Waitin' on 8

Several months ago, John Calipari made the comment that Kentucky basketball is "the Commonwealth's team."  At the time, the comment seemed to ruffle the feathers of Louisville Cardinal fans.  Today, I want to take a look at Kentucky basketball's record against the other various teams from the Commonwealth of Kentucky.  I am including official games and exhibition games that have been played.  The exhibition games will be clear to recognize.  It is worth noting that current Division II and III schools along with certain mid-major Division I schools have not always been in the position that they are in today.  Many of today's "lower" schools were once a bigger player on the national scene.

Ashland YMCA  2-0

As we all know, he UK/Indiana series has come to a close.  Calipari wanted to play the next two
 games at a neutral site and Crean wanted to play a home and away series.  In fact, Calipari
 offered to play both games at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianpolis, Indiana.  Crean or Indiana's 
athletic director chose to end the seires.

Many members on the media are choosing to look at this situation as Calipari and Kentucky 
being afraid to play Indiana at Bloomington.  The question should be "Why is Crean afraid to 
play away from Bloomington?"


Let's look at some numbers.  

Overall
Crean: 55-75 at IU
Cal: 102-14 at UK

At Calipari's current win/loss pace, Crean could go undefeated until 2024... and Calipari would 
still have a better record. 

Rupp Arena
Calipari at home: 49-0 (100%)
Crean on road:  5-36  (12%)

Kentucky tends to "hold its own" at Rupp Arena and Indiana is less than stellar in true road 
games.   Let's look at that again... 5 true road wins in 4 seasons?  No wonder Crean doesn't 
want  to go to Rupp. 

Assembly Hall
Calipari on road: 18-10 (64%)
Crean at home:  45-26 (63%)

Calipar is better in true road games than Crean is at home, so it makes no sense to think that
 Calipari would he be scared to go to Bloomington...a place where Calipari has already won? 
The question should be how has Crean already lost 26 home games in 4 seasons?? 

Neutral
Crean at neutral:  5-13 (28%)
Calipari at neutral:  34-4 (89%)


These statistics are "interesting."  Calipari won more neutral site games in the 2012 NCAA 
tournament than Crean has in 4 seasons at Indiana.

Crean is well aware that playing at Assembly Hall is the only chance that Indiana has of beating
 Kentucky.  Crean would not agree to play both games in Indianapolis... 
60 miles from Bloomington.

Everyone in Kentucky is looking forward to the IU/UK game.  Either you're a UK fan awaiting revenge or you're a UofL fan hoping Indiana can do twice what UofL could not do once... beat Kentucky.

Indiana currently has a SOS of 26 and Kentucky has a SOS of 38.  At this point in the season, 12 spots in SOS does not make that big of a difference.  It should be taken into consideration that Indiana's SOS is slightly  higher due to playing #1 Kentucky whereas Kentucky did not get as much SOS credit for playing Indiana.  At this point in the season, we can assume that these two SOS's are about equal when comparing stats.  It's not like one team has inflated stats due to playing a vastly inferior schedule.

We all know that the overall #1 seed is supposed to get the easiest bracket, right?  Did that happen this year for Kentucky?  Let's take a look...

Because the NCAA has released their team rankings (in order) this year, we're able to perfectly assess the difficulty of each bracket according to how difficult the committee itself deemed each team to be. Before this, all we could go by were polls or RPI, or just our gut instinct.

The committee tries to keep each region within 5 points of difficulty/seeding (per the S curve). You will notice that they failed to do this when it comes to this years bracket (makes you wonder if they've ever done it).

Here we are at the most wonderful time of the year: the NCAA Tournament.  We've now seen teams play around 30 or more games, so we have a lot of data collected.  Today, I'd like to look at where Kentucky statistically ranks in the NCAA world.  When you look at these stats, keep in mind that several of the teams ranked ahead of Kentucky are small schools from low-major conferences.  If you only account for mid-majors who had a shot at making the NCAA Tournament and BCS schools, they look even better.

Points per game: 23rd averaging 76.7

The Kentucky Wildcats have been playing basketball since 1902 and have seen a multitude of freshmen come and go.  Among that multitude, Kentucky has seen some pretty amazing players do some pretty amazing things.  However, since John Calipari has come to Lexington, everything has changed.  In just under 3 complete seasons, John Calipari's freshmen have outdone nearly every meaningful Kentucky freshmen record that was set over the previous 109 years.  Think about that for a second.  Calipari's freshmen have done in under 3 years what was built up over 109 years.

