Not losing any sleep over it but do enjoy seeing where he has everyone. It's still very early and our upside is much higher than where we are today. I like this team.
KenPom 12-18-2023
KenPom 12-18-2023
UK at #21 on KenPom...UNC at #20
- Thread starter bigbluelou
- Start date
I do scratch my head a bit over Alabama, Auburn, and Wisconsin, but I confess I haven't seen a lot of their play so far.
We're going to take a beating in that formula with the UNCW loss. They're currently at 117. All we can hope is that they dominate their conference.
They hate our defense right now, and I can’t really blame them. We have an elite offense super early in the season and that’s only going to get better. Cal emphasized we are not slowing down, I only hope he keeps his word.
Having Bradshaw and Onyenso back is only going to help our defense get on track. We have to start playing better of the picks.
This is true. And I seem to recall that Cal said he used not to even work on offense in the early season and focused on defense only with young teams. Or am I misremembering that and it was the other way around? I'm getting old.
KenPom's algorithm really doesn't like teams that allow their opponents to score seemingly at-will. Cal has to figure that out over the next month or so.
Definitely, although I was a bit surprised to see our SOS as low as it is considering we've played KU, Miami, UNC, and St. Joe's, all pretty good to very good teams. Of course there are some weaker ones, but everyone else has those, too. PU, UT, Wisc, Bama, and A&M have pretty stout schedules it appears.
As much as i dislike them, Kansas at 11 is just dumb by any metric. BYU at 5?
I don't pay attention to ANY computer crap until at least mid-conference schedule.
I don't pay attention to ANY computer crap until at least mid-conference schedule.
I don't get how our SOS is in the 150 range.
We played 3 ranked teams: Kansas, Miami, UNC
We played 3 other games against teams hovering around 125th: St. Joes 76, UNCW 117, and Penn 179.
Let's look at Kansas who'se SOS is 40th:
They played 4 ranked teams: Kentucky, Marquette, Tennessee, Uconn.. Mizz and Indiana who are in the 80s range.. and then like 4 other teams in the 300s.
Kansas schedule IS a little tougher, but by nearly 100 spots? I don't think so. They essentially just have 1 more top25 game than us, as I think our mid-range teams are on par with Mizz and Indiana.
We played 3 ranked teams: Kansas, Miami, UNC
We played 3 other games against teams hovering around 125th: St. Joes 76, UNCW 117, and Penn 179.
Let's look at Kansas who'se SOS is 40th:
They played 4 ranked teams: Kentucky, Marquette, Tennessee, Uconn.. Mizz and Indiana who are in the 80s range.. and then like 4 other teams in the 300s.
Kansas schedule IS a little tougher, but by nearly 100 spots? I don't think so. They essentially just have 1 more top25 game than us, as I think our mid-range teams are on par with Mizz and Indiana.
I'm also not too concerned about defense right now. We play fast and playing fast means more possessions for the other team, inherently. That UNC game was the 2nd fastest game of the season. You're not going to hold opponents to 60 points when you do that.
Kentucky took 72 shots, and held UNC to only 57 FG attempts. For comparison, Virgina played Auburn a week ago, their FGA were 51 and 62. The pace of that game was much slower. You can say "Virginia held Auburn to only 62 field goal attempts", but part of that was Virginia only taking 51 shots over the course of 40 minutes of basketball. Can't always go by the final score.
When you score a lot of points, you're going to then give your opponents lots of possessions. Keep scoring near 90, and we will be fine if the opponent scores 80.
Kentucky took 72 shots, and held UNC to only 57 FG attempts. For comparison, Virgina played Auburn a week ago, their FGA were 51 and 62. The pace of that game was much slower. You can say "Virginia held Auburn to only 62 field goal attempts", but part of that was Virginia only taking 51 shots over the course of 40 minutes of basketball. Can't always go by the final score.
When you score a lot of points, you're going to then give your opponents lots of possessions. Keep scoring near 90, and we will be fine if the opponent scores 80.
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That is why UT is usually so high on KenPom's rankings.
That’s true to an extent, but the KenPom algorithm uses per possession defensive efficiency stats rather than points per game averages. I’m still hopeful that having Bradshaw and Onyenso back to change some shots at the rim can have a positive impact on our defense, but it’s legitimately been a little shaky in the early season.
Offensively, we are good on Kenpom.
Defensively, we aren't a contender for the title yet. Gotta keep improving that.
Right now Kenpom says there are 7 teams that will likely win it all.... Houston, Purdue, UConn, Arizona, BYU, Marquette, and Auburn.
Teams like UK, Gonzaga, and Creighton are just outside of that 20/20
I believe the last team similar to UK that won the title was UConn in 2014. They had a top 10 defense and were 39th. UK is 14th and 44th, but that is steadily coming down the last 3-4 games.
Defensively, we aren't a contender for the title yet. Gotta keep improving that.
Right now Kenpom says there are 7 teams that will likely win it all.... Houston, Purdue, UConn, Arizona, BYU, Marquette, and Auburn.
Teams like UK, Gonzaga, and Creighton are just outside of that 20/20
I believe the last team similar to UK that won the title was UConn in 2014. They had a top 10 defense and were 39th. UK is 14th and 44th, but that is steadily coming down the last 3-4 games.
