~2017-18 Big Ten Basketball Thread~

[847badgerfan]

"I didn't say and I don't think that @ELA said that M/FSU and Loyola/KSU were complete crap basketball or, as you put it, "not good basketball".  It was good, but it wasn't great and it wasn't at the level of the right hand side of the bracket. "

I disagree strongly with this. Dook and Kansas played sloppy basketball. Just because they have the most talent doesn't mean they played the best basketball.

I didn't see the first game on Sunday because I got mixed up and thought that the times were similar to Saturday. It was only after checking on here and seeing ELA's comment on Nova that I figured it out. But it sounds like it was a good showing by Nova.

Loyola played the ultimate team game Saturday. It was great to watch. M/FSU was a little sloppy - lots of bodies crashing together.

[medinabuckeye1]

Can I be a douche

Sure, go ahead.  

I really did want to get some feedback on this.

For those not following, "this" is Kris's suggestion that instead of players "fouling out" the other team gets one extra foul shot for fouls committed by that player.  His reasoning is that he hates seeing players have to sit.  

Honestly, I'm trying to work through the unintended consequences in my head.  In CBB you get five fouls in a 48 minute game and in the NBA you get six in a 60 minute game so either way it is about one foul allowed every 10 minutes of game time.  That is pretty standard and we've been accustomed to it for decades so a change would be a pretty big deal, IMHO.  
As I think about it, it seems to me that the biggest difference would be that depth would be less important, especially at the post position.  I'm not sure if that would be good or bad for the game in the long run.  

I also think that you might need to have some kind of escalator clause built into that rule (which would probably make it too complicated) because otherwise the smart play would be to just continually foul a bad FT shooter.  Ie, imagine that your team is playing against a team with a Center who is a great defender and good a finishing around the rim but he only shoots ~50% FT's.  Well, why not foul him every time he shoots from the paint?

[medinabuckeye1]

MB - you know I have a tremendous amount of respect for your opinion, but you’re blinded by seedings and rankings right now as opposed to the quality of the basketball a team is playing. Loyola has played great basketball and I’m not confident Michigan can take them down.

If it were my team, I'd be worried about the game too but that is because I always worry when it is my team.  Since it isn't my team, I can look at it from farther away and I don't expect a contest in the first semi-final at all.  FWIW: that has little to do with Michigan.  I'd feel the same way about Loyola/Kansas or Loyola/Villanova.  For that matter I would feel the same about Loyola/aTm or Loyola/Gonzaga.  I'd only be worried if it were Loyola/Ohio State.  

[ELA]

Based on the feedback, whoever wins between Michigan and Loyola should walk right off the court and congratulate Nova or Kansas as National champs.

Again, you are conflating Michigan's path with Michigan.  I, again, am saying that once UNC was out of the picture, there wasn't a single a team on that side of the bracket that would have beaten Michigan.  Be it FSU and Loyola or Xavier and Virginia (if seeds had held).

[ELA]

Rarely hear of Sagarin cited for college basketball these days. Maybe it’s just me. RPI, KenPom frequently are brought up. Massey to some extent too.

In those Loyola is 22,30, and 8 respectively. So Sagarin is a major outlier.

Michigan certainly hasn’t faced murderers row this year. But by most computer metrics Houston was a 4/5 seed that was underseeded. The Houston game was ugly in style, but Michigan beat a top notch team. FSU wasn’t a world class opponent, especially for the Elite Eight. But they were a unique matchup problem type team, and Michigan advanced with supreme domination on one end of the court. .7PPP on defense was lower by some margin than any FSU opponent all year.

RPI is probably the most useless metric out there.
Since you brought up the "most computer metrics," we can go to my favorite metric, Massey's composite rankings.

Houston was #20 entering the tournament, Loyola was #40.  So, based on a composite of computer rankings, Houston should have been the final 5 seed, and Loyola should have been the final 10 seed.  Instead they were a 6 and an 11, it's not like that's crazy out of whack with what the computer metrics said.

