Expectations for 2018-2019
- Thread starter CloneGuy8
- Start date
Shayok the surprise breakthrough player? Judging by what I've read over the last year I don't think it will be that much of a surprise.
I think we have a lot of great defenders but I fully expect shayok to be the best. I mean he is coming from Virginia lol
I don’t know if UVA is built on solid individual defenders more than an incredible team defense. Then again, you can’t be too terrible on an individual basis considering how nasty their stop unit has been the last couple of years.
How often does Prohm use packline concepts?
Shayok's on ball defense is probably great. Hopefully there isn't much off-ball adjustment. Someone who knows basketball better than me, help?
Edit: doesn't Prohm usually like more pass denial? I remember Hoibergs, um, "defense" more clearly haha.
Shayok's on ball defense is probably great. Hopefully there isn't much off-ball adjustment. Someone who knows basketball better than me, help?
Edit: doesn't Prohm usually like more pass denial? I remember Hoibergs, um, "defense" more clearly haha.
CycloneErik
Well-Known Member
Shayok will probably be one of our most criticized players this year.
Any time his guy scores, people will freak out with "but he came from Virginia!!!!!"
It won't be fair, it won't be smart, but it'll happen every game.
Any time his guy scores, people will freak out with "but he came from Virginia!!!!!"
It won't be fair, it won't be smart, but it'll happen every game.
Cameron Lard is our biggest X factor to next year’s success.
I wanted to share this with the group.
According to this site, which projects something like the KenPom rankings for the next season, ISU is something like the #40 team in the country.
http://www.barttorvik.com/
It wobbles around as they make adjustments, rosters finalize, and schedules finalize. We were closer to #30 a few weeks ago when I looked at it.
They compare our projected team on offensive efficiency and defensive efficiency to the following squads, almost all of which made the tournament...
...some of which made the Round of 32. The above includes, of course, the 2012 ISU team headed by Royce White and Chris Allen, for some context.
That White/Allen team was great on offense but very shaky on defense. The projection for the 2019 team, right now, puts them in the same league.
Unfortunately, they project our tournament resume to be a little light. Here are the peer schools/seasons in terms of the season they project for us...
None of them made the tournament. That includes some teams we might remember from last year, like Baylor and Notre Dame, that just missed the tournament.
We forget sometimes how hard it is to even make it.
I still hope/expect us to make it, but this made me a little unsettled to see. I tend to trust analytics as a reasonable baseline, even if they can be wrong.
I wonder if that last chart factors in that they do not have our full scheduled loaded right now. They have the conference games, but not all of the OOC games...
8-10 in the conference.
They have five of the roughly 12 games we should have actually projected.
Maybe missing those hurts the resume?
According to this site, which projects something like the KenPom rankings for the next season, ISU is something like the #40 team in the country.
http://www.barttorvik.com/
It wobbles around as they make adjustments, rosters finalize, and schedules finalize. We were closer to #30 a few weeks ago when I looked at it.
They compare our projected team on offensive efficiency and defensive efficiency to the following squads, almost all of which made the tournament...
...some of which made the Round of 32. The above includes, of course, the 2012 ISU team headed by Royce White and Chris Allen, for some context.
That White/Allen team was great on offense but very shaky on defense. The projection for the 2019 team, right now, puts them in the same league.
Unfortunately, they project our tournament resume to be a little light. Here are the peer schools/seasons in terms of the season they project for us...
None of them made the tournament. That includes some teams we might remember from last year, like Baylor and Notre Dame, that just missed the tournament.
We forget sometimes how hard it is to even make it.
I still hope/expect us to make it, but this made me a little unsettled to see. I tend to trust analytics as a reasonable baseline, even if they can be wrong.
I wonder if that last chart factors in that they do not have our full scheduled loaded right now. They have the conference games, but not all of the OOC games...
8-10 in the conference.
They have five of the roughly 12 games we should have actually projected.
Maybe missing those hurts the resume?
Thanks for sharing!
Not trying to be at all dismissive, but it seems like ISU would be a very difficult team to project on the basis that returning talent is doesn't tell the whole story. I understand KenPom takes into account recruiting classes, but what does it know about transfers? Maybe it does, I know it's detailed.