For criticism's sake, I realize that today's schedule includes more games and opportunities to acculate stats.  I also realize that the game has changed quite a bit and that freshmen were not always allowed to play varsity basketball.  With that said, let's take a look at the historical Kentucky freshmen records set by Calipari's players.

Since 1902, Kentucky basketball has an all-time record of 2080-648, good for a 76.2% winning percentage.  However, many of Ketucky's detractors attempt to take away from that tradition of winning by saying that UK only wins big due to playing in a weaker SEC.  Today, I'd like to take a look at that particular idea and see how it stands up.

First, we're going to take a look at how Kentucky has fared in the SEC as well as the other prominent conferences as they stand today.  I fully realize that certain programs were very powerful in the past and are not so powerful today.  At one time San Francisco was quite powerful, but is not in one of the prominent conference today.  Still, we're going to look at the most prominent conferences as they stand today.

Let me start off this article by saying that you will probably disagree with what I am about to present. I will be blatantly honest in saying that I initially thought there was no way that this information was true as well. However, after I examined the data and did my own computations, I was left with no real choice but to accept that it is true more often than not.

Stat guru Ken Pomeroy recently released an article stating that statistically, defense does not significantly impact an opponent’s 3FG%. Let me say that again… Ken Pomeroy provided statistical graphs showing that the level of defense does not significantly impact an opponent’s 3FG%. Before you get upset and stop reading, Pomeroy’s data clearly shows that defense very significantly impacts 2FG%.

Every year, we talk about coaches who over-achieve, under-achieve, and do exactly what they are expected to do with the team they have. Depending on conference and team loyalties, there is often a lot of discrepancies about the coaching ability of various coaches. Kentucky fans look at UK’s young roster and assume that the recent success is due to Calipari’s coaching. Louisville fans look at UK’s talent and say that Calipari’s coaching ability has very little to do with Kentucky’s success. Calipari is the coach in question that I care the most about, but he’s certainly not the only coach that is often discussed in similar conversations.

Wouldn’t it be nice if there was some sort of objective way to judge who over-achieves, under-achieves, and pushes? Today, I will attempt to do just that…

The RSCI rating system is an average ranking of 6-7 various recruiting services… Scout, Rivals, ESPN, etc. The top 50 RSCI recruits from each season will have every 5-star and nearly every 4-star “impact player.” Looking at 1999-2008 recruiting seasons is very telling in how it relates to the Top 25 programs from 2000-09 as rated by ESPN’s outstanding Encyclopedia of College Basketball. Let’s take a look at how closely most teams performed based on how they recruited with Top 50 recruits from 1999-2008:

Coming into this season, Kentucky’s Kyle Wiltjer’s 3-point shooting was already somewhat of a legend before he ever stepped foot on the court. However, UK fans have fallen victim to several pre-season legends in the past. Would the 6’9” guy who won the McDonald’s All-American 3-point shooting contest be any different? We’re now 27 games into the season and we can now safely start judging Wiltjer’s impact as a 3-point shooter.

Kyle Wiltjer has come off the bench all season long. Thus far, he has been averaging 13.7 minutes per game. In those minutes, Wiltjer is shooting 38.1% from behind the arc, going 24/63.

In relatively few minutes per game, Wiltjer has knocked down quite a few triples at an acceptable percentage. It is apparent that Kyle Wiltjer is very efficient in knocking down 3’s with the minutes he is given.   How efficient? Could Kyle Wiltjer be the most efficient and effective true bench player at Kentucky for at least a decade? Let’s take a look…

About 2 weeks ago, I outlined the phenomenal defense of Marquis Teague that has been present all season long.  At first glance, a rival fan may feel that I was trying to rationalize Teague's lack of offensive production by focusing on his defense.  The problem with Marquis Teague is that many rival fans and still many UK fans are focusing on Teague's early season production.  Sure.  Teague definitely looked very rough at the beginning of the season.  Early on Teague did not appear that he would be living up to the hype of a John Calipari point guard any time soon.

