The State of Coaching (Summer 2010)

Four years ago, Indiana had a chance to hire former Hoosier player Steve Alford as head coach. They passed on the opportunity and Alford eventually moved on to New Mexico. At New Mexico, Alford has won a ton of games and posted fantastic efficiency numbers along the way. Meanwhile, Kelvin Sampson imploded the Indiana program. In retrospect, it seems like Indiana made the wrong decision.

But I still think Indiana made the right decision. As evidence, I point to NC State which hired former player Sidney Lowe in that same summer four years ago. Lowe was supposed to restore the tradition of NC State’s 1983 national title. But while he’s brought back some nice memories for NC State fans, he certainly hasn’t added any new ones.

NC State has played some exciting games against North Carolina, but otherwise remained irrelevant in the ACC race. The team has never finished better than 6-12 in four seasons. And of the remaining four-year coaches, Sidney Lowe has the worst efficiency margin in the ACC.

And yet, NC State is not quite ready to fire their inconsistent coach. Some claim a new recruiting class will save the day, but I doubt it. Lowe has seemed over his head from day one. But I suspect that because Lowe is a former star player, the university boosters are hesitant to make a move. It’s easy to get rid of an inconsistent outsider with failed promises. It is hard to get rid of a respected part of the university tradition.

This year Iowa St. heads down the same road, hiring former star shooter Fred Hoiberg. Hoiberg played in the NBA for 10 seasons, and no doubt knows a lot about basketball. But does he know enough to win in a BCS league right away? My extended thoughts about the new hires are listed below.

Inside The Numbers

Before I make comments on various coaches, I’m going to update the efficiency stats. The following tables list the number of years at the current school (YRS), the average adjusted offensive efficiency (AAOE), the average adjusted defensive efficiency (AADE), and the national rank of the efficiency margin (RK). I list the numbers with the “current school” and the average over “all schools” in the last seven years. Averages are calculated using data available on kenpom.com.

Keep in mind context when interpreting any number. Steve Donahue’s numbers are not great nationally, but they were great for the Ivy League. The best remaining Ivy League coach is Tommy Amaker whose efficiency margin at Harvard is -5.9 points per possession. On the flip side, Sidney Lowe’s numbers seem pretty good. But in the ACC, they’ve been near the bottom every season.

Also keep in mind that this is a “what have you done for me lately” world. So the simple average is not always the best way to evaluate which coaches are hot and which coaches are in trouble. This past year several coaches were hired to new jobs after making positive changes with their teams. Jeff Bzdelik (Colorado to Wake Forest), Tad Boyle (Northern Colorado to Colorado), and Bob Marlin (Sam Houston St. to Louisiana-Lafayette) were all hired to new positions based on dramatic offensive improvements. Similarly, Tony Barbee (UTEP to Auburn), Ed Conroy (The Citadel to Tulane), and Milan Brown (Mt. St. Mary’s to Holy Cross) were all hired to new jobs based on tremendous defensive improvements. And after Steve Donahue turned Cornell around on offense and defense, he became the hot hire for Boston College.

Because the recent trend matters, I highlight in green and red coaches that were 5 points better or worse than their historical average last season. The point here is to illustrate that not all coaches low on a conference list are necessarily the worst. Scott Drew had a negative efficiency margin in his first two seasons at Baylor. But Drew brought his team to the Elite Eight last year, and the recent numbers have been much better.

Hot Seat

We’ll revisit this topic in-season, but the hot seat candidates are pretty obvious. Sidney Lowe probably won’t get to see his current recruiting class graduate. Ed DeChellis bought some time with his NIT run in 2009, but he and Bill Carmody have done little to warrant serious job security. Doc Sadler might not survive to see Nebraska head to the Big Ten. And while Pat Knight may coach a few more games than Sean Sutton did after replacing his father, it isn’t clear that he’ll coach a lot more games. Mick Cronin is in serious trouble after Lance Stephenson didn’t deliver an NCAA bid. And luckily everyone looks safe in the Pac-10, but that’s only because they are all so new. (It is hard to believe that Herb Sendek is already the third most tenured coach in the Pac-10.) Finally, Andy Kennedy’s off-court activities haven’t helped his job security in the SEC.

