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Two picks today, both in college basketball.
As always:
- Lines come from the Vegas Consensus at the time this is written, or the best approximation I can find of it online.
- Data and predictions from KenPom, FanGraphs, Baseball Savant, Team Rankings, and ESPN is/are often used and/or cited.
- The blurbs often aren’t justifications of the picks. Often, they’re instead just notes about something or someone related to the pick. Something that interests me. I don’t explain the picks because in general, the rationale behind each pick is the same, so it would be boring to say over and over again that the numbers I use project a good return on investment and I see no red flags significant enough to make me hold off.
UAB @ Troy
Tonight begins the Scott Cross era for Troy basketball. Whether that will mean anything in a few years is unknowable. Over his twelve years at UT-Arlington, Cross peaked in 2017 with an NIT quarterfinal appearance before being let go following the 2018 season. It’s not the most inspiring résumé, but had the Mustangs not laid an egg in that year’s Sun Belt semifinal, they may have wound up a 13-seed in the NCAA Tournament, and who knows what could have come of that.
After a year assistant coaching at TCU, Cross took another Sun Belt job—this time, as was stated, at Troy.
The biggest question surrounding this pick has to do with what Cross will make with Troy’s offense. During his tenure at UTA, Cross’s team only finished outside the top 75 in KenPom’s adjusted tempo metric once, all the way back in 2013, with their median pace the 38th-fastest over those seasons. Troy, though, was 207th in adjusted tempo last year (for context, there are 353 Division I men’s basketball teams). How fast will Cross’s first Trojan offense play?
There are a few indicators we can look at to make a guess on this. The first is what happened when Cross took over at UT-Arlington: This is a highly fleeting indicator, taking no account of personnel and taking place nearly a decade and a half ago, but UT-Arlington’s tempo did jump from 125th in Division I to 36th in Cross’ first year. The second is similarly anecdotal but slightly more relevant: Troy’s tempo last season was the slowest it had been since then-coach Phil Cunningham’s first year, back in 2014. The roster Cross inherits, then, may not be used to playing fast, but they’re used to playing at a fairly average pace. Turning their speed up a notch or two seems, intuitively, like it would be easier than doing the same with, say, Saint Mary’s personnel.
By the numbers, the over looks questionable. Averaging KenPom’s projected offensive and defensive efficiencies for each team, we come out with Troy being expected to score 0.96 points per possession, while UAB is expected to score 1.03, for a total of 1.99 points per possession. Averaging last year’s adjusted tempos between the two teams, we come out with 131.6 expected points. Averaging this year’s projected adjusting tempos, we come out with 144.4 expected points.
Here, though, is where another wrinkle should be noted.
This year’s tempo should be faster than last year’s across all of college basketball.
The new rule in which the shot clock resets to only 20 seconds following offensive rebounds isn’t meaningless. With roughly 30% of rebounds offensive, and roughly half of all field goals missed, it might not be hugely impactful while watching a game, but the addition of a few possessions is expected. This shows up in KenPom’s tempo adjustments: last year’s median adjusted tempo was 67.6 possessions/game. This year’s is 71.8. There are other factors working here, but we don’t know in what direction, so apply that increase proportionally to the 131.6 expected points number we got when combining projected 2020 efficiencies with final 2019 expected tempo, and we come out with 139.8 expected points. Add to that the likelihood that Cross will speed Troy’s offense up a bit from last season and the over becomes promising.
There are few guarantees in college basketball, and this is far from one, but it’s still the second-best bet you can make from today’s thin slate.
Pick: Over 139 (-110). Low confidence.
Idaho State @ Air Force
This total, as with the pick above, opened close to what KenPom’s numbers would suggest before being bet down to its current standing. With the above pick, we can guess that Troy’s average-paced offense last season influenced the shift. With this one, the cause is likely what Idaho State did Tuesday night.
In their opener Tuesday night at Wyoming, Idaho State managed to score only 40 points. Together, the Bengals and Cowboys created just 57 possessions apiece. Tonight, KenPom’s adjusted tempo projections suggest roughly 70 possessions apiece.
That’s a big difference, but it’s hard to believe the game could possibly be as slow as Tuesday’s. Even last night’s Virginia/Syracuse game featured more than 57 possessions. Both Idaho State and Air Force are already in the slowest 100 when it comes to projected adjusted tempo, with the former expected to be the 23rd-slowest team in Division I basketball. In words, a 70-possession game is already very slow.
A similar effect is visible with Idaho State’s sad offense, projected as the 24th-worst in Division I. They’re bad at scoring, and we’re still getting a projected over, by about six points. Some of this is because the Idaho State defense is expected to be even worse than the offense. Some of it is that 131, in 2019 men’s Division I basketball, is a very low total.
Pick: Over 131 (-110). Low confidence.
