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GO UCONN!!!!!
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Join my Group!!
I have created a Tournament Challenge group for this blog.
It's called Doggy's Doghouse and the password is doggydaddy.
Just click on the link.
Two entries per person!!
Have at it! And good luck. I'll be reporting the results after each round.
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Time and TV
Bridgeport Region
Reynolds Coliseum
Raleigh, NC
No. 8 Washington State vs No. 9 Kansas State Saturday 11:30 AM ESPN2
No. 1 North Carolina State vs TBD Saturday 2:00 PM ESPN
Gampel Pavilion
Storrs, CT
No. 2 UConn vs No. 15 Mercer Saturday 1:00 PM ABC
No. 7 UCF vs No. 10 Florida Saturday 3:30 PM ESPNN
Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall
Bloomington, IN
No. 3 Indiana vs No. 14 Charlotte Saturday 1:30 PM ESPN2
No. 6 Kentucky vs No. 11 Princeton Saturday 4:00 PM ESPN
Lloyd Noble Center
Norman, OK
No. 5 Notre Dame vs No. 12 UMASS Saturday 7:30 PM ESPN2
No. 4 Oklahoma vs 13 IUPIU Saturday 10:00 PM ESPNU
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Spokane Region
Maples Pavilion
Stanford, CA
No. 8 Kansas vs No. 9 Georgia Tech Friday 7:30 PM ESPNU
No. 1 Stanford vs No. 16 Montana State Friday 10:00 PM ESPN2
Pete Maravich Assembly Center
Baton Rouge, LA
No. 6 Ohio State vs TBD Saturday 2:30 PM ESPNU
No. 3 LSU vs No. 14 Jackson State Saturday 5:00 PM ESPNU
Xfinity Center
College Park, MD
No. 5 Viriginia Tech vs No. 12 Florida Gulf Coast Friday 2:30 PM ESPNU
No. 4 Maryland vs No. 13 Delaware Friday 5:00 PM ESPNU
Frank Erwin Center
Austin, TX
No. 7 Utah vs No. 10 Arkansas Friday 5:30 PM ESPNN
No. 2 Texas vs No. 15 Fairfield Friday 8:00 PM ESPN2
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Greensboro Region
James H. Hilton Coliseum
Ames, IA
No. 6 Georgia vs TBD Friday 7:30 PM ESPNN
No. 3 Iowa State vs No. 14 UT Arlington Friday 10:00 PM ESPNU
McKale Center
Tucson, AZ
No. 5 North Carolina vs No. 12 Stephen F. Austin Saturday 7:30 PM ESPNN
No. 4 Arizona vs No. 13 UNLV Saturday10:00 PM ESPN2
Colonial Life Arena
Columbia, SC
No. 8 Miami vs No. 9 South Florida Friday 11:30 AM ESPN2
No. 1 South Carolina vs TBD Friday 2:00 PM ESPN
Carver Hawkeye Arena
Iowa City, IA
No. 7 Colorado vs No. 10 Creighton Friday 1:30 PM ESPNN
2 Iowa vs 15 Illinois State Friday 4:00 PM ESPN
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Wichita Region
Crisler Center
Ann Arbor, MI
No. 6 BYU vs No. 11 Villanova Saturday 1:00 PM ESPNN
No. 3 Michigan vs No. 14 American University Saturday 3:30 PM ESPN2
Thompson-Boling Arena
Knoxville, TN
No. 4 Tennessee vs 13 Bufalo Saturday 3:00 PM ABC
No. 5 Oregon vs 12 Belmont Saturday 5:30 PM ESPN2
Ferrell Center
Waco, TX
No. 7 Ole Miss vs 10 South Dakota Friday 1:30 PM ESPN2
No. 2 Baylor vs No. 15 Hawai'i Friday 4:00 PM ESPN2
KFC Yum Center
Louisville, KY
No. 8 Nebraska vs 9 Gonzaga Friday 3:30 PM ESPNN
No. 1 Louisville vs No. 16 Albany Friday 5:00 PM ESPNU
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Straight from the Dog
You won't find a better tournament preview than what former Hartford Courant writer put together for ESPN. They have solid gold with Alexa.
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UConn Post Selection Interviews
Geno
Paige
Azzi
Caroline
Nika
Dorka
Christyn
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First she was, then she wasn't, now she is probable....
Geno announced that Dorka Juhasz was coming back next season. Then UConn said that she hadn't decided. But Geno wouldn't have said anything unless Dorka told him. It's probably more of a timing thing. I would expect her own announcement to come out any day.
Her returning is HUGE for this team. She will be their starting center and build on what she was able to do this season. I'd look for a double double type player.
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Home Advantage
It is an interesting article and I will discuss some of the points made in the article. While my tone will come across as critical, I will say that this article was pulled together with a fairly short deadline so it shouldn't be viewed as an academic peer-reviewed analysis. Articles in major papers about women's basketball should be welcomed.
