basketball season autopsy, part 2

First up, apologies: I always try to post at least once each weekday and let you know when I won't be. Yesterday I spent some time going over the sabermetric stats I talked about earlier. Apologies again to those who were hoping to see it added, but it's not a worthwhile endeavour. Two reasons for that. One, sample size: this stuff is designed for a 162-game MLB season, and the typical college ballplayer won't rack up that many til his junior year. Maybe. Two, the weirdness of nonconference schedules throws this stuff out of whack. The teams in the majors aren't that different from each other in terms of talent, but when we play Coppin State and beat them 27-1 (a real actual score from last year), the statistics go bonkers. It might be worth revisiting after the season is over and using only stats from ACC games, but that's a lot of extra work, and again: sample size.

Anyway, the basketball season. It's over, thank heavens for that. The other day I rambled about things that went right and things that didn't go wrong, which was a thinly-veiled way of saying it's not Dave Leitao's fault entirely. Actually, I don't think it was veiled at all. But on with the show. Today, I tell you what I think the problems were this year and then, what we're looking at for next year. What went wrong?

1. Three freshmen in the starting lineup. Look, I don't care if one of them turns out to be ACC Rookie of the Year (oh wait he did), the ACC is not, has never been, and hopefully never will be a league where you can have the majority of your lineup be freshmen and that is a recipe for success. It just ain't happening. Sammy Zeglinski will be a fine point guard in time, but he could have had a big scarlet F for Freshman on his back and it wouldn't have been any more obvious. He'd play well in some games - in fact, quality play from Z was a common thread in our wins - and others he'd shoot 1-for-5 and dish out no assists to go along with his three turnovers.

Not only the freshmen, but I've touched on this before: guys might have a certain class listed on the roster, but they carried so much extra responsibility as compared to years past that they really are more like a year behind what it says. Calvin Baker, case in point. He's officially a junior but he spent a year sitting out as per transfer regulations and before that was at William & Mary, a far cry from the ACC. He's a sophomore, basically, but with only one more year of eligibility. Mustapha Farrakhan is technically a sophomore, but figure this: the Ken Pom player ratings call him a "significant contributor" to the team based on how much he was involved in the offense; last year he had such a non-role he wasn't even listed - not even enough to qualify as "nearly invisible". A sophomore playing a freshman's role.

2. Mamadi Diane and Tunji Soroye's injuries. This is two problems in one. Before the season I figured we could at least make a return trip to the CBI, because we'd have some senior leadership in key roles. Mo on offense, Tunji on defense. Not having them made the above problem that much worse. Diane ought to have been a starter - in place of Baker, if I'd had my say. Without him, Baker (effectively a sophomore) and Mike Scott (actually a sophomore) were the graybeards in the "typical" starting lineup - who were they turning to for leadership in the huddle?

Plus, for three years Diane was a rock-solid dependable player and it was the threat of his outside shooting that opened up more than a couple driving lanes for Sean Singletary. That disappeared completely this year and had a direct effect on the offense in particular. Teams respected the jump-shooting abilities of absolutely nobody on the roster. Nobody. And with good reason. Give us Diane's jump shot back and at the very, very least the Liberty debacle never happens - Diane played 27 minutes and shot 0-for-6. And who knows what the offense might have produced if anybody at all could have hit a shot from outside the paint somewhere? That was Diane's role, but his foot took away his shot.

3. So yeah....the shooting. It....was....awful. Coaches, especially ours, like to preach that defense begets offense. Play solid defense and the offense will come. That goes in reverse too, as we learned. Not only is missing shots counterproductive to the scoring effort, it leads to no respect for your shooters on that end and transition buckets on the other end. We were, FYI, the 278th best 3-point shooting team in the country, tied with the following States: Central Connecticut, South Carolina-Up-, and Kennesaw. Somewhere, in some gym or court, somebody is informing some no-game-havin' playground hack that he shoots like Kennesaw State. This is the #1 problem that has to be fixed for next year.

4. Extreme strength of schedule. No matter whose ranking system you use, ours was one of the nastiest schedules in the country. The RPI says the nastiest. That's right - according to the official rack-and-stack fancy number tool that the selection committee uses, of 343 teams in Division I basketball we had the hardest schedule in the land. A small part of that comes with the territory of being one of the worst teams in the ACC, since everyone gets to play you and you do not. Then again, of the other bottom five teams in the conference, we got only one crack at three of them, and as a bonus we got to be UNC's chew toy twice.

