Bucky is back, and so am I

It has been a long break for this blog. The 2 deep depth chart came out today, so it seemed like a good time to get up some predictions about this season.

1) Will Bucky match it's preseason #4 ranking and end up in the playoff?
If I have to answer now, (which I do) then I say they miss out by a nose. I think this team ends up 11-2, and that will likely leave them just outside the final 4. Bucky should go 7-0 at home, as they don't play a team currently ranked or getting votes at home. Nebraska could put up a fight, and Minnesota may be better under Fleck, but I don't see anyone pulling the upset at Camp Randall. The problem will be the road/neutral field schedule, assuming they play in the B1G championship. Of those 6 games, only Purdue is not ranked/getting votes, and even Purdue was a decent team last year. 4-2 in those 6 games away from home seems most likely. 5-1 should get them in the playoff.

2) This offense will be fun. After the offense struggled a bit in Chryst's previous 2 seasons, they put it together by the end of last year. The team averaged almost 34 points per game last year, and I think this year they will be close to 40. The offensive line has talent at the top and depth throughout which is what drives great UW offenses. Throw in an experienced QB, Heisman trophy candidate at RB, and one of the deepest groups of WR/TEs Bucky has ever had, and this team will run up the scores.

3) If this team loses 4 games, it will be because the defense can't hold up. The defense has a lot of young players, and that scares me. The top line starters look solid, but if there are any injuries (as there almost always is) there does not appear to be much depth. The opening day 2 deep roster has 5 underclassmen starters and 13 in the 2 deep. The defensive line is especially concerning, with 4 freshman in the 2 deep including a starter who just moved over from the offensive line. That group could be trouble with Rand out for the year and Loudermilk out for at least a couple games.

4) Time for the week one predictions. Bucky is a 34.5 point favorite and the o/u is 51. I think there will be a blowout under the lights, and I think Western Kentucky puts up a couple scores against a young defense that will be playing a lot of new/young players, especially late with the new redshirt rules. I'm taking Bucky to cover the spread and the over.

MSG Challenge

Okay, time for my annual ten seconds of thinking about the Big Ten tourney bracket. Not 100% positive, but I believe I am undefeated in this contest. Chorlton, put your picks in the comments. Try to pick actual games this year.

Weds:
Rutgers over Minn.
Illinois over Iowa

Thurs:
Wisconsin over Maryland (why not)
PSU over Northwestern
IU over Rutgers
Michigan over Illinois

Quarters:
MSU over Wisconsin
Purdue over PSU
OSU over IU
Michigan over Nebraska

Semis:
MSU over Michigan
Purdue over OSU

Champ:
Purdue over MSU

Will Arizona owe Sean Miller more if they fire him with cause than without?

Word broke yesterday that Sean Miller is allegedly on tape talking about paying Deandre Ayton to come to Arizona.

Today, there are reports that Arizona will owe Miller the balance of his base salary even if they fire him "with cause," but only 50% of that if they fire him without cause. Can that possibly be correct?

Spoiler alert: No.

The argument based on this language in his contract:

And here is Section III, where Base Salary is defined:

This is being interpreted to mean that even if Miller is fired with cause, Arizona will owe him his Base Salary—the yearly salary, plus the $700k in "peripheral duties compensation"—for all those years left on his contract. Even though he won't be working, and indeed will have been fired in disgrace (presumably).

No. Arizona does not have to pay Sean Miller not to work if he's been fired with cause. What the language actually means is that Arizona's only obligation to Miller in the event of a firing with cause will be to pay him the Base Salary that he has earned. In other words, what is actually owed as of the date of termination.

That is the most reasonable interpretation of the language. A salary is not due until it is earned, and Miller will not be earning any salary after the date of the termination.

Moreover, the contract language on what Miller would be owed in the case of a termination without cause shows the parties used different language when talking about payments that would have been earned in the absence of a termination:

This language shows the parties understood that no further Base Salary would be owed after termination. They needed the "would have ... but for" language to identify those additional funds. That language isn't in the termination with cause provision.

Darren Rovell and others have interpreted these provisions to mean that after termination with cause Miller is owed 100% of his Base Salary that would have been owed to him but for termination and upon termination without cause he would only be owed 50%. That is just obviously incorrect. The "would have ... but for" language would have to be in the termination-for-clause provision for that interpretation to hold water.

Finally, even if it were reasonable and fair to interpret the contract to insert the language that Miller is entitled to 100% of what he would have been owed but for termination with cause, that interpretation would lead to obviously absurd results, and no court would countenance it. Imagine that Miller had just decided to move to Costa Rica and stop coaching. What could the university do? Surely they could terminate him with cause, but that would mean paying him everything he's owed. Ridiculous. 

Or say he had decided to take another job. The contract says explicitly what would happen in that scenario:

Supposedly, Miller would have to pay Arizona $500,000 in liquidated damages if he left for another job. But why would he do that? Why not just stop showing up for work, and show up for the other job instead? All Arizona could do is fire him, with cause, in which case they'd supposedly owe him all the base salary he would have earned but for the termination. Absurd.

Now, Miller may sue and advance this theory. It's plausible enough and there's enough money at stake that a lawyer may take the case. But probably not on contingency.

🚨 STATE OF THE PROGRAM 🚨

This will be our first official blogersation although we have had many unofficial ones. Is Bucky just in the middle of a minor setback, or is this program in trouble? 

CHORLTON:  

UW was a nothing basketball program before Dick Bennett. Maybe there are defenders of Stu Jackson and maybe even Steve Yoder. They did do their part to push the program forward, but there was still precious little in results on the court. Other than the magical final 4 run in 2000, Bennett didn’t do anything that would be considered miraculous at any other mediocre program. It was just miraculous for UW. 

Prior to Bennett, UW had only 2 winning seasons in conference play since 1954. Bennett had 3 NCAA tourney appearances which matched the program's total prior to his arrival. In 1998-99 he coached the team to their first ever 20 win season. 

I won’t get into the greatness of Bo Ryan here, as we have discussed it much before. If Bo did what he did at any school, it would have been great. The fact that he did it at a program that was as horrible as UW shows his genius. Now that he is gone, and many of the players he recruited and developed are gone, is UW returning to its history of awful basketball?

I heard a sportscaster discuss this idea a while ago. I don’t remember who it was, but I liked what they said. Paraphrasing from memory- 

There are only so many basketball geniuses in the world. UW had one in Bo Ryan, and that’s what allowed them to have 15 years of unprecedented success. What are the odds they had 2 sitting on the bench at the same time?

