Dave in Green

Well, there are hundreds of college basketball camps at campuses across the country, including 28 in Ohio alone: Ohio State University Ohio University University of Cincinatti Bowling Green State University Can't State University University of Toledo University of Akron Miami University of Ohio Ashland University Baldwin-Wallace College Capital University Cleveland State University College of Mount St. Joseph Hiram College Marietta College Mount Union College Mount Vernon Nazarene University Muskingum College Ohio Northern University Otterbein College Tiffin University University of Findlay University of Rio Grande Walsh University Wilmington College Wittenberg University Wright State University Xavier University If UA is able to get all the top HS players without the King James connection, that would be spectacular. But it's hard to imagine that the top HS players would be attracted to the camps at schools with "lesser" programs when the facilities are generally so much better at the bigger basketball power schools where most of the top HS players dream of playing. My understanding is that the big attraction for UA is the King James connection. But I would be more than happy to be proved wrong.

What terrible news. My condolences to the Hitchens family.

Good news for Dambrot. Lots of great high school players play at the JAR during the summer camps. There will be some benefit to UA due to the LBJ camps as long as LBJ remains committed to the Akron area. But this will mostly benefit the "big" schools that have most of the "big" camps. In general, the rich will continue to get richer. And if LBJ ever moves on to greener pastures, it will probably end up hurting UA more than helping.

Not much info available, but Egner and Henniger both played in Saturday's Ohio-Kentucky All-Star Basketball Game. Ohio won, 92-84, with Columbus State recruit Jordan Sibert the high scorer with 17. Henniger had 8 points, as did Xavier recruit Griffin McKenzie from the Cincinatti Moeller team Jackson HS beat for the state championship. Egner scored only 3 points, but no info on his defensive effort (blocks, rebounds, etc.). Probably the most interesting news is that Egner was runnerup in the Slamjam Festival contest held Friday, just losing out to a Kentucky player described as "very athletic."

The reality of the professional business world is that most of us are expendable if someone is available to fill our position, and our employer is willing to pay whatever it takes to replace us with someone they think is better. But change for the sake of change often produces negative results. KD has proven that he can do something that no other MAC coach has been able to accomplish -- take his team all the way to the tournament championship game 4 consecutive years. My assumption is not only that KD has proven himself as one of the very best coaches in the MAC, but that he's capable of continuing to grow as a coach and accomplish even more. Should he ever be replaced, my expectations for the incoming coach would be even higher. Why replace a winning coach with one who's not likely to exceed the performance of the one he's replacing?

The touchy-feely side of the resident curmudgeon is revealed.

Baloney. Read it again. It does not infer that UA basketball has had NO painful losses, only that UA basketball has had a better overall record than UA football in recent years. Maybe this thread needs to be split in two -- one for the original topic and one for the ubiquitous BB vs. FB topic.

I can understand why tailgating is more important to UA football fans than UA basketball fans. Tailgating provides pleasant memories to help offset the pain of losing games.

Dave was not the one who asked for the financial stats. But don't let reality get in the way of launching a good zinger.

I haven't discovered the financial stats motherload, so hopefully Zach can address this. As someone who attends all the home basketball and football games but who has always enjoyed basketball more than football, I have no problem with UA splitting its resources between the two. I understand that football is a bigger draw at UA than basketball, even though the basketball team has been more successful in recent years. It's tempting to imagine what UA might accomplish in basketball if it was the main sports focal point as it is at such schools as Butler and Gonzaga. But UA's commitment to football is too deep to reverse, so we will all have to live with the two-headed monster of high expectations for two major teams that both require significant resources to be successful.

Indiana, a midwest state that borders on Ohio, begs to differ.

SeeTeeZip, you said you try watching the premier college BB teams on the tube and the whole package doesn't grab you because you have a hard time getting past their lack of skill, lack of size and the silly length of the shot clock. And that's the premier teams, the best, the cream of the crop. Even if the Zips were to become a premier team and win the national championship, by your standards they'd still lack skill and size, and they'd still be playing with that silly long shot clock. It wouldn't grab you. You'd still prefer the pro game WAY more than college BB. Given all of the above, there's nothing the Zips BB team can do to please you because you don't particularly care for the sport they are playing. There's nothing wrong with that. Not everyone has to like every sport. We all have our favorites. That's why I respectfully suggested that you just stick with football, which you obviously do enjoy and appreciate.

