Another massive rankings shuffle brought on by Pitt, Wake and Duke all losing last week. UConn assumes the #1 ranking and the reward for all their trouble? A trip to Louisville where the Cardinals are hotter than Gary Williams chair which means we could see the #1 team fall in their first game at the top for a 3rd straight week.
Oklahoma rides in at #2 and is doing a good job of not being noticed which is not as hard as it sounds for a basketball team in the Big 12 not named Kansas. In the AP poll UNC is #3 and Duke is #4. In the coaches poll the Heels trade spots with the Blue Devils.
Of course the ESPN fantasy scenario is for UConn to lose this evening and Oklahoma to drop their game to Texas A&M midweek while Duke and UNC win their next two games to setup a #1 vs #2 matchup for College Basketball Armageddon 2009, Part 1 on February 11th. I don’t see it happening though. Even if UConn loses at UL, Oklahoma will likely handle Texas A&M but even if that end of the bargain holds up Duke travels to Clemson and then gets Miami at home which could be trouble. For UNC it is Maryland(standard warning applies) and then a rematch with UVa. Both are at home which should give the Heels a clear path heading into Durham.
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Always remember that ESPN generates the most revenue for any individual game from the UNC vs. Dook game. So aside from our desire to win and the importance of the game to the tar heels ESPN would kill for a 1 vs. 2 game. Regardless the big one is at the Dean Dome this year.
Also want to thank THF for the great work on this blog and the always great analysis.
Go Heels!
Remember that ESPN generates $0 in income in the ACC states for the first Duke game because Raycom has that contract.
Why is it we are under dook all the time when (biased) we are better than them?
Rankings are irrelevant. It’s all about the scoreboard and it’s all about Psycho T and the senior class going 4-0 at Cameron.
Yeah. Where can we get a 7′ 3″ who can actually run the court?
The ESPN/USA today poll will, of course, favor The Rat King and his band of dorks. Dookie V still has a lot of pull, and that man simply drools over the thought of Duke being anywhere near the top.
Remember back in the day, circa 1998-2002, when he (Vitale) would almost challenge non-Dook fans on national television?
“Who wants to criticize this program? Seriously. Mike (Patrick)”
Patrick interrups Dookie to say, “You know, I really don’t know Dick…I mean they are…”
“Special. In one word. Special. Criticize Duke? What?! There’s nothing to criticize!”
Okay, there was some paraphrasing going on there, but the last four words WERE uttered and I hope it gets everyone (who posts here) a little steamed.
The AP poll is where it’s at. However, none of it is all that relevant as long as Dook slide from the #1 spot. Let UConn, or whoever, have it now. The Heels have yet to peak (putting together a streak of at least five consistently solid games on both ends). UConn are now, Pitt have, Wake have, and so have Dook.
We are capable of losing any game that involves…
1. Lawson getting hand-checked as he drives to the basket with no fouls drawn.
2. Hansbrouch sees limited free-throws for contact received.
3. We let good guards go unchecked.
4. No bench production from Davis/Graves/Drew/Frasor
We win big when
1. Lawson gets good penetration to the basket and finishes
2. Hansbrough gets his due at the stripe
3. Lawson gets free throws for hand-checks
4. Thompson shows up
5. Bench play production from Drew & Frasor
We win REALLY BIG when
1. We are allowed to play the same kind of defense we have to face from opposing teams. Just go back & check last year’s home game with Virginia Tech. You will see what I am talking about. We got by with a lot of hand-checking in that game, and we got by with a lot of physical inside play as well. We shouldn’t have been allowed to play that way for the most part, but it is so seldom we do, I’ll take it. Notice how that is just exactly what other teams to do us.
Schedule comparison for the ACC’s Top 4 (UNC, WFU, Clem, Duke):
UNC: 2 games against the ACC’s top 4, 5 of 9 at home.
WFU: 2 games against the ACC’s top 4, 5 of 10 at home.
