Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Are Steve Alford And New Mexico Tournament Failures?

As we get closer to the first day of the regular season, college basketball social media is starting to kick into gear. And today, an interesting topic came up: the idea of a "regular season team" that fails in the postseason.

The context for this discussion is this article about New Mexico hoping that "a change in leadership yields a change in postseason success". I ended up debating the issue with Rob Dauster and Andy Glockner, and promised to write a blog post breaking down the math. So here we are.

Anyway, the crux of the issue is whether New Mexico has historically been a "postseason failure" and whether Steve Alford is an example of a "regular season coach" who has regular season success but can't find postseason success.

We know that Alford's Lobos had two pretty big Tournament failures in the last few years. And as Rob argued, the entire program has been to the Tournament 13 times and only won multiple games once, way back in 1974. In fact, because statistically analyzing the Tournament prior to the expansion to 64 teams is hard to do objectively, I'm only going to look at data from the 64/65/68 team era. And during that time, New Mexico has been to 11 NCAA Tournaments, never making a Sweet 16 and going 6-11 overall. That seems pretty damning.

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Here's how I'm going to break this down. Total wins are a not-great way to define Tournament success. If you are a 14 seed every year, it's not a huge failure if you bow out in your opening game most years. The correct way to do this is PASE (Performance Against Seed Expectation). I'm going to use the data from here. So for example, the average 9 seed wins 0.59 games. If you are a 9 seed in ten consecutive years and go 6-10 then you will be exactly average, neither over- or under-performing what the average team has done with your seed.

So let's break down three different eras. New Mexico prior to Alford. New Mexico under Alford. And Alford at Division I schools other than New Mexico. What do we get?

New Mexico prior to Alford: 4-7 overall record. 6.75 projected wins according to PASE.
New Mexico under Alford: 2-4 overall record. 5.23 projected wins according to PASE.
Alford at other DI schools: 3-4 overall record. 3.77 projected wins according to PASE.

So overall, over a three decade stretch, New Mexico has won 6 games when they were supposed to win 12. Alford has won 5 games when he was supposed to win 9. So clearly, both have underperformed. But is that really significant?

I say no. And here's why. That sample size is just way too small. New Mexico prior to Alford won 2.75 too few games across two decades under three different coaches. Is that really supposed to be statistically meaningful?

And Alford before getting to New Mexico? He won 3 games when he was supposed to win 3.77. He lost famously on a crazy buzzerbeater in the opening round as a 3 seed, but he also took a 12 seed to the Sweet 16. The other two years he lost an opener as a 10 seed, and won a game as a 7 seed. Basically, he did fine.

What about this bad stretch for Alford at New Mexico? I'd argue that the PASE is deceptive here. As I've talked about many times, the Mountain West has become expert at "rigging" the RPI. It's very easy to inflate your RPI, and basically the whole conference does it. I spent all of last season getting excoriated in New Mexico fan forums and by New Mexico fans on twitter for pointing this out. But in the end they were only an 11 point favorite against Harvard in that 3/14 game. It was an upset, but nothing like a typical 3/14 upset. And in 2010? When a 3 seeded New Mexico lost to 11 seed Washington? That game was actually a pick'em in Vegas, and both Sagarin and Pomeroy had Washington the favorite. Why? Washington was a really strong 11 seed, and 3 seeded New Mexico was actually ranked 50th in KenPom. They were simply a fraudulent 3 seed.

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So have Steve Alford and New Mexico, on average, underperformed in the NCAA Tournament? Yes. But not by much. And certainly not enough that statistical randomness and some bad seeding (such as due to Alford's Lobos coming up with a schedule that inflated their RPI) can't explain.

In general, the argument that "regular season teams" exist is without evidence. This post is in no way a rigorous statistical breakdown, but as far as I'm aware there has been no evidence that certain teams are more likely to struggle or succeed in the NCAA Tournament. The whole idea of ascribing an entire program over several decades as a "regular season team that fails in the postseason" seems to be proof of how irrational the concept is. Even if you believe that a certain style of basketball is more or less likely to succeed in March, what exactly is the style overlap between Dave Bliss, Steve Alford and Fran Fraschilla? Is there a magical potion in the Albuquerque water supply that causes basketball skills to deteriorate in March? Come on.

To me, this falls under the category of the "clutch" discussions I talk about all the time. Some athletes deal with clutch situations better than others, but the effect is a small one. And whenever anybody tries to statistically measure the impact of "clutch" play on a team's won/loss record, or future postseason success, they find none. The idea that some athletes or coaches can just "will" their teams to victory in clutch situations is nothing more than apophenia.

If the NCAA Tournament were played with a coin flip rather than on the basketball court, then by pure statistical randomness some teams would end up outperforming their seed more often while others would underperform. But this would mean nothing as far as projecting their future postseason success - it would still be a coin flip.

