If a team’s still undefeated at this point in the season, it will as a matter of custom be ranked or very close to it. Is that a correct assessment? Good question. (TCU)

TCU and Colorado State have posted identical 13-0 records to start 2014-15, and I would venture to say that both the Horned Frogs and the Rams are indeed much better than we expected them to be in the preseason. Kyan Anderson, an unfailingly aggressive sub-six-foot lead guard, really is playing the way Chris Jones probably thinks that Chris Jones plays. CSU is winning games with zero (or multiple) point guards, a very high barrage factor (many offensive boards and few turnovers), and heaping helpings of clutchy clutchness and just wanting it more in close games. Trent Johnson and Larry Eustachy, take a bow.

I’m just not sure either team is really as mighty as what’s currently being shown in the polls: Colorado State is No. 24, and TCU’s No. 1 in the “others receiving votes” small type. There’s an evaluative bonus that comes from being undefeated, and I’m not interested in lobbying against it as much as I am in defining it more precisely. Indeed I myself have been known to bestow the evaluative bonus on this or that team on occasion. If anything I was perhaps too charitable in my pre-Stony Brook ranking of Washington.  Continue reading →

He’s been far and away Syracuse’s most accurate three-point shooter. He’s shooting 28 percent. (syracuse.com)

If the Unannounced Audit Panel of the US Basketball Writers Association shows up at my door later today, I think I’ll be in pretty good shape. I’ll steer them toward my pre- and early-season wariness of a North Carolina team that at the time was being ranked in the top 10 or even in the top five. I’ll trot out my hearty approval of Tony Bennett’s decision to embrace offensive rebounding last season. (Now look. The guy’s practically Tom Izzo Jr.) And I may even call attention to my canny (if entirely risk-free) decision to leave an analytic light on just in case an NJIT team returning six members from a seven-man rotation should decide to win one of its four tries against major-conference competition — despite the fact that the Highlanders entered the season 0-22 lifetime on that score.

All in all I feel like the audit will go pretty well. But then the diligent and tireless auditors will ask me about Syracuse, and that’s where things could get a little awkward. What was that I said again about the Orange being “underrated”? Just what exactly did I mean when I said “the laws of statistical gravity suggest an offense powered collectively by Trevor Cooney and players to be named later can shoot just as well as if not better than the one that last season was focused with surprising insistence on C.J. Fair”?

Since those statements were so confidently asserted Syracuse has started the season 5-3, losing two of those games by double-digit margins to unranked opponents. Furthermore Jim Boeheim’s men have reached mid-December shooting 20.8 percent on their threes. So, yeah, at that point in the audit I’ll have two options — flee or explain. And since I’ve already given the USBWA my home address, I guess I’ll have to opt for the latter.  Continue reading →

Kaminsky vs. this guy. That should be fun. (newsobserver.com)

Tonight the ACC-Big Ten Challenge will tip off, with Florida State hosting Nebraska and Clemson playing at home against Rutgers. This will be the 16th time the conferences have squared off in this event, meaning if there had been a Lamar Hunt figure at the founding we would be referring to this as Challenge XVI.

The ACC holds a 10-3 advantage since 1999, though in truth John Swofford’s league hasn’t won the event outright since December 2008. The last two Challenges have ended in 6-6 ties. This will be the first year that 14 games are played — the ACC chose to leave Boston College at home for this one.

If the ACC leads the Challenge 10-3 all-time, that must mean it’s been the better conference over the past 15 years, right? Well, sort of. Continue reading →

Life is good at the top of Division I. (USA Today)

Counting NCAA tournament wins since 2000 is little more than a blinkered exercise in setting arbitrary and subjective quantitative goalposts. Much like a good portion of real life. Let’s do this.

                     NCAA tournament         National
                     wins since 2000     titles since 2000
1.   Kansas                38                    1
2.   Michigan State        36                    1
3.   Duke                  34                    2
     North Carolina        34                    2
5.   Florida               33                    2
6.   Connecticut           32                    3 (4 since 1999!)
     Kentucky              32                    1

After Connecticut and Kentucky there’s a big drop — equivalent to one national championship run — before you get down to plucky underdogs like Arizona, Louisville, Syracuse, and Wisconsin. No other program has won more than 25 games. (Full team list at the bottom of this post. Limber up your scrolling finger.)  Continue reading →