What do you think Torvik. Is UW headed back to another 40 years of losing basketball?

TORVIK:

No, I do not think UW is headed back to Yoder era and beyond. I actually don’t think that’s even possible anymore. For better or worse, Wisconsin is a sports school now. If Gard doesn’t get it done, he will be replaced. And they will be willing to spend big bucks to bring in a worthy successor. There’s just too much money at stake. 

But it is probably unreasonable to expect the miraculous success of the Bo-era will continue. You quote an unnamed sportscaster wondering about whether there were two basketball geniuses on the bench at Wisconsin all these years. I’m almost 100% sure that unnamed sportscaster was me, because this has been a talking point of mine, almost word for word. In any event, I agree with the premise that some slippage is almost inevitable. The only question is how much. Let’s break this into three possible tiers:

1) Tier 1: Still a regular contender, but with occasional down years. Still capable of putting together a team that might make a final four. Similar to Purdue and Michigan have been the last 5-10 years, but below the Ryan-era teams and Matta-era OSU teams.

2) Tier 2: A step below—almost always at least on the bubble, in the tournament most years, but hardly ever a contender. I’m thinking post-2005 Bruce Weber at Illinois and Kansas St. here.

3) Tier 3: Bottom level of acceptable high major success: some bad years, some years where you make the tourney, but never a contender. Illinois, Minnesota.

Based on the history you describe, I think Badger fans should be ready to embrace being a Tier 2 team. I put Bruce Weber in Tier 2 and Illinois in Tier 3 for a reason. If Gard is able to have Tier 2 success and it isn’t good enough for the fans, a fall into Tier 3 is really, really likely. 

And I think Gard can keep UW in that Tier 2. He’s no Bo Ryan, and there’s reason to be concerned about how this year is going, but it’s pretty silly to look at his overall performance and not be optimistic that he’ll be able to take UW back to the tournament regularly. For example, I’m a big optimist about next year. This team has no scholarship seniors, a genuine star in Happ, lots of promising Freshman minutes, and two starters injured. So there is good reason to think this is a blip, and next year will be a quick bounce back.

What’s your feeling—does Wisconsin still need a basketball genius to stay out of the cellar?

CHORLTON:

No, I agree that the UW program has fundamentally changed since those lost decades. Donna Shalala, Pat Richter, and Barry got UW to invest in the athletic program, and unless there is a change in that philosophy the program will not be what it once was. Now that UW has built the Kohl Center, renovated Camp Randall, built new practice facilities, and upgraded locker rooms, scoreboards, etc. their facilities are on par with the best programs around. They may not pay their coaches the highest salaries, but they are competitive, and they will pay to keep a head coach who shows they can win. 

Before I start predicting tiers, let’s discuss a few points about the direction of the program. I’ll break it into 2 sections, players and systems. I’ll start with the players, and leave systems for the next section. I mean both recruiting and player development, and I think there is reason for concern with Gard on both. 

The recruiting got off to a pretty decent start. With Bo leaving midseason Gard didn’t have much time to put anything together his first year, and took what looked like 2 big reaches in Ford and Trice. Trice looked like a guy that could be a player last year in limited minutes, but appeared to take a step back this year before getting hurt. Ford has showed enough promise in his first year to give you some hope that Gard can find diamonds in the rough. In addition to that, he kept the commitment of King through the Ryan retirement, and added Reuvers and Davison who look like they could be great players someday. 

Then we had the decommit of Herro, and the miss on Hauser. Bo missed on big time instate recruits too, like Matthews and Vander Blue so this is nothing new for UW, but it doesn’t help either. I don’t know a ton about the 2 guys that replaced them except that the center wasn’t even promised a scholarship for his freshman year, and they both have already said they intend to redshirt. Hard to get excited about guys that plan to redshirt before they have even practiced against the guys they are competing with for minutes. No commits for 2019 recruits yet, but it is still early, and there is still a scholarship open for 2018. If Gard doesn’t get some players to get excited about, it makes him vulnerable if UW struggles again next year. 

On to player development which worries me a lot more, especially this Junior class. With Bo, we all just got used to the idea that the players got better every year and took that for granted. With 3 years learning under Gard, Van Vliet, Illikainen, and Thomas show little to no progress, and Iverson and Pritzl have only shown minimal gain. You could argue that Happ is the only player to make significant strides since Gard took over. Player development may have as much to do about picking players that want to get better as it does coaching, and the Junior class are Bo’s players. Still, it’s hard to ignore how little that class has progressed. While the Freshman class looks like it will be great someday, that assumption is based on those guys all getting much better, and the Junior class makes me doubt that the freshman will progress like the Bo players we are used to.

Any of this making you nervous Torvik?

TORVIK:

I admit you’re making me a little nervous, but more in anticipation of your “systems” breakdown (which I have reason to fear will be withering). I’m more optimistic on the players.

Gard’s first two classes as the man in charge yielded Trice, Ford, Davison, Reuvers, and King. Though I agree he probably got a little lucky with Trice and Ford, that is a very solid core—exactly the kind of core that the Badgers have regularly developed into Big Ten contenders this century. Assuming King comes back full strength and Davison isn’t permanently hobbled by his shoulder, I expect that core to compete in the upper half of the Big Ten the next three seasons.

But I can’t argue with your analysis of the 2015 class. It was a poorly conceived class: four forwards and a shooting guard, which left them reaching for a point guard the next year—and contributed to them not recruiting Sam Hauser, which everyone can agree now was a mistake. They took a gamble on a raw athlete in Iverson, and they didn’t hit the jackpot. The struggles of Illikainen, Thomas, and Van Vliet are well documented. Pritzl, who should have been the jewel of the class, seemingly lost his mojo when he stepped on a crack and broke his … foot. That said, I have not given up on Pritzl and Illikainen could still surprise us with a Duje-type senior year.

Is it Gard’s fault that these guys haven’t developed as hoped? I don’t really buy it. I’m frankly not a big believer in coaches really developing guys in terms of actually making them better players. For example, I roll my eyes when people say that Kentucky turns out pros. What happens is the future pros choose Kentucky. Something similar typically happens at Wisconsin. Players who are willing to put in the work to develop, and spend some time on the bench while they do, are the kind of players that Wisconsin attracts. But ultimately the development is mostly on the player. It’s not that coaching doesn’t matter at all—it does, though I think the ways in which it matters are pretty mysterious—it’s just that the basic formula doesn’t require a Svengali as coach. So maybe I’m being naive, but I give Gard a pass for that Junior class. I think it was just a bad break.