Duke: 4 games against the ACC’s top 4, 4 of 9 at home.
Clem: 2 games against the ACC’s top 4, 4 of 9 at home.
Duke’s schedule is pretty brutal.
c. michael, may be i’m just slow but could you please explain your post? i assume the schedule stats are for games played to date since we played wfu and clemson and we’ll play dook twice for a total of 4 games against the top 4. i think dook has only played wfu so far. they will play clemson on 2/4, wfu again on 2/22 and twice against us to total 5 games for the season. i think wfu will play 5 games and clemson will play 4.
He is talking about remaining schedule.
I have to say, that although Hansbrough’s efficiency rating is about the same as last year, in that game in Raleigh, that was the first time this year that he really looked like the old Hansbrough.
Several times on Saturday I was saying to myself, “Don’t take that shot, Tyler,” in reference to the type of shot that he used to usually make and that seemed not to fall this year. Saturday, they were going in, from mid-range and even one three. That has to make a huge difference in opening up the floor.
I do notice that our defensive rating has started to go down, strangely during a period where we have mostly played better. Maybe it is best not to worry about it. I think this team needs to play adequate defense and excellent offense to win. I don’t think they can win on defense alone, unless Lawson, Ellington and Thompson really take it to the next level.
THF, is there any way over on the side, for you to show more of the recent comments? There have been a lot of interesting ones lately but the page only shows the most recent five.
I have always thought the lack of offense was more to blame for the two losses than the lack of defense. Yes it would help to keep guys like Rice and Teague in check more but at the same time if the offense functions then it does not matter what they do nearly as much.
heeledsoul,
THF is right. I was just looking at the schedule from here on out. Should have made that more clear. Sorry.
william, I think you’re right in saying don’t worry about the defensive ratings. To me, playing adequate defense means getting stops when you really need them. If you can do that, and play offense the way we typically do, then you’re going to win. The problem is that when you can’t take advantages of your easy offensive opportunities (see BC and Wake), you will lose.
It was pretty amusing on the call-in show last night when a caller said, basically, that people who write on message boards think they are smarter than the Coach and that that annoyed him. Coach Williams said, why don’t you stop going on those boards then? The caller didn’t answer that question.
The very next caller said that he thought Ed should start ahead of Deon. Coach ripped the guy’s head off.
Irony?
I was taking a look at Basketball on Paper last night and the author of that book notes that he believes the phrase “Defense wins championships” probably goes back to the titantic Boston-Philadelphia and Boston-L.A. play-off series of the 1960′s.
The media leaped on defense as the simple explanation for what was happening since Russell was great at defense and Chamberlain, West and Baylor were great at offense.
In reality, things were a lot more complicated. But what does stand out from my study of the NBA standings is that adjusted point differential or SRS, seems to be the greatest predictor of success in the NBA play-offs. Because, as in college ball, NBA teams have not played equal schedules, the team records are often misleading.
For example, the 1969 Lakers, who finished 55-27, are often chided for losing to the 48-34 Celtics, who only finished in fourth place in the East. But guess what? Due to statistical anomalies, Boston essentially tied for first in the NBA that year in SRS, finishing at 5.38, while L.A., which won seven games more, only had an SRS of 3.84. Boston won in seven games.
Celtic fans try to have it both ways with the Celtic teams of the late 50′s and 60′s. They try to say that they were both the best teams of all time, and also that they were incredibly clutch.
I would say that it is much more true to say that they were the best teams of that period by far, and that they managed to avoid being upset by inferior teams, although often just by the skin of their teeth.
Out of the 13 years Bill Russell was with the Celtics, the Celtics had the best SRS in the league 11 times(including 1969 which was essentially a tie with the Knicks), and guess how many championships they won? Yes, 11, but many times they were extended to seven games by teams that finished far behind them during the regular season.
