Wednesday Night Musings
Posted by kj on Wednesday, March 11th, 2009
Wednesday Night Links
- Kalin Lucas is OK despite bruised hand
Please, no more injuries. - Conference Check: Final Reality Edition
We finished in a tie with Illinois for lowest defensive efficiency in the Big Ten (more on that below). - Conference Tournament Odds: Log5 Style
BP’s system gives us a 33.7% chance of winning the BTT title. - Big Ten Tournament history
Sadly, we rank only 5th in all-time BTT winning percentage. - Big Ten Tournament Round 1: #8 Minnesota vs #9 Northwestern
NW-side preview of the game that we play the winner of. - Big Ten Tournament Preview: Day 1
Hammers and Rails.
That’s Not Enough: Even MORE Evidence of How Smart I Am!
Patrick at It’s Just Sports posted some very kind words about this blog today. This reminded me that I had made one other preseason prediction in an interview I did with Patrick last November:
And, for this occasion, I’ll got out on a limb and say that at least one banner gets hung in the Breslin Center at the start of the 2009-10 season–be it for the Big Ten regular season championship, the Big Ten Tournament championship, or a Final Four appearance.
Again:
Can We Put It All Together?
A graph of game-by-game offensive (blue) and defensive (red) efficiency figures for MSU in conference play this season, based on last year’s methodology:
The graph tells a pretty simple story: We got much better on defense as the conference season progressed, but we also regressed some on offense. There are three factors I can point to in terms of our offensive efficiency going down:
- Raymar Morgan’s illness (which contributed to our offensive rebounding percentage falling off somewhat).
- The late-season 3-point shooting slump.
- Playing Illinois/Purdue–and their ball-hawking, turnover-inducing man-to-man defenses–three times in the final six games.
On defense, the team really came together playing Izzo’s man-to-man scheme–which requires a lot of switching and hedging–as they avoided mental lapses resulting in good 3-point looks. Of our final 9 conference opponents, only two shot better than 30% from 3-point range.
If we can regain the offensive rhythm (and rebounding dominance) from early in the conference season and combine it with the much-improved defensive cohesiveness the team showed down the stretch, we’re going to be a legitimate Final Four contender. Of course, if the offense doesn’t regain it’s early form and our defense doesn’t hold up against unfamiliar conference opponents, the forecast is much less rosy.
I’m not going to post the full group of graphs for all 11 teams this year (I don’t see as many interesting stories this year; lots of .500 teams that played at a .500 level for most of the season). But I will say one thing: Beware the Badgers. Per usual, they appear to be peaking at the right time.
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5 Responses to “Wednesday Night Musings”
Andrewon 11 Mar 2009 at 7:25 pm 1Wisconsin may look good in the graph but doesn’t their schedule come into play? Their upturn began with Iowa and includes Ohio State, Indiana (twice), Michigan, and Minnesota. That comes out to three games against the two horrible teams in the conference and three against the middle of the conference. They definitely improved (since they won some of those games) but I think the schedule is more telling.
kjon 11 Mar 2009 at 9:25 pm 2Good point, Andrew.
Mark in DCon 12 Mar 2009 at 11:16 am 3You could say the same thing about our improvement on D – it was enhanced in the second half of the Big 10 season by the fact that we had already played OSU and Northwestern (2 of the better offensive teams in the Big 10) twice already but still had two games left against Indiana, who was by far the worst team in the league on offense.
kjon 12 Mar 2009 at 11:26 am 4Visually, you can see a lower “plateau” on defense for both teams in the second half of the season. I think that indicates a fundamental improvement.
Wisconsin’s offensive improvement is more easily attributed to playing IU twice, since their late season improvement on that end shows a spikier trend, with the two IU games and the Iowa game as the big spikes.
IU’s abysmal performance and that darn unbalanced schedule are screwing up my graphs . . .
Mark in DCon 12 Mar 2009 at 2:18 pm 5IU hasn’t been nearly as bad as Depaul, and five teams in the Big East are as bad (or worse) in efficiency margin terms than Iowa. Plus the Big East schedule is even more unbalanced than ours. I guess what I’m saying is you could have it worse.