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Wake Ken Pom Thread: 2014-15 Preaseason = 104, Currently = 125 Season Over

We should play Duke to kick off the ACC season every year if this level of effort is the result.

Leaving [Redacted] out of it, that first half was a thing of beauty. Terrific defense, consistently high intensity, smart offense with what - 10 Deacs in the scorebook and Moto starting off the game torching his man...

The level of improvement on the defensive end from this team from last year to this year is ridiculous. I'm not sure we had a game last year when we didn't give up 5 or more (often way more) uncontested shots. Not sure we had more than one last night. Good stuff, even if the last 10 minutes were tough offensively. Then again, make the 3 open layups and we breeze.
 
dot com said:
We're up to #141
Holy shit we cracked #150
Bz is somewhere wearing nothing but an ugly tie composing a harmonica song about it now
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The Buzz train is a rollin'...get on board!


"This train is bound for glory, Buzz train.
Buzz train is bound for glory, this train.
Buzz train is bound for glory,
Don't carry nothing but believers and the holy.
This train is bound for glory, Buzz train."

"This train don't carry no haters, Buzz train;
This train don't carry no haters, Buzz train;
Buzz train don't carry no haters,
Rope tokers, thieves, nor girlfriend beaters,
This train is bound for glory, Buzz train"
 
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Good post stonz. I think we can all agree the computers are no longer overrating us. Like others have said it sucks that this is viewed as some kind of 'great progress'; the bar is way too low for Wake hoops right now, but at least we are slowly raising the bar. We've been fun to watch since Nebraska.
 
Wake Forest Basketball 2013 #BoundForGlory #BzzTrainChooChoo
 
So being dominated in a game where you enter at #28 and play #156 and are favored by seven only costs you three spots. Hmmmmm.....

Yes we did dominate them. Only two very tough threes made the game close.
 
Even if they missed those two 3s... a 9 point win isn't a "dominating" win.
 
A nine point win when most of the second half was a double digit lead and in a game that had a total score of around 100 between the two teams is a dominating win.
 
freakadeac said:
Good post stonz. I think we can all agree the computers are no longer overrating us. Like others have said it sucks that this is viewed as some kind of 'great progress'; the bar is way too low for Wake hoops right now, but at least we are slowly raising the bar. We've been fun to watch since Nebraska.
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The flip side to this is all the people biting their lips to not be happy we won so they won't have to be wrong that [Redacted] can win at Wake. Is it not progress to go from a bottom feeder to maybe a mid pack team when you have 6 Fr and 1 Sr in a rotation of 9 players? That's the definition of progress IMO. Before this game, UVA was definitely viewed as a solid mid level ACC team. It's happening. I feel bad for those who can't embrace it.
 
stonz said:
Link.

A second attempt to explain, really not happy with how I worded the first one:

A large part of KenPom's preseason model is simply a weighted average of the past 3 years (it might just be 2 years. He switched at some point, don't remember which way. Either way, t-3 is relatively unimportant). This may seem overly simplistic, but it works in most cases. Good teams tend to stay good. Bad teams tend to stay bad. Take a team like Duke, for instance. Even when they lose a good chunk of their minutes, everyone still assumes they will be good the next year. Their 'replacement level' players tend to be very good. Lose Dawkins? --> plug in Sulaimon. No problem.

So, in [Redacted] year 1, KP's preseason system projected Wake to rank 107. On the one hand, we lost nearly our entire team (Ish, Chas, Rouq, LD, Weav), which generally results in a major drop. On the other hand, our final rank the previous three years was 68-25-58. So, essentially, the system assumed that our young players had similar talent to our departing players, and it would just be a slight step back because we were so young. Obviously, as we all know, TC-JTT-Trav-Tabb-Carson was not an adequate replacement group for the aforementioned 5. As a result, we sucked hard. Looking at VT's graph for year 1, it looks like we declined all year, until about game 20. As someone who watched way more games than I probably should have that year, I don't feel like this paints an accurate picture. In my opinion, we were absurdly terrible all year- but it was fairly consistent. Remember, the double-digit home loss to Stetson was game #1. Aside from the Iowa game, there was no point in that season where we played like a top 150 team, but we were ranked in the KP top 150 for the first 10 games. Essentially, KP expected us to be around 110 nationally, even though that quickly proved to be nowhere near accurate. So, from the computer's perspective, it seemed like we were continuously under-performing. By about game 20, the preseason model was eliminated from the ratings, and at that point, as the graph illustrates, our rating stabilized. In short, I believe that our KP rank dropped dramatically over those first 20 games because it took time for the computer to accurately assess how bad we were, not because we continuously got worse.

