Recapping First Month of College Basketball

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With the college basketball season about one month old, several storylines have been established:

Big 12 Dominance:  The Big 12 leads the KPI Rankings by a wide margin. The Big 12 is 78-13 overall (.857, best among all conferences) and is 50-1 in home games.  With a true round robin in conference play, quality wins will be abundant for those teams.

Location, Location, Location:  Home teams are 1,171-316 (.787) to date.  All 32 conferences are over .500 at home (the MAAC is lowest at 19-16, .543).  Conversely, only three conferences are above .500 on the road: the Big 12, WCC, and Big Ten.

One Week Shorter:  The season is one week shorter this year because the men’s basketball season begins on the second Friday in November (this year November 14) and is not tied to the end of the season.  As a result, 1,724 games have been played in 31 days through Sunday so far this season (55.6 games per day) while 1,862 games were played by December 15, 2013 (55.6 games per day).  This has led to shorter prep times for teams.

Scoring Returns to 2012-13 Levels:  Scoring has dipped by 4.94 points per game (down 6.8% from 2013-14) through Sunday.  After a sharp increase between 2012-13 and 2013-14 due to much publicized rule changes, scoring has returned to previous levels.

The pace of the game has slowed (possessions per game are down 2.21 per team, per game).  Steals (up 6.9% per possession) and turnovers (up 8.4% per possession) are both trending upward, undoing a change that was part of last year’s explanation that more would-be steals/turnovers were being called fouls.  Fouls are down 4.8% (0.95 per game) and down 1.7% per possession.  Free throw attempts are down 11.1%, and down 8.2% per possession.  Interestingly enough, 3-point field goal makes and attempts are both slightly up, leading one to include that teams are playing more zone defense.

Less Than 30?:  There have been five Division-I teams score fewer than 30 points in a game this season: Savannah State (26 vs. Louisville), Rutgers (26 vs. Virginia), Cal State-Bakersfield (27 vs. San Diego State), Texas State (27 vs. Texas), and Montana State (28 vs. Kentucky).  It happened only once all of last year (Washington State vs. Arizona).

Offensive DIFFs:  Offensive DIFFs measure the difference between one team’s offensive points per possession and what each of their opponents allows by way of defensive points per possession.

  1. Duke, +.240
  2. Gonzaga, +.203
  3. Notre Dame, +.200
  4. Ohio State, +.198
  5. Wisconsin, +.169
  6. Indiana, +.168
  7. Eastern Washington, +.165
  8. Davidson, +.164
  9. Wichita State, +.163
  10. Iowa State, +.160

Defensive DIFFs:  Defensive DIFFs measure the difference between one team’s defensive points per possession and what each of their opponents average by way of offensive points per possession.

  1. Louisville, +.228
  2. Kentucky, +.225
  3. Wisconsin, +.181
  4. Texas, +.181
  5. San Diego State, +.177
  6. Virginia, +.176
  7. Oklahoma, +.155
  8. South Carolina, +.146
  9. Baylor, +.142
  10. Iowa, +.138

Combined Offensive and Defensive DIFFs:  The sum of offensive and defensive points per possession DIFFs.

  1. Kentucky, +.384
  2. Duke, +.358
  3. Wisconsin, +.350
  4. Louisville, +.339
  5. Ohio State, +.336
  6. Virginia, +.324
  7. Texas, +.301
  8. Gonzaga, +.296
  9. Utah, +.293
  10. North Carolina, +.289

Strength of Schedule:  Measured as the average KPI of opponents played by date, but also factoring in the location of the game (home/road/neutral).

  1. Texas Southern, +.254
  2. VCU, +.183
  3. Charlotte, +.167
  4. Richmond, +.151
  5. UNC-Wilmington, +.146
  6. Mississippi Valley State, +.146
  7. Buffalo, +.144
  8. Southeastern Louisiana, +.138
  9. Mount St. Mary’s, +.133
  10. Nicholls State, +.129

Projected SOS:  Same strength of schedule numbers, but including all teams currently scheduled who a team has not yet played.

  1. Kansas, +.303
  2. Oklahoma, +.287
  3. Kansas State, +.267
  4. West Virginia, +.266
  5. Texas, +.261
  6. North Carolina, +.259
  7. Iowa State, +.249
  8. Oklahoma State, +.248
  9. Georgetown, +.237
  10. Tennessee, +.237

Best Wins by KPI Formula – FULL SEASON

  1. +1.04 #4 Duke 80, at #9 Wisconsin 70 (Dec 3)
  2. +1.00 #21 Green Bay 68, at #18 Miami-FL 55 (Dec 6)
  3. +0.97 #2 Virginia 76, at #33 Maryland 65 (Dec 3)
  4. +0.94 #1 Kentucky 72, #3 Kansas 40 (Nov 18)
  5. +0.93 #14 LSU 74, at #32 West Virginia 73 (Dec 4)
  6. +0.88 #49 Boise State 82, at #41 St. Mary’s-CA 71 (Dec 6)
  7. +0.87 #2 Virginia 74, #17 VCU 57 (Dec 6)
  8. +0.86 #11 Gonzaga 73, at #45 St. John’s 66 (Nov 28)
  9. +0.83 at #1 Kentucky 63, #8 Texas 51 (Dec 5)
  10. +0.80 #105 New Mexico 63, at #76 Valparaiso 46 (Dec 6)

Game Outliers – FULL SEASON

  1. 97.6% #347 Non D-I/SE Oklahoma State 69, at #206 Tulsa 66 (Dec 10)
  2. 89.4% #253 Brown 77, at #65 Providence 67 (Dec 8)
  3. 86.9% #307 St. Peter’s 68, at #126 Rutgers 50 (Nov 25)
  4. 82.8% #297 Siena 73, at #128 St. Bonaventure 70 (Nov 19)
  5. 76.9% #182 Bryant 80, at #134 Army 73 (Dec 9)
  6. 75.6% #336 Central Connecticut 56, at #275 Hartford 47 (Dec 6)
  7. 75.5% #277 NJIT 72, at #124 Michigan 70 (Dec 6)
  8. 74.8% #141 Wake Forest 71, at #84 Tulane 49 (Nov 17)
  9. 72.0% #254 Nebraska-Omaha 97, at #93 Marquette 89 (Nov 22)
  10. 71.8% #347 Non D-I/University of the Sciences 54, at #324 Drexel 52 (Dec 4)
Posted in College Basketball, KPI Sports.