Not a "dork poll," but a dork article from one of ESPN.com's analytics guys arguing why Duke's current team (at #3 in the polls) is underrated. https://www.espn.com/mens-college-ba...son-underrated
Among other highlights:
"Even after the Clemson loss, Duke remains No. 1 in these widely used predictive metrics: BPI, Sagarin, TeamRankings and Massey. (Duke fell slightly behind Kansas for No. 1 in KenPom on Thursday morning)."
"Duke is first in the nation with an adjusted net efficiency of 33.9, and Kansas is second at 32.5. Of Baylor, Butler and Gonzaga -- the three other No. 1 seeds in Joe Lunardi's latest version of Bracketology -- Gonzaga is the closest at 7.9 points per game behind Duke. While that stat would be impressive in most years, this year it is especially so. This season has the smallest standard deviation of adjusted net efficiency at this point in the campaign, going back to 2008. ... Translation: Duke's lead in adjusted scoring is more impressive considering the parity in what has been a wild year for college basketball."
"The numbers say this group is every bit as dominant as [Zion's team last year]. ... BPI ranks Duke as the best team by 2.1 points. The only team in BPI history (since 2008) that has had a bigger lead in BPI at this point in the season was the 2015 Kentucky team that started 38-0 and featured nine future NBA players."
"[Despite improving in 3 point accuracy from 327th in the country last year to 40th this year], Duke is not in the top 300 in terms of the percentage of shots it attempts from 3. This team should be shooting even more from outside, and when it does, watch out."
I've posted about this before, but I wonder if the bolded part is really true? The past couple games we've both taken and made a lot of threes, but for the season we've had 8 games in which we've taken fewer than 30% of our shots from three, and in those games we've hit 41.7% of our three-pointers; and we've had 9 games in which we've taken more than 30% of our shots from three, and in those games we've only hit 34.4% of our three-pointers. Maybe it's statistical noise, or maybe when we take fewer three-pointers, the ones we do take are better shots. It might be worth watching, anyway.
I completely agree with you. Our shot selection has been very good this season. I think one reason is we don't have any player that's a stopper of the ball. At the beginning of the year, it looked like Wendell might be guilty of that but he's improved greatly in that part of his game. Sure there have been times the team has forced up a 3 with the shot clock winding down but that's mostly a result of the opponent playing good defense. I love the way this team plays on both ends of the court. Well, except in the Clemson game. Our defense wasn't that great.
GoDuke!
Duke is hitting 36.9% of our threes while taking 31% of our shots from deep. It is absolutely a fallacy to say that we will continue to hit at a 36.9% rate if we up that shot choice percentage to 35 or 40%. It might hold true, but it is fairly likely it will not.
Why are you wasting time here when you could be wasting it by listening to the latest episode of the DBR Podcast?
Why are you wasting time here when you could be wasting it by listening to the latest episode of the DBR Podcast?
Especially since, at least to my eyes, one of the reasons we are hitting so well from 3 overall is that we don't really take many bad threes. almost all of them are in the flow of the offense, breakaways, kickouts, etc.
I also don't see us pass up these good shots when they are available.
So if we were to attempt to increase our 3PA, it seems we would necessarily be increasing the amount of "bad" shots we take from three, which would almost surely lower the overall percentage.
1200. DDMF.
Duke is back at #1 on KenPom this morning by a hair over Kansas (29.41 to 29.40) due to the secondary effects of previous games played and those teams' shifting rankings. Both are head and shoulders above the field, with #3 Baylor at 25.24, down through #10 Louisville at 22.74. Tonight will be a true test for Duke (vs. Louisville) to validate their lofty perch in this and most of the other analytical rankings.
Earlier today Kenpom tweeted this "...My home court advantage model says HCA is as low as it's ever been and home teams have won just 59.6% of conference games so far. The third lowest of all time!". The image below features Doug Gottlieb's reaction to this statement and also features Ken Pom's follow up slam of Gottlieb's inaccurate analysis. Ken is right... any college baskedball fan knows that Doug's analytical abilities are alarmingly unpolished.
2020-01-18 16.15.40.jpg