Future recruiting has become a bit concerning, though. It’s funny—there was a moment last summer when I thought it seemed that Gard had really ushered in a new era of improved recruiting at Wisconsin. Obviously the 2017 class was very good on paper. Gard had a commitment from Tyler Herro, not the kind of player that typically chooses Wisconsin. (Spoiler alert.) And it seemed that they actually had a shot to pull Joey Hauser in despite Bo’s snubbing his older brother. 

But it all fell apart. Hauser picked Marquette, as he was probably always destined to do. Wisconsin’s primary backup plan, Nate Laszewski (whose dad played at UW in the 80s), blew up on the AAU circuit and committed to Notre Dame. Tyler Herro decommitted. Suddenly the 2018 class was kind of a disaster. They’ve partially redeemed it by getting the Currie kid, who had previously committed to Michigan, but as you say he is not an immediate contributor. While top-level recruiting has never been a huge part of the Ryan-era formula for success, my hope was that Gard could potentially make up for not being a basketball genius by being a bit better at recruiting than Bo was. It’s still possible that will turn out to be true, but the jury is still out.

CHORLTON:

OK, I think we agree that there is at least some reason to be concerned with the players, but maybe not enough to panic yet. Next year should be very telling. I’m pretty much writing off the 2015 class, but if all the freshman and sophomores that are getting so much playing time this year don’t take a big step forward, Gard is in trouble. It’s probably too late for Gard to salvage the 2018 recruiting class after the big misses. He’ll have 5 open scholarships for the 2019 class, so he had better get some quality commits early in the process to maintain excitement for the future.   

On to the offensive and defensive systems. It would be nice if this group did one well, but both offense and defense are awful this year. I fear the system that has served UW well for the Bo Ryan era is fading away. When I look at the box scores for a game, I look at shooting percentage and the differentials between turnovers, and offensive rebounds. Those things usually tell you the story of the game, and the Badgers, like all good teams have done a good job dominating the differentials over the Ryan era. In any given game your team can go cold, or the other can get hot, but if you get more opportunities by dominating the differentials you will prevail despite shooting woes. 

There are various ways to win the differentials, but Bo used limiting turnovers, and dominating the defensive glass. This year’s team is bad at both, but all of Gard’s teams have not performed in these areas. For turnover percentage Gard’s teams have ranked 120, 68, and 102. Since 2008, Bo’s worst rank was 68, and that was an anomaly, as the 2^nd worst rank was 9. For opponent’s offensive rebound percentage Gard’s teams ranked 61, 42, and 78. Bo’s worst since 2008 was 32. To be fair Gard’s first 2 teams won 22 and 27 games including 12 conference games and both went to the sweet 16 despite those numbers, so there is more than one way to skin a cat. I just think it’s clear that Gard is going a different direction than what has worked in the past. 

I had intended to use this section to go on a rant about this year’s offense and how they can’t figure out if they are running isolation or swing, and how the defense is too complicated for inexperienced players. In the end though, I’m not sure it matters when they have at times put a team on the court that has 3 guys that walked on to the program. It’s hard to limit turnovers when Iverson constantly travels, gets the ball swiped, or passes to no one, and the alternative is more TJ Schlundt. While this year’s team is frustrating to watch, the change in turnovers and rebounding are not isolated to this year’s team.

Do you think Gard is intentionally changing Ryan’s system for success, or is he just not as good at teaching guys how to do it? Is Gard changing the system because the Ryan system at UW is past it’s time? The freedom of movement rules have changed the game, and change is not necessarily bad. Gary Anderson’s offensive changes were a disaster, but the 3-4 defense he brought has kept UW’s defense humming right along. 

What do you think?

TORVIK:

I do not think that Gard is intentionally changing the Ryan system—but I do think the formula may be outdated. Not because it doesn’t work, but because everyone is using it now. Bo was at the vanguard, and used shot volume to wring wins out of lesser-talented teams. After about ten years of doing this, other coaches finally grudgingly admitted that it was ingenious and started doing it (namely: protecting the defensive glass and limiting turnovers) themselves. At around the same time, however, Wisconsin got super talented and put together its best sustained run ever. So we didn’t notice that the underlying formula might not work as well without elite talent.

Let me explain this a little further. You correctly point out that Wisconsin used to rank among the elite in turnover percentage and defensive rebounding percentage, and now they rank as mediocre. That is correct, but it obscures the fact their actual performance hasn’t changed much. Look at the turnover numbers:

Year   TO% Rank

2018  18.0  120

2005  17.9   22

An even starker example, using last year’s full year numbers:

Year   TO% Rank

2017  17.0   71

2006  17.4    9

In other words, a turnover percentage that used to rank among the elite, now ranks among the mediocre. Wisconsin hasn’t really gotten that much worse at committing turnovers, it’s just that literally everybody else has gotten better. A lot better. Last year’s turnover percentage would have been top 10 nationally in any of Bo’s first five season at Wisconsin. I think this is an extremely important and overlooked fact.

A similar, though less drastic, thing is happening with defensive rebounding:

Year   DR% Rank

2018  26.1   61

2014  27.4   15

2007  26.7   15

2003  26.7    9

(Lower is better in this stat.)

As recently as 2014 (when the Bo got to his first Final Four) a defensive rebounding performance like this year’s Badgers would have been considered elite rather than mediocre. 

My conclusion is that the game has changed, in large part because of Bo Ryan’s success. And now that it has changed, it is far from clear that the Ryan formula for winning at Wisconsin will continue to work. After all, his last half-season was an unmitigated disaster—and these problems of relatively higher turnover rate and relatively poor defensive rebounding were big factors in that disaster.

If I’m right, what that means, unfortunately, is that Gard will have to make changes to keep the level of success up. As I mentioned earlier, the easiest path to success would be to use the same sound formula but increase the average talent level. If he can’t increase the talent level, he’ll have to figure something out schematically—some kind of inefficiency that others haven’t seen—to maintain the level of success. And that’s the kind of thing that typically only a basketball genius can do.

CHORLTON:

Fantastic points. So, if we are going off the assumption that Gard is not a Bo Ryan like genius, Tier 1 is looking less and less likely to me. I would add 2 other changes to the game that will probably adversely impact UW. I have no empirical data to back these up, just have a feeling from what I see in games and how I feel things are going. The rule changes to the game at all levels seems to be favoring 2 types of players; guards that can create for themselves and their teammates off the dribble due to freedom of movement rules, and stretch big men. 