[Redacted] year 2 was a somewhat similar story. The system had a better understanding of how bad we were (preseason ~150), but still underestimated our suckiness. As a result, it looks like we declined throughout the year, until about game 20. I don't really believe this is true. If anything, I thought we were getting better during most of the non-con last year, and then actually got worse during conference play.

Now, in [Redacted] year 3, I think its fairly likely the system over-corrected. From the computer's PoV...last two seasons ranks of 251 and 210, combined with losing a huge chunk of minutes off last year's team (Nikita, Fields, Carson, TC, Ty), spelled major trouble. At this point, based on our last couple seasons, the computer assumed our replacement players (the self-proclaimed "Sensational Seven") would, by and large, suck pretty badly. As a result, our preseason rank was in the low 200s. While the jury is still out on whether or not our 2012 recruiting class is good enough to lead us to the top half of the ACC, I think we can all agree that it has pieces you would not expect a sub-200 program to bring in. (By the way, Pos Rep is available for anyone that convinces me that they read this whole post.) Think about the 2010 and 2011 recruiting classes. 7 of the 8 players in those classes were either awful, didn't even get meaningful minutes, or transferred (or some combination of those). That is not a tough bar to surpass. I think we all knew that the 2012 class would beat that threshold, but the computer is naive (and it has to be. Pomeroy cannot feasibly, objectively, add a human touch to all 347 teams. Most teams coming off back-to-back years ranking in the 200s don't bring in a handful of top 125 recruits. The system works decently well for most teams; Wake has been a major exception the past few years).

Anyway, long story short, is it possible our KP ranking drops significantly over the next few weeks? Sure. Of course its possible. I just don't think its very likely. If it happens though, it would not be following the same pattern as the previous two years (I mean, on the surface, it would look similar, but in my opinion, its completely different). Again, those two years, our ranking dropped after almost every single game because it took time for the computer to 'catch up' to how bad we were, not because we got worse each game. That should not be an issue this year. If we did drop, it would be because we actually began playing worse. Right now, the computer knows how bad we are; if anything, I would argue we were significantly underrated in the preseason, and so the computer actually thinks we're worse than we are. As a result, I would be very surprised if our ranking dropped significantly in the near future.

(exhale)
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this is such a good fucking post. paw's rep.

Haros said:
I think it depends on how you define that corner. I think we're very much safe from falling back towards the 200 threshold. I'm also beginning to believe we will finish slightly better than 150. That's 'turning a corner' compared to the last two years, but does absolutely nothing for the program's overall long-term goals. If we turn it on the rest of the year and end up top 100, even barely missing the NIT (VERY doubtful, but theoretically possible), that would at least be a good sign in terms of being competitive in the future. It's a shame that getting to that range (somewhere slightly worst than where we were in 05-06 and 06-07) signifies significant improvement, but that's where we are.
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i think we can defs see where we've turned a corner. we've improved.

Deacsfan27 said:
I do agree with MDMH that it doesn't really mean much overall if the Deacs finish 130th instead of 200th. It's just not very likely and people are thinking that the past two years will be a model for this year, which, as Stonz explained it is not very reliable.

Now, I do think tonight we will lose by more than 7 and probably score under 56 points so it's likely we drop 8-10 spots tonight if we lose something like 63-48. In the long run (this season) I think we will continue to improve in KP's rankings and under the "eye test".
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exactly. aknowledging improvement doesnt mean we're happy with where we are. it's being intellectually honest about the team.

myDeaconmyhand said:
We're going round and round here. I get that there's analytic theory behind your all's opinion, but I saw both games and i'm sticking by my opinion that we played better in our 7 point neutral site loss to a top 25 team, then we did in a 7 point home win over a team that lost to Pacific and Wofford. X is not the same team right now that beat Butler.
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youre on the wrong thread then. you and dv7 are showing your asses acting like little bitches. we are trying to discuss the team analytically on this thread. if you cant do that, then join rj in timeout.

vtwhat etc said:
enough so that you're out of the buzzout camp?

what about at the end of the year? (assuming your prediction comes true)... ballpark, what end-of-year ranking would it take to have seen 'significant enough progress' to want to see Bz back next season?
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absolutely still buzzout. he's setting us up nicely, though, once we boot his ass.

freakadeac said:
Good post stonz. I think we can all agree the computers are no longer overrating us. Like others have said it sucks that this is viewed as some kind of 'great progress'; the bar is way too low for Wake hoops right now, but at least we are slowly raising the bar. We've been fun to watch since Nebraska.
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THIS

If we want to discuss the team honestly, then there's no room to not acknowledge improvement over the last two years' teams. that doesnt mean anyone is happy about being a 140-160 KP team. it means we're analyzing the data and discussing recent trends based on it. like stonz said, the dips the last two years has been primarily due to the strength of previous wake teams. as such, we'll be interested to see if this team can hold steady or even improve or if bzzzzzzzzzzzzz will just suck the life out of them. wins like uva really help the former. theyre also a hell of a lot more fun.
 