New Hires

Now that Tom Izzo is not heading to the NBA, I think we can safely say this was the most boring off-season for coaching changes in some time. I can’t even generate a decent coaching chain.

"Oliver Purnell – Brad Brownell – Billy Donlon" just doesn’t look that exciting on paper.

Sure, there were 51 jobs that changed hands (and one at Chicago St. that remains open). But with Butler’s Brad Stevens staying put, and with none of the elite programs making a change, I’ll do my best to make these comments interesting.



ACC New Hires

-I’m not showing pace in any of these tables today, but I think it is worth emphasizing that the ACC may be getting a lot slower. Last year the ACC added slow-paced Tony Bennett, and this year the league adds three coaches with a reputation for working the shot clock. Jeff Bzdelik and Brad Brownell’s squads have ranked over 300th in tempo on numerous occasions, and Steve Donahue’s Cornell team ranked a not-so-speedy 245th in the nation last year in tempo.

This is probably smart strategy. Most teams won’t consistently perform at Duke and North Carolina’s level. And if you want to upset Duke and Carolina, you want to minimize the possessions in the game. But for fans used to bragging about the entertainment value of track meet ACC games, this change may not be for the better.

-Steve Donahue’s negative efficiency margin doesn’t look great, but remember that he’s been coaching in the Ivy League. Donahue clearly accomplished something special in building Cornell into a Sweet Sixteen team. I don’t expect Donahue to have Boston College competing for the ACC title next year, but he deserves a chance to build a program. A good projection for Donahue might be Fran Dunphy. Dunphy jumped from the Ivy League to Temple four years ago and after an inconsistent first year, Temple’s efficiency margin has improved three years in a row.

-Jeff Bzdelik’s Colorado team was rated near 300th in the country in 2 Pt FG% defense the last two seasons. So my initial reaction to the Wake Forest hire was that the Demon Deacons were making a mistake. If a team doesn’t play interior defense in the ACC, they are going to get crushed. But when I look at Bzdelik’s overall numbers, and remember what he did at Air Force, the move starts to make more sense. Bzdelik probably has the best efficiency margin of anyone Wake Forest could have hired at this point. And assuming the problem with the interior defense was a lack of quality post players at Colorado, it may be an aberration. In the end, Wake Forest gets a star offensive coach, and Bzdelik resets his tenure clock with a more prestigious BCS team.

-Did Oliver Purnell bolt Clemson because of a lack of commitment from the university? Or does he just like a challenge? There’s no question Clemson experienced serious heart-break under Purnell, but there’s also no question he built the program to levels not experienced since Rick Barnes left. Under Purnell, Clemson was no longer the team projected for the cellar or near the cellar every year. And with Purnell gone, the team adds Wright St.’s Brad Brownell. Brownell isn’t the sexy pick based on big NCAA tournament upsets, star recruits, or even a recent league title. But all he has done is win. In 8 seasons in the mid-major CAA and Horizon league, his teams have finished lower than 3rd only once. The numbers suggest he’ll have a tough-minded defensive team. And if you don’t have the most talent in the league, defense is the great equalizer.

Big Ten New Hires

-Fran McCaffery pulled the ultimate turnaround at Siena. He took over a team that was 273rd in the Pomeroy rankings and raised them to a team that was 59th nationally. His team went from last in the MAAC in 2005, to three straight MAAC titles. Sure, his average efficiency numbers aren’t phenomenal. But that’s only because of where his teams started. They’ve gotten steadily better since he took over. Iowa’s basketball team is a huge rebuilding project, and that is why McCaffery is the perfect fit. He’s rebuilt a disaster before, now he just has to do it again.

Big 12 New Hires

-Besides my concerns about how quickly Iowa St. can fire Fred Hoiberg if he fails, I’m also really concerned about his lack of coaching experience. Can he really motivate and communicate with players in the heat of a dreadful season? While Fran McCaffery can look at his Iowa team and say, “I’ve been here before guys. I know it is bad now, but it will get better.” I’m not sure Hoiberg can say the same thing. But my pessimism is lessened somewhat by Hoiberg’s decision to hire former Charlotte coach Bobby Lutz as an assistant. I never felt like Lutz got a fair shake. He built UNC-Charlotte into a consistent NCAA contender in CUSA, and then when the Big East raided CUSA, he lost all his rivalries with elite teams. His team was put in the A10 and was never able to reform an identity. A lot of people talk about how Memphis was left behind when CUSA reorganized, but Charlotte really got left behind. Hopefully this is the opportunity for Lutz to show what he can do once again, even if he isn’t officially the head coach.

