It is Championship Week and the links are flying around with interesting news. I wanted to include some here so that people could keep up. There's good information about
Northwestern and more on the
DePaul coaching search. Here are my thoughts about all of them.
Northwestern's Big Ten Tournament Chances: The Wildcats have a .4 percent chance of running the table and making the NCAA Tournament according to Ken Pomeroy's
Log 5 analysis of the events in Indianapolis. That low, but not ridiculously low, number seems about right. (Compare is to say
Iowa's .003 percent chance.) Two things though that stick out from the link, which includes the excellent analysis of Bradford Doolittle.
1) I don't think Northwestern is an NIT lock at the moment, which is what Doolittle appears to imply further down the page. The Wildcats have to at least beat
Indiana. A close loss against
Purdue wouldn't hurt either. Also, right now Northwestern has an 11.4 percent chance of making the semifinals and a 2.8 percent chance of making the finals. If the Wildcats made a miracle run to the finals and lost could they get in as an at-large? Depends on who they beat to get their. But their neutral court record would look awfully good then.
2) Look at
Wisconsin. They don't have any NBA prospects and they're considered the team to beat according to Log 5 in the Big Ten. You don't need highly recruited prospects to win basketball games.
Bo Ryan's (photo above) a great coach. Other teams should try to emulate his success.
Will Walker wasn't able to lead DePaul to a victory in the first round of the Big East Tournament.
season with so much promise. After a miserable 0-18 campaign in the
Big East during the 2008-09 season things looked up when the Blue Demons beat
Cincinnati in the first round of the Big East Tournament. Now though, a year later, it is obvious that the moment was a blip instead of a sea change in DePaul's fortunes.
The Blue Demons spent the afternoon on ESPN getting blasted on ESPN with
Tracy Webster finishing up the slow march of a season and Big East play. They finished with one fewer wins than a season ago (8 versus 9). The commentators speculated about
Isaiah Thomas and
Bob Knight and pondered what it would take for the Blue Demons to be relevant again. (Well, when they said Blue Demons even that was a little victory as Blue Devils and Demon Deacons were used interchangeably.) It was a long way away from better days for the program.
Since the
Horizon League is almost done playing basketball as a conference their games aren't included in this final edition of Tuesday Truths. On the other hand, the first annual
Great West Conference tournament starts tomorrow in Orem, Utah. Even giving
Utah Valley the benefit of the doubt fans of
South Dakota should start making plans for a bid to the CollegeInsider.com Tournament.
Did you know the Coyotes have 7 straight seasons of 20-plus victories? Crazy to think someone in a conference so small has so many. I guess that's why they'll be moving to the
Summit League in a few seasons. As a reminder these efficiency numbers were compiled during a true round robin format. Without further adieu, the final efficiency margins of the season:
Team - Efficiency Margin:- South Dakota - .12
- Houston Baptist - .04
- Texas-Pan American - (-.01)
- N.J.I.T. - (-.02)
- North Dakota - (-.03)
- Utah Valley - (-.05)
- Chicago State - (-.08)
Thoughts on all these numbers after the break.
I'm sure Jeremy Nash didn't want his senior year to end with even the NIT in doubt.
The end of the season hasn't gone as planned for
Northwestern. The Wildcats were supposed to be able to use a soft second half of the
Big Ten schedule to rack up the wins and getting into the
NCAA Tournament bubble conversation, even if it probably would've been a futile effort. Instead, Northwestern proved it couldn't win on the road and solidified itself as a bubble team - for the
NIT.
Northwestern has won two true road games all season - at
North Carolina State and
Michigan. When the Wildcats go on the road its like they've forgotten how to play defense. Saturday's 88-80 overtime loss to
Indiana was just the latest example.
There are a lot of bracket projections out there trying to predict the NCAA Tournament, but very few that also tackle the NIT. I'm going to bring you some of the best in this post and try and dissect what Northwestern needs to do to make sure it qualifies for the little dance for the second season in a row. At the end of the post I'll also debate whether Northwestern should consider taking a
CBI bid.
Things have been light here over the past weekend because I was at
MIT's Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in Boston this weekend. I have some new ideas from the conference that I'm going to use in the analysis during the off-season here, but obviously there was a lot to talk about over the weekend. I'll get to
DePaul's triple overtime loss and why
Northwestern might not even make the NIT shortly, but first I wanted to honor the seniors that played their final regular season game over the weekend or during the past week.
There are 10 seniors that have played their final game - not including Northwestern's
Kevin Coble or
Loyola's Andy Polka who are both expected to return - nine of them are pictured below. The one missing is
Matt Steger. The Northwestern forward was injured for most of the season and thus I don't have a photo of him.
Gallery sneak peek (9 images):
View the gallery...
