Draft picks and NCAA tournament wins

In my free time I've done quite a bit of analysis of the NCAA tournaments since 2003, particularly their relation to the Kenpom data. But I haven't had much time to really dig into the results or blog about them. Today, however, I saw a tweet about how Louisville has had only two players drafted since entering the Big East. That reminded me that I've compiled a set of data that lists all the First Round picks teams have had since 2003 and compares that to how many NCAA tournament games they've won in that span. One thing to note: this data does not include players that will be drafted this year, which explains why Michigan doesn't appear yet. (Actually I've put Michigan in at the bottom as one of the teams with zero first round picks but more than five tourney wins. That will change this summer, obviously.) Anyhow, here it is, sorted first by 1st round picks, and then by wins:

Team	Actual Ws	1st Rd Pix
North Carolina	28	13
Kansas	30	11
Connecticut	23	11
Kentucky	22	11
Duke	24	9
Texas	15	9
Ohio State	17	7
Florida	23	6
Syracuse	20	6
UCLA	15	6
Washington	8	6
Arizona	14	5
Georgia Tech	7	5
Wake	5	5
Louisville	22	4
Illinois	11	4
Georgetown	8	4
Boston College	5	4
Memphis	15	3
Marquette	13	3
Oklahoma State	8	3
North Carolina State	6	3
Oregon	6	3
Stanford	4	3
Nevada	4	3
Florida State	3	3
Michigan State	23	2
Wisconsin	15	2
Xavier	14	2
Villanova	12	2
Gonzaga	11	2
Virginia Commonwealth	7	2
Baylor	6	2
Missouri	5	2
Texas A&M	5	2
LSU	5	2
Vandy	5	2
Brigham Young	4	2
St. Joes	3	2
Southern Cal	3	2
New Mexico	2	2
Arizona State	2	2
Colorado	1	2
Butler	16	1
West Virginia	12	1
Purdue	9	1
Oklahoma	8	1
Tennessee	8	1
Indiana	7	1
Maryland	6	1
Kansas State	6	1
Cincinnati	5	1
Nevada Las Vegas	5	1
San Diego St.	3	1
Mississippi State	3	1
Washington State	3	1
Cal	3	1
Iowa State	3	1
Davidson	3	1
Utah	2	1
Temple	2	1
Arkansas	1	1
Minnesota	1	1
Colorado State	1	1
St. Johns	0	1
South Carolina	0	1
Georgia	0	1
Pitt	13	0
Michigan	7	0
Wichita State	6	0
George Mason	5	0

Obviously, there's a strong correlation between first-round talent and NCAA wins:

Unsurprisingly, Wisconsin is among the outliers. Only Michigan State and Butler have won more NCAA games with two or fewer first-round picks since 2003. What's more, only those two teams and Louisville have won more games with five or fewer first-round picks.

I'm sure the results would be even more stark if either restricted to "lottery picks" or expanded to second-round picks.

Time to sit Weeks?

I have broken the seal. Here it is, a baseball post.

I am not a Rickie Weeks fan. His defense is not good. He is a career .249 hitter. He has had only 2 seasons in his 8 full years with the Brewers that he has played in more than 130 games. Yet he makes over $10 million per year.

The options are limited at this point. With his high salary the Brewers would likely have to pay a large chunk of his salary to any team that would take him in trade. Why give him away and pay his salary unless you have some young talent you want to try out, or a vastly superior player to play there which the Brewers don't have.

Rickie was able to turn around his season last year after spending much of it hitting under .200. He finished at .230, so I kind of understand the Brewer's patience. There is no way they can trade Weeks at his current production level (hitting .187) , and he still has time left on his deal.

There is a clause in Weeks' contract that will have to make them think about the bench at some point. This is from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

If Weeks accumulates 600 plate appearances in 2014, or 1,200 plate appearances combined in 2013 and 2014, the option vests for $11.5 million in 2015. If he does not reach those levels, the Brewers can void the option. Weeks also must be healthy at the end of 2014 - in other words, no disabling injury - for the option to vest.

