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2013 NCAA Tournament

Even though I don't trust Kenpom darling Florida, those defensive efficiency numbers Lville are putting up are just so hard to ignore. Funny enough, just because of how potent our offense is, I think we probably stand the best chance of stopping them (if we meet), but good god, that 0.81ppp allowed after a season of facing BE opponents is just nuts.


They're gonna get that third title.
 
Yeah, they are my pick. They got to the Final Four last year with much worse offense. While their offense isn't truly elite this year, it's good enough in conjunction with that defense.
 
yeah good offensive team isnt whats stopping Lville, its if they face a good defensive team like Msu or us if we get back to early season prowess
 
2003 Syracuse 11th
2004 UConn 4th
2011 UConn 16th

That's the list of Kenpom era champions with offenses outside the top 2 after the final game. Louisville is starting at 15th. Neither 2003 Syracuse nor 2011 UConn had a great defense, either (both outside the top 10). They were flukes. 2004 UConn had Okafor's injuries weighing their numbers down.

Offense wins championships. I post this every year. Until a team exactly like Louisville (incredible defense, meh offense) wins it, I'm not believing otherwise.
 
There's a big gap between Indiana and everyone else on offense. The next big gap is after Duke at #4. Indiana, Michigan, Gonzaga, Duke. Duke is the one team with an injured player who is now healthy who weighed down the offense significantly.

Kansas somewhat fits the profile of the fluky team with the most talented player in the country who goes on a tear, except they're actually good.
 
I was going to make the point about elite offenses, SMTTEM, but it's my belief that this year's Louisville team will be the exception. I believe their defense is so unprecedentedly dominant that it will carry them.

And Kenpom was historically bad (given its short history) on everything in 2011. I think it's safe to say that he hasn't been doing this long enough for any truly meaningful patterns to emerge. JMO, though I do still take him into account when making my bracket.
 
But it could be I'm being too swayed by their run last year. Still, I look for teams who bring back roughly the same players to make steady tournament progress. 2009 UNC, 2010 Duke, and basically every other Duke title team. Seems like the recipe is a stable base plus the experience gained from disappointing losses.
 
I mean, in 2010 you had Butler at #50 in offense. Why is coming one shot from winning a title less statistically significant than winning it? Jon Scheyer doesn't block Nored on the break, Hayward makes that baseline fadeaway shot, etc.

Then 2011, as I've said, was just brutally wrong. We're only talking about a 10-year window here.
 
It's not the HISTORY that makes me think offenses are more important than defenses; the history just made me think of why it might be that way. I think when so many games come down to 1-2 possessions at the end, any team can come together and focus and play 1-2 great defensive possessions together. NC State can do this. Like, think about NC State and the players they have. The fact that they suck so badly on defense tells you how terrible a coach Gottfried is, whether it's a lack of motivation or a lack of X's and O's. But I definitely think if those players decided to be awesome for 1-2 defensive possessions, they could be at least pretty good. Not good enough to win a title, but good enough to stop someone for a few possessions.

However, no team can collectively focus more to somehow make their best player, their end of game scorer, have a quicker first step or better jumper. This seems like a reasonable line of thought, since it's so obvious at the highest level of basketball when the Spurs or Heat are taking plays off or taking an entire night off. I think you need great shotmakers or guys who are great at drawing fouls to have a decent shot at winning this tournament, otherwise your defense has to be at some incredibly high level that we haven't even seen yet. Louisville might be that.
 
I just think that when you have three teams in the Final Four with offenses of #16, #50, and #32 just two seasons ago, and two of those end up in the title game, it's tough to say that one of the two worse than UConn couldn't have won a title. Even if you want to look at it and say "Well, UConn, who had the best offense of the three, won," you can just look at the year before. Butler again had the #50 defense. And it wasn't like we won with a superior offense that buckled down on defense.

I tend to agree with you that defense is about coaching while offense is about talent, though.
 
Have to remember both of those Butler teams were closer to losing in the 1st or 2nd round than winning it all. It's all luck, which is why I think it's weird to the point where we can draw some conclusions when more fluky years don't happen. 8 out of the 10 champs on Kenpom had top 2 offenses, if we assume UConn with Okafor was top 2. I'd expect it to be like 3 out of 10 because of how random the tournament should be and how close together every team in the top 20 or so are. 8 out of 10 is absurd. It's 2 out of 10 on defense (2008 Kansas and again assuming 2004 UConn would've gotten there with Okafor), which is around what I'd expect for offense.
 
In general, I agree with your thesis. But given the flukiness of the tournament and the teams well outside that range who made the Final Four, and also given how dominant Louisville is defensively, and given their experience and previous tournament success, I feel like they are a logical pick.

If you pick Indiana on the strength of their better statistical profile, that makes sense to me too. I have them in the title game. Again, best to play it safe in smaller brackets.
 
SeanMayTriedToEatMe said:
2003 Syracuse 11th
2004 UConn 4th
2011 UConn 16th

That's the list of Kenpom era champions with offenses outside the top 2 after the final game. Louisville is starting at 15th. Neither 2003 Syracuse nor 2011 UConn had a great defense, either (both outside the top 10). They were flukes. 2004 UConn had Okafor's injuries weighing their numbers down.

