Point Blank – January 21
How in the hell do your Power Rate Rutgers?...There is no such thing as free throw defense…A Brady/Manning chart that won’t help you Sunday, but will make you more savvy in general…A different Cavalier approach for Thursday…
Let me start with something that I believe is a long-term truth in the sporting arena – many bad teams are even worse than they appear to be. There is actually a benefit in being terrible shows up in two ways on the scoreboard: First in that opponents rarely take them as seriously as they do other teams, which reduces the talent gap because of a lesser degree of preparation and Second in that opponents are often comfortable to win and move on, instead of feeling the need to go hard for the entire game. As such, on the college basketball hardwoods a sad-sack bunch can lose a game 75-55, when perhaps the favorite would have won in 80-50 had they brought their “A” game. It creates a genuine challenge in setting power ratings, and a particular one with the current feeble edition of the Rutgers Scarlet Knights, who host Iowa tonight.
Rutgers is inept at a unique level this season, one that we rarely find for programs in the Big 10. Eddie Jordan’s team has been out-scored by 164 points in opening 0-6 in conference play, and naturally it has not been easy for the marketplace to price down to that – in going 1-5 ATS, the Scarlet Knights have finished 60 full points below the expectations, or 10 per game. But now comes the * - just how bad might some of these games been, had the opposition played hard the entire way?
Purdue slaughtered Rutgers 107-57 at the Louis Brown Athletic Center on Monday. It was 59-26 at halftime. Yet as bad as that score was, the Boilermaker starting lineup only played 89 of the 200 floor minutes. Contrast that to the Scarlet Knight starters being on the floor for 163. Now work with that - Jordan’s starting lineup played nearly twice the minutes of the opposing team, yet a home game was still lost by 50 points!
That shows the challenge of grading – as horrific as a 107-57 scoreboard looks, it could have been worse. Purdue won the boards 59-22, as wide of a gap as you will ever see in a major conference, and for one team to have more rebounds than the other has points is almost unthinkable. Yet again that was with the Boilermaker starters not even playing half of the game. Let’s consider the minutes of each of those starting lineups through that 0-6 opening:
Rutgers Opponents
Purdue 163 89
Ohio State 134 129
Nebraska 136 111
Maryland 146 104
Wisconsin 150 130
Indiana 147 125
Rather alarming isn’t it – Rutgers has been out-scored by 164 points despite the fact that the opposing starting lineups have played 188 fewer floor minutes. It absolutely is a case of a team being even worse than those horrific final scores. That has become numbing to Jordan, who got caught up in the Monday aftermath with a quote that he would love to escape, but perhaps tells the sad tale as well as anything. When asked if he was disappointed with the team’s defensive effort, his response was rather unfortunate - "No. What was disappointing about the defensive effort? Just little instances where we give up layups — that's going to happen. You just have to bring it back in and reaffirm what you're trying to do. You sort of tell them, 'This is important to us. You don't give up layups and you don't give up open shots. You don't take bad shots.' "
And that is part of why Jordan will not be a part of the re-building process after this season, if he even lasts until the end of it. It may not be a sinking ship, but rather one that has already sunk. Consider this, from D. J. Foreman, when asked about the next step for the team – “I guess we just come together somehow, I guess, just pray.”
Now back to Power Ratings. Naturally it has been difficult to work with the Rutgers results, because each of those dismal scores could have been even worse. But that also has to be accepted as what the protocols will be going forward – it may be a rare night in which any Big 10 opponent has their starters on the floor very long. That will be the challenge for the game-day handicap the remainder of the way, attempts to probe inside the heads of the opposing coaches to see how seriously they can get their teams to focus on an opponent that is not easy to get excited about.
This is a classic dilemma in handicapping at the college level. When Fran McCaffery has his Iowa team looking at Rutgers game films, how does he get them to take the matchup seriously? Does one actually lower the power rating on a team like the Hawkeyes for tonight, because the Hawkeyes are unlikely to bring their “A” game? What you can look for the rest of the way is a setting in which the opposition actually wants to play the Scarlet Knights, but those will be few and far between, of course. Perhaps there will be a team off of an ugly loss that will bring a chip on the shoulder, and that is when the true ineptness of Rutgers could show.