Effectively, next year's team will replace Beverley and Brase with Shayok and Jacobsen, who are major upgrades. I don't expect most analytics to pick up on how big that should be by itself. I also like the prospect of not playing games like Missouri with six guys suited up.
Preseason basketball analytics seem like a far more fruitless endeavor than football analytics because it only takes a couple moving parts to drastically change a team's fortunes. I love KenPom as the season nears the mid-way point and then leading into the tournament.
They have Shayok and Jacobson loaded into the roster based on their stats from UVA and Nebraska, respectively, plus some growth model for improvement from season-to-season with the redshirt on them. They account for that.
They also account for the recruiting class given their rankings and, historically, roughly what you can expect from guys given their stars and percentages.
I agree that it is not perfect, but the idea they inherently underrate us because of what we have coming in is not quite right. Nearly every team in the country is going to have a case for improvement through newcomers in the same way, too.
They just crunch the numbers to put us on the wrong side of the bubble right now.
Might be completely wrong come mid-season, yeah, given actual team data for 10-15 games is way better than projections, but it is the best guess right now.
I feel where you're coming from, but I think ISU had a unique mix last year, with its most talented players also it's least experienced, along with a couple low-mid major guys playing big roles that are in essence directly replaced by vets with proven worth, and now is in store for a unique leap this year.They have Shayok and Jacobson loaded into the roster based on their stats from UVA and Nebraska, respectively, plus some growth model for improvement from season-to-season with the redshirt on them. They account for that.
They also account for the recruiting class given their rankings and, historically, roughly what you can expect from guys given their stars and percentages.
I agree that it is not perfect, but the idea they inherently underrate us because of what we have coming in is not quite right. Nearly every team in the country is going to have a case for improvement through newcomers in the same way, too.
They just crunch the numbers to put us on the wrong side of the bubble right now.
Might be completely wrong come mid-season, yeah, given actual team data for 10-15 games is way better than projections, but it is the best guess right now.
KenPom is certainly the most detailed college basketball tool I know of, and like you said, it's not perfect, and it's imperfections are down to intangibles. Last year's team played below the sum of it's parts because of roster makeup and injuries, and last year's results would drag down this year's projections. Weiler-Babb playing while not 100% comes to mind, along with an early stretch with Jackson as primary point guard, and with six or seven players to choose from, and it's not the six or seven ISU wants. Projecting based on individual efficiencies in a team sport is tricky business.
A healthy Nick Weiler-Babb, who knows he's a point guard, combined with core of the team having a year of college basketball under their belt, combined with high-quality veterans replacing directly replacing (position for position) the least talented cogs in the machine last year and apparently improved team chemistry is a cumulative intangible that computers would have difficulty accounting for. I think ISU's progression will be on the higher end of the bell curve compared to many past and present teams with similar profiles.
Interesting stuff. I'm not a big believer in KenPom in-season to evaluate resumes, but when it comes to preseason projections number-crunching trends, it seems well-formulated.
The first comparison chart that includes the Royce team, that's about where I'd put my expectation for ISU this season -- 8/9 seed area.
Curious about the non-conference teams listed, have Southern and NDSU been added, and I wasn't aware? (if so, entirely possible I missed it). But where are Iowa and Drake?
I will say from the outset that I do expect ISU to make the tournament next year, and I would be worried for the state of the program if we did not (unless there are some really extenuation circumstances, such as a repeat of last year's horrible set of injuries for key players at key times/bereavement of a starter the same way).
However, I like discussing the assumptions and logic of these projections, so...
RED:
Their models are going to project improvement from year-to-year from players, particularly men going from their freshmen to their sophomore seasons. Statistically, while guys improve as upperclassmen and despite the "sophomore slump" cliché, that is usually the off-season of the greatest improvement for most players in the game.
So we are mostly talking about Wigginton, Lewis, and Lard here.
They project the following ORTGs for those three...
Wigginton = 110
Lewis = 99
Lard = 114
Here is what they actually achieved last year...
Wigginton = 98.7
Lewis = 87.1
Lard = 111.1
...so the model is giving those guys credit for likely playing better. They are also increasing NWB's total from 110 to 116 -- might be a slight underestimation given the return from injury, but you have to discount that a little yourself. We are unsure about his health, too, even if I hope he comes back 100% and completely confident.
