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GO UCONN!!!!!
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A ton of games were played Sunday. I've linked all the results and while there were a couple of Top 25 cancellations, there were many games that were able to be played.
And I can't tell you how jealous I am of the fans of those teams.
Every night, when prepping this blog, I look for articles about UConn to share with you. And when there are no results other than another UConn game being postponed, well, it's painful.
I see all these teams that I know if everyone was healthy UConn would be sitting at the No. 2 spot right behind South Carolina.
2020 was a really tough season, with no fans and cancelled games and finally the season ending early. But somehow this feels worse, starting with the Bueckers' injury.
So, what happens next has to be better than what we have now. And something tells me that somehow and sometime this season, UConn will have it's full compliment of players. Hopefully early enough to get several games in together.
Then LOOK OUT!!!!
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Now it's their turn to be jealous!!!!
AYANNA PATTERSON - Class of 2022
KAMOREA ARNOLD - Class of 2023
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GAMES
MOST SCORES HAVE CLICKABLE LINKS TO A GAME STORY
UPSETS IN RED
No. 24 North Carolina 77 Clemson 59
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Straight from the Dog
I wrote about 4 games yesterday and I think I did pretty well in my comments.
No. 3 Louisville take a trip to Georgia Tech to take on the No. 16 Yellow Jackets in a game between two teams that have both beaten UConn this season. This is a really tough one to call, but I will make one prediction, If either team scores more than 59 points they will win this game. Good chance for an upset in this one.
Result - I was close. The team that scored more than 49 won. A real slugfest that Louisville was able to pull out at the end.
No. 7 Tennessee goes to Fayetteville to take on unranked Arkansas in two more games that are on UConn's schedule. The Huskies beat Arkansas in their first game of the season. Tennessee has been playing great defense, but again, they have been playing mostly offensivly challenged teams. Their center Key makes it impossible for teams to get to the rim. The Razorbacks will have to hit a ton of threes to pull this one off.
Result - Arkansas was 8-40 on threes. That is an incredible amount of three pointers to put up, but hitting only 20% is really bad. The freshman Wolfenbarger was 2-10 from the field and 0-7 on threes. Tennessee's Key was the difference on defense with five blocks and many other intimidation plays.
No. 17 Notre Dame visits No. 15 Duke in another ACC tussle. Duke is a tough team to figure. They have played some teams tough. They beat ranked Iowa team by 14 points and played No. 1 South Carolina in a close game. But then they just got hammered by Virginia Tech. Gotta go with the Irish here, but maybe the Blue Devils will have a bounce back game. I hope so.
Result - My hopes came true as Duke was able to beat the Irish 72-70 on a couple of late three pointers. It was a great bounce back game by the Blue Devils.
No. 6 Maryland visits No. 8 Indiana in a huge Big Ten matchup. I love how the Hoosiers play and if you can watch this game on ESPN2, do it. It will be very entertaining.
Result - This game was as entertaining as it gets. Back and forth and then into overtime. But like I said, I love how the Hoosiers play and they pulled away in the OT session.
Two great coachs lock horns when No. 23 Texas A&M travels to Louisiana to take on No. 19 LSU. Gary Blair leads the Aggies against Kim Mulkey's Tigers. At home, I like LSU to take this one.
Result - LSU went ahead and stayed ahead. Mulkey has them playing at a very high level and still only have one loss on the season. They really should crack the Top 15 next week.
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By Phil
Upsets
Inspired by DavidinNaples' observation about potential upsets on the schedule, I thought I would look into it a little more.
I haven’t completely organized my thoughts, but I thought I’d share some preliminary observations.
I looked at the Massey stats where one can see the projected scores along with the implied margin of victory. I arbitrarily selected single digits as potential upset games. In other words, if the expected margin of victory is under 10, I counted it as a game with upset potential. Obviously, upsets can happen even with a larger mismatch – for example, on Thursday 30 December, Brown played St. John’s at St. John’s and was expected to lose by 20 but ended up winning 75–72 – but I’m sticking with single digits for the moment.