As I've said multiple times before, with solely the info that Texas A&M was going to beat UNC, I would have picked Michigan to reach the national title game.  Even if that meant going through Xavier and Virginia, instead of Florida State and Loyola.  But what facing the #38 and #40 teams (after facing #27), instead of #8, #9 and #2, like if the seeds had held, is a margin for error.  Michigan can get away with a meh performance.  Loyola is only ranked 3 spots above a Penn State team that didn't even get selected.  Getting Penn State in the Big Ten semifinals was seen as a break for Purdue, Michigan is essentially getting an equivalent team in the NATIONAL semifinals.

Like I said, breaks are breaks, and nobody should apologize for them.  You have to be both lucky and good.  I think Purdue was the Big Ten's best team this year.  But MSU had a cake conference schedule, and won the Big Ten title, so they get a banner.  Michigan had to beat #79, #20, #27, #38, #40 to reach a national championship game.  Purdue would have had to beat #152, #28, #14, #1, #7 to reach the same point.  MSU was both lucky and good.  UM was both lucky and good.  Purdue was good, but not lucky.

[Kris61]

Sure, go ahead.   :)For those not following, "this" is Kris's suggestion that instead of players "fouling out" the other team gets one extra foul shot for fouls committed by that player.  His reasoning is that he hates seeing players have to sit.  

Honestly, I'm trying to work through the unintended consequences in my head.  In CBB you get five fouls in a 48 minute game and in the NBA you get six in a 60 minute game so either way it is about one foul allowed every 10 minutes of game time.  That is pretty standard and we've been accustomed to it for decades so a change would be a pretty big deal, IMHO.  
As I think about it, it seems to me that the biggest difference would be that depth would be less important, especially at the post position.  I'm not sure if that would be good or bad for the game in the long run.  

I also think that you might need to have some kind of escalator clause built into that rule (which would probably make it too complicated) because otherwise the smart play would be to just continually foul a bad FT shooter.  Ie, imagine that your team is playing against a team with a Center who is a great defender and good a finishing around the rim but he only shoots ~50% FT's.  Well, why not foul him every time he shoots from the paint?

Well, that’s a situation/strategy with the rules as they are.  I don’t think my suggestion changes that dramatically.  In fact, with a player with 5 fouls you would be less inclined to foul that guy.  You are giving him an extra opportunity to make one.  

[Anonymous Coward]

I posted here before the tourney that Michigan's region was a *way* better deal than Detroit, and that was when I expected that winning meant having to play UNC then Xavier. I still feel that way. Nothing is guaranteed. They still had to win. But their path on paper was among the easiest in tourney history. That doesn't mean it was objectively easy. There's no such thing, really. But it could have been harder.

I posted that after the S16, too. And about how this might as well be called fair karma to counterbalance the insane path (13-5-1-3-4[-1]) they took on to get to the F4, championship game in 2013 versus Pitino's Hooker Boys.

[Anonymous Coward]

I like that players foul out. If a coach takes the risk of fouling as a strategy and uses his best players to do so, then so be it.

I agree with this. I think the game is best when the fewest fouls occur. And I don't think "1 extra FT" is nearly the deterrant that the bench is. Since this is all hypothetical, if you want to trade a new rule for kicking the player out for the rest of the game, it'll have to be for something much more severe than an extra chance at one point.

[medinabuckeye1]

MB - you know I have a tremendous amount of respect for your opinion, but you’re blinded by seedings and rankings right now as opposed to the quality of the basketball a team is playing. Loyola has played great basketball and I’m not confident Michigan can take them down.

I know I already answered this one, but @ELA 's comment made me think about it a different way.  Per his favored "massey composite" Houston and Loyola should have been seeded one line higher but lets look at a much more ridiculous example.  Suppose for a minute that every team that Michigan will play on the way to the NCG was seeded three lines lower than they should have been.  Elevating each of Michigan's opponents by three lines, they will face:

• #11 seed equivalent Montana
• #3 seed equivalent Houston
• #4 seed equivalent aTm
• #6 seed equivalent FSU
• #8 seed equivalent Loyola

That is STILL a remarkably easy path to the NCG.  By comparison, Michigan's NCG opponent Monday night will have played a #1 (each other), either a #2 (Dook by Kansas) or a #3 (TxTech by Nova), a #5 (WVU/Clemson), an #8 or #9 (Bama/Seton Hall), and a #16 (Penn/Radford).  