BLUE:
I think all of us would agree that Jacobson and Shayok are going to be better than an unhealthy Brase and an over-matched Beverly, but the model knows this, too. It has already given us an upgrade in that time and came up with what it did.
I think we do need to cool it a little on those two, though, at least until we see it in action. Jacobson started for bad Nebraska teams. Shayok is coming from one of the best programs in the country, but he started 14/34 games as a junior, played 20.6 minutes (though that was somehow the second most on the team) per game, and shot 33% from three that season. Both of them better be making some pretty large leaps.
The rest:
I do hope you are right about all of the other differences coming down to team chemistry and avoiding a slew of bad luck. I agree with you that the team last year had a kernel of a good basketball team. I really thought we had something going through that winning streak, even if we were mostly beating up on cupcakes.
A healthy NWB running the show, Wigginton getting buckets, Jackson hitting threes, Solomon screening and boxing out, "good Lard" from games like the Oklahoma game, a healthy Talley, the Lewis from late in the season who was hitting threes, and a Beverly who gives you a good 10-15 minutes per night is probably a team that finishes in the middle of most other conferences and maybe even sneaks in the NCAA tournament.
I really wonder how things might have been different if we won a few of those close Big 12 games early in the conference season and/or stayed healthy. We will never know. I have to hope you are right that the model misses something like that.
Then again, just about every team in the country is probably able to tell themselves some narrative about why that might be. I hope ours is right.
I would be satisfied with a #8 to #9 seed, even if that means a likely execution by somebody like UVA or Gonzaga. Then again, a team heavy on seniors like ours, playing for their lives, can always be pesky in that first weekend game.
However, I like discussing the assumptions and logic of these projections, so...
RED:
Their models are going to project improvement from year-to-year from players, particularly men going from their freshmen to their sophomore seasons. Statistically, while guys improve as upperclassmen and despite the "sophomore slump" cliché, that is usually the off-season of the greatest improvement for most players in the game.
So we are mostly talking about Wigginton, Lewis, and Lard here.
They project the following ORTGs for those three...
Wigginton = 110
Lewis = 99
Lard = 114
Here is what they actually achieved last year...
Wigginton = 98.7
Lewis = 87.1
Lard = 111.1
...so the model is giving those guys credit for likely playing better. They are also increasing NWB's total from 110 to 116 -- might be a slight underestimation given the return from injury, but you have to discount that a little yourself. We are unsure about his health, too, even if I hope he comes back 100% and completely confident.
BLUE:
I think all of us would agree that Jacobson and Shayok are going to be better than an unhealthy Brase and an over-matched Beverly, but the model knows this, too. It has already given us an upgrade in that time and came up with what it did.
I think we do need to cool it a little on those two, though, at least until we see it in action. Jacobson started for bad Nebraska teams. Shayok is coming from one of the best programs in the country, but he started 14/34 games as a junior, played 20.6 minutes (though that was somehow the second most on the team) per game, and shot 33% from three that season. Both of them better be making some pretty large leaps.
The rest:
I do hope you are right about all of the other differences coming down to team chemistry and avoiding a slew of bad luck. I agree with you that the team last year had a kernel of a good basketball team. I really thought we had something going through that winning streak, even if we were mostly beating up on cupcakes.
A healthy NWB running the show, Wigginton getting buckets, Jackson hitting threes, Solomon screening and boxing out, "good Lard" from games like the Oklahoma game, a healthy Talley, the Lewis from late in the season who was hitting threes, and a Beverly who gives you a good 10-15 minutes per night is probably a team that finishes in the middle of most other conferences and maybe even sneaks in the NCAA tournament.
I really wonder how things might have been different if we won a few of those close Big 12 games early in the conference season and/or stayed healthy. We will never know. I have to hope you are right that the model misses something like that.
Then again, just about every team in the country is probably able to tell themselves some narrative about why that might be. I hope ours is right.
I would be satisfied with a #8 to #9 seed, even if that means a likely execution by somebody like UVA or Gonzaga. Then again, a team heavy on seniors like ours, playing for their lives, can always be pesky in that first weekend game.
