Having watched the three games in Maui, I have come to a few conclusions…..

1) UConn is once again fun to watch. They play with great intensity and appear to be having a great time on the court. During the past three or so seasons they always looked like they were just going through the motions. Maybe the bad chemistry players are now gone. Walker and Oriakhi totally dominated two top 10 teams.

2) They will lose some they should win this year. That’s just the product of youth. With Walker being a junior and Oriakhi a sophomore, the rest of the cast are all freshmen. If they play as hard as they have so far, there will be games when Kemba won’t be so hot or Oriakhi will be doubled down low. Then it will be up to Smith, Lamb, Giffey and Napier to carry the team. But as we have seen already, they will definitely win some that they were thought to have no chance when the season began.

3) Kemba Walker is a big time player. With the influence of Dyson et al we were robbed of seeing the real Walker last season. And they have allowed Oriakhi to become a dominant big man who has destroyed some pretty good front lines in Hawaii.

4) We are really going to enjoy watching these Husky pups grow up for the next few years!

Categories: Coach O, Commentary, Connecticut
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Kansas State gave me flashbacks to Georgetown circa John Thompson. Man they’re bruisers. Syracuse, should they meet them, might struggle with these guys because of their relatively thin frontline. Onuaku’s health will be very important.

The other obvious comparison is Pitt, and K-State is now waiting for them in Salt Lake. Could be ugly.

Categories: Commentary, Dan'l B
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There are roughly 5 million brackets filled out for the ESPN challenge this year. It should be easy to guess how many brackets are perfect through 16 games as of this morning.

What should be the case if brackets were filled out blindly? If we ignore all information such as seed and resume, we’d have to flip an unweighted coin to decide each match. Given 5 million brackets filled out by coin flip, we’d get the perfect combination about 70 times.

But there’s plenty of information that should help us make better decisions. Most glaringly, A #1 seed has never lost.  What if we advance them in every bracket and flip a coin for the rest. With only 14 unweighted coin tosses, the number of perfect brackets jumps to 300. That’s impressive, but we know things about all of the teams and should be able to make more educated decisions than that.

Sagarin, Pomeroy, and others provide all sorts of tempo-free and margin-adjusted ratings to inform our decisions, so what happens when we apply that knowledge? Strictly taking their favorites isn’t very good–that would net precisely 0 clean sheets so far. Instead, let’s use coins weighted by probabilities for each team generated from the ratings systems. If we use weighted coin flips based on Ken Pomeroy’s ratings (see the series of articles on Tuesday, 3/16, here: basketballprospectus.com/news/ and look at the first round odds) or similar systems such as Sagarin’s PREDICTOR, there would be about 700 perfect brackets right now. If the #1 seeds were automatically advanced and the other 14 games were chosen by unweighted coin flip on all brackets, there would be roughly 300 perfect brackets this morning. If every game of every bracket was filled out by unweighted coin flip–including the 1v16 games–there would be roughly 70 perfect brackets right now. There are 56 perfect brackets left.” target=”_blank”>http://basketballprospectus.com/news/ and look at the first round odds) or similar systems such as Sagarin’s PREDICTOR, there should be about 700 perfect brackets generated out of 5 million. This approach gives our most unbiased, informed result: a 1/7000 chance of a perfect bracket this morning.

Alas, there aren’t a couple million bracketologists filling out those five million brackets, so we shouldn’t expect that best-case result. Logically, the results should fall somewhere between 70 and 700, our predictions for a completely blind crowd and a fully informed one. Odd then, that there are only 56 perfect brackets left. Ouch. I suspect a few million too many people listed to the pundits way too much–enough to make them collectively less wise than a penny. That’s my two cents at least.

Categories: Commentary, Dan'l B
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After watching quite a few early season games I have some thoughts on Big East teams this season.

Cincinnati – The Bearcats have looked to be much improved this season. Yancy Gates is becoming a polished down low player. Lance Stephenson is probably the best Freshman in the league. Cincy will be a much tougher opponent for the top teams this year. They sit at 5-1 and have a rebound margin of +11 a game.

UConn - The guards are fine but the Huskies have some glaring deficiencies down low. This is a rarity for UConn. They have even been outrebounded by Hofstra at home. Jerome Dyson is playing very well as is Gavin Edwards. In order for the Huskies to be successful they have to rebound and run to make up for having no half court offense.

Georgetown - An impressive win over Butler last night shows that the Hoyas may be one of the top teams in the league. Greg Monroe is dominating down low. Chris Wright is a steadying influence on the outside. A 7-0 start is a good sign for GTown fans.

Marquette - Too much is being thrown on Lazar Hayward. The loss of the three amigos is probably too much to make up for. MU needs something from Acker on the outside to compliment Butler and Hayward inside.

Notre Dame - Luke Harangody is expected to carry this team. He tries to do that but is constantly double teamed and ends up throwing up off balanced forced shots. Tim Abromaitis has been outstanding and Tory Jackson is still driving and creating opportunities. ND still relies way too much on 3 point shooting. This may be a tough year in South Bend.

Pittsburgh - Pitt looks very shaky at this point. They are having trouble scoring points and were outplayed by a young and weak Indiana team last night. The Panthers could only garner 15 points in the first half against New Hampshire! Ashton Gibbs has been steady as has Wanamaker. No big run in the BET this year for Pitt.

Syracuse - The Orange have been really on top of their game so far. A big win against North Carolina at MSG was a major lift for SU. Even though we are used to early season success for the Orange, this year may be different in that they have faced quality foes early.I have been impressed with Wes Johnson, a transfer into the program. Opponents may have to start fouling Onuaku to stay with them in games. Another Triche? The young guys have blended well with veterans and without the Devendorf distractions this may be the year for Syracuse to make a run at the league title.

Villanova - STRONG! The Cats are strong at every position. Of course Scottie Reynolds may lose a few winnable games with trying to do too much, he will also be the reason they win most of their games. Any team that falls behind VU is in real trouble. Only when Nova gets behind does Reynolds throw up some crazy shots. The class of the league.

West Virginia - As long as DaSean Butler and Devin Ebanks stay healthy and on the court the Neers look to be one of the best. WVU is 5-0 and I expect them to roll along and be one of the top teams in the league.

These are the teams I have seen so far. I like Nova, Cuse and WVU to be the top teams in the Big East this year and Pitt and the Irish will struggle.

Categories: Coach O, Commentary
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Just watched Lemoyne beat Syracuse 82-79. I know it’s only an exhibition but it was fun anyway.

Tomorrow night Ill be at the UConn – American International game in Hartford. Didn’t someone tell these guys there’s a World Series going on?

Categories: Coach O, Commentary, Syracuse
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