Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Kentucky Loses To Florida, Loses Noel

#7 Florida 69, #25 Kentucky 52
A devastating night for Kentucky. As you surely know by now, Nerlens Noel fell into the basket stanchion, tore his ACL, and is now lost for the season. And that is, of course, the real story of this game. Kentucky's odds of winning at Florida were pretty low to begin with, as Florida is probably the best team in the nation. Even before the Noel injury, Kentucky was down by 12 points with 8 minutes to go. But Noel is one of the best defenders in the nation (I know some people think Noel is the best, though I still prefer Jeff Withey), and he's far and away the most important and irreplaceable player for the Wildcats.

Despite the general misconception about John Calipari's teams, he's actually more of a defensive than offensive coach. His teams have been ranked among the 15 best defenses in the nation by Pomeroy for the past seven seasons, going back to his days at Memphis. This year he just hasn't gotten that same level of defense - they're rated 34th by Pomeroy and are only 5th in SEC play with 0.95 PPP allowed in conference play. Their perimeter defense this year is flat out mediocre. Noel's presence in the paint (he leads the nation with 4.4 blocks per game) has been their one saving grace. 7-footer Willie Cauley-Stein is the team's best second best defender, and he'll do his best to fill some of the void, but it won't be the same. And after him? There is no back-up. Kentucky has been playing with seven true scholarship players in their rotation, and now they're down to six. The only remaining player over 6'7" is Kyle Wiltjer, and he's a perimeter player. Are we really going to see Jon Hood playing against opposing power forwards? Defense, depth and rebounding are all significantly worse for Kentucky now.

So what about the at-large hopes of Kentucky? They're currently rated 18th by Pomeroy and 14th by the Sagarin PREDICTOR, but that's how good the team was with Noel. Those ratings will drop now. And remember that Kentucky was a team that I'd been saying for a while was underrated because they hadn't had big wins, but they were going to eventually get some and improve their resume throughout the season... now they might really get burned by not sealing the deal in a big game when they had the chance.. Because despite being rated a Top 20 team in terms of performance, Kentucky has exactly one RPI Top 50 win this season, and that one win (Ole Miss) might not even be an RPI Top 50 win for much longer. Their Sagarin ELO_SCORE is still 22nd, but their RPI is 44th, and even their RPI Top 100 record is only 4-7. At 8-3 now, I think they need to get to 13-5 to completely lock up an at-large bid. At 12-6 they'll probably need to win an SEC tournament game. And at 11-7 they'll be firmly on the bubble. Kentucky's next game, on Saturday at Tennessee, is suddenly very important. Without Noel, that's almost a toss-up game.

With the loss to Arkansas, Florida's Sisyphian journey to #1 in the polls begins anew. Florida continues to destroy the SEC (they're now +0.35 PPP), but the lack of quality opponents in the conference, plus the fact that pollsters will refuse to ever move one team above another that does not lose, means that it's a minimum of two more weeks before Florida can get to #1. They just need to keep winning. Sweeping the SEC regular season and tournament titles should be sufficient for a 1 seed in March, though. The Gators will play on the road at Auburn on Saturday, but then have an important game at Missouri next Tuesday. That should be their final tough game until their re-match at Kentucky on March 9th.

#8 Michigan State 75, #4 Michigan 52
This game just snowballed out of control for Michigan. Michigan State led by as many as 16 points in the first half, and Michigan immediately got desperate. They got overly aggressive on defense and rushed too many one-on-one shots on offense. The stat that stood out to me more than any was that Michigan had only six assists, which tied for the fewest they've had in a game all season. Michigan also got another nothing game from Glenn Robinson III (2 points on 1-for-4 shooting). In his last four games he is averaging 4.5 points and 3.3 rebounds per game, with 7-for-24 shooting from the field. It's startling how much he has fallen off, and it's unclear if it's a fluke, if he's tiring, or if he's got some short term mental block right now.

Michigan State, of course, was excellent. I don't want to make it sound as if they weren't. Gary Harris led the Spartans with 17 points, with 5-for-9 shooting behind the arc. Derrick Nix was 6-for-9 from the field. Branden Dawson and Keith Appling played well also. But as I say all the time, it's unwise to overreact to a single game. Michigan State is still only at +0.10 PPP in conference play, compared to +0.11 for Michigan and +0.23 PPP for Indiana. So the Spartans have very much narrowed the gap between themselves and the top of the league, but in my view they are still not the Big Ten favorites.

Michigan State has to get past a road game at Nebraska on Saturday before heading into the key stretch that will determine whether they can win a share of the Big Ten regular season title or not. That begins with a home game against Indiana, on Tuesday, and also features road games at Ohio State and Michigan.

The Wolverines have four losses now in the Big Ten, which puts them two games behind first place, but their remaining schedule is far and away the easiest of the top contenders. They will be favored in every remaining game, and even if they lose another game to fall to 13-5, that still might be enough for a big tie for first place. And I think that a 13-5 Michigan that wins the Big Ten tournament will still be in pretty good shape for a 1 seed in the Tournament. Their next game will be on Sunday, against Penn State.

Missouri State 67, Indiana State 65
I hate to say "I told you so", but... I warned you about Indiana State. Indiana State has had a few very visible quality wins, but has had some bad losses that simply were not seen by the national media. It's almost unheard of for a team with a Sagarin ELO outside the Top 60 to earn an at-large bid (even with the expanded bracket, it shouldn't happen more than once or twice per year), and Indiana State's ELO_SCORE was outside the Top 75 even before this loss (it's now tumbled to 89th). They were certainly an interesting bubble team, but it was just ridiculous to me for so many people to have Indiana State in their bracket.

So what was the difference in this game? Nothing, really. Rebounding was even, assists were even, turnovers were pretty even, shooting was pretty even.... the only real difference was that Indiana State was called for twice as many fouls and allowed twice as many free throw attempts. But hey, that's what homecourt advantage is for.

Indiana State is now 9-5 in Missouri Valley play, and it's hard to see them earning an at-large bid without at least getting to 12-6. They'll play on the road at Bradley on Saturday, but then their key game will be on Tuesday against Wichita State. That's the win that they need to get back onto the bubble, in my opinion.

Missouri State moves to 6-8 with this win, which puts them only a half game out of 6th place (to avoid the first round of Arch Madness). Their next game will be on Saturday, at Southern Illinois.

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