Their preseason rankings last year had us as #37 in the country...
http://barttorvik.com/trank-time-machine.php?date=20170801&year=2018
So they were actually way too optimistic. They have us as #40 going into this season as a bubble team, so they likely had us projected as a bubble team last season.
I figure we would have all found that fair or even generous at the time.
We fell 59 places to #96. That was one of the largest misses for a P6 school...
These are their misses in the other direction...
Thanks for digging into this. I think Kenpom is the most accurate way to judge teams at this point of the season and after last year I don't think being ranked #40 is really a huge slight. Conservative in my opinion but I can understand why that system would have the team there.
We should remember that any predictions at this point are predictions base on growth/addition assumption and Kenpom himself will say his model is far less predictive going into the season then once actual sample size (Late Dec/Jan) can be gathered. Good debate to have but we need to see the team play together for ~10 games to really know ISU's potential.
Is KenPom adjusting these efficiencies in a vacuum, or does the high tide raise all boats? That's part of what I consider the cumulative intangible, along with the other more obvious intangibles.
I should have been more clear from the beginning, I think an #8 or #9 is a reasonable prediction. This will sound convoluted, but even though I agree with the overall prediction, I see that as more a function of how seeding works in the tournament, and schedule makeup, more than overall team efficiency over the course of the year. I expect the team to be more efficient than what any computer can spit out, but that might not reflect itself in overall record or seed given the front loaded nature of the non-con schedule and how tight the middle of the Big 12 is, where luck and timing will play a big factor for teams two through eight. But I'm wandering into gut feeling territory here.
I think it is a matter of both, really.
Subtract outgoing players -- usually, across the whole of BB, the best players given they are mostly upperclassmen and/or leaving early for professional careers.
Add incoming players -- either transfers from other schools, with or without red-shirts or JUCOs and prep players based on their rankings from recruiting services.
Add improvement to returning players based on historical trends/models.
= player efficiencies, which then build into team efficiencies.
Teams that have a lot of the first and not much in the second two categories should get worse, while teams not losing much (or not losing all that much that good really) while bringing a lot in should be better. We are jumping from #96 to #40, which you might expect after only losing Jackson (a good if one-dimensional player, even if that one-dimension was drilling threes) and two duds (sorry, Jeff and Hans) and given what we have coming in plus the expected improvement in the returning guys on the roster.
Thing is, the same process is going on with a lot of teams. The overall quality of basketball, though, year-to-year, does not really change.
Efficiency statistics are zero-sum like that.
The bold part above is what "worries" me.
The projections have us with the efficiency of a tournament team -- see my point about similar efficiency statistics to the Royce team, which was a #8. However, the projections did not have the team making the tournament based on the RPI and the like. The difference comes down to, well, simply having enough wins or not.
That is the problem with the Big 12 right now. Wins are hard to come by. There are a lot of 50-50 games, which puts a lot of variability into your projected record. It is not like it is a series of 80-20 games where you can be pretty sure about your outcome. Two teams with similar efficiency statistics can have records 3-5 games apart in conference, which is going to make all the different to making the tournament or not.
I just hope we are on the right side of that curve.
I am going to get a couple Excedrin now after reading the last dozen or so posts. All of this preseason analysis can make your head spin.
I think it's pretty simple, if NWB comes back healthy, if Cam Lard is OK, if Wigginton is improving as it appears from these articles and the Camps he is going to, if Young is improved, if THT is as advertised, if Shayok and Jacobsen play up to their potential and we avoid injuries / suspensions, if Talley keeps playing like he did toward the end of the season, and the other freshmen provide us with at least one more rotation player, we could have just an unbelievable year and a good seed in the NCAA tournament. But that is a lot of "ifs." So, my expectations are optimistic based on our talent but with some hesitancy due to all the unknowns.
I think it's pretty simple, if NWB comes back healthy, if Cam Lard is OK, if Wigginton is improving as it appears from these articles and the Camps he is going to, if Young is improved, if THT is as advertised, if Shayok and Jacobsen play up to their potential and we avoid injuries / suspensions, if Talley keeps playing like he did toward the end of the season, and the other freshmen provide us with at least one more rotation player, we could have just an unbelievable year and a good seed in the NCAA tournament. But that is a lot of "ifs." So, my expectations are optimistic based on our talent but with some hesitancy due to all the unknowns.