And then there's the schedule we gave ourselves. Games against Xavier and Syracuse and halfway decent mid-majors like Radford and VMI are great if you think you need a little extra oomph in the selection committee room. They are also great for racking up losses if you play a ton of freshmen, effectively lost your seniors to injury, and can't shoot.

So......ja. These are the four things, more or less in order, that I think doomed the season. Not that you can't put your finger on a myriad of other silly little problems, but I think most of those stemmed from these.

Ah, but next year.....next year, I truly and honestly see things getting better. Much better. The only question mark is the shooting, since most of the same people who couldn't shoot this year will return next year to also not shoot. But the ACC is poised to take a huge hit next year in the talent department. Check out who's all leaving:

Tyrese Rice (BC)
K.C. Rivers (Clemson)
Greg Paulus (Duke)
Toney Douglas (FSU)
Alade Aminu (GT)
Lewis Clinch (GT)
Jack McClinton (Miami)
Tyler Hansbrough (UNC)
Danny Green (UNC)
Courtney Fells (NCSt)
A.D. Vassallo (VT)

And you figure there will be early entries of course....Wake's Jeff Teague is almost certainly thinking about it, and perhaps his teammate Al-Farouq Aminu. Ty Lawson and Gerald Henderson project to the first round too, if they go. That's a lot of leading scorers. The Dukes and UNCs of the world will always know they can replace these guys, but what about Miami? FSU? VT? The difference is that they think they can replace them.

Meanwhile we won't have to. Landesberg appears likely to stay at least another year, though I think we'll be in for some heartburn every year around this time waiting for his decision. And I thin Tristan Spurlock will bring in a little bit of that shooting we need. While most of the rest of the ACC is going to worry about filling in the holes, we'll be adding on, and we've started the maturing process for next year early. You could see the growth and improvement the team showed as they got rid of some bad habits while the season progressed. This team was too young and inexperienced for the ACC and it was ugly to watch them get schooled night in and night out by much older players who've seen this movie before. Next year that excuse goes away, but hopefully so does the crazy decision-making and the intimidation.

Just, you know, spend some time in the gym with your jump shot, fellas?

game quasi-preview: Maryland

I'm really just using the Maryland game tomorrow as a launching board for other basketball topics as well.

To start off, I had a little extra time this afternoon, so I decided to nerd it up and see who we're going to face in our tournament game. The answer is: the overwhelming likelihood is that we'll draw Boston College. The chances of that are about 82%. Other options: chance of seeing Clemson is about 12%, and the chance of getting Florida State is about 6%. Told you I nerded it up. These are the only options.

Methodology:

- Lay out all 64 possible outcomes of the six games this weekend.
- Use the KenPom percentage chances of each team winning to find the probability of each outcome. For example, our chances of beating Maryland are 48%. The chance of all six favorites winning is about 12%, which comes from multiplying all six individual game probabilities together.
- Determine the 6th-place team in the standings in each outcome. We're locked into 11th, so no matter what, we get #6.
- Add up the probabilities that match each possible 6th-place team.

Numbers are kind of fun like that.

Further nerdy results: BC ends up in some kind of tie involving 6th place in every possible scenario. However, they've got tiebreakers over Maryland, VT, and the three-way tie with both, so we're not getting those teams no matter what. Our playing Clemson would be the result of Clemson losing a three-way tie for fourth with BC and FSU, and our playing FSU is the result of FSU losing a tie with BC for fifth.

Alright, 'nuff of that. So what's it mean for tomorrow? Well, one might say it doesn't matter whether we win or lose because our seeding for the tournament is locked in. But seriously now. We're the second-worst team in the conference and whoever we play is going to hand us our ass, and if by some miracle they don't then we win the right to have Wake Forest hand us our ass instead. The Maryland game is in fact the one that actually means something.

For one thing, you always want to send your seniors off on the right note, and it'll be the last game at home for Mamadi Diane and Tunji Soroye. It's been a tough season and these two have had it the toughest. Both battled through injuries and never were their usual selves all season. Diane's shooting touch cheated him, which is ten kinds of a shame because the .414 he shot from beyond the arc as a junior would have been a godsend this year. And Soroye petitioned for a sixth season and waited longer than usual for the answer from the NCAA, all the while not knowing or caring if there'd be a scholarship for him. And to have the season go the way it did, especially for these two.....sucks. Besides the fact that there isn't a Hoo alive who doesn't like watching Maryland walk the slow walk of the vanquished off our court, a win for the seniors would be only right.