-For this year at least, Tad Boyle is a Big 12 coach. And Tad Boyle should know how to recruit in Colorado, after coaching at Northern Colorado. And his team did win 25 games last year. But the positive vibes end there. Boyle’s teams have never been particularly dominant, and even last year’s 25 win club wasn’t great. They finished second in the Big Sky, and only picked up 25 wins because of an incredibly weak non-conference schedule. I’ll be the first to admit that the stats are not everything. But there isn’t anything in Boyle’s resume that makes me think Colorado won’t be hiring again in a few years.



Big East New Hires

-Sadly Steve Lavin’s last year at UCLA came before we started tracking tempo-free stats, but based on my memory, I have questions about what he can accomplish. He had a much better winning environment at UCLA and his teams often underachieved. But I have effusive praise for this move because of the timing. Lavin inherits a team of seniors with a chance to win right now. And, he has a full year to bring in what should be a critical recruiting class to St. John’s. We should know by next spring if Lavin can recruit St. John’s back to glory.

-Oliver Purnell is the dream hire for DePaul. He brings an excitement to the program thanks to his full-court pressure and attacking system. And this isn’t just Keno Davis seven-seconds-or-less revolving door at the basket. Purnell’s average defensive efficiency in the last seven years is 90.8. That’s equal to the average defensive efficiency of Jay Wright, and nearly as good at the 90.4 posted by Jamie Dixon. This is a team that will play defense, and be fun to watch. But Purnell brings more than just occassional full-court pressure, Purnell brings instant credibility. Instead of a mid-major coach trying to convince recruits that DePaul may win someday, Purnell knows he has a system that can win immediately. Just like Purnell did when he took over at Clemson, and just like Tubby Smith did when he took over a down-trodden Minnesota program, I expect DePaul will be better immediately. The ultimate question for Purnell is not whether he will win, but whether he can eventually compete for a Big East title. I’m skeptical he can get DePaul to that level. But after the last couple of years, even a .500 team sounds fantastic to DePaul fans.

-Does the “almost” upset count for anything? Robert Morris “almost” upset Villanova in the NCAA tournament this year. Which means by now most of you forgot about it. Just like you may have forgotten that Fred Hill stepped down at Rutgers and that Mike Rice Jr. was hired from Robert Morris. Hey, maybe you never even read that headline. But that’s the problem. Rutgers isn’t hiring a well-known coach. Rutgers isn’t hiring a proven winner, a proven offensive or defensive genius from the mid-major ranks. Rutgers is rolling the dice outside the normal hiring pattern. Robert Morris is hiring the coach of the three-time NEC champ, a league that as recently as two years ago was the third weakest conference in the country. And that’s fine. I’m actually a pretty big advocate for trying out winners from different levels. But if you are going to take a risk on an unproven commodity, couldn’t he at least have a signature victory? Is he supposed to sell Rutgers recruits on the fact that he once “almost” beat Villanova?

-Kevin Willard did little at Iona that would merit getting hired as a coach in the Big East. His team finished 7th, 7th, and 3rd in the MAAC. But Kevin is the son of a former coach who has lots of connections in the business. And while it is easy to criticize this type of hire for the lack of supporting “data”, the truth is that college basketball coaches need connections to succeed. Fair or not, Kevin Willard has access to a much bigger network of recruits than Mike Rice Jr. He’s also spent years on the sidelines next to incredibly smart basketball minds. And even though I can’t point to a single piece of data to tell you why Kevin Willard will succeed at Seton Hall, he has something a lot of mid-major coaches would dream of… an opportunity.

