Saturday, December 12, 2020

Early look at Home Court Advantage in Covid Season

With some frankly disturbing exceptions, most college basketball games this year are being played in empty or near-empty arenas. This raises an obvious question: how much does this affect home court advantage (HCA)?

It's a reasonable assumption that lack of fans will reduce home court advantage, and I lowered the HCA factor in my ratings from 1.3% to 1.0% coming into the year. But I am tracking it (or at least attempting to)to see whether it needs to be further adjusted. Here's what I'm looking at so far.

I calculate and apply HCA by looking at how many more net points home teams score than my ratings project they should. For example, if two perfectly evenly matched teams play, and the home team ends up winning by 3 points in a 50 possession game, that's an HCA of 6 points per 100 possessions. Here are the actual results of that method over the last three years, plus this year so far:

Year Games HCA/100
2018 4873 5.14
2019 4934 4.93
2020 4877 5.22
2021 438 5.53

Looking at this, you might conclude that HCA is as strong as ever so far this year. But that would be wrong. Things look quite a bit different if you look at just the first 17 days of each season:

Year Games HCA/100
2018 662 6.24
2019 555 6.33
2020 666 6.42
2021 438 5.53

On this view, HCA is about 13% reduced from the average of the last three years. Basically, HCA is usually higher at the beginning of the year, probably because it is generally higher in mismatches, and mismatches are common early in the year.

In fact, if we break this down and look at only games in the first 17 days involving teams who are ranked within 100 spots of each other, there is a huuuuge drop-off this year:

Year Games HCA/100
2018 293 5.59
2019 236 5.69
2020 300 5.89
2021 215 2.18

Here, in a fairly similar number of games as previous years, HCA is down by more than half! Given that the overall number is only down about 12%, that means that HCA in uneven matchups (where the difference in team ranks is more than 100) is actually UP quite a bit:

Year Games HCA/100
2018 369 6.75
2019 319 6.8
2020 366 6.86
2021 224 8.78

What is the difference in these games? Well, one possibility is officiating. In the evenly matched games, home free throw rate is just a 1.18% advantage for the home team (versus an average advantage of 3.4% in the previous years. Meanwhile, in mismatches the home team is mostly retaining its usual advantage in getting to the line: 3.2% versus 4.3% in those kinds of games in previous years.

Where does that leave us? It's too early to make any firm conclusions. Another couple caveats I want to add: (1) this analysis is kind of down of dirty because I'm not fully backing out the effect of HCA in the first place when considering team quality (which could especially be skewing the results this year of teams that have not played road games), and (2) the results for this year are obviously hard to disentangle from errors in the preseason projections.

But a couple things I'm confident in saying: HCA still exists, even with few fans in the arena, but it is attenuated to at least some degree. Maybe a lot in real games.

Now for some speculation. Perhaps the difference that shows up between more evenly matched games and mismatches reflects that Covid-related travel and other restrictions are particularly rough on low major teams. And perhaps the vast majority of HCA that remains is more related to this kind of travel fatigue, and has largely replaced implicit officiating bias as the main driver of HCA for now.

Update:

I did some more work on this to back out HCA for team quality. The raw numbers are different (slightly less HCA overall), and make this year even closer to a normal year so far, but the basic ratios / conclusions noted above still hold. In particular, the marked split between closely matched and mismatch games still holds, although the "through day 17" split is now close enough to be reasonably considered possibly just noise.

Monday, May 25, 2020

What to make of Rick Pitino to Iona?

After a couple years in Greece, Rick Pitino is coming back to coach college basketball next year at Iona College, a member of the MAAC. This is a pretty unusual situation, obviously. Pitino is already a Hall of Fame coach, with six* Final Fours and two* NCAA championships. And when he left Louisville prior to the 2018 season, he was still putting together great teams—it wasn't like the game had passed him by and he was put out to pasture. So it's intriguing to think about what such an established coaching legend might be able to accomplish in a one-bid league.

I asked the hive-mind on Twitter for some historical analogues, and here's what we came up with, listed in approximate order of similarity (in my opinion):

Larry Brown to SMU

This is probably the closest analogue in terms of coaching ability and situation. Brown made a Final Four at UCLA and won a title at Kansas before heading off for a successful couple of decades in the NBA (where he won a title with the Pistons).

SMU was a decidedly moribund program when Brown arrived, having missed the tournament for about 20 years in a row. They struggled through one more year of mediocrity under Brown before his methods, such as they were, resulted in Madness. Brown ended up lasting only four seasons, and he left under a cloud of impropriety, but he had tournament-quality squads his last three years.

