The Final Four happens today.
Err…starts today? I don’t really know what terminology to use with the national semifinals.
Four teams play one another in two games today. The winners will play in the national championship.
The Gonzaga/UCLA game is rather straightforward. UCLA needs to do something shocking if they’re going to do something shocking, the latter something of which would be beating quite possibly the best men’s college basketball team of all time (a sentence which makes me realize I can think of few sports radio debates uglier than best men’s team vs. best women’s team).
The Baylor/Houston game is more complicated.
We have a pretty good idea how good each team is. Or at least, we should. We should know how good they are because we have intricate algorithms to tell us, algorithms that are often more predictive than even the immensely accurate, immensely powerful market that is sports betting. We have KenPom, and KenPom’s usually pretty right, and the betting markets usually agree with KenPom because they also are usually pretty right.
Today, they disagree.
KenPom has Houston 49% likely to win. A one-point underdog. Hardly.
The betting markets have Houston as a five-point underdog.
That’s a big discrepancy. One of the biggest of the NCAA Tournament.
Why does it exist?
I don’t know, to be fully honest. My guesses are…threefold?
The first is that there is doubt about how good Houston is because of their schedule. Houston’s best opponent, to date, was Texas Tech, and they played them in November. After Texas Tech comes a batch of teams ranging from NIT Champion Memphis to First Four participant Wichita State, with the area between the two populated by Rutgers, Syracuse, Oregon State (Houston’s second round, Sweet Sixteen, and Elite Eight opponents, respectively), as well as SMU and Boise State. That isn’t an awe-inspiring list. Which I suppose is probably making some question whether Houston really can hang. Personally, my guess would be that if there’s anything to be said for Houston’s schedule making it harder to gauge them, it would work in both directions, and they might be better than KenPom thinks. But again. I don’t know.
The second is that there is doubt about how good Houston is because they don’t “look good.” They’re a defensively-minded team, they’ve played four straight slow games in this tournament, in one of them they needed an improbable comeback to beat Rutgers, in another they nearly allowed an improbable comeback, and in the third their opponent shot 22% from deep—something Houston played a role in but probably does not get sufficient credit for causing. Offensively, Houston doesn’t shoot efficiently. They score points (and a lot of them, on a per-possession basis) by grabbing offensive rebounds and, for the most part, avoiding turnovers. It is highly effective and not at all what people picture when they call to mind a good college basketball team.
The third is that there is a belief that Baylor’s struggles from February 23rd, when they nearly lost to Iowa State, through March 12th, when they followed a near-loss to Kansas State with a reasonably decisive loss to Oklahoma State, were driven by their three-week coronavirus-induced absence. It’s fair to speculate on this. We saw team after team play poorly this year as they returned from a Covid layoff. But at the same time, it’s now been four games since that stretch, Baylor has won each forcefully, and personally, I’d guess that’s given the algorithm enough time to catch up. Also, Baylor played pretty darn well in their last two regular season games, implying…they got better then got worse again then got better? That doesn’t make as much sense as “this is a college basketball team and is therefore inconsistent.”
As you can guess or may have read one of the zillion times I’ve written it these past four days, I think Houston is more likely than not to cover the spread, with turnovers the big question as Baylor does force a lot of those. (Though Baylor does not rebound particularly well on the defensive end…) I trust KenPom. But for whatever it’s worth, there appears to be more uncertainty here than in your average college basketball game.
Enjoy it.