Pac-10 New Hires

-Certain coaches are off limits in the mid-major ranks. Mark Few is not leaving Gonzaga anytime soon. Jim Larranaga is happy at George Mason. And for a long time, Dana Altman has been in that category. But somehow, Oregon made the hire. But for some reason, people want to find negative things to say about this hire. Why didn’t he go to Arkansas a few years ago? Why hasn’t he won in the NCAA tournament? Why has his team struggled lately? Why couldn’t Oregon find someone better after such an extensive search? I find all of these comments ludicrous. No BCS team (other than DePaul with Oliver Purnell) got a coach with a better efficiency margin than Dana Altman. He knows how to coach offense and defense, and recruit to a league that gets multiple NCAA tournament bids. On paper, he is the perfect hire.

SEC New Hires

-The post John Calipari CUSA was supposed to give multiple teams a chance to be good. But probably no one seized the opportunity more than Tony Barbee’s UTEP squad which made the NCAA tournament as an at-large selection. But while part of me wanted to see a little bit more out of UTEP before I was willing to anoint Barbee a top mid-major coach, the truth is in the four year numbers. UTEP’s efficiency margin has improved three years in a row. Barbee is ready for the challenge of a BCS league.



Who's Next?

I suppose the natural question is what coach will be next to jump to a BCS gig. But the MWC and A10 are often as much a destination as a way to get a better job. Steve Alford isn’t getting paid peanuts at New Mexico. Fran Dunphy will gladly tell you he can win a ton of games in the A10 at Temple. But many of the coaches with the best numbers, from Lon Kruger to Brian Gregory, will go elsewhere if the price is right.

-Chris Lowery was once the hot coach with the best numbers, but he’s been trending in the wrong direction. Still, if any of those top MVC coaches has a good year, they could easily be on the move.

-Other people have said this, but it is worth pointing out again. CUSA is definitely a league that likes to recycle former BCS coaches:

Mike Davis – Indiana
Larry Eustachy – Iowa St.
Matt Doherty – North Carolina
Ben Braun – California
Jeff Lebo – Auburn
James Dickey – Texas Tech
Tim Floyd – USC

-I’m expecting Tad Doyle will make me eat my words now, but if Colorado has to make an odd hire, why not someone like Stew Morrill? I know he isn’t young. And maybe he cannot be lured away from a safe, low stress environment. But I find it sad that only people living in the mountains ever get to see how good Stew Morrill is at coaching offensive basketball.

-I’m also surprised Old Dominion’s Blaine Taylor didn’t get a little more press for some of the openings. Defensive coaching will translate to any league.

-Notice that the mid-major coaches with the best numbers tend to be relatively new. They inherited great programs (think Chris Mack and Josh Pastner), and don’t have enough track record to get a BCS job yet.



This last group includes the rest of the coaches with positive efficiency margins. I also list the coach with the worst efficiency margin who has kept his job for 7 years and the coach with the worst efficiency margin overall.

Spring Brackets 2010

Baseball’s Championship Week is here. I can’t really recommend you watch, but you could. I mean, if you live in Pittsburgh, it might be the only relevant baseball you see for a long time. You probably didn’t know this because ESPN hides its College Baseball Blog in the dark recesses of the ESPN.com site. It isn’t quite as fun to read as the sparkling work Eamonn Brennan does, but bubble talk is fun right? You can’t possibly be sick of talking about Tennessee’s bubble chances yet are you?

Mainly, I just enjoy the brackets. And so I will continue my annual tradition:

Eight Teams, Two Double Elimination Brackets
SEC Tournament – Once again, the SEC is crazy good. Teams that failed to qualify for the conference tournament are still on the bubble.
Big East Tournament – Louisville, check. UConn, probably. Pittsburgh, might want to win a couple.
Sun Belt Tournament – Bubble implications perhaps.
Southern Conference Tournament – More bubble implications.
Southland Tournament – Ah, now this seems like a perfectly fascinating tournament. The two favored teams, SE Louisiana and Texas St. are clearly on the bubble. Will they meet in the final? Will one of them lose early and miss the NCAA field? Every game counts.

Eight Teams, Two Round Robin Pods
ACC Tournament – According to ESPN, Boston College is the last team in.
Big 12 Tournament – And Baylor is one of the first teams out.

Six Teams, Two Pods
CUSA Tournament – This tournament format is just crazy. You play your own pod plus a bonus game against the other pod.