As of now there is no way the Crew want Weeks option to vest for 2015. At least that way they only have him for one more year at his exuberant salary. I guess if they want to make sure Weeks does not reach the 1200 vesting option they can always bench him next year to make sure he doesn't reach the number of at-bats, but it's never too early to start guaranteeing he can get there.

I am reminded of the Bill Hall contract the Brewers practically had to buy out so they could trade him after he lost it.

Dick

I'm not a racing guy, but even I know Dick Trickle. Dick killed himself. Part of a growing trend of middle age to older men who take their own lives.

He was 71, and I guess it would be hard to say he didn't live a full life.

Goodbye Dick.

Basketball Schedule Developments

A couple items of news on the Badger basketball team's '13-14 schedule.

1) They will open the season against St. Johns in Sioux Falls, SD. Apparently there is a new sports complex there called "THE PENTAGON!!!" built with money from a health care organization run by Joe Krabbenhoft's dad. Small world.

2) The Big Ten conference season match-ups have been released. Wisconsin's four single-game opponents are MSU, OSU, @PSU and @Nebraska.

3) Going back a bit, the "bracket" for the Badgers' Cancun tournament have been released as well. They will play St. Louis in the first game, and then the winner of West Virginia vs. Old Dominion. As with last year's matchup against Creighton in the pre-season "tournament," the SLU / Wisconsin game is clearly the championship game.

On the game against St. Johns, I like it. This will be in place of a home game for Wisconsin, so it takes the place of a terrible game against the Little Sisters of the Poor. St. John's hasn't been great under Steve Lavin, but they're decent. They'll be a top-150 team, which means this will likely be good for the RPI.

I like the Badgers' Big Ten schedule. I prefer to have the tough games at home and the cream puffs on the road in those no-return-game matchups because it increases the chances of going 4-0 in that slate. Last season the Badgers were set to go 4-0 after winning at Indiana, at Northwestern, and home against Michigan, but they laid an egg against Purdue at home. I like the Badgers' chances to go 4-0 next year, and would be very surprised if they don't go 3-1. (Though PSU figures to be somewhat tougher next year.)

More on NCAA rules, sorry I just can't do baseball yet

The NCAA rules committee came out with their recommendations and they did not include the change to the 35 second clock. This pretty much means that the clock will remain at 35 seconds for another season. The proposed changes are outlined in Eamonn Brennan's column.

The best suggestion in the article is not from the NCAA committee, but from Brennan himself regarding timeouts. Basketball has too many. There are already official timeouts at each 4 minute mark, do we really need many more?

The rule change to 5 timeouts a game instead of 3 per half was sort of a move forward, but it hasn't helped. Since teams lose a timeout at halftime if they don't use it, teams often use one at the end of the first half to set up a play rather than lose it at halftime. This is totally unnecessary and slows down the game.

Teams also don't need to have 4 timeouts in the 2nd half. They already get one every 4 minutes, why do we need to have a half of basketball with potentially 8 team timeouts plus the 16, 12, 8 and 4 minute timeouts.

Brennan brought this up because the NCAA committee proposed to expand the ability of refs to review plays to the last 2 minutes which will slow down games even more. I'm OK with the extra review as long as there is an NFL like time limit on the review, but there should be fewer timeouts.

In the NBA there are 82 games and a need to make that huge number of games as competitive as possible so they entertain. The NBA allows a team to move the ball to half court after a time out to get an advantage in end game situations and allow teams a better chance to come back. NCAA games don't allow the movement of the inbound, so the only real advantage is to set up a defense after a made basket. I don't think getting rid of timeouts will lead to a ton fewer steals on inbound plays, as teams usually just foul anyway. Just think if teams only had 1 or 2 timeouts at the end of games. Fouling slows down the game enough, do we need all the time outs?

I also think the foul out timeout needs to go. Why should a team get to huddle and talk to the coach just because a guy fouls out. If the coach needs 30 seconds to make a decision about a sub, why does he need to huddle with his players to do so.

I'll stop bitching now.

Bruiser's Gash

In case you want to see photographs of Mike Brusewitz's leg all sliced open, click here. It's kind of amazing.