As previously mentioned, UK fans have become spoiled with the lineage of Calipari point guards at Kentucky.  We've had John Wall, Eric Bledsoe, and Brandon Knight all in a matter of 2 previous seasons.  What most Kentucky fans don't stop to consider is that through the first 10 games of the season, Marquis Teague's turnover count was lower than that of both John Wall and Brandon Knight.  Not only was it lower, it was quite a bit lower.  Through the first 10 games, John Wall had 45 turnovers.  Brandon Knight had 36 turnovers.  Marquis Teague?  He had the lowest of the three with 27 turnovers in the first 10 games.  Of the three, John Wall certainly had a better assist count at 63.  Knight had 37 assists.  Teague? 41 assists.  Let's take a look at the A/T ratio for all three.

On 2/17/12, Kentucky is ranked #1 in both the AP and Coaches/ESPN Polls.   I’m thrilled that biased human pollsters think my Cats are #1. However, as a stat guy, I realize that human pollsters are often biased and often wrong. Every season, we see teams that are ranked highly due to complete human bias without any actual merit. It’s amazing how certain teams can lose and lose again, but only drop 1 to 2 spots in the polls. We also see teams who are ranked highly only due to the law of inertia. When ranked #4, Louisville was a prime example of the law of inertia. I don’t think any rational sports fan actually thought Louisville was really the 4^th best team in the NCAA based on the way they had been playing. Sure, Louisville was winning, but they did not appear to be the #4 team. Louisville didn’t look impressive, but they managed to keep winning as teams ahead of them lost.   Murray State was another example of the law of inertia. Did anyone ever truly think that Murray State was actually the 7^th best team in the NCAA? Not likely.

Human polls clearly have their place, but we need to be honest in realizing that they are biased and flawed.   I’m sure you’re aware, but there are multitudes of much more cold and unbiased rankings available. Stat-based rankings certainly have their flaws, but when combined with the human polls, you gain a much clearer picture of where teams actually belong in the rankings.

Most people are family with the RPI. RPI is a good tool, but it has some major flaws. The biggest flaw is that RPI does not make concessions for margin of victory or defeat. A win is treated the same way whether it is by 1 or 100. RPI also does not care about road, home, or neutral site games. Kentucky is currently #3 in RPI.

Now that we’re well into conference play, we’ve seen enough of teams to start accurately guessing who is a legit threat to win the national championship.

For several years, I’ve been tracking the “vital statistics” of national champions.   With the exception of UK’s 2010-11 team, UK has not had the “vital statistics” of a serious national contender.

Almost every title contender since the early 1990’s has had three VERY consistent stats of excellence. I call it the “Triple 40 of Champions.” Basically, it measures how good you are at the very essence of basketball – shooting, rebounding, and defense.

As we all know, Kentucky just won a game at Vanderbilt's Memorial Gymnasium.  We've all heard about Memorial Magic.  We all know that UK typically does not lose at Rupp Arena.  Today, I'd like to take a look at Kentucky's home winning percentage as it relates to the other programs with crazy home winning percentages.  You might be surprised by some of these numbers.

Over the last 89 years, Kentucky is is 1030-122 at home for 89.4%.

1. Alumni Gym (1924-1950) UK was 248-24 for 91.2%
2. Memorial Coliseum (1951-1976) UK was 307-38 for 89%
3. Rupp Arena (1977 season forward) UK is 475-60 for 88.5%

Note: 8 of UK's 60 Rupp loses were under Billy Gillispie's 2 seasons.

Let’s talk about UK’s Marquis Teague. UK’s PG entered his freshman year with a lot of anticipation from the fans. Due to following Tyreke Evans, Derrick Rose, John Wall, Eric Bledsoe, and Brandon Knight, UK fans expected a lot from the latest Calipari PG. Needless to say, Teague’s offense did not appear to live up to Calipari’s standards right away. Teague didn’t “get it” nearly as quickly as the succession of Calipari PG’s. However, over the last 5 games, Teague has 28 assists and 10 turnovers. The offense has come a long way.

While offense is great, defense wins championships… or so some wise person once said. I’d like to point out some of Teague’s defensive stats this season. Teague’s offense is looking much better, but Teague’s defense has been incredibly solid all season long and I don’t think most people realize just how excellent Teague’s defense happens to be.

The following stats are from the man that Teague has guarded in the non-cupcake games this season.