So if somebody has evidence that a certain style of basketball or coaching tends to outperform or underperform on average in the postseason, I'd love to see it. It's certainly believable and plausible. But without evidence it's nothing more than a guess. And if there's any effect at all, it's surely a small one.

Saturday, October 05, 2013

Post-Midnight Madness BP68

The start of a new season means a new bracket projection. This one will have to hold you for about a month. The first in-season bracket projection will be the "W-17 BP68", which will come out 17 weeks prior to Selection Sunday (November 17th).

There aren't too many significant changes from the last bracket. There just isn't a lot of news in August and September.

Probably the biggest change is Kentucky grabbing the SEC favorite spot from Florida. The two swapped spots in the bracket, with Kentucky sliding up to a 1 seed and Florida dropping to a 2. The change is mostly due to the Chris Walker eligibility case.

I do still think that the Kentucky hype needs to be chilled down a bit. They might end up being the best team in the country, but it doesn't make you a massive hater to think that they won't. Their roster still has question marks. Although I'm sure that the fact that I defended Kentucky as underrated all last season prior to Nerlens Noel's injury will buy me precisely zero capital with that fan base. Regardless, let's all agree to chill the 40-0 talk, okay? I don't care if Kentucky ends up being a massive favorite in every game (they won't be), because the odds are still that they will lose. It's almost impossible in the modern era for a team to go 40-0. So when Kentucky gets off to a 6-0 start or whatever, let's not make idiots of ourselves by talking about 40-0.

The one change to the Field of 68 is the Horizon League favorite. I've lost my nerve on Wisconsin-Green Bay because of their off-court issues. So Wright State is my new favorite there.

Butler drops significantly because of the Roosevelt Jones injury. I have them in the Field of 68, but only narrowly. I think they're a bubble team.

Let's get to the rest of the bracket:

1. MICHIGAN STATE (BIG TEN)
1. KENTUCKY (SEC)
1. DUKE (ACC)
1. KANSAS (BIG 12)

2. Florida
2. ARIZONA (PAC-12)
2. Ohio State
2. GEORGETOWN (BIG EAST)

3. LOUISVILLE (AAC)
3. Oklahoma State
3. Virginia
3. VCU (ATLANTIC TEN)

4. Creighton
4. Marquette
4. Wisconsin
4. GONZAGA (WCC)

5. North Carolina
5. Iowa
5. Michigan
5. NEW MEXICO (MWC)

6. Indiana
6. Villanova
6. St. Louis
6. Pittsburgh

7. UConn
7. Boise State
7. WICHITA STATE (MVC)
7. Memphis

8. Notre Dame
8. Baylor
8. Syracuse
8. Tennessee

9. Stanford
9. UCLA
9. La Salle
9. Colorado

10. Cincinnati
10. UNLV
10. Maryland
10. HARVARD (IVY)

11. Kansas State
11. Purdue
11. BYU
11. Butler

12. LOUISIANA TECH (CONFERENCE USA)
12. Dayton
12. Texas
12. NORTH DAKOTA STATE (SUMMIT)
12. Oregon
12. Boston College

13. MANHATTAN (MAAC)
13. WEBER STATE (BIG SKY)
13. TOWSON (COLONIAL)
13. NEW MEXICO STATE (WAC)

14. BELMONT (OVC)
14. GEORGIA STATE (SUN BELT)
14. WRIGHT STATE (HORIZON)
14. TOLEDO (MAC)

15. MERCER (ATLANTIC SUN)
15. BOSTON UNIVERSITY (PATRIOT)
15. DAVIDSON (SOCON)
15. NORTHWESTERN STATE (SOUTHLAND)

16. VERMONT (AMERICA EAST)
16. UC IRVINE (BIG WEST)
16. HIGH POINT (BIG SOUTH)
16. NC CENTRAL (MEAC)
16. MT SAINT MARY'S (NEC)
16. SOUTHERN (SWAC)

Teams seriously considered that just missed the cut:
Georgia Tech, UMass, Providence, St. John's, Illinois, Minnesota, Iowa State, Oklahoma, Indiana State, Utah State, Arizona State, California, Alabama, Ole Miss, Vanderbilt, Denver, St. Mary's

Other teams with a decent shot to get onto the bubble:
Houston, SMU, Florida State, Miami (Fl), Richmond, St. Joseph's, Xavier, Northwestern, West Virginia, Southern Miss, UTEP, Wisconsin-Green Bay, Northern Iowa, Fresno State, San Diego State, Washington, Washington State, Arkansas, LSU, Missouri, San Francisco

Other teams I'm keeping my eye on:
Central Florida, South Florida, Temple, Clemson, NC State, Wake Forest, George Mason, Rhode Island, Seton Hall, Montana, Penn State, Drexel, Northeastern, Charlotte, Middle Tennessee, Detroit, Niagara, Buffalo, Western Michigan, Missouri State, Nevada, Oregon State, Lehigh, Texas A&M