Offense wins championships. I post this every year. Until a team exactly like Louisville (incredible defense, meh offense) wins it, I'm not believing otherwise.
Click to expand...
Interesting. I hadn't thought of things this way...

- 2003 Marquette (#1 offense) made the Final Four. Georgia (#2 offense) did not.
- 2004 Wake Forest (#1 offense) did not make the Final Four. Duke (#2 offense) did.
- 2005 UNC (#1 offense at 126.6 (lolwut)) made the Final Four. Wake Forest (#2 offense) did not.
- 2006 Gonzaga (#1 offense) didn't make the Final Four (#178 defense - epic collapse to UCLA). Florida (#2 offense) made the Final Four.
- 2007 Florida (#1 offense) made the Final four. 2007 Georgetown (#2 offense) made the Final Four.
- 2008 North Carolina (#1 offense) made the Final Four. 2008 Kansas (#2 offense / #1 defense) made the Final Four.
- 2009 North Carolina (#1 offense) made the Final Four. 2009 Pitt (#2 offense) lost in the Elite 8.
- 2010 Duke (#1 offense) made the Final Four. 2010 Kansas (#2 offense) didn't make the Final Four.
- 2011 Ohio State (#1 offense at 125.6) lost to Kentucky in the Sweet 16. 2011 Wisconsin (#2 offense) lost in the Sweet 16.
- 2012 Missouri (#1 offense at 125.4) lost to a 15 seed (#115 defense). 2012 Kentucky (#2 offense) made the Final Four.

So barring 2011, SMTTEM is right. Offense seems to be a better indicator of final success.
 
WorldStar HipHop said:
SeanMayTriedToEatMe said:
2003 Syracuse 11th
2004 UConn 4th
2011 UConn 16th

That's the list of Kenpom era champions with offenses outside the top 2 after the final game. Louisville is starting at 15th. Neither 2003 Syracuse nor 2011 UConn had a great defense, either (both outside the top 10). They were flukes. 2004 UConn had Okafor's injuries weighing their numbers down.

Offense wins championships. I post this every year. Until a team exactly like Louisville (incredible defense, meh offense) wins it, I'm not believing otherwise.
Click to expand...
Interesting. I hadn't thought of things this way...

- 2003 Marquette (#1 offense) made the Final Four. Georgia (#2 offense) did not.
- 2004 Wake Forest (#1 offense) did not make the Final Four. Duke (#2 offense) did.
- 2005 UNC (#1 offense at 126.6 (lolwut)) made the Final Four. Wake Forest (#2 offense) did not.
- 2006 Gonzaga (#1 offense) didn't make the Final Four (#178 defense - epic collapse to UCLA). Florida (#2 offense) made the Final Four.
- 2007 Florida (#1 offense) made the Final four. 2007 Georgetown (#2 offense) made the Final Four.
- 2008 North Carolina (#1 offense) made the Final Four. 2008 Kansas (#2 offense / #1 defense) made the Final Four.
- 2009 North Carolina (#1 offense) made the Final Four. 2009 Pitt (#2 offense) lost in the Elite 8.
- 2010 Duke (#1 offense) made the Final Four. 2010 Kansas (#2 offense) didn't make the Final Four.
- 2011 Ohio State (#1 offense at 125.6) lost to Kentucky in the Sweet 16. 2011 Wisconsin (#2 offense) lost in the Sweet 16.
- 2012 Missouri (#1 offense at 125.4) lost to a 15 seed (#115 defense). 2012 Kentucky (#2 offense) made the Final Four.

So barring 2011, SMTTEM is right. Offense seems to be a better indicator of final success.
Click to expand...


Yes, but what about the other teams in the Final Four? While it's true that either the #1 or #2 offense tends to make the Final Four (in this, I argue, extremely limited window), there are also outliers who did. 2011 has three of them. 2010 had the #11, #50 and #28 offenses. And that's just two years that I bothered to look at.
 
I really want Miami vs Indiana to happen. Even if Duke loses earlier, I want to see what this monster from the monster conference can do against the team of 24 year olds that Duke had to deal with twice.
 
Lhys, I agree.

I asked the same thing in my head right after I made that post. "What about (at least) the other two slots or (in some cases) three slots?"

So it seems there's really no way of consistently being able to predict even 3 of the 4 Final Four participants.
 
And I would argue that there's not a big statistical/degree of difficulty difference in getting to the Final Four and winning it all. I'd be happy to hear arguments to the contrary, however.
 
Someone should just do the basic math involved. I don't care enough to. I have Florida to fail with.

It would involve assigning 1 point to each win in the tournament and then figuring out the correlation between offensive ppp and performance in the tournament, and then doing the same for defensive ppp allowed, over the past 10 years, including every single team in the field of 64. This way, we wouldn't be just looking at champions, or just looking at Final Four teams, or even just Elite Eight teams; we'd be looking at everything. Then look at which one has the higher correlation with wins - offense or defense. There might be a much simpler way too.

NBA data would be even better if it exists, but I have a feeling the NBA champs are almost always great on both offense and defense so the difference in importance would be very small.
 
Yeah, that sounds like a lot of work, especially for a humanities major. I'll let Zack do it.
 
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