Freedom of movement, and specifically the removal of the hand check, allows smaller quicker players to flourish. Those players were marginalized for a long time because bigger/longer guards could keep up with them by just sticking a hand on their hip and controlling them. Now they can blow by that bigger, slower player and get opportunities in the lane they never had before. Once they beat their man, they also cause help to collapse and this opens up a lot of open 3 pointers. 

Here is where the stretch big man comes in. When you have a big guy that can shoot that means he has to be guarded on the perimeter. This just makes that little guy better, because the lane isn’t clogged with a 7 foot center who only cares about protecting the rim. The stretch big also gets wide open 3s from the guards that break down teams off the dribble, and can shoot right over the top of any smaller guards that may rotate out to challenge the shot. 

I don’t think either of these are groundbreaking or controversial observations, but I bring them up because they specifically relate to UW recruiting. Traditionally UW has not recruited those ball handling guards very well, while they have had a never ending stream of stretch big men. I don’t think anything is likely to change with UW's struggles recruiting those types of guards. Davison is as close to one as we have had since Traevon Jackson, and Traevon certainly wasn’t a big time recruit. The only other that comes to mind was Trevon Hughes, and he wasn’t special either. While UW should be able to keep getting stretch big men, now every other team in the country wants them too, so we have a lot more competition for them. 

There will probably be a lot more of these kinds of players to pick from in the future, so maybe this concern is overblown. Young kids see the stars of today and emulate them, and the stars of today are those types of players. So maybe in the long run UW is still able to get their types of players, but this trend doesn’t seem to favor UW.

TORVIK:

Completely agree with those observations. Ties into the main cause of this year's disappointment, which is that Andy Van Vliet could not stay on the floor. He was the stretch four we were promised, and it hasn't worked out. (At least in Gard's mind—and the fact that he went from a guy that Gard thought was our most improved player to a guy who he wouldn't even put in during mop-up time is a possible red flag, in my opinion.) 

I actually think Trice is more of the model for a point guard that can exploit the new freedom of movement than Davison, at least right now. Davison is not particularly quick, and when he does get by his guy it's by using strength and going full steam ahead—so he has little ability to make good passes on his drives. (Which is related to the fact that he usually ends up on his back out of bounds.)

So the Trice injury and the Van Vliet experiment gone awry have been absolute killers for this season, in my opinion. I don't look at those as permanent new features of the program though.

Ultimately, it seems like we're in agreement that the program is likely to take a step back, but hopefully can remain in the "tier 2" range as I've defined it. I'll give you the last word.

Chorlton:

Yep, I think tier 2 seems most likely long term, because the program will get rid of Gard if it looks like they are falling toward tier 3. I would not have thought firing Gard this year was remotely possible before this season. I still think it is unlikely, but I wouldn't rule it out anymore. We didn't even get into some of the other questionable decisions, like the Reuvers redshirt, then not redshirt. Or remember when the Badgers played that awful zone defense?

The team doesn't look like it is quitting on Gard which would be a big warning sign. They just look frustrated with the losses, and bad play. With all the injuries and youth Gard gets a pass, but I think we will have to revisit this post around this time next year.

Teamcast tip: note the Projected T-Rank variable

One of the newer features over at the T-Rank site is a tool I call "Teamcast," which lets you select the results of a team's games and shows how those results would affect the T-Ranketology forecast.

I'm not gonna lie, I think this is a pretty awesome tool and I play around with it a lot. But of course there are some pretty important caveats to keep in mind:

1) The underlying T-Ranketology algorithm is not a crystal ball. Although it performed really well last year, last year was a pretty predictable year. In retroactive investigations, T-Ranketology does "pretty good" for prior years too. But overall it's safe to say that you should consider any T-Ranketology forecast to have at least a +/- one-seed margin of error.

2) There's reason to believe that this year will be much less predictable than prior years, because the Committee will be considering new and different information (most importantly, the new quality win quadrants). We can only presume how the Committee will use the new information. My guess is that they will use it to make some ... unpredictable ... choices.

That said, the Teamcast is still a fun tool, and at the very least it should be pretty good for looking at relative changes. If it's predicting your team to be an 8-seed, and picking it to win a game moves them up 4 spots to a 7-seed, it's reasonable to say the win was worth about one seed-line—even if it was actually from a 10 to a 9, or a 6 to a 5.

One important thing that gets overlooked, I think, by people playing around with the tool is that the current T-Rank rating plays a role. First, it is obviously how predictions for future games are calculated. Second, it is an independent variable in the T-Ranketology algorithm, and a not insignificant one. (Not because I think the committee is using it, but as a good-enough proxy for other ratings like Kenpom that the committee is using.)

So particularly if you are exploring an extreme scenario, like say, "What would happen if my team won the rest of its games?" you might get a weird result if you do not change the projected T-Rank as well. Because in the scenario where your team wins out, its T-Rank is probably going to improve a lot.

Fortunately, the Teamcast tool lets you change the projected T-Rank (right at the top of the page), which fixes this problem. In fact, simply changing the projected T-Rank and doing nothing else is a pretty good way to use Teamcast earlier in the season. E.g., keep upping the projected T-Rank until your team gets in the field, and that shows how well your team will have to play the rest of the way to likely make the tournament.

ADDED: One way I've attempted to automate this is the "DynamaRank" feature. Basically, this estimates changes to power ratings (including NET) based on the changed results. So this box should be checked for any extreme scenarios where a team loses or wins a lot more games than expected.

If you get any funky results with the Teamcast, or have ideas for improvement, please let me know.

Time to quit the switching?

As you 2 regular readers of this blog know, I have had a long running interest on the changing way the Badgers have defended ball screens over the years. As anyone who watched yesterday's Marquette game can see (or really any game this year), the defense sucks. Much of that has to do with playing a bunch of young players who are not great individual defenders, and lack the awareness needed for good help defense. For the past 20 years the Badgers have had a core of experienced upperclassmen virtually every year that were well schooled in the team's defensive principles. That is not the case this year, and it shows.

UW has played nothing but man to man defense over that time except for a very brief flirt with the 2-3 zone under Gard which was a disaster. There have been changes within the man to man, from going over the screen and hedging, to switching all screens, to going over and sinking. Currently, I'm not exactly sure what the system is, and that is a big part of the problem. Here are a series of clips from the Marquette game showing different ways they play the ball screen.