Stick with football.

First of all, try to understand how a newspaper reporter works. Many questions are asked, many answers are given, and the reporter chooses what he wants to use to make the points he thinks need to be made for an interesting story. When more than one person is interviewed and similar answers are given to similar questions, the reporter may toss a coin on who to quote on that particular subject. So don't assume that KD made a special point of making the comment about the downside of Butler making it to the finals. The reporter may have asked both coaches if they saw a downside, and just elected to run with KD's response. A question about higher expectations is simply a realistic reflection of a common thought that might occur to any mid-major coach under the circumstances. It's one thing to have realistic expectations that a mid-major is capable of accomplishing a little more than was previously thought. Unrealistic expectations set in when people start thinking it's possible to achieve this without all the right pieces being in place. Even mid-major coaching golden boy Mark Few at Gonzaga might be wondering what his school's executives are thinking after all of the money and effort they've poured into Gonzaga's program, only to see Butler beat them to the national championship game. Looking at what Gary Waters' was quoted as saying, I'm struck by the potentially damaging aspect of his quote about having everything he needs except the players. I'll bet that all of his current players feel real good about that, and I'm darn glad it wasn't KD quoted as saying that. Brad Stevens didn't achieve what he did by out-recruiting the big schools for a bunch of 4-star players. He took his share of the leftovers like every other mid-major program and coached them all to do their best as a team all of the time. If it was Waters' Cleveland State that had made it to the championship game and Stevens was asked what he needed to get there, I'm pretty sure from everything I've read about the man that he would not blame it on lack of good players.

It all starts with the coach being better organized and prepared than those he's coaching against, and leveraging that into getting the most out of the players he has to work with. As good as KD is, he could learn a lot from studying Brad Stevens' approach. The most insightful look into what I think makes Butler so good was in a New York Times piece. I'll include a few quotes. But it's well worth reading the whole story at the link below: Brad Stevens is a believer in statistical analysis, which after heavily influencing baseball is making its way into basketball. At home, he pores over statistics almost as much as he does film in preparing game plans. He refers to the 6-foot-3 forward Willie Veasley as his team’s Shane Battier, the Houston Rockets player whose role as a facilitator is not often reflected in box scores but has made him a darling of the statistical set. The result is a team that is not gifted athletically and starts only two players taller than 6-3 but that could outrebound Kansas State by 12. And force Syracuse into 18 turnovers. And hold each regional opponent to a season-low point total, neither reaching 60 points. “Yeah, definitely,” Kansas State forward Curtis Kelly said when asked if the Wildcats had underestimated Butler. “I didn’t think they were that good, especially defensively. But they disrupted our offense with their pressure.” Two things have been noticeable about Butler in the N.C.A.A. tournament — the Bulldogs are very well prepared for their opponents, and they do not rattle easily. “We know everything we need to about our opponents, all their tendencies are broken down,” the sophomore guard Ronald Nored said. “I honestly believe every time we go on the court, we’re the most prepared team in the country.” That preparation translates into confidence, and it is what the Bulldogs, who have won 24 consecutive games, credit for their success when the game is in the balance. NYT link

I don't think we're allowed to discuss this player on ZN.O, as he is described as "very athletic." But seriously, he was already mentioned on ZN.O here: ZN.O link Rivals.yahoo.com ranks Abell among the top 150 HS juniors nationally (148), and Rick Bolus' High Potential® Basketball Recruiting Service rates him in the top dozen of Kentucky's underclassmen: rivals.yahoo.com link Bolus link Rivals.yahoo.com indicates lots of interest from quality schools, including Butler: rivals.yahoo.com link

OK, no more offense-defense BS. That was just the greatest all-around national championship game. Either team could have easily won. No shame, no blame.

Heck of a game.