If there is a critique to be made of those Philadelphia teams with Wilt and those Laker teams with Baylor and West, and later with Chamberlain, it is not that they lost to Boston in the play-offs. That was the expected outcome. It would be why couldn’t these teams match Boston in the regular season.
As regards Wilt Chamberlain, he played on four teams that led the league in adjusting scoring differential, in 1967, 1968, 1972 and 1973. Thus, Chamberlain played on four teams that would be deemed the play-off favorites and he ended up winning twice, in 1967 and 1972, although the 1972 Knicks were only a couple of points behind the Lakers during the regular season.
Adjusted point differential (SRS) is simply a team’s offensive average minus its defensive average, with an adjustment upward or downward based upon schedule strength. Among power ratings in basketball, this is basically what Sagarin in USA Today calls “pure points” adjusted for schedule strength and I would beat that if we look, we will generally find that teams that win the NCAA title generally have excellent point differentials. Sagarin indicates that pure points is not politically correct but does the best job of predicting success.
Generally, in the NBA, an SRS of over 8 points is outstanding and will almost always result in that team winning the title. As far as I can discern, no team has ever led the league in SRS at an average of 9 points or more, without winning the title. This select group includes the 1971 Jabbar/Robertson Bucks, the 1972 Chamberlain, Goodrich, West Lakers, the 1986 Walton/Bird Celtics and three different Jordan-led Bull teams.
Because expansion, injuries and improvement throughout a season can affect team success, SRS is not the final arbiter of greatness, but it certainly is highly correlated.
Only three teams have exceeded 11.5 points, the 1971 Bucks, the 1972 Lakers and the 1996 Jordan/Rodman Bulls, and all three won 66 games or more during the regular season and went through the play-offs at a clip of .800 or above.
The 1972 Lakers, who went 69-13 in the regular season had to play the almost equally worthy Bucks that year in the Western Finals. The Bucks went 63-19 and had an SRS of 10.70, which is one of the five highest of all time, but went down 4 games to 2 versus the Lakers.
So maybe the defense versus offense paradigm is not especially illuminating. There have been times this year where Carolina had trouble getting stops, like Saturday in Raleigh. There have been other times where Carolina had trouble buying a basket, like against Wake Forest. Comparing defense and offense may be useful for coaches in making team adjustments or for discovering why a particular game was won or lost, but it may not be particularly informative in terms of telling us which team is better, when an “offensive” oriented team faces a “defensive” oriented team.
I believe it’s all about the defense. Yes sure offense really counts a lot but when you are facing a good time like Wake or Duke, you have to be up on your defensive game no matter what. The key to beating Wake is to shut down Teague, if possible. That didn’t happen, that’s one of the big reasons we lost and it was the same story against Boston College, we didn’t shut down Rice. Again, other factors played in effect from those losses but I think if was would have played better defense we would have won both of those games. Plain and simple!!!!
Now, for the national standing. There is way too much hype!!! I don’t care if Duke is ranked higher than the Heels and I don’t care if the Heels are ranked highter than Duke. All I am worried about is how well Carolina plays from game to game. People get so hung up about who’s where in the standings. Let’s take one game at a time and worry about how our heels are playing. To me, the standing don’t make a hill of beans until March. That’s when the fun starts!!!! Go Heels!!!!!!!!
Well, that really is not supported by the box scores.
The Tar Heels two losses and their near loss to FSU, were their three worst offensive games of the season and not surprisingly, they struggled in all three. They were also poor defensively, particularly in the BC game, but at other times they have been bad on defense and have still won easily, Saturday for example and against Notre Dame. Why? Because they were unstoppable on offense.
Everyone talks about defense, but let’s be honest, you ain’t gonna win without scoring more points than your opponent. Certainly it helps if you can keep your opponent from scoring, but if your offense is potent then who cares if defense is a bit off. People like to point to great defensive teams, but I’d argue that great offensive teams deserve the same praise. If you can do both, well then, you’ve got yourself a hell of a team.