This is classic switching. Davison runs into the screener and stays with him after the dribble hand off, and Ford goes with the ball. Then there is another dribble hand off, and Ford stays on ball while Iverson switches with the guard going to the corner. Ford then hands off the ball carrier to Davison and stays with the big that floats off to the left side of the floor. At this point Happ's man comes up from the post to set another screen, and Davison hands off the ball carrier off to Happ. Happ does not come out to take him on the switch, and he gets a wide open 3.

In this clip Davison runs into the screener, Happ switches to the guard, and Happ shows this time to take away the jumper. The guard takes a dribble to create space, and Happ steps back, then comes out again to challenge but it's a shot fake. The problem is that Davison does not switch, he goes over the screen and comes over to the guard, instead of staying with the screener. The guard passes to an open man for a dunk (notice the other 3 defenders are all standing 18 feet from the hoop where they can't help).

Here there is no switching on the ball or off. There is a bunch of off ball screening action, a dribble handoff, and finally a ball screen, but everyone stays home with their man. On the final screen, Iverson shows on the ball carrier, before retreating to his man, and Davison "fights" over the screen to get back to his man.

Here Schlundt fights over the screen, and Charlie sinks to take away the lane instead of showing on the ball carrier to take away the jumper (I actually think Charlie has no idea where he is or what he is doing, but let's just say he was sinking on this one).

Finally, one last switch clip. On this one, both Happ and Davison leave the ball carrier, and go with the screener. Notice after the guard gets the wide open 3, Happ and Davison are fighting over who was responsible for what.

As I am known to say on occasion at Badger games, "What the hell are they doing"? Some of this is on the players as they are obviously getting torched routinely. More has to go on the coaches. They are playing a bunch of young players who are still learning how to play defense, and I think they are overloading them with too much responsibility. They should get rid of the switching. Switching requires a lot of communication, and a lot of feel for when to switch, when to switch back, and none of the young players are good enough for this.

When Bo started at UW, the defensive rules were simple. The on ball defender goes over the screen and stays on ball. The screening defender hedges every time and recovers to his man afterwards . All 3 other guys sink in when that happens to take away the lane. Everyone has a job, and everyone knew what the other's job was. If you did not do your job then you go to the bench.

Simplicity is a great thing. The Badgers need more of it on defense.

FPI is annoying

Before I get into this post, I want to make clear that I don't have any animus toward Espn or their analytics people. I like them! I've defended them! (Though they've gone backwards a bit since I wrote that "In defense of BPI, etc." post.)

With that throat-clearing out of the way...

Espn has a predictive metric for college football called FPI. It is relatively good* at predicting the results of college football games. So if you want to lose a little (instead of a lot) of money, use FPI to pick games against the spread. Or you could just toss a coin and do slightly better.

For the most part, the analytics people at Espn are admirably clear that FPI is a predictive tool. But lately they've been doing two things with FPI that annoy me: First, they've been touting it as an accurate and objective arbiter of team quality. Second, they've been openly clamoring for an FPI-based metric—Strength of Record—to be used in selecting the teams for the college football playoffs.

Here's why I'm annoyed.

FPI is not an accurate measure of team quality.

I said above that FPI is relatively good at predicting the results of games. I say relatively good because college football is a crazy sport where crazy things happen on the regular. People say "Vegas knows, man" but Vegas don't know much about college football: the mean absolute error for closing betting lines in college football is about 12.2 points (and FPI is at 12.4). In the NFL, the mean error is 10.5 points—significantly better.

Why is this? It's because there is just not enough good data in a college football season to produce a highly accurate measure of team quality. Each team plays just 12 games, and only 8-10 of those are games that we can extract much useful information. (The other 2-4 games are mismatches that are likely to be all but useless for discerning differences among quality teams.)

So this is not a knock on FPI in particular. There simply does not exist a highly accurate measure of team quality in college football. What annoys me is that Espn pretends that there does, and that it is FPI.

We can see this hubris in an article today where they purport to show that the playoff selection committee is not selecting the "best" teams because it is not selecting the teams rated highest in the FPI and is considering teams rated poorly by the FPI (poster boy: Wisconsin). In other words, FPI is the arbiter of "best." Bullshit! If the question is: "Who are the best teams?" the only intellectually honest answer is:

"We don't know."

FPI-based "Strength of Record" should not and cannot be used in playoff selection 

As I mentioned above, there is not enough good data in a single college football season to construct an accurate enough measure of team quality to reliably discern between the best teams. To help make up for this, Espn incorporates its preseason prior — which is based on things like historical performance and recruiting ranks — into the FPI all year long. It never goes away. And while they refuse to say how much it still, at this point, influences the ratings, it is pretty clear that is still doing a lot of work. There is no other explanation for how Florida State (preseason No. 3, but 5-6 with bad losses) is still ranked 21st.

There is nothing wrong with keeping the preseason prior part of the formula. Espn's guys say that using the prior makes the predictions more accurate, and that's what the FPI is supposed to be maximizing. Fine!

But keeping the preseason prior means that FPI cannot be used in any way for selection to the playoffs. No one would argue that selection should be based on recruiting ranks or last year's performance. But if you rely on a strength of record measure based on FPI, that's what you'd be doing. You're giving Alabama extra credit for beating a bad Florida State team because FSU has five-star recruits and used to be good. Completely unacceptable.

Who benefits?

Obviously, a system that maintains a significant prior based on program strength and recruiting ranks will boost teams like Ohio State and Alabama. It makes sense if you are trying to predict games to give those teams a boost, because even in the middle of a down season they probably still have a lot of good football players could put it together at any time.

And obviously it hurts Wisconsin, which has not ever had a recruiting class better than 30th in the country. Which is why it is particularly annoying to see Espn touting Wisconsin's low FPI as a reason that it can't truly be considered among the best teams. It's crazy-making.

WI is better than MI

Quick revisit of one of my favorite Blog posts of all time.

With the win today. UW clinches another year in which MI will not win more games than the Badgers. The last time MI won more games was in 2003.

2003 was a long time ago. For some reference I'm sure one MI fan will appreciate:

In 2003 the show "Friends" was still on the air with new episodes.

UW MI

6-10 after splitting the double bet last week. I'm doubling down again.
UW is a 7 point favorite, and the over under is 41.

I'm taking UW to cover, and the under.

UW wins. 23-14.

On board with Van Vliet, but....

OK, that was a decent game for Van Vliet. I'm on board with him in this rotation, but there are concerns. Hard to argue with the line. 18 points on 7-11 FG, 4-5 3FG, 8 boards, 2 blocks and just one turnover. Any player puts up those numbers and you have to be a bit crazy not to be encouraged. I can already hear people starting to compare this with Kaminsky's break out junior year. A bit premature? Yes. Will he put up those numbers all year long? No way, but he doesn't have to to be an effective part of this rotation.