Could Pitino build a (clean) Brown-at-SMU type program? I think that's optimistic. SMU was in a multi-bid league by Brown's second year, and had considerably more resources than Iona. But I think something just a step below that is achievable. The main lesson is that even in this relatively best case scenario (basketball-wise), there was a transition year before the superior coaching (etc.) turned into more wins.

Jerry Tarkanian to Fresno State

Tarkanian built an indisputable mid-major powerhouse at UNLV, where he went to three Final Fours and won a title. Like Larry Brown, he is legendary for his run-ins with the NCAA, which led to his departure from UNLV just a year after winning that title. After a brief stint in the NBA and a few years in the wilderness (litigating against the NCAA), he returned to coach his alma mater, Fresno State.

He was immediately successful, going 22-11 in his first year—the most wins for Fresno in over ten years. He continued to win 20+ games every year and built the program into an at-large quality team, eventually earning back-to-back 9-seeds in 2000 and 2001. The 2000 team lost, of course, to the Final Four bound Wisconsin Badgers. Unfortunately, these later teams were subsequently the subject of NCAA sanctions.

This is certainly a favorable comparison for Pitino (other than the sanctions stuff). Tark immediately built a contender in the WAC—and this is back when New Mexico, UNLV, and Utah were in the WAC, and the conference regularly sent 3 or 4 teams to the tournament. Like Iona, it was a program with some pedigree (Tiny Grant took them to the Elite Eight in 1982) but nothing like the powerhouse that Tarkanian was coming from. Ultimately, I'd say this is an example in favor of expecting bigger things out of Iona this year.

Rollie Massimino to Cleveland State

It seems fitting to follow Tarkanian with Massimino, who replaced him at UNLV. Massimino had a legendary 19-year run at Villanova, capped by a miraculous run to the 1985 title as an 8-seed.

The UNLV interlude is problematic for our purposes. First, he left Villanova for UNLV after four straight years with at least 15 losses (though he did go to the tourney in two of those years). So his career was already on a downward arc. Second, he had an undistinguished two-year tenure at UNLV that, according to Wikipedia, ended with him being "forced out when it was revealed that he and UNLV president Robert Maxson had cut a side deal to lift Massimino's salary above the figure being reported to the state of Nevada and the state commission ruled that this had violated both state ethics laws, as well as UNLV rules." 

So when he took the job at Cleveland State a few years later, it was less of a giant stooping down than a natural step in a parabolic career arc.

He did okay at Cleveland State. They were coming off a 5-win season, and Massimino won 9 games his first year. Then 12, then 14, then 15, then 19 ... But he never took them over the hump or got to the tournament. Inconclusive at best.

Bobby Knight to Texas Tech

Knight was proposed to me somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but the more I think about it the more analogous it seems.

Bobby Knight's bona fides as a coaching legend are beyond dispute and need no recounting. Sure, he was not at his apex when Indiana fired him for finally going too far with the "I'm a total psycho" stuff off the court, but he had still taken IU to fifteen fucking tournaments in a row.

The tongue-in-cheek part is really about Texas Tech, in that it was not and is not a mid-major in any real sense. But it was a team that had missed 13 out of those 15 NCAA tourney that Bobby Knight had just taken Indiana to. As far as major-conference programs go, that's bottom of the barrel. (And, by contrast, Iona has been to 6 of the last 8 NCAA tournaments under Tim Cluess, so ...)

Knight was immediately successful at Texas Tech, winning 23 games his first year and going to the NCAA tourney. The next three seasons were also successful (by Texas Tech standards of the time) culminating in a run to the Sweet 16 in his fourth year. Then things turned toward mediocrity, especially by Knight's standards.

Knight certainly turned Tech around in a hurry, showing how important the head coach is in college basketball. Although the program comparison between 2000-ish Texas Tech and current Iona is not really on point, it was certainly a big step down for Knight. So this is an encouraging example for Pitino.

Lefty Driesell to James Madison

I had to be talked into this one, because although Driesell did eventually make it to the college basketball Hall of Fame, I don't think he had that status when he left Maryland. It was really what he did afterwards, at James Madison and Georgia State, that cemented his legacy as "the greatest program builder in the history of college basketball."

This is not to imply that he was unsuccessful at Maryland, where he coached from 1969 to 1986 and went to three Sweet 16s and two Elite Eights. But he never got to the Final Four (much less won a title), which certainly puts him on a different level from Rick Pitino and the coaches already mentioned.

That said, his coaching tenure at Maryland did end "unnaturally" in that he was forced out for non-basketball reasons. And he certainly had some success at James Madison and then Georgia State. At JMU he went through the typical transition year and then won at least a share of the CAA regular season title for the next five seasons. After a few down years at JMU, he had immediate success at Georgia State, culminating in a heartbreaking (to me) victory over Mark Vershaw and the Badgers in the first round of the 2001 tourney.