Six Teams, Two Byes, Double Elimination
MWC Tournament – TCU is the gift that just keeps giving, and not just in Football.
Big Ten Tournament – No bubble implications, but these might be the only games on TV in your area

Six Team Double Elimination
Big South Tournament – Technically there are eight teams, but four of them play a play-in game for a slot in the six team field.

None: Pac 10, Big West

What goes into a "Way Too Early" Pre-season Poll

Next Monday, prominent college basketball writers everywhere will be asked to submit their “way too early” top 25 polls for next season. I mock these every year, but I understand why they are written. Interest in college basketball is at a peak now, not when many of the key questions will be cleared up.

Earlier this month, I posted a numeric model predicting year-to-year performance. I still plan to tweak it this summer before I make any official predictions. Regardless, here are the factors that various writers will attempt to combine when trying to guess next year’s best teams.

Biggest Offensive Losses due to Graduation

A few updates:
-Due to popular demand, I added all the teams in the Pomeroy top 60 even if they did not play in a top-tier conference. This gets me all the way down to Siena. I still include all teams in the top 8 RPI conferences.
-I updated my database to use the most recent player data – this caused a few minor shifts up or down.
-I fixed a problem related to dropping certain teams.
-As in the model I presented a few weeks ago, I am weighting offensive production by percentage of total team possessions used. (This is a combination of minutes played and possessions used when on the floor.)

1. Cornell –Chris Wroblewski is coming back. But that’s about it. Basically the whole team is gone.

2. California – Jerome Randle, Patrick Christopher, Jamal Boykin, and Theo Robertson are four seniors with offensive ratings over 112. They will be hard to replace.

3. Maryland – On the one hand you have prolific and still efficient players like Greivis Vazquez leaving, on the other hand you have someone like Eric Hayes who was one of the most efficient players in the country. Maryland loses a lot.

4. Duke – Duke tends to lose a lot each year, but for once the losses are due to graduation instead of early entry. John Scheyer was one of the most efficient high volume shooters in the country this year and that’s going to be hard to replace.

5. St. Mary’s – Omar Samhan took 33% of his teams shots when on the floor, played major minutes, and had an offensive efficiency rating of 117. And fellow senior Ben Allen was very efficient too.

6. Auburn – Probably not who you expected to see on this list, huh? But Auburn loses 5 rotation seniors and at least one of them, Tay Waller, was quite efficient.

7. Marquette –Marquette has some key players returning. But losing Lazar Hayward, one of the most effective high volume shooters in the country is going to hurt any offense. And did you see how efficient Maurice Acker and David Cubillan were this year? I’m optimistic based on what Buzz Williams was able to accomplish this year, but you can’t say the team won’t miss these players.

8. Northern Iowa – Three stars (including hero Ali Farokhmanesh) are seniors.

9. Rhode Island – The NIT semi was the end of the road for three fabulous senior stars.

10. Tennessee – Tennessee already took a big hit with Tyler Smith leaving mid-season, but with Smith, J. P. Prince, Wayne Chism, and Bobby Maze gone next year, Tennessee will have some big shoes to fill. The only salvation for Tennessee is that none of these guys played 40 minutes a game and there were plenty of possessions used by other players on the roster over the course of the season.

11. Notre Dame – Sure, Notre Dame played well without Luke Harandgody late in the year, and yes Mike Brey is a genius offensively. But any statistical model is going to tell you Notre Dame’s offense should take a hit without its high volume shooting star. Minor note: Ben Hansbrough is listed as “senior” on Notre Dame’s webpage but as far as I can tell he didn’t go through senior day ceremonies and he definitely has one year of eligibility left. While I think I caught this error which bumped Notre Dame down from 3rd overall to 11th overall, it is possible I don’t know about another “senior” who is coming back. This is the type of thing I hope to double check by this fall.

12. Wisconsin – Just two key players here, but Bohannon was incredibly efficient and Hughes was pretty good too for how often he shot. Heaven forbid we interpret losing star players as a bad thing for the Badgers.