Here are the concerns. Chuckers are great when the shots are falling, but can be a cancer when they aren't. Remember those games when Vitto would jack 10 long 2 point jumpers and only hit 2or 3 of them. Van Vliet won't hit 80% of his 3s in many, if any more games this year. The concern is as much the types of shots, as the volume. At least 3 of the 3 pointers were attempted very early in the shot clock, (I was at the game so I'll have to check the tape, could be more) and came from a pass from the top of the key instead of from a post feed. He needs to let the offense roll a bit and they can get a better shot.

He also had 3 fouls in 22 minutes against competition that was not imposing on the inside. SCS hardly even tried to get it inside in the first half, as they shot jumper after jumper. Badgers only had 9 team fouls all night, he had a third of them. Defense is still not his thing. Finally, with about 6 minutes left in the 2nd half, Van Vliet looked like he was about to fall over. He was subbed out with 5 to go, and to be fair he had played a stretch of about 7 straight minutes. However he only played 9 total minutes in the 2nd half, and 22 overall. Conditioning is not his thing yet either.

Maybe that last part is OK. If he only gets 20 minutes a game, that may be for the best. Gard can roll with him when he's hot, and bench him when he's not. Having a guy with no conscious isn't always bad. When Vitto was hitting shots it totally changed the team. Van Vliet is certainly a better shooter than Vitto, so he should hit more often.

So, I'm much more encouraged about Van Vliet than I was before, but not as encouraged as all the people I will talk to tomorrow at the bar, who will probably be calling him the 2nd coming of Kaminsky already.

UW Iowa

4-8 after another 0-2 week. Haven't got a single win since that meaningless FG Torvik likes to make fun of me for. Badgers are a 12.5 point favorite, and o/u is 46.

In honor of Torvik, I am changing up the rules. When everything is going wrong and you can't buy a win, what do you do? Double the bets! All picks count double from now on.

I'm taking Iowa and the points and the over this week.

Is Illikainen out?

I saw today Reuvers is still considering taking a redshirt year. After watching him in the exhibition I can see why. He needs body development and practice in the system, but I would like to see him play this year. We'll see what happens, but it got me to thinking about Illikainen.

Reuvers is behind Happ, Thomas, and Van Vliet at this point, and maybe Ford too. It's not clear that he is behind Illikainen. Illikainen did not show anything special in the video I saw of the Australia trip. I didn't hear anything about him against Missouri, and while I didn't see the N Iowa game, his line was telling. In a game the Badgers dominated, he was 1-2 for 3 points and had  2 rebounds in 8 minutes, with 3 fouls and 3 turnovers. He wasn't any better against UW-Stout with 0 points, 2 rebounds, 1 foul and 2 turnovers in 6 minutes.

Last year I floated the idea that a sophomore Badger big man should redshirt. That didn't happen, and now it looks more likely that Illikainen would transfer than redshirt as a junior. Thomas seems destined to be the physical presence we need when Happ is on the bench. Van Vliet may be a chucker, but at least he has some confidence, unlike Illikainen who looks scared every time he is on the floor. Not many minutes left for the remaining 3 guys, and at this point Ford looks to be the first guy up to get a crack at those minutes.

It's really too bad. Maybe he turns it around and gets in the rotation, but it doesn't look good. In his first 10 games as true freshman he showed tons of promise. Then his confidence went somewhere and it has yet to return. I know they haven't even played a real game yet, so there is plenty of time to turn things around, and an injury could open an opportunity at any time. Here's hoping he does better tomorrow night,  but if he continues to sit I'd be surprised if he wasn't gone by season's end.

Likelier Things

There's been a lot of focus lately on a scenario—let's call it the Doomsday Scenario—that could arguably keep a 13-0 Wisconsin out of the college football playoffs. I have a few things to say about this.

To start, a 13-0 Wisconsin team is making the playoffs. "But what if the Doomsday Scenario occurs? What are the chances that the Badgers would miss the playoffs then?" The chances are zero. ZERO. It's not happening. "How can you be so sure?" Because I have a functioning brain. If you disagree with me about this, I'm sorry: we can't be friends anymore. Not even on Facebook.

Even if I am wrong about this—and I am not wrong about this—it's super unlikely that I'll be proven wrong. This is because the chances of the Doomsday Scenario even materializing are still extremely small. For the Doomsday Scenario to occur, each of the following must occur:

1) The Badgers must win out. Let's be chipper and put the odds of that at 1 in 3. Here, already at step one, we have a Likelier Thing that submarines the Doomsday Scenario. But we still have hope. 

2) Either Alabama or Georgia must win out, and the other must finish with just one loss (to the other, preferably by a slim margin). I'll be generous and say Georgia has a 40% chance of winning its final three games, and Alabama has a 75% of winning its final three games. That makes this another 1 in 3  shot, and one of them losing not to the other is another Likelier Thing that pierces the Doomsday Scenario bubble.

3) Either Oklahoma or TCU wins out. FiveThirtyEight says Oklahoma has a 33% chance to win out and TCU has a 17% chance to win out. That's a total chance of one of them winning out of around 45%. This may be off given that they play each other at least once, but close enough for these purposes. Another Likelier Thing that defeats the Doomsday Monster.

4) Finally, the most likely iteration of Doomsday Scenario involves both Notre Dame and Clemson winning out. Being generous again, let's say both of those are 50/50 chances, meaning the chance of them both happening is 1 in 4. Yet another Likelier Thing kneecapping Dr. Doomsday.

So, the odds of the Doomsday Scenario emerging in the face of all these Likelier Things is .33 * .30 * .45 * .25 = 1% — and that's being generous.

5) Now, if you plug the Doomsday Scenario into the FiveThirtyEight playoff calculator—which has not been informed that a 13-0 Wisconsin team is actually a 100% lock to make the playoffs—it says that the Badgers currently have an 83% chance of making the playoffs even in this Doomsday Scenario. In fact, they're actually the third-most likely team to make the playoffs in this scenario, meaning that they'd still likely be the 3-seed ahead of either Oklahoma or Notre Dame. 

Bottom line: even if we pretend we don't know that the Badgers would be a 100% lock to make the playoffs at 13-0, there's about a one-sixth of one-percent chance the Doomsday Scenario ensnares them. So let's talk about something else. 

How about college basketball?