Surprising that with all the talk about our offense being so potent that we are 15th behind Duke, Creighton, Texas A&M, FAU, Colorado St and UNC.
We were on a meteoric rise in offensive efficiency, reaching the top 3 in Kenpom, until the UNCW game. In that game, we scored less than a point per possession on our home court against a team with a defensive rating ranking in the 150's. We've come back to earth with some hot shooting cooling down. Our lost three games constitute 3 out of 4 of our worst shooting games and our 3 lowest 3 point shooting rates of the season. We are taking less threes and shooting worse than in all the games before UNCW.
TAMU plays at a snails pace. 327th. Only Virginia, Villanova, Houston, and South Carolina play slower than them in the P5. I'd love to see them try to play like UK is playing. Their efficiency would go in the tank.
Colorado St is 211th in tempo. Duke is 169th so they aren't exactly pushing the pace either. Creighton is 236th in tempo. FAU is 137th. UK is over 100 spots higher than any of these teams. In the case of TAMU the Cats are 305 spots higher in tempo.
Colorado St is 211th in tempo. Duke is 169th so they aren't exactly pushing the pace either. Creighton is 236th in tempo. FAU is 137th. UK is over 100 spots higher than any of these teams. In the case of TAMU the Cats are 305 spots higher in tempo.
Among the last twenty title winners, per KenPom ratings, all but one had a top-25 adjusted offensive efficiency heading into the tournament. Meanwhile, none of the teams that have won the tourney have ranked outside the top 50 in adjusted defensive efficiency.
Only 15 teams meet that criteria thus far. We are one of them.
Only 15 teams meet that criteria thus far. We are one of them.
Top 25 in both offense and defense, which is a qualification met by 14 of the last 21 teams to win the title.
Only 8 teams meet that criteria. We are NOT one of them.
Only 8 teams meet that criteria. We are NOT one of them.
21 isn't bad. There's plenty of time to move up from that.
The difference between where we are at 21 and say where UT at 7 is...........is a matter of 1-2 points on a neutral court. There's an ability to move up quite quickly.
The difference between where we are at 21 and say where UT at 7 is...........is a matter of 1-2 points on a neutral court. There's an ability to move up quite quickly.
Tempo up from 256 at the end of last season, right now we're at 21. Love the pace! And along with that our TO's are less.
That's fine, I would wager that our defense has the potential to be top-25 by years' end.
We are already showing major improvement in 3 of our last 4 games.
Held Penn to their lowest scoring total of the season.
Held UNC to their lowest PPP of the year (even less than what UCONN held them to).
Our pace is going to naturally allow more points because there are more possessions, but if we can maintain a PPP of as close to 1 as possible, we'll be fine. UNC had 1.05 against us, lowest of the year for them.
We were elite defensively against Miami, allowing only 0.88 PPP according to SynergySports.
And I think that will only improve as we get more into a rhythm with these shot blockers back.
People like Matt Jones who love to repeat every single show that our defense "is what it is" and that we are never going to be good defensively are not accurate- we are going to be really, really solid defensively come Feb and March IMO.
Agreed. And it cant be "it is what it is". We're not going to make it very far if that's the case, cant stand that guy sometimes.
Miami is KILLING us right now. They've somewhat crapped the bed. The SEC teams crapping the bed aren't helping either.
People make fun of Camp Cal but over the break we will be practicing a ton. Working on detail stuff and better defensive principles I’m sure. I think these next few weeks are huge to where we will end up. Especially getting Bradshaw a lot of work in with the starters.
Scoreboard. North Carolina @ Chapel Hill, nobody I want to beat more. Nobody I hate to lose to more. I guess that shows my age. I go back to following since 1963.
Same. They are my least favorite team of all time, and yes that includes IU, Uavel, KU, and dook. I probably wouldn't feel this strongly if it weren't for the decades of institutionalized cheating that garnered them at least 3 ill-gotten, undeserved titles. All while taking a sneering, condescending tone with everyone else and touting their "Carolina Way". Nothing personal against any of their fans or even players...I don't hate any person. It's just the whole, damned stench of the crap that went on there. And they got away with all of it.
Okay, rant over. Carry on.
They weren't that great to begin with. Completely over hyped, the two guys they lost were massive losses.
I don't deny that we have talent to be solid defensively. Reed has excellent anticipation and Bradshaw/Onyenso can provide some rebounding and rim protection that we were lacking. The one factor that causes some doubt in our defensive progression is that we simply haven't had an elite level defense in a long time. The last team to crack the top 30 in kenpom's adjusted defensive rating was the 2019 squad. Cal didn't have the same struggles producing solid to elite defensive units early in his tenure here. A part of me wonders if a bit of our defensive deficiencies we've experienced recently are built in to Cal's approach.
If we beat Louisville by 40 tonight I'm not convinced we wouldn't move down in the computer rankings. They are THAT bad.
They play Marshall tonight and I think they play Arkansas on the 30th so that should be interesting how those games play out for them
Kenpom only has us winning this one by 13 (86-73). So we'll definitely move up quite a bit if we win by say 25-30
Also the fact that UNC was 20th before the Oklahoma game and moved up 9 spots just illustrates how close these teams in this range are to one another.
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