Soroye won't be going out without at least some honors though. He and Jerome Meyinsse made the ACC All-Academic team - Meyinsse for the second time. So there's that, and congratulations.

The coverage map for tomorrow's game is right here. As you can see, Rhode Island is Big 12 territory, so the game's not on here, and I've been given tickets gratis for the BC-Georgia Tech game tomorrow. So I'll be off scouting the opposition for next Thursday's game.

Soroye not leaving after all; Lars gone

Time for the Monday catch-up. First, the best news. Per the Daily Progress, Tunji Soroye will return and be awarded the scholarship vacated by Will Harris. Soroye is the only really tall (6'10" or above) player on the roster that isn't a freshman, and his defense was sorely missed last season. This means that Calvin Baker will remain a walk-on, at least for this year.

** As I was typing, this happens. Bombshell: Lars Mikalauskas is gone. On the bright side, ummmmmm..... maybe Baker will get that scholarship after all.

Wonderful. Just wonderful. The season just went from pretty bad to a little bit better to a whole hell of a lot worse.

%#&*. Moving on....

Speaking of Will Harris, he has decided to become a Great Dane and play for UAlbany. Best of luck to him there. Of note, remember Keith Friel? I do. Slow, awesome white kid who could do nothing but shoot and get big cheers every time he came in the game. His brother Jeremy is an assistant at Albany. So that's neat.

Looking around the league....

- Virginia Tech's Zach Luckett is suspended from the team for DUI. He will spend time in jail if convicted; whether or not he's still on the team by then is anyone's guess. Since it's his second in just a few years, perhaps iffy.

- NC State has been hit hard by injuries, losing Toney Baker, Clem Johnson, and Donald Bowens. Baker, though talented, is the least of their worries; he'll likely be back at some point this year, and the Pack have two other quality backs. Clem Johnson, in complete defiance of my projections, was on track to start at safety. And Bowens, out with a slight spinal fracture, was their best wide receiver.

- Again in defiance of my projection, Maryland has named Jordan Steffy the starting quarterback.

- Florida state in major NCAA doo-doo? More in a bit.

First, some quickies:
- The kicking is looking better.

- Sean Gottschalk and Staton Jobe are hurting.

Now.....Florida State.

There's almost zero MSM backup on this right now, because the school is being obstreperous about releasing any info. So bear that in mind. Then go read this post over at BuckeyePlanet. Gatorubet is a reliable and excellent poster. The ominous part of the post (for the Seminoles) is the unattributed quote from the AD: "The NCAA may be looking to make an example of us."

This would be something to keep an eye on. Even after FSU announced their self-imposed punishments, all was not kosher in Nole-land. Simply suspending players for a couple games was not going to do it, especially when you then go ahead and schedule Little Debbie and the Keebler Elves to fill those spots on the schedule. The players may be the ones participating but this is an institutional issue, not a player-misconduct issue. The NCAA's catchphrase is "lack of institutional control" and it certainly applies to FSU over the past 16 years or so. This goes beyond lack of control, it is outright institutional enabling. Scholarship slots will almost certainly be lost; a postseason ban is also not out of the question, in the humble opinion of your blogger.

the hits they keep on coming: Soroye to transfer

As reported by the CDP, second transfer in a week: Tunji Soroye will leave the program.

What this means:

- Hunch is that Soroye made up his mind when Will Harris's scholarship wasn't promised to him, or was promised to Calvin Baker outright. It's the sort of thing that can make a guy feel unwelcome, especially one who's put in five years in the program.
- Thusly, Calvin Baker is now probably a scholarship player, whether or not that decision was made before or after Soroye announced his decision to transfer.
- We are once again thin at center. The only players listed with a C are Jerome Meyinsse and the two freshmen, Sene and Brandenburg. Meyinsse is not a center, I don't care what the roster says. Not at 6'8". He and Lars are power forwards being asked to go up against bigger guys.

I hate to call Leitao's methods into question, and I've got little right to seeing as I literally have less insider access than the concession stand guys. But what goes on in a program when two players decide to leave in less than a week? I'd like to think it's a coincidence and hate to think it has anything to do with being pushed out. Harris' out-the-door comments seemed to reflect favorably on Leitao, so that's a plus. But a player "getting the feeling" that the program doesn't want him back, despite the work he's put in to come back knowing he probably won't even see much playing time - that is a question mark.