UW Indiana

Drop to 4-6 after another 0-2 week. UW is a 13.5 point favorite this week and o/u is 48.5.

This sure seems like a trap game. UW has Iowa, MI, and at Minn before a date at the Big Ten Championship game. Indiana is an improved team, and Bucky is on the road.

I'm taking Indiana and the points, and the under.

UW vs. IL

4-4 after last weeks meaningless FG with less than a minute to play covered the spread and the over. The lesson again, if you don't have a good feeling, don't bet. Bucky is a 26.5 point favorite and the o/u is 50.

Not much time this week, and Illinois sucks. I'm taking Bucky and giving the points, and taking the over.

T-Rank: New Stuff for 2017-18 ICYMI MEGAPOST

I've added a bunch of stuff to the T-Rank site this offseason (or at least since the start of last season) and thought it might be a good idea to inventory & explain it somewhere. Somewhere like here.

First, a little back-patting. Three different aspects of the T-Rank site were validated as pretty useful last year: the ratings system itself, the "T-Ranketology" tourney predicting algorithm, and the preseason projections.

The rating system performed well. In terms of predicting games, it was the best full-season predictor, at least according to this analysis. At the very least, T-Rank is in the same league with Kenpom (no surprise, since I copied Kenpom liberally) and Sagarin. This means the adjusted efficiencies that drive the ratings are likely sound as well, and all the fun stuff that I use those adjusted efficiencies to power has at least some relation to reality.

The T-Ranketology algorithm did a great job last year, finishing near the very top of the Bracket Matrix competition. Of course, this was probably lucky, and last year was a bit of a strange year in that most people were able to correctly pick the field. But again, the main takeaway is that T-Ranketology is "good enough" to use for other fun stuff, such as the new Teamcast and Tourneycast features, and feel confident that the results are at least worth taking seriously.

Finally, last year's preseason projections turned out the be the best 1 to 351 projections, at least according to Dan Hanner's analysis. This is somewhat of a bittersweet victory because—as I've explained in an update to this old post—I have actually totally revamped the preseason projections for this year. But I'm confident that the new system is even better, and I'm also quite certain that last year's "victory" was mostly luck. Still, coming out ahead of Hanner and Kenpom by any metric at least shows that the ideas behind the system aren't garbage.

So putting these three facts together, I think it's safe to say that T-Rank's underlying algorithms and ideas are reasonably sound, which makes the tools on the site even more fun to play around with. Speaking of those tools:

Teamcast

This is probably the coolest thing I've added: a tool to play around a team's schedule (picking wins and losses, adding dropping games) to see how it affects their tourney chances and seed, based on the T-Ranketology algorithm.

The last two columns there show how much of an effect a win or loss would have on a team's T-Ranketology score (in isolation from all other games). Teamcast is also retroactive back to 2008, so you can go back and look what would might have happened if a certain game had come out differently.

I'm excited for Teamcast this year to play out various bubble scenarios—especially given the likelihood that the Badgers will be on the bubble.

Daycast

Daycast is similar to Teamcast, except that instead of playing around with a team's schedule, you play around with the games on a given day to see how it affects the tourney. As part of this, I've developed a new thrill quotient, the "Torvik Tourney Thrill Quotient" or "T3Q" which ranks games in their anticipated effect on the tourney. Basically, games between potential bubble teams reign supreme.

TourneyCast™

For TourneyCast, I run 10,000 simulations of the season (including simulations of every conference tournament), run the results of each sim through the T-Ranketology algorithm to get a projected field of 68, and then simulate the NCAA tournament. The output is odds for every team to get to the tournament (whether through an autobid or at-large) and then odds for advancing to various stages of the tourney.

ADDED: one cool feature of the TourneyCast is that if you filter by conference you get the projected number of bids, at-large chances (interesting for mid-majors), final four chances, and championship chances.

Backfill to 2008

Not sure exactly when I did this, but the site is completely backfilled with team and player stats all the way back to 2008. This includes advanced stats boxscores, which certain other sites don't have back past 2011.

The only exception to this is play by play based stats (win probability, game score). I have a complete set of PBP for last year (2017) and 95% coverage for 2015 and 2016. I will probably add more backfill on that in the coming months, but my impression is that available PBP peters out around 2011 anyhow.

This also includes conference-only advanced stats, and all the other various ways I've got to split the player stats, back to 2008. Notable other sites have conference-only advanced stats back to just the 2014 season.

More Player Stats Splits and Filters

As I just mentioned, I've added new ways to split player stats in the pretty awesome Player Finder tool. Now you can filter out the stats so you look at performance against only top 50 (adjusted for venue) opponents. You can even filter by date, to see who the stars of November were. I've also added a "max height" filter so you can see who the best short rebounder is, for example.

Player Histories and Game Logs

Part of the backfill is that I have advanced player stats back to 2008, including game logs. In addition, one of my major projects this summer was to create a linked database of player histories, so that when you click on a player's name, all his seasons come up. You cannot imagine what a supreme pain in the ass this was. The things I had to learn, I shit you not, were things like natural language processing. Woo boy. But at this point the player histories are about 99% linked. If you see any any discrepancies, please let me know.

Charts and graphs! Charts and graphs!

I just learned how to make some awesome interactive charts and graphs, replacing the old jpeg-based graphs it took me a week to learn how to make. Pretty proud of myself. This new skill is on display in three areas:

Win probability charts

I blogged about my fun foray into created a win probability model here. I've now learned how to make the result more useful and interactive.

Old:

New:

Also: Win probability calculator.

Team Trends Charts

Previously, I had team trends charts for just offensive and defensive efficiency, and they were pictures like the old win prob chart. Now I've got em for most team stats, and they are interactive and fabulous. Note: these charts are also available at the bottom of the "Team Results" page.

Player Stats Trends

Not to be done, the player stats department demanded access to the charts and graphs technology.

Strength of Schedule Stats & Page

Every team page has strength of schedule stats, and there's also a comprehensive page for strength of schedule. These are broken down by overall SOS and non-conference SOS, and also broken down by the SOS so far, and projected SOS for the entire season. (Conference SOS calculations are on the conference pages.)

Might as well say a word about my SOS metrics, since they're a bit unusual. The "basic" metric is just the average of the team's opponents' pythagorean expectancy (adjusted for the location of the game).

The "elite" metric is different, and better. This is the percentage of games an "elite" team (approx .9000 Barthag) would be expected lose against a given schedule. This is better because it reflects how little difference there is between playing mediocre and bad teams at home, and really rewards playing games that a good team could realistically lose.