For now, we are left with the notion that perhaps the worst team in Big 10 history may be even worse than the scoreboards make them appear, and another lesson in the difficulties of making accurate power ratings. Now time for another curveball on the ratings front…
Item: There is no such thing as free throw defense
Arizona is traveling to Palo Alto to meet Stanford in Pac 12 play tonight, and in the process of breaking that one down there is a significant aspect to score-based power ratings that you likely will not notice – the fact that conference opponents have shot their free throws so much better against the Wildcats (76-97) than the Cardinal (59-104). Consider how much impact that has had on the scoreboards.
Arizona is +63 over six Pac 12 games, and Stanford even. What would happen if the opposition had shot 70 percent from the line against each of them? The Arizona point differential would go to +71, and Stanford would fall to -14. Those are the little things that play a part of the daily processes, though this is not something that will create any value for tonight’s setting – I believe this is a spot in which Arizona may miss Alonzo Trier, something that did not show in those easy home wins over the Washington schools last weekend.
Item: Before you get inundated with Brady/Manning talk this weekend
Let me preface this – do not believe this chart for a minute in terms of what to expect on Sunday. Tom Brady is not too far below his peak level, while Peyton Manning has lost a lot of elevation since his highest point. Instead, let this be your guide in the continuing discourse on how the Sports Mediaverse will often misinterpret stories, and sometimes flat-out create narratives that lack an integrity. You are going to read or hear often over the next few days about how bad Manning has been in his career in the playoffs. But how true is that? This table, from an interesting piece at ESPN Insider brings some intriguing food for thought on just what the realities have been -
PLAYOFF METRIC | PEYTON MANNING | TOM BRADY |
Games started |
25 (2nd) |
30 (1st) |
Wins as starter |
12 (6th) |
22 (1st) |
Passing DVOA (FO) |
26.8% (7th) |
23.3% (11th) |
Total DYAR (FO) |
2,591 (2nd) |
2,696 (1st) |
Total QBR (ESPN; min. 100 plays) |
66.0 (6th) |
59.4 (12th) |
Total EPA (ESPN) |
77.9 (1st) |
74.4 (2nd) |
QB PAR (ESPN) |
98.6 (1st) |
89.1 (2nd) |
QB PAA (ESPN) |
38.7 (2nd) |
19.8 (6th) |
Yards per pass attempt |
7.22 (26th) |
6.79 (44th) |
Passer rating |
88.0 (16th) |
89.6 (12th) |
ESPN statistics and rankings are for 2006-2015 |
FO statistics and rankings are for 1989-2015 |
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Does any of this matter for Sunday? No. Instead, use it more another cautionary tale about being careful as storylines get created across that Sports Mediaverse...
About Last Night…
Following the ebbs-and-flows of individual players can occasionally set up some interesting opportunities going forward. In the Monday column I detailed why North Carolina looked like a promising futures investment, and one of the reasons was in detailing that Tar Heel depth – there is so much to work with that even when floor leader Marcus Paige has gone through a bad shooting stretch, they were still winning comfortably. Last night vs. Wake Forest was more of the same – Paige went 1-8 from the field, missing all five 3-point attempts, yet Carolina controlled the game wire to wire.
Now add up the last three outings – Paige has gone a remarkable 3-25 from the field, including 1-16 from 3-point range. Yet the Tar Heels went 3-0 SU and 1-2 ATS, all three wins coming in double figures. When your key cog can shoot that poorly, yet have it not overly impact the team flow, it is a good sign.
In the Sights…
It is time to take a slightly different direction here, lowering the wager amount because of the investment involved, but because I do see value for the setting, #704 Cleveland Money Line (8:05 Eastern) goes into pocket. Last night the path with the Cavaliers was the First Half, when they indeed brought the proper focus to build a working margin at Brooklyn, and it was that margin that helped to set this one up well, with the starting lineup only having to play 126:50, including a 29:03 from LeBron James that was his third lowest count of the season. Now they are back in front of the national cameras again after Monday’s debacle vs. Golden State, and the collective egos on this roster will relish the opportunity for some redemption.
There is also something else that happened last night to put Monday’s Cleveland failure into perspective – the way that the Warriors ran through Chicago (125-94) with such relative ease. It has been brilliant basketball by that bunch this week, which further cautions against a downgrade of the Cavaliers.
Meanwhile the Clipper issues were dealt with in a column last Monday, their strong run without Blake Griffin not nearly as impressive as the tab of Wins and Losses would have it appear. This will be only their second road game in January, and their first road outing against a winning team since December 18, and while I do not like laying points into a fresh side with Chris Paul at the trigger because of back-door prospects, the confidence in Cleveland winning outright makes the -245 out there more than fair value.
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