Nav, just to make sure that others get it, the part that didn't come through on that screen capture of the conference comparison from statsheet.com is the following: RPI and strength of schedule (SOS) stats are based on averages since the 1998-1999 season. All other stats go back to the 1980-1981 season.

"His prediction" being Pomeroy's computer program, not mine. Hey, every time you flip a coin, there's a 50% chance it will be heads and 50% chance of tails. Don't blame me if you get tails 10 times in a row.

I haven't been a big fan of some of Huggins' antics over the years. But I have to admit that I was touched by his reaction to his fallen star player in Saturday's Duke game. cbssports.com link

The more closely Butler is analyzed, the more hope every mid-major should have about the potential for being able to accomplish something similar. Looking at the individual players stats, this is not an especially big team, nor is it composed of many highly recruited superstars like a Kentucky or Kansas. None of Butler's players ranks especially high in any individual statistical category. This is the classic team of many good, but not great, players who are well coached in a system that produces better results than other teams with similar building blocks. When I look at the Pomeroy analysis of Butler's individual player and team statistics, the most amazing thing that jumps out at me is that nothing jumps out at me. It's just a tremendously well-balanced team that does almost everything a little more effectively than its opponents. kenpom.com link

Statistics can be parsed and interpreted many different ways. For example, Horizon supporters will point to such things as having by far the single best ranked team, that the lowest ranked team is from the MAC, and that the average team RPI in the Horizon is 160 vs. 169 for the MAC. MAC boosters might note that 3 of the top 5 ranked teams are in the MAC and 3 of the bottom 5 ranked teams are in the Horizon. On a more neutral note, I noticed after posting that if you list the 22 teams in the MAC and Horizon by RPI and draw a line halfway down the list, both conferences have exactly half of their teams in the top half and half in the bottom half: 7. Butler 49. Can't State 87. Wright State 91. Ohio 98. Akron 104. Green Bay 110. Buffalo 126. Milwaukee 137. Miami (OH) 151. Western Michigan 154. Cleveland State --------------------------------- 169. Detroit 178. Valparaiso 189. Bowling Green 194. Central Michigan 205. Eastern Michigan 215. Ball State 219. Loyola (Chicago) 266. Northern Illinois 269. Youngstown State 290. UIC 325. Toledo Yet another way to look at the two conferences is to eliminate outliers -- numbers that deviate markedly from other members of the sample -- a common practice in statistical studies. If we eliminate the highest and lowest ranking teams from both the MAC (Can't and Toledo) and the Horizon (Butler and UIC), then the two conferences become even closer. Minus the lowest and highest ranking team from each conference, the remaining 8 Horizon teams have an average RPI of 163 vs. 165 for the 10 remaining from the MAC: 7. Butler 49. Can't State 87. Wright State 91. Ohio 98. Akron 104. Green Bay 110. Buffalo 126. Milwaukee 137. Miami (OH) 151. Western Michigan 154. Cleveland State 169. Detroit 178. Valparaiso 189. Bowling Green 194. Central Michigan 205. Eastern Michigan 215. Ball State 219. Loyola (Chicago) 266. Northern Illinois 269. Youngstown State 290. UIC 325. Toledo

Maybe my previous post on RPI was not graphic enough to make the point about how close the MAC and Horizon conferences measure in relative strength. Below is from the latest RPI rankings, with Horizon teams in bold and MAC teams in italics to more visually convey the relative strengths of the two conferences: 7. Butler 49. Can't State 87. Wright State 91. Ohio 98. Akron 104. Green Bay 110. Buffalo 126. Milwaukee 137. Miami (OH) 151. Western Michigan 154. Cleveland State 169. Detroit 178. Valparaiso 189. Bowling Green 194. Central Michigan 205. Eastern Michigan 215. Ball State 219. Loyola (Chicago) 266. Northern Illinois 269. Youngstown State 290. UIC 325. Toledo

Except the Horizon is leaps and bounds better than the MAC from top to bottom. It's not even close.... By what measurement? By the most commonly used measurement of relative team strength -- RPI -- the MAC team average for the 2009-2010 season is 169 and the Horizon team average is 160.