Massey has 43 games scheduled today where the projected margin of victory is in single digits. My first instinct was that this was a large number but I haven’t looked at this before so I don’t know that for sure. One complication is that many games have been postponed or canceled so many of those 43 games will not be played today.
After thinking that 43 sounded like a lot, I checked yesterday’s games, and I was surprised to see that 54 had an expected single-digit margin of victory. My off the top of the head guess is that the start of conference play should increase the number of expected close games. This should be easy to check.
However, as we know, many of the games on 1 January were postponed or canceled. Of the 54 potential upset games, only 25 were played. In those 25 games, nine of them were upsets. This strikes me as quite plausible. I haven’t done the math completely, but one ought to guess that a little less than half would end up being upsets.
I haven’t completely organized my thoughts, but I thought I’d share some preliminary observations.
I looked at the Massey stats where one can see the projected scores along with the implied margin of victory. I arbitrarily selected single digits as potential upset games. In other words, if the expected margin of victory is under 10, I counted it as a game with upset potential. Obviously, upsets can happen even with a larger mismatch – for example, on Thursday 30 December, Brown played St. John’s at St. John’s and was expected to lose by 20 but ended up winning 75–72 – but I’m sticking with single digits for the moment.
Massey has 43 games scheduled today where the projected margin of victory is in single digits. My first instinct was that this was a large number but I haven’t looked at this before so I don’t know that for sure. One complication is that many games have been postponed or canceled so many of those 43 games will not be played today.
After thinking that 43 sounded like a lot, I checked yesterday’s games, and I was surprised to see that 54 had an expected single-digit margin of victory. My off the top of the head guess is that the start of conference play should increase the number of expected close games. This should be easy to check.
However, as we know, many of the games on 1 January were postponed or canceled. Of the 54 potential upset games, only 25 were played. In those 25 games, nine of them were upsets. This strikes me as quite plausible. I haven’t done the math completely, but one ought to guess that a little less than half would end up being upsets.
I looked at the previous day, 31 December. Not a lot of games scheduled, nine had single-digit projected margin of victory but not a single upset. Definitely a small sample but mildly interesting that not a single one of these games turned out to be an upset.
The day before, 30 December, there were 23 games scheduled with a single digit projected margin of victory and 11 almost exactly half turned out to be upsets.
On 29 December, there were 10 potential upsets and six, more than half, turned out to be upsets. Again 10 is a small sample size, so the vagaries of chance makes it likely that there will be some day where there are more than half upsets, and this just barely exceeded 50%.
Someone with better computer skills could probably automate this so that one could look at the entire season and see if anything interesting arises.
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By David in Naples
Shame on Iowa and Caitlin Clark for stats padding..! The headlines will read that Clark scored 44 points on 18-26 shooting. Wow, what a player..!! But a deep dive into the stats show an interesting game plan.
Consider:
1. Iowa won the game 93-56 and was leading by 30 after 3 periods.
2. Iowa was playing that basketball juggernaut, the Evansville Purple Aces. Yes, those purple aces..!!
3. Clark scored a basket with 2:47 left in the game to give Iowa 91 points.
4. Clark scored again with 2:22 left in the game to give Iowa 93 points.
5. Iowa played 9 players.
6. Clark took 26 shots. The other 4 starters to 26 shots combined.
7. Clark was 2-7 from 3 pt range.
Pure stat padding by Iowa. Playing Clark and having her score the last 4 points when up by 40 is bush league. Shame..!!
Consider:
1. Iowa won the game 93-56 and was leading by 30 after 3 periods.
2. Iowa was playing that basketball juggernaut, the Evansville Purple Aces. Yes, those purple aces..!!
3. Clark scored a basket with 2:47 left in the game to give Iowa 91 points.
4. Clark scored again with 2:22 left in the game to give Iowa 93 points.
5. Iowa played 9 players.
6. Clark took 26 shots. The other 4 starters to 26 shots combined.
7. Clark was 2-7 from 3 pt range.
Pure stat padding by Iowa. Playing Clark and having her score the last 4 points when up by 40 is bush league. Shame..!!
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