To see what this is better, imagine three potential opponents: one good team (Barthag of .9000), one mediocre team (.5000), and one terrible team (.1000). Under the basic method, playing two mediocre teams is the same as playing a good team and terrible team because (.5 + .5) / 2 = (.9 + .1) / 2. But this really isn't right for most teams that we care about, because an elite team's chances of losing to the mediocre team (at home, at least) aren't really that different than its chances of losing to the terrible team, while its chances of beating the elite team are quite a bit different: (.05 + .01) / 2 < (.50 + .01) / 2.

Coach History and Team History pages.

A concise way to look at team and coach performance back to 2008.

Advanced Analysis of Unbalanced Conf. Schedules

I blogged about the underlying analysis here: I run simulations to see how differently teams would perform against a true round robin schedule (both winning percentage and chance of winning the conference) and log the results. 

RPI Forecast

Here's one I forgot about: a page showing the projected RPIs of every team based on their current T-Rank rating. This page also shows projected records in each of the selection committees newly delineated "quality win" buckets. If you hover over those records, you can see which teams are in each bucket:

UW vs. Maryland

4-2 on the season after last weeks split. UW is a 24 point favorite and the o/u is 50.5. Don't have a strong feeling on this game, which means I shouldn't bet it, but since I'm not betting I'll still pick.

Maryland is bad. They can't score with their 3rd string QB against a quality defense. Bucky has the 5th best scoring D in the country and has given up more than 17 points only to NW. Don't see this Maryland team going higher than 17.

Bucky's offense has played better than they have scored. Even in the 17 point debacle last week they had almost 500 yards and 300 on the ground. All the injuries worry me though. If this team gets healthy the offense could be special, but they may not get healthy until the bowl season break.

24 is a lot of points. Vegas really has no respect for Maryland after consecutive blow outs against OSU and NW. I don't like my choices in this one, but I'll take Maryland and the 24 points, and the under.

How much longer until the season starts?

So, I’m getting pretty antsy waiting for the Badger Basketball season to start. Getting a taste by watching the Australia/New Zeeland footage was nice, but I am ready for the real thing. In an effort to assuage the anxiety of waiting, I am going to put up some ideas/hopes for the season, and keep telling myself that it’s just a few more weeks.

Unsurprisingly, I am more bullish on this season than most people seem to be. With so many players leaving from last year’s team that may seem foolish, and I won’t argue to much with that. At this point any projections are long shots with so many unknowns. This is more about what I am hoping the Badgers will become, as much as it is what I think they will become. In any case, here goes.

I like the guards. This is going to be a fun bunch of players to watch. All 4 seem to have a good all around skill set with some ability to shoot, handle the ball, and drive. They all obviously have strengths and weaknesses, but I see this group as less of the "one skill" kind of guards UW has had a lot of in years past. Think of Jason Bohannon who shot great, but did nothing else on offense and was limited athletically on defense. Think of Jason Chappell who provided a big body and rebounded, but nothing else. This group seems to be better all around players.

The guards will all play, not because they have to because of the numbers, but because they deserve to play. UW recruiting since Bo Ryan took over has been big man heavy, usually having only 4 scholarship guards at a time (out of 13 scholarships). That way more scholarships could be used for big guys that are more hit or miss in terms of recruiting, or take a couple years to develop. That sometimes means you have to play young guards, and that’s all we got this year. Luckily guards are better equipped to play right away, and with a healthy Pritzl, and 2 physically mature players in King and Davison, this group should not hold Bucky back.

I kind of wish Jordan Hill hadn’t transferred. As anyone who went to a game with me the past 4 years knows, I was no fan of Jordan Hill. Call me crazy, but I don’t like point guards that can’t dribble and take bad shots. Nevertheless, with 4 young guards it is almost inevitable that this group struggles on the defensive end of the court. While he had his faults, Hill was an effort defender, and you could get by with him on the court for a spell. Sometimes when you have young players, it’s nice to have that effort defender you can put on the court, and let them watch from the pine while a less talented player gets their minutes because he is doing the right things on defense. 

I expect Iverson to play a lot this year. His quickness and defensive versatility is going to let him take over Showalter’s role last year taking on the best perimeter player, but with his size he can guard a bit bigger players too. In my many fantasies about the Badgers lineups this summer, (yes, I know that is kind of weird) I have had Iverson playing everything from 2 guard to 4. While he fits this team as a 3, depending on what other players step up, I could see him playing a lot at any of three positions to accommodate other talent, because he is so versatile defensively. I sure hope he gets better at shooting and dribbling. If he can improve those 2 skills, he can be a star. I think Iverson eats up almost all the minutes at the 3 position this year, and Bucky ends up playing 3 guard lineups the rest of the time, but Moesch, Ford, and even Illikainen may get some backup minutes there too.

Then there’s Happ and the rest. Happ is poised to break all kinds of Badger records including some I teased last year. I have no doubt Happ will be great fun to watch as he was the last 2 years, but seems likely he will struggle statistically this year. With no Koenig and Hayes around, it’s all Happ. He will get doubled and tripled mercilessly this year. Kaminski had that happen to him too, and he went through a stretch where he struggled while figuring out how to pass out of/dribble out of/split doubles. I expect Happ will have similar growing pains, and while it will ultimately make him better, stats will suffer.

I have no idea what to make of the rest. I don’t want to take too much from the trip down under as that was a different kind of game, with different rules, and the coaches had different goals in mind with regard to playing time. That said, what I saw from the 3 other Juniors was not encouraging. Van Vliet scored well, but only because he is a chucker. To me he looked like a taller, thinner version of Vitto, minus the quality post defense and rebounding. Illikainen still shows effort on defense, but nothing but promise on offense. For some reason he just seems to have no confidence or aggression on offense. If he doesn’t find it, he won’t be any better than last year. Thomas is sort of the same. He has yet to realize his body is a freight train on the offensive side of the court. He had games last year where he showed he can dominate the defensive boards with his body, and I hope that grows. Bucky will need his bulk at some point to man up against bigger, more physical teams. My hope is that one of those 3 steps up. Just one guy please! I don’t really care which one. The other 2 guys can then battle with Reuvers and Ford for backup minutes.

There you have it. 4 guards, Iverson, Happ, and someone else makes a nice, tight 7 man rotation, with 4 other big guys that compete with each other to provide some depth. 25 wins and a sweet sixteen later, and I have had a lot of fun.

God, I can’t wait for the season to start. Maybe I need another fantasy.

What if Iverson starts at the 2 guard, and then...........