NCAA Basketball Thread 2024-2025
Quick OP here just to get us up and running
Things to watch for this year:
1. Can UConn 3-peat? Hurley won back to back championships with Clingan, Tristen Newton, and company. Can he make it a third with only one returning starter?
2. Who will be this years national player of the year? Zach Edey was the best player I've seen play college basketball in my lifetime. People throw the term generational talent around alot and Edey was truly a generational talent winning back to back national player of the year awards. But, now he's gone. So who can win the award?
- the 5th year guards in Mark Sears(Alabama) and RJ Davis(UNC) are a good spot to start. Both elite shooters and engines of an offense, they should lead two really good teams.
- the 5th year centers in Hunter Dickinson(Kansas) and Ryan Kallbrenner(Creighton) are also viable options. They'll be the anchors to what should be two really good teams.
- The phenoms: Cooper Flagg(Duke), Ace Bailey and Dylan Harper(Rutgers), VJ Edgecombe(Baylor), and Tre Johnson(Texas) lead a loaded freshman class.
3. Who are the contenders?
Spoiler
Lettuce college basketball
NetRtg is scaled relative to the "average" team only in the given year. There's nothing linking an average team in year Yi to year Yj that would allow meaningful direct comparisons between teams in different seasons. That's significantly more difficult to model for a variety of reasons.
Regarding 2025 specifically, there's reason to believe that good teams are getting better at the expense of average teams largely because of portal and NIL poaching. The degree to which that's true would be diffic
Wow thanks a lot for this explanation. I totally understand. Much appreciated
I think EC can excel if he has the right pieces around him. But he doesn’t do a great job of making those around him better. Which is a handicap for a pass first PG who isn’t much of a scorer.
His inconsistency would really tilt me.
He was great at getting to the hole and finishing, but he seldom did it outside of spurts here and there. One of the most annoying things he’d do is pass up a shot going at the rim to another player in the same area. It resulted in a turnover more often than not. I was constantly yelling at him to just shoot the ****ing ball.
He also sees the floor well, but he doesn’t do a great job of understanding whether his teammates see the same flow. A great PG can make both the difficult pass and put their teammate in a position to succeed. EC can make the difficult pass, but a lot of times, it ended up being a turnover.
He’s not a great shooter but can knock down an open look. He has no ability to create his own shot, outside of getting to the rim. But he is a great finisher when he wants to be.
Maybe a change in scenery will be good for him. He’s a high level recruit who left high school a year early. This past season was supposed to be his freshman year.
I have no ill will towards him and hope he plays well for y’all.
a 4.0 FC/40 this season and a career 66.0 FT% are also part of the EC experience
It was amazing how often he flopped and either had the foul called on him or his guy ended up with a wide open shot.
np
If you like Kenpom, there's also Bart Torvik and Evan Miyakawa in case you aren't already aware. Miyakawa has a PhD in statistics so I default trust his stuff a little more, but I dunno if that's warranted. Not sure about NCAAB, but for NBA there's a body of research on statistical plus/minus measures, etc., that get into the inherent estimation problems with plus-minus on/off type data. It's not light reading.
