Doggydaddy's Den: Doggy's Doghouse 3/10/2022

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GO UCONN!!!!!

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My mom would have been 99 today.

Miss her every day!!!

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Like Phil says in his piece today, the time between the BE Championship game and Selection Sunday is just torture. And then the time between Selection Sunday and the first tournament game is just as bad.

But UConn fans have a lot to look forward to. The team is playing theirh best basketball of the season with a great 9 player rotation.

Now that first game? Yeah, it usually gets pretty ugly, more so when it's 1 vs 16. But the 2 vs 15 is not much better.

I don't have to see the opponent to predict a 40+ point win.

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Ayanna Patterson Highlights

Me and @ayannap34 getting some lab work in @UConnWBB #JHOWELLTRAINING pic.twitter.com/QoEvnJKK6W
— Jamal Howell (@JaMalHOWELL260) February 26, 2022

Gotta love the pull up jumper

Love this kid!!!

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GAMES

No. 25 UCF South Florida Late Game

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Straight from the Dog

Dave isn't the only one that likes stats. Every once in a while, something catches my eye.

Christyn Williams has become a much more reliable three point threat. She is up to 37.1% on threes. More than respectable. It's been a tale of two halves for her.

First half - 13 games, 17-53 for 32.1%

Second half - 14 games, 26-63 for 41.3%

Add her to Azzi Fudd and you have a really good duo from deep.

If Paige Bueckers can get back to form......well....lights out!!

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Yesterday I posted about the DUI, underage drinking and car crashing incident with Brooklyn Miles. She was arrested and charged with various infractions. Her hearing is in April.

It appears that her only punishment by Coach Harper was a one game suspension. At least that is all that was made public. I questioned if that was a fair punishment. Personally, I thought it should have been more.

I found one similar incident. UConn player James Bouknight hit a pole while driving without a license, then fled police, according to a warrant. After turning himself in to police, he applied for an accelerated rehabilitation program that would result in all charges against him being dismissed.

UConn suspended him for 3 games. No alcohol was involved.

No, I don't think the one game was enough.

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From another Orange Idiot....

"If you don’t think the top colleges in the country are still going after Justine Pissott and trying to pry her away then you’re sadly mistaken."

I believe Pissott has signed her LOI. And here is a definition of what that means...

A Letter of Intent is a legally-binding contract which says that you will attend that college for a minimum of 1 academic year in exchange for an athletic scholarship. Once you sign a LOI, the recruiting process is over. No other college is allowed to recruit you.

This is typical parinoia from the Tennessee fans.

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By PHIL

Who is number 4?

It’s the best time of year, it’s the worst time of year.

All year, I look forward to March. What could be better than basketball games every day, upsets wreaking havoc on polls, individual performances that are awesome to watch, starting to fill out brackets for the upcoming tournament, and arguing about which players deserve which awards?

That describes March and if we are lucky early April.

But there’s also the period after the Big East tournament ends, and the first NCAA tournament tipoff. Too many days with too few games, none involving our main team of interest.

Sure, there’s a few things to talk about such as the bracket on Sunday night, but there’s about two days’ worth of discussion with 10 days to fill. That means we must rehash and revisit issues we settled or think we settled over and over again. This is where I’m supposed to say am going to try to talk about something new, and I’ll try but I won’t be surprised if I fail.

Baylor reached number four in both the AP and Coaches poll. I’ve tried before, mostly tongue-in-cheek but somewhat seriously, to argue that UConn ought to be in the top four. I thought I’d try comparing UConn to Baylor and see if I could make an argument that UConn clearly deserves to be ranked in the poll ahead of Baylor. It’s a hard sell. (There are some good arguments, both teams have five losses, but two of UConn’s five losses are to the top five teams in the country; Baylor hasn’t played any of them. Take out those losses and UConn’s record looks a lot better. The problem is take out those five losses and that weakens UConn strength of schedule; so it’s complicated.)

That’s when I decided to think about what it means to create a list of the top 25 teams. We all know exactly what that means right? The best 25 teams. But let’s dig a little. The best 25 teams right now or the best 25 teams over the course of the season? Those aren’t the same thing and we implicitly concede this when we weight a November win or loss a little less that we weight a more recent result.

We know that the rankings in the polls do not officially play a role in the selection committee deliberations, but we also know that the selection committee knows who is highly ranked in the polls.

What I would like to suggest is that the AP poll ranking, and the selection committee rankings will be different, not simply because of the vagaries of different humans making different decisions but because they are serving different purposes. Very crudely, the polls reflect how a team has actually performed during the season, while the selection list is an attempt to identify the best teams right now. There are a few differences (a small one being growth of the team over the course of the season), but the major one is injuries. Here we must be careful definitionally. We don’t mean injuries such as Griffin because she is not available for the rest of the season. We mean injuries during the season which might have adversely affected the record, but where the players have recovered and are largely or fully available.

UConn is the poster child for this phenomenon, although there are many other examples, one of which is Villanova who lost Siegrist for the first six games of the season, so when I look at Villanova ranked 59 in Massey, which doesn’t quite sound like a bubble team, I must remember they lost three of the first six games without Siegrist. They are not remotely being considered for an AP poll but if the AP extended beyond 25, I would expect them to be downgraded because of actual results, while moved up a bit when assessing how they are to be slotted into the tournament.

I look at Baylor and see some pretty solid wins, such as back-to-back wins over Texas in early February, and think those wins aren’t really matched by anything that UConn has accomplished. I look at losses by UConn to Georgia Tech and Villanova and don’t see black marks like that on Baylor’s resume.

The bottom line:

I think the AP voters are correct in assessing that Baylor season is deserving of a number four ranking, while simultaneously thinking that the selection committee could make a case for assigning UConn to the fourth number one seed. I’m not pretending that will happen, but I’ve come to terms with thinking that the two metrics are slightly different.

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By David in Naples

Since 1994, Geno and UConn have won 25 conference titles. Of that total, 16 were in the old Big East, 7 were in the AAC and the last two in the new Big East. Those 25 titles have come in 29 years. In four of the years when UConn didn't win the title, they lost in the final 3 times. (In 2004, the final was Boston College vs Rutgers) The 3 losses occurred to Villanova in 2003, Rutgers in 2007 and Notre Dame in 2013.

The various losses have all been avenged. The 2013 loss was avenged in the NCAA tournament with a victory over ND on the way to the National Championship. The conference title was also won 7 times over Notre Dame. The Rutgers loss was avenged with 4 victories in the conference title game. It took until this week to make up for the Villanova loss. The 30 point smack down and possible elimination from the NCAA tournament was worth the wait.

Geno was 34 when he made his first coaching debut in the NCAA tourny. This next Big Dance will be his 33rd straight.

Go Huskies..!!

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