Doggus said:
The flip side to this is all the people biting their lips to not be happy we won so they won't have to be wrong that [Redacted] can win at Wake. Is it not progress to go from a bottom feeder to maybe a mid pack team when you have 6 Fr and 1 Sr in a rotation of 9 players? That's the definition of progress IMO. Before this game, UVA was definitely viewed as a solid mid level ACC team. It's happening. I feel bad for those who can't embrace it.
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The freshman have come a long way since Iona, but it's still too late for [Redacted]. At this point he has basically written off 2 recruiting classes and gone 3 seasons without a winning record. That's unacceptable.
 
There's no question we have improved. One problem is we blew an easy game against Seton Hall and nearly did the same last night. A decent coach wouldn't have a terrible foul shooter in the game when he knew we'd be getting fouled. Just like a good coach would have set multiple picks for CJ versus SH and had Cav as our second choice to inbound to due to his height and good FT%.


We went to the sideline on multiple possessions in the last three minutes of the the game last night just like we did versus SH. That's horrible. It's the worst thing you can do and we do it often.
 
deacphan said:
absolutely still buzzout. he's setting us up nicely, though, once we boot his ass.
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I was thinking about this last night. If Buzz is not our coach next year, I think there's a pretty good argument that the team the new coach will inherit is better than the team Buzz inherited (I am not counting Woods as being part of what Buzz inherited even if he technically left after Buzz got here, because I don't think his transfer had anything to do with the coaching situation).
 
Wait, what? Cav and CJ shot our final 6 free throws and went 5/6 to ice the game. CJ came off a double screen to get the last inbounds pass as an adjustment to the double he faced that ended up putting the ball in Moto's hands. We don't have 5 good free throw shooters - a bad one has to be on the floor.

We didn't have a turnover in the last 3 minutes.
 
i agree that the team (and some individual players specifically) has been showing improvement. still too early to know for sure how much improvement since the schedule has been awful.

what was the previous worst kenpom rating for an acc team (prior to bzz of course). i suspect it is around our current rating.
 
DCDeac said:
We should play Duke to kick off the ACC season every year if this level of effort is the result.

Leaving [Redacted] out of it, that first half was a thing of beauty. Terrific defense, consistently high intensity, smart offense with what - 10 Deacs in the scorebook and Moto starting off the game torching his man...

The level of improvement on the defensive end from this team from last year to this year is ridiculous. I'm not sure we had a game last year when we didn't give up 5 or more (often way more) uncontested shots. Not sure we had more than one last night. Good stuff, even if the last 10 minutes were tough offensively. Then again, make the 3 open layups and we breeze.
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Fair point. They won't face a more intense opponent or environment, and they got the best the ACC offers right out of the bat. Hopefully they will remember that game and use it as a barometer of the effort necessary to compete in the ACC.
 
DCDeac said:
Wait, what? Cav and CJ shot our final 6 free throws and went 5/6 to ice the game. CJ came off a double screen to get the last inbounds pass as an adjustment to the double he faced that ended up putting the ball in Moto's hands. We don't have 5 good free throw shooters - a bad one has to be on the floor.

We didn't have a turnover in the last 3 minutes.
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That was a good adjustment, but why did we have to wait for so many inbound passes to start setting double screens for CJ when we knew that teams are going to focus on denying him the ball.

The SH inbound and the 1st one last night, we played like they were just going to let us easily inbound the ball to him.
 
DCDeac said:
Wait, what? Cav and CJ shot our final 6 free throws and went 5/6 to ice the game. CJ came off a double screen to get the last inbounds pass as an adjustment to the double he faced that ended up putting the ball in Moto's hands. We don't have 5 good free throw shooters - a bad one has to be on the floor.

We didn't have a turnover in the last 3 minutes.
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I just mentioned this in the game thread, but I wonder if we could trust someone other than Travis to throw the inbounds pass in those situations. Having CJ, Chase and Travis all as options to receive the pass would make me more comfortable.

I agree with RJ that we don't want to get stuck in the corners/on the sidelines, but the D is doing everything they can to take the middle away, and, when UVA really started fouling, we had 3 TOs left, so if we got stuck, we could have easily used one. Inbounding to the corner or sideline to a decent FT shooter is much better than getting a 5-second call, a TO, or inbounding to a bad FT shooter (granted, we did the last one on one possession).
 
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