Driesell was not as old as Pitino, and not as great a coach, but his mid-major success is an example for Pitino to follow.

Bobby Cremins to College of Charleston

Bobby Cremins is no Rick Pitino, but he had a long and distinguished run at Georgia Tech, including a trip to the Final Four in 1990. He retired in 2000, but was lured out of retirement by Charleston for the 2007 season.

Iona and Charleston are pretty good analogues in that they were both consistent contenders in their conferences before landing their late-career coaching legend. Tim Herrion, Cremins's immediate successor, averaged over 20 wins in his four seasons but never went to the tourney. But Herrion's predecessor, John Kresse, had fantastic success and dominated the TAAC/Southern in the 90s.

Cremins kept alive this record of decent mid-major success, but never really broke through or returned Charleston to the tournament.

Honorable Mentions with brief summary:

Jim Harrick to Rhode Island

Won a title at UCLA, and had instant success at Rhode Island. Dogged by scandal everywhere, though. Overall, Harrick not on Pitino's level, and Rhode Island clearly above Iona on the pecking order.

Steve Fischer to San Diego State

Steve Fischer was only 52 when he was fired by Michigan as part of the Ed Martin scandal. So even though he had tremendous success at Michigan (including an out-of-nowhere run to the 1989 NCAA title when he replaced Bill Frieder right before the tournament, and two Final Four runs with the Fab Five), his status as a coaching great was not really established until he built San Diego State into a west coast powerhouse.

Also, San Diego State is a clear step or two above above Iona on its own terms and in terms of conference affiliation.

Tubby Smith to High Point

Another coach with an NCAA title on his resumé, but by the time Tubby went to High Point, the shine on his star was long gone.

Mike Dunleavy to Tulane

Dunleavy never had any success in college, but he did have a long and sort of decent career in the NBA. So you might have thought he would do well at Tulane. He did not.

Jim Calhoun to St. Joseph (D-III)

Calhoun certainly is on Pitino's level as a coaching legend. But it's hard to really compare starting up a D-III program to taking over at Iona. For what it's worth, Calhoun is off to a good start.

Monday, March 9, 2020

A Coach of the Year Polemic

What is the Coach of the Year award for?

If you answer this question by looking at results, the answer is pretty clear: the Coach of the Year award typically goes to the coach of the team that most exceeded expectations. Another way of putting it:


I'm here to say that's the way it should be.

Just like the preseason AP poll tends to give a fairly pure view of how good knowledgeable people think a team will be—before dirty game results sully the analysis with overreactions and the like—preseason expectations for a team give us a pretty pure view of how talented people think the roster is.

There are many reason a team could outperform its presumed talent. Obviously the presumptions of talent could be quite wrong. That happens all that time. It could be just luck. That no doubt happens all the time. But generally speaking when a team outperforms its presumed talent level, I think it's fair to attribute at least some of that variance to coaching—superior training, development, and game strategy.

That's a sound theoretical justification for giving the Coach of the Year award to the coach of the team that most outperforms its preseason expectations. It's not at all dumb. Let's just accept it.

There are two main objections to this regime:

1) Why shouldn't preseason favorites be eligible for coach of the year?

and, relatedly,

2) Recruiting is coaching, too, and this doesn't account for that.

Both of these objections are wrong.

First, under this regime, coaches of preseason favorites are eligible to win Coach of the Year, and they do. Even favorites can wow us with their overachievement. For example, John Calipari was national Coach of the Year in 2015 despite having probably the most talented roster in the one-and-done era. Bo Ryan won B1G COY in 2015 leading a preseason top-5 juggernaut. There are many examples.

Second, and I cannot emphasize this enough, recruiting is not coaching. Coaching has a general meaning that applies to all sports: training players, developing players, and directing game strategy. Recruiting, program-building, fundraising, glad-handing, press conferences, etc.—these are all things college basketball coaches have to do, but none of those things are coaching. The Coach of the Year award need not (and should not) consider them.

Most sports have a Coach of the Year award. In professional sports, coaches don't get credit for having great players (even if they happen to also be the GM that drafted them) because it's understood that coaching and roster construction are different things, and the Coach of the Year award is for the coaching part. Just because the person called "Coach" happens to both coach and recruit doesn't mean recruiting is coaching. It isn't. It just isn't.

The existing regime for deciding Coach of the Year focuses, appropriately, on coaching: instruction, development, game strategy. That's reasonable and appropriate. There's no need to muddy the waters trying to evaluate the non-coaching duties.