2009 Player Projections: Clemson, Duke, and Maryland

While none of these three teams has posted their updated roster yet, I wanted to get them up. Clemson should once again be one of the top teams in the league. Duke is Duke, etc. Maryland has some patches to fill in the frontcourt. The next task, of course, is to assimilate all of the individual projections into team ones, and that's a bit trickier. I'm currently working on a few different ways of doing this, but I'm not in love with any of them.

NIT Preview: Maryland at Syracuse

Just a brilliant scheduling move by the NIT and ESPN here. Counterprogramming the NCAA Tournament with the NIT is like putting the Arena League opposite the Super Bowl. One other thing to keep in mind if you happen to be watching this one tonight: all of the nation's top officials are most likely working NCAA games right now; what kind of crew is going to be calling this one?

NIT Preview: Maryland at Minnesota

If you can't see the tables below, click back to the blog to see them.

The story of this game is turnovers. Minnesota is 12th-best in the nation in adjusted defensive turnover rate, forcing opponents to turn the ball over on 21.9% of their possessions; Maryland ranks 256th nationally in adjusted turnover rate, coughing the ball up 19.6% of the time. On average, Maryland would be expected to turn the ball over on over a quarter of its possessions against the Golden Gophers. For Gary Williams' team to win this game they'll have cut that turnover rate in half.

Tourney Preview: (6) Maryland vs. (11) Boston College

The tables below might not show up in an RSS reader; if all you see is text, either click back to the blog to see them, or click here to see the source spreadsheet.

The nightcap features the biggest mismatch of the day according to the oracle of TAPE. Maryland is slightly worse than average both offensively and defensively, scoring 1.034 and allowing 1.054 points per possession in conference play, while Boston College is just about dead average offensively (1.046 PPP) and horrible on the defensive side (1.114). The Eagles won the first meeting 81-78 (72 possessions) way back in the very first conference game of the year on December 9 in College Park, mostly thanks to BC attempting 41 free throws to Maryland's 17. Maryland evidently learned the lesson that it's hard to win when you send the opponent to the charity stripe on 27.4% of their possessions, as the Terps won the return game 70-65 (59 possessions) on February 6.

Looking at the numbers, it's apparent that while Maryland is definitely the better team, it's mostly due to being significantly better in just one area: making two-point baskets (and keeping the opponent from doing same, so I guess maybe that's two areas). BC's defense is completely reliant on a shotblocker cleaning up drives to the basket, and when they're not getting that (read: when Tyrelle Blair is either out of the game or otherwise occupied) things get ugly. Maryland's flex offense gets them better looks at two-point baskets than any team in the league. When strength meets weakness, things rarely go well for the weaker team. That said, a gameplan designed to take away the deuce might just leave the door open for an Eagle upset.

Game Previews: The Overshadowed

Let's be honest here: there's only one game that anybody outside of Atlanta, Chestnut Hill, College Park, Coral Gables, Tallahassee, and Winston-Salem really cares about tonight. It's a damn shame, too, because all three promise to be good games. I'm running short on time this evening, so I'll run a paragraph on each along with a link to the respective reports.

The closest of the three is the first game of the night, when Maryland travels to Chestnut Hill to take on the Boston College. Maryland has a small advantage on paper, but when the difference between two teams is 2/3 of a point over 74 possessions it's hard to call them a favorite to win.

Also tipping at 7:00 are Wake Forest and Georgia Tech. The two schools everybody used to get confused with one another when they were kids square off in a game whose winner will reach the halfway point of the ACC season at .500. Wake is just under a 2-point favorite, and they won 55% of the simulations.

A half hour later, Florida State and Miami will tip off before a crowd of dozens. Miami's advantage on the glass makes them a 7-point favorite, making this the biggest mismatch of the night.

Game Preview: Maryland at Georgia Tech

Turnovers are the point of separation here. Georgia Tech does a decent job of taking care of the basketball, but Maryland has been uncharacteristically bad at forcing their opponents to turn the ball over this season. At the other end of the floor, the Terps have been giving away possessions like candy, ranking 248th in adjusted turnovers per possession. If the Terps can even out the turnover margin this shapes up as a tight game.

Game Preview: Duke at Maryland

Those of you using a reader to view this might need to click back to the blog to see the tables.