13. Miami FL – Four key players.

14. Stanford – Landry Fields never got enough love this year because the Pac10 was so down.

15. West Virginia – At least Da’Sean Butler is still playing in the Final Four.

16. Texas – Wow, are Damion James and Dexter Pittman really seniors? Did they really play that few minutes and post only “decent” offensive numbers this year? I expected so much more.

17. Baylor – Tweety Carter was not only the first-ever McDonald’s All-American at Baylor, he was incredibly efficient this year.

18. Connecticut – Gavin Edwards, Stanley Robinson, and Jerome Dyson did some great things in the last 4 years even if they didn’t go to the NCAA tournament this year.

19. Louisville – As much as we picked on Edgar Sosa, he had great numbers.

20. Washington – Quincy Poindexter played more minutes than Scottie Reynolds, had a better offensive rating, and yet no one talked about him until he hit the game winner against Marquette.

21. Villanova –How can a team that loses Scottie Reynolds not be ranked higher? Well, the formula doesn’t give enough weight to Reggie Redding. With Redding missing most of the first half of the year, Scottie looks like the team’s only real loss. That’s not fair, but given Villanova’s depth, it might be the right measure. Because Redding didn’t play for a good portion of the year, other players got time to develop.

22. Syracuse
23. Minnesota
24. Texas A&M
25. Arizona St.
26. Siena
27. Murray St.
28. South Carolina
29. Alabama
30. Providence
31. New Mexico
32. Michigan
33. St. Bonaventure
34. Utah St.
35. Memphis
36. Richmond
37. Gonzaga
38. Clemson
39. Kansas
40. Missouri

Not missing much

12. Illinois –Domique Keller’s playing time steadily fell off late in the year.

11. Kentucky – Ramon Harris sometimes played, but didn’t contribute offensively. Perry Stevenson at least made a few shots, but he never played.

10. Florida – Dan Werner wasn’t efficient enough as a senior to count as a loss.

No seniors:

T6. Georgetown
T6. Texas El Paso
T6. Penn St.
T6. St. Louis

Addition by subtraction:

This is a very cruel title on my part, but when you lose inefficient players to graduation, history shows that this is good for your offense.

5. Virginia Tech – Two words: Lewis Witcher. That’s the only loss. Expect Virginia Tech to be a trendy pick next year in the ACC next year unless Malcolm Delaney goes pro.

4. Air Force – They lose some horribly inefficient rotation players. I won’t even mention them by name.

3. Indiana – I can’t believe Devan Dumes was that inefficient. He always seemed to make shots against my team.

2. Southern California – The offense was so bad this year, random freshman have to have more upside. That’s not really fair, but that’s the way this stuff works.

1. Colorado St. – No comment.

Biggest Defensive Losses due to Graduation

I plan to try to add some more factors to this model this summer. Right now this list is too similar to the offensive list to provide any real insight.

Freshmen Minutes

In my numeric model, I also document that teams that waste lots of possessions on freshmen (or give freshmen lots of chances to improve) are the most likely to get better. Here are the teams that used the most possessions on freshmen this year:

1. Kentucky – Kentucky is first, but this is irrelevant. The key in my model is “returning” freshman. It isn't clear that any of Kentucky's fabulous freshmen are coming back next year.

2. Fordham

3. Oklahoma – Another case of “will any of them be back?”

4. Arizona
5. Indiana
6. Iowa
7. George Washington

8. St. Louis – I’m really high on St. Louis next year. This was a very young team and they played very well against quality A10 competition late in the year.

9. Georgia Tech
10. Texas
11. Nebraska
12. Massachusetts
13. Providence
14. Colorado St.
15. Air Force
16. Gonzaga
17. Miami FL
18. Cincinnati
19. Washington St.
20. Illinois
21. Wyoming
22. Arkansas
23. Utah
24. North Carolina
25. San Diego St.
26. St. Mary's
27. La Salle
28. Colorado
29. UCLA
30. North Carolina St.
31. Villanova
32. South Carolina
33. Saint Joseph's
34. Florida
35. Oregon St.
36. Charlotte
37. Kansas
38. Wake Forest
39. Temple
40. Northwestern

Sorry freshmen, no shots for you:

25. DePaul
24. Michigan St.
23. Virginia Commonwealth
22. Virginia
21. Mississippi
20. Cornell
19. Siena
18. Dayton
17. Richmond
16. Utah St.
15. West Virginia
14. Texas Tech
13. Seton Hall
12. Memphis
11. California
10. Marquette
9. Stanford
T1. Notre Dame
T1. Ohio St.
T1. Miss St.
T1. Boston College
T1. Butler
T1. Old Dominion
T1. USC
T1. UTEP

8 teams didn’t have a single freshman that played over 10% of the team’s minutes. Stanford barely let Gabriel Harris play. Marquette had 3 Top 100 recruits, but they ended up winning because a number of veterans stepped up their play. I keep talking up how Michigan St. gives younger players a chance to learn and develop, but there was some controlled learning this year. Even though Derrick Nix started and Garrick Sherman played, they got a very limited number of shots this year for the Spartans. And the worst new for DePaul is that even though they were bad, they didn’t really give their freshman much chance to get better either.

Biggest Losses due to Early Entry
1. Kentucky
2. ???

This is the biggest guess, and this is the biggest reason it is dumb to try to make pre-season polls on the last day of the season. I’m not going to speculate yet, but I’m sure this will be a huge factor in anyone’s preseason poll for next year.

Best Recruiting Classes
Recruiting is also an incredibly huge guess at this point. The spring signing period officially starts April 14th. The last time I checked 7 McDonald’s All-Americans had yet to officially choose their college. And at least 9 of the fall RSCI top 50 recruits had not declared their intentions. In other words, we still don’t have a clue what teams will be able to replace their losses with key freshman.

Plus players who have already committed can always change their mind. Terrence Ross has already de-committed from Maryland after his stock shot up this year. Daniel Bejarano de-committed from Texas and committed to Arizona when he saw that Arizona had a bright young coach at the helm. More coaches are going to change jobs this spring and that’s going to lead to even more changes in commitments.

Finally, some players won’t even be eligible in the fall. (See Renardo Sidney this last season.)

Still, here’s a rough guess of the top classes, based on previous discussion that only top 10 recruits are unlikely to be busts.

1. Memphis (A top 10 recruit, and several top 100 recruits.)
2. Ohio St. (A top 10 recruit, and several top 100 recruits.)
3. North Carolina (Three top 25 level recruits.)
4. Tennessee (A top 10 recruit, and a couple top 100 recruits.)
5. Duke (A top 10 recruit and a top 100 recruit.)
6. Baylor (A top 10 recruit)
7. Texas (A top 10 recruit)
8. Wake Forest (4 top 100 recruits)
Three Top 100: Illinois, Michigan St., South Carolina, Syracuse (?)
Two Top 100: Florida, California, Connecticut, Florida St., Georgetown, LSU, Marquette, Missouri, Pittsburgh, Stanford, UCLA, USC, Villanova, Virginia

Again, the Top 100 lists vary and RSCI won’t update the fall “summary” for at least a month. So this is all a big guess. But this is clearly a huge factor in predicting what will happen next season.

Teams that had big runs in the NCAA tournament

We tend to get caught up in the excitement of the NCAA tournament, but I think it is a mistake to include this factor. Anything can happen in a single elimination game setting. You can’t tell me Kansas was over-rated based on one game. Kansas was clearly the most dominant team in the country all year long. So I don’t agree with folks that inflate expectations for next season based on a couple of NCAA tournament upsets. I would only include these wins to the extent they are part of a team's overall profile.

How teams “performed” this year

The Pomeroy and Sagarin ratings give a good estimate of who the best teams are. I prefer these predictive ratings because sometimes a team's overall record was deceiving. New Mexico’s margin-of-victory numbers suggested they were a little over-rated this year. And a quick visit to kenpom.com suggests a number of teams that were generally good, but just couldn’t win the close games this year. This unlucky group who might be better next year includes:

1. Penn St.
2. Providence
3. Dayton
4. Alabama
5. Boston College
6. Iowa St.
7. Connecticut
8. Michigan

None are obvious pre-season Top 25 candidates, but Dayton played better than an NIT team this year. Because the Flyers lose 5 seniors from the rotation, they aren’t a great top 25 pick for next year. But on the positive side, the team’s two most efficient players Chris Wright and Chris Johnson should return.