For the second straight season
DePaul's final home game of the season will be played against
St. John's and head coach
Norm Roberts. Hopefully this year's game goes better than the 84-63 debacle to end last season. Pico Dulce of the
East Coast Bias, a very thorough blog about the Red Storm, was kind enough to answer some questions about the team and its season before the game. You can check out my answers to his DePaul questions
here.
1) CCB: I thought St. John's had a chance to be a breakout team in the Big East this season. What happened that prevented it?ECB: A solid part of the problem is coaching - in that the team's offensive efficiency remains substandard (simple table
here); the players lost a little confidence; and I would say the defensive effort and scheme has some obvious holes that have been exploited. It's a big, big leap from losing by an average of 7.8 points (last Big East season) and losing by 4.4 (current Big East season). They have improved a bit - not enough to break out. They could have had a
South Florida-style increase in competence, but they were inexplicably worked over by
Providence and
Rutgers, lost to
Marquette at the end (but weren't sharp for crucial points of the game), and gave a spectacularly poor effort against
Seton Hall - a game that looked like a 40 minute case of the jitters.
If only one of those losses happens, they would be 18-11, 8-9 in conference, and they would be just on the wrong side of the NCAA bubble. It would still be ugly, but it would be a breakout season. From the player effort and mistakes, I would say that this isn't just a case of lacking talent. I think the losing has begotten more losing.
Alex Marcotullio had a good game from beyond the three-point arc against Chicago State. He was given some space and knocked down 5-7.
used one nice run near the end of the first half to turn a tight game into a 10-point halftime lead and then cruised to a 72-49 victory over
Chicago State last night at Welsh-Ryan Arena. You can see photos from the game
below.
The game gives Northwestern the most wins in program history at 19. That's a fitting tribute to seniors
Jeremy Nash and
Matt Steger. While Steger was unable to play in the game due to injury, Nash contributed 7 points, 4 steals, and 3 assists.
Interestingly enough though it was the presumed heir to Nash's place in the rotation -
Alex Marcotullio - that returned from the freshman dead zone to lead the Wildcats. He put in 15 points - second on the team to
John Shurna's 16 - on 5-7 three-point shooting. Marcotullio also had 3 assists and played 18 minutes. It was good that he was able to get some time on the court.
Of course fellow freshman
Drew Crawford didn't have such a good night. He went 1-7 from the field and it is apparent that his hip injury is bothering him more than the team would like to admit. His box score has a lot of 2's in it as in 2 points, 2 assists, 2 turnovers, 2 steals (and 1 block). It's tough to hold up over such a long season.
Northwestern managed to run past Chicago State 72-49 on Wednesday night at Welsh-Ryan Arena. It was senior night for Jeremy Nash and Matt Steger. The Cougars kept the game close until a few minutes remained in the first half, but a 12-2 run to close the half gave the Wildcats a comfortable margin and let them hang on for the win.
I'll do a more thorough analysis tomorrow. But here are photos from the game.
Gallery sneak peek (11 images):
View the gallery...
I almost missed the fact that Seth Davis
tweeted about the
DePaul job on Monday, that is until I read
this post on Not Qualified To Comment. There Paul Banks of
The Sports Bank.net said that
Steve Lavin (right) would be a good choice for the Blue Demons.
Quickly addressing a few other names in Davis' tweet. It's obvious after
Craig Robinson signed his extension yesterday with
Oregon State that he won't be coaching in Chicago next season. That's a good thing for DePaul. Robinson needs to learn to build a program instead of jumping from one job to the next. If he stays at Oregon State he can do that.
Speaking of needing to build well... anything,
Isiah Thomas is another name that should be immediately dismissed. In Davis' tweet it appears that is already the case. Still, anyone who has pipe dreams of Thomas coming in and recruiting the best kids to Chicago and then winning is delusional. Thomas has failed at a number of stops in his basketball coaching career. He leaves destruction, not construction, at each stop.
Davis' tweet is also the first I've heard of
Tony Barbee being in the running. Honestly though, this one makes a bit of sense. Barbee is the highly successful coach of
UTEP. The Miners have built a strong program and he's made the CBI twice and is going to the NCAA Tournament this season. He's from Indianapolis, IN and was an assistant to some very good coaches before starting his career. Tuck that name in your back pocket.
But back to Lavin.
Will Walker scored 16 points on 6-13 shooting.
Against
South Florida on Tuesday
DePaul led at halftime. At the end of the game though the Blue Demons had dropped another close one, 63-59. Now they have one more home game against
St. John's on Friday in which to make amends and get things righted before the Big East Tournament.
DePaul has already locked up the #16 seed in the conference tournament. The Blue Demons can't escape the cellar. (At least they escaped the 0 in the win column.) Still, it would be nice if they took advantage of their final home game at Allstate Arena and pulled out a victory in
Will Walker's final home game.
Pomeroy gives DePaul just a 35% of winning that final game. I'm sure that the odds that the Blue Demons will be winning at halftime are much higher. Still, winning the first 20 minutes doesn't really matter. It's winning through 40.