I get that teams can play above their seed and I get that an argument can be made that Houston and/or Loyola should have been seeded a line or two higher but in order to argue that Michigan is not getting an epic break by facing Loyola-Chicago in the national semi-final you have to argue that the committee was wrong by at least eight lines.  Nobody agrees with everything the committee does but they have never made a mistake THAT big.  

Finally, much like @ELA said, this is NOT a critique of Michigan.  Michigan is not far out-of-place in the NCG and they certainly are not out-of-place in the Final Four.  Michigan is a good team and since their late-January/early-February slump they have been a great team on a phenomenal 13 (about to be 14) game winning streak including wins over MSU, PU, and tOSU.  The oddity here is that in my opinion and the opinion of the committee the best three teams that Michigan has defeated over that run are Purdue, MSU, and tOSU.  They are about to get to the NCG without having to play an opponent in the tournament any better than the fourth best team in the B1G.  

[Kris61]

I like that players foul out. If a coach takes the risk of fouling as a strategy and uses his best players to do so, then so be it.

My thought process wasn’t coaches fouling as an end of game strategy.  It was players and teams not being punished as much for by an official’s call.  I just watched the Carter kid from Duke play less than half the game and then foul out in OT on a bang bang block/charge call that easily could have went the other way.
I just watched one of my own team’s best players pick up a critical 4th foul on a call that had everyone scratching their head, sit down with a lead, and come back in ten minutes later with his team down by 10.
I agree that excessive fouling should be punished and makes a fast paced up and down game less enjoyable.  I just hate seeing good players sit on a bench due to foul trouble.  It’s the only sport that it’s an issue in.  I’d just like to see a different consequence to allow players to continue playing in the game.

[Anonymous Coward]

All that does is exacerabate the end of game situation you are complaining about.  Now you are forcing the team that is behind to foul twice as much in order to get the ball back.

I'm not convinced of that. I suspect many teams would find the FT+possession too steep a cost to even try. Others would be undeterred, I'm sure, and would hurt more for trying, which I also favor. 

[Kris61]

I'm not convinced of that. I suspect many teams would find the FT+possession too steep a cost to even try. Others would be undeterred, I'm sure, and would hurt more for trying, which I also favor.

“Too steep a cost to even TRY.”  The more you post about this the more it sounds like you just want the team that’s losing to quit so you don’t have to be bothered to watch it.  I mean why not give each coach a stick with a white flag on it to wave as a sign to end the game?

[Kris61]

Yes, it can make the end of games tedious.  But when the strategy works the pay off to me is always worth it.  Again, if this rule were implemented you, as a Michigan fan, would have been denied the Trey Burke shot against Kansas in 2013 and ensuing run and Jordan Poole shot and ensuing run this year.

Those two shots and memories aren’t worth all the foul fests you’ve had to sit through that just delayed inevitable endings?

[MarqHusker]

I like that a player is disqualified (and that's what it is, a DQ) for committing 5 personal fouls (6 in NBA).   The personal fouls are violations of certain rules.   At some point the penalties must become more harsh.  First the team suffers by providing the opponent a 1+1, and later 2 shots.   The individual is permitted a reasonable (that's arbitrary I know) number of violations before they are disqualified.   A team must take this into account while determining any number of strategies, who to play, when to play them, in addition to the 'late game' de jour of fouling in an effort to get the ball back.

I prefer enhanced degrees of personal fouls in late game situations.  Such as,  a personal foul committed in the back court in the final (minute/90 seconds) to result in two shots, and the ball.   A trailing team is provided an outsized advantage (the opportunity to shoot a three point basket) for every attempt they successfully foul the opponent, which will subsequently only receive an opportunity at two points, especially in the backcourt, in an effort to get the ball back.     The only more harsh penalty I could come up with would be, three, five to ten second run offs for fouls committed in the backcourt, but that may yield some unintended consequences in the other direction.   The leading team can of course run the risk of burning that clock while in the backcourt, but they have to advance the ball across the timeline within ten seconds.  I feel there's a neutral balance restored by providing the disincentive to manipulate the scoring chances this way.  Trailing and you want the ball? steal it, cause a turnover, make the leading team crap themselves, force a 10 second call.  Commit a foul, and pay a price.

I just know the foul fest is many times more annoying to me than the one pitch/one batter LOOGY in baseball and I don't like that either.