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Most Improved Player: Herbert Hill (Providence)

All-Improved Team

G: Aaron Brooks (Oregon)
G: Acie Law (Texas A&M)
G: Drew Neitzel (Michigan State)
F: Dionte Christmas (Temple)
C: Hebert Hill (Providence)

 

- Last year’s CHN Most Improved Player was Florida’s Joakim Noah.

 

I love sports stats. Its as simple as that.. baseball has the best stats obviously, but college basketball has some underrated numbers. And I'm not talking about the RPI, I'm talking about Ken Pomeroy's offensive and defensive efficiency numbers. Its not my place to explain these numbers, but you can check out http://kenpom.com/blog/index.php/weblog/stats_explained/ for what the stats mean. But basically a good offensive efficiency rating means a team is good at offense and a good defensive efficiency rating means your good at D. Ken combines these two efficiency ratings into the "Pythag Winning Percentage" which basically predicts how a team will do against an average schedule. For example, last year's national champion Florida, ended up #1 in the Pythag category. They were projected to have a 97.4 winning percentage against an average schedule. The worst, not suprisingly was 1-26 Savannah State with .8% Pythag winning percentage. This means (theoretically), Savannah State would only have won 1 of every 100 games against an average NCAA schedule last year.

Wisconsin at Michigan State, Air Force at UNLV, Texas A&M at Oklahoma State, and Duke at Clemson

Kentucky at Arkansas, Southern Illinois at Wichita State, Ohio State at Michigan State, Texas A&M at Kansas

#9 Pitt at Villanova, Michigan State at Illinois, Texas at Texas Tech, #7 Oregon at #2 UCLA

So many thoughts.. such little space to put them all in. Where do I begin?..

UCONN is done. Period. Well.. if they win 5 straight lets talk, until then, they're done. Michigan will be joining them in the NIT.. where a Tommy Amaker team apparently belongs.

Big win for VCU at Drexel.. but the Dragons were without their best player. Frank Elegar was suspended by the CAA for that one game. The Dragons were up at half.. and who knows what would have happened if he played. I'm not sold on VCU yet.. and I wouldn't give up on Drexel either.

Xavier will be a tough out in the NCAA Tournament (and they will make it). Who is Johnny Wolf by the way? I think he's the best 10 mpg on a mid-major player in the country.. He doesnt get much play in crunchtime.. but on the season, Xavier's backup point guard has 48 assists to just 8 turnovers. That's a money 6 to 1 ratio.. he also shoots 50% from the floor and 48% from three.. let the kid play!