Analyzing the top teams by comparing their losses; or, things aren't so bad!

[scottdude8]

The analysis I'm going to provide below is based off of the following thesis statement, which, while most definitely debatable, I think most of us would agree is reasonable: when comparing the best teams in the country (i.e. those vying for Top 4 NCAA seeds), it may be more illustrative to compare their losses than their wins, since these teams only have a handful of losses but dozens of wins. Obviously, this same analysis isn't as viable when looking at lower seeded or bubble teams. This is something I've been thinking a lot this season since, with parity prevailing in college basketball, even the best teams have at least a handful of losses, and a lot of former AP Top-5 teams have endured two or three game losing streaks, often with some pretty bad losses in there.

Obviously, we can debate this thesis statement in the thread as much as is necessary, but lets go with it for now. Let's look at Duke's losses compared to the other top teams we're going to compete with for seeding in the NCAA Tournament. As I do this, I'm going to highlight three categories of losses:

• bold losses occurred at home
• italicized losses occurred to teams outside the power conferences or to teams that are inarguably amongst the bottom feeders in their conference
• CAPITALIZED losses were blowouts (I'll set the cutoff at 10+ points)

Here's Duke: Boston College, NC State, Virginia, St. John's, and North Carolina.

Now, here are the other teams in the AP Top 10, plus some cherry picked teams of interest.

• Villanova: Butler, St. John's.
• Virginia: West Virginia.
• Purdue: Tennessee, Western Kentucky, Ohio State.
• Michigan State: Duke, OHIO STATE, MICHIGAN
• Xavier: ARIZONA STATE, Providence, VILLANOVA
• Cincinatti: XAVIER, Florida
• Texas Tech: SETON HALL, OKLAHOMA, Texas, IOWA STATE
• Auburn: TEMPLE, Alabama, Texas A&M
• Kansas: Washington, ARIZONA STATE, TEXAS TECH, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State
• (Skipping Gonzaga and Saint Mary's)
• Arizona: NC State, SMU, Purdue, Colorado, Washington, UCLA
• (Skipping down until) North Carolina: Michigan State, Wofford, Florida State, VIRGINIA, VIRGINIA TECH, NC State, Clemson.

Some conclusions we can draw from this:

• With the exception of UVA, every team has a loss you could classify as very bad, due to it being at home or to a sub-par team, or in some cases both. While Duke's losses to BC and St. John's fall into this category, both were on the road, and both of those teams have shown to be much better than expected.
• There has been a rash of top teams losing to sub-par competition at home, which I'd argue should ring major alarm bells (definitely louder than nearly any road loss). In comparison, while it hasn't always been pretty, Duke's only home loss was a nail-biter to the best team in the country.
• Again, while it hasn't always been pretty, Duke hasn't had any real "blowout" losses... to the contrary, all our losses have gone down to the wire (even NC State, where the final score was skewed by FTs). Meanwhile, nearly every team outside the top 3 listed here has had at least one of those blowout losses.

So what does this analysis tell us? Even though a lot of us are justifiably concerned by Duke's uncharacteristic losses, almost every other top team this year has had similar losses, some of which should be considered even more alarming. I'm betting the fan bases of almost every top team is feeling the same angst that we are. Combine this with the other half of the equation, which is quality victories and the overall quality of non-conference and conference competition, and Duke's stock definitely gets a bump.

Obviously this doesn't take into account the aesthetic, qualitative aspect of these losses, i.e. the eye test. That opens a whole other can of worms. But if you want to look at things from an objective, quantitative stand point, this has to be considered. For those saying the sky is falling and we might struggle to get a Top 4 seed (I've seen multiple of those posts), consider this next time you think that (and realize that the losses get worse the farther down the poll you go). For those concerned from a more qualitative standpoint about how Duke shouldn't be losing to teams like St. John's, keep that in context of what a crazy year this has been.

I'm interested to hear what others think of this new perspective through which to view Duke's recent struggles. Personally, going through and doing this analysis left me feeling more optimistic, even if it is primary via schadenfreude.