This matchup of two outstanding defenses (Duke is #4 in the nation and Maryland #28) and two teams that like to play at a high pace (both are in the 80th percentile of Division I in terms of average pace) should make for a fun game to watch. Unfortunately for Maryland, Duke also has a top-25 offense while the Terps, um, don't. Even with the home advantage, the Devils are nearly seven point favorites here.

Any time Duke takes the court, especially against Maryland, officiating has the potential to become a story. Based on what each has done so far this season, free throws in tonight's game should be pretty even.

...And the Rest

Virginia Tech and Maryland are up.

FOLLOWING UP

In the previous post, I noted that Maryland's opponents have shot .131 lower from the line than their collective season free throw percentage (actually, in that post I think I gave .138 as the difference, but that was wrong; Maryland's home opponents have shot .578 from the line this season, and their collective FT% is .709). This raised a couple questions: First, is that unusual? If so, is there something in the air (or behind the basket) in Comcast Center that makes players miss, or is this a one-season anomaly based on a small sample size?

The answer to the first question would appear to be Yes, this is unusual. Since the 2005 season, the biggest such disparity other than Maryland's was Georgia Tech in 2005, whose opponents hit .085 less in the Thriller Dome than those same teams did in all their other games.

The answer to the second question is Probably Not. In 2005 and 2006, Maryland's opponents actually shot slightly better from the line in Comcast Center than they did elsewhere (+.003 in '05 and +.033 in '06). So maybe the hypnotic spinners are having some effect--there's no way to prove that they are or are not--but the likely explanation is that the 2007 Terps have just been lucky to have their opponents shoot poorly from the line in their home games this season.

SHINY HAPPY WAHOOS

Saturday's Virginia-Georgia Tech game featured something I'd never seen before. As fans entered the Basketball Jones they were given what looked like a rolled up-scroll with a handle at each end (no, that's not the weird part; fans are often given cheaply-manufactured objects which they can use to litter the floor of the grandstands show their school spirit). When unfurled, these scrolls said "Go Hoos Go" in blue on an orange background. They were made of mylar, so the reverse was a mirror-like surface.

When the teams changed ends in the second half, and the Yellow Jackets started shooting into the end of the arena with the bulk of the student section, the Virginia students started shaking the scrolls with the shiny surface toward the court, which had the effect of reflecting the arena lights back at the court, making for a very tough shooter's backdrop, and evidently also was hell on the TV cameras (it didn't seem to affect the Tech shooters all that much, though--they hit 3 of their 5 shots in that stretch).

At the first media timeout, the public address announcer told the kids to cut it out, and that if they didn't the 'Hoos would be assessed a technical foul. Fun over. (Incidentally, since there's nothing in the rules to specifically prevent fans from flashing shiny film at the court, Karl Hess and crew had to use the artificial noisemaker clause of the rulebooks to get the things put away.)

Some friends and I were talking about this yesterday, generally agreeing that the officials had every right to make the kids stop, when one of the guys brought up the subject of the big spinners--you know, the ones that look like hypnosis spirals) the Maryland student section has been displaying this season, and wondering why they've been allowed, and, more importantly, whether the suckers work.

Well, it turns out that they do. Obviously, small sample size cautions apply any time we're talking about seven games, but Maryland's opponents have shot .138 points worse in the Comcast Center than they have in their other games. That's 17 points that, one could argue, Maryland's student section has given their team over 7 games. Let's have a table, eh?

Date	Team	gFTM	gFTA	gFT%	sFT%	exFTM	netFTM
1/10/2007	Miami	22	29	.759	.742	21.5	0.5
1/13/2007	Clemson	5	13	.385	.579	7.5	-2.5
1/24/2007	Georgia Tech	6	16	.375	.698	11.2	-5.2
2/ 6/2007	Virginia	11	13	.846	.741	9.6	1.4
2/11/2007	Duke	6	13	.462	.688	8.9	-2.9
2/21/2007	Florida State	16	27	.593	.775	20.9	-4.9
2/25/2007	North Carolina	8	17	.471	.708	12.0	-4.0

gFTM, gFTA, and gFT% are the stats for each team in the respective games; sFT% is the team's season free throw percentage in all ACC games; exFTM is the number of free throws each team would make if they hit their season percentage in each game; and netFTM is the difference between the actual and expected free throws made.

I haven't dived into the full play-by-play for these games, but it'd be interesting to see that broken down even more by half, as the Comcast Center (I think) only has student seating at one end of the court.

Update: Maryland's opponents have hit 60% of their first half free throws and 56.4% in the second half.