My first comment is to invoke a law I learned about a few years ago, which has turned out to be amazingly insightful:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines
Betteridge's law of headlines states: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."
While the author may protest that he simply asked a question, anyone who has spent any time with the news business is familiar with the adage, so the implied point of the article this does suggest that the placement was unfair.
The article asserts that placement of UConn in Bridgeport gives them a "virtual home court advantage". The question at hand is whether a virtual home court advantage is the same as a home-court advantage.
Home-court advantage has been studied statistically, at least simplistically. The simplistic analysis uses a single variable with values "home" and "away" or "home", "neutral" and "away", and crunches a bunch of scores to figure out home-court advantage. Many people generally assume it is worth about three points in women's college basketball.
With the rich potential dataset, I will be surprised if more sophisticated analyses havenn't been done but I confess I'm unaware of them. Let me just scratch the surface and mentioned a few reasons why the problem is a little more complicated than home versus away.
Everyone knows that playing at home is better than playing away but why is this venue the same as playing at home?
There are a variety of factors:
- Players at home sleep in their familiar beds
- Players at home eat familiar food
- Players at home find it easier to follow a standard pregame routine
- Players at home are shooting at backboards they are familiar with against a background they have seen many many times
- Players at home have supportive fans in the stands.
Visitors have the opposite situation but there are also some different considerations for visitors.
A visitor from Fairfield driving to Storrs is not the same league as a visitor from Washington State flying hours across the country and now playing in a different time zone. A visitor from Florida may have a long travel time, but no time zone differences. Occasionally there are travel problems necessitating changing planes and/or buses which disrupt routines.
A true statistical analysis factors in all of these variables. With this many variables you cannot do this over a single season but you need multiple seasons which adds an additional complication because teams change over the years.
If you had such an analysis you can look at the relative contributions and then note that Bridgeport is sort of home but not exactly home. It's close enough that you can drive there avoiding multi-hour flights and avoiding time zone changes. It's close enough that you can probably sleep in your own bed and have your usual food. But it's far enough away that it will not be the usual routine. It's not the same backboard you are used to nor are the background lines the same familiar lines as in Gampel. As fans, we hope that the contribution of fans to the equation is significant, but I seriously wonder. (As a small aside, I wonder if layups are affected less than three point shooting.)
The Washington Post attempted to do an analysis of the home-court advantage for UConn and came up with seven points.
A true statistical analysis factors in all of these variables. With this many variables you cannot do this over a single season but you need multiple seasons which adds an additional complication because teams change over the years.
If you had such an analysis you can look at the relative contributions and then note that Bridgeport is sort of home but not exactly home. It's close enough that you can drive there avoiding multi-hour flights and avoiding time zone changes. It's close enough that you can probably sleep in your own bed and have your usual food. But it's far enough away that it will not be the usual routine. It's not the same backboard you are used to nor are the background lines the same familiar lines as in Gampel. As fans, we hope that the contribution of fans to the equation is significant, but I seriously wonder. (As a small aside, I wonder if layups are affected less than three point shooting.)
The Washington Post attempted to do an analysis of the home-court advantage for UConn and came up with seven points.
While they did not share the details of the latter analysis the implication is that it was done on a single year's data. There was no suggestion that they made any adjustment for missing players. If you look at our schedule after Paige was hurt, there were seven away games, three home games and one sort of home game at Mohegan Sun. However you measure that, there was an emphasis on away games when we were missing many of our players. We ended our season with four consecutive home games followed by three sort of home games at Mohegan Sun with many of those games reflecting partial or full complements of the team. We had some big margins of victories in those home games but my concern is that the WP analysis attributes the margin of victory to being home as opposed to having our players back. They suggest home advantage is seven points.
I don't doubt that their calculations are correct, I just question that the seven points is all attributable to being home as opposed to getting our players back.
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By David in Naples
The brackets are set and UConn ended up as a #2 seed in Bridgeport. According to Doggy, if the favorite for each game wins, the Huskies would play Mercer, UCF, Indiana and N.C. State. That depends on UConn taking care of business in each of their games. So how have the Huskies done against each of those teams.
According to my research:
1. Mercer - never played.
2. UCF - UConn is 13-0 all time.
3. Indiana - never played.
4. N.C. State - UConn is 6-2. Two loses were in 1991 & 1998. Wins were in 2001, 2002, 2003 & 2007.
Three other possible games would be against Florida, Oklahoma or Kentucky.
5. Oklahoma - UConn is 13-0 all time.
6. Kentucky - UConn is 4-1 all time. Loss was in 1992.
7. Florida - UConn is 2-0 all time.
1. Mercer - never played.
2. UCF - UConn is 13-0 all time.
3. Indiana - never played.
4. N.C. State - UConn is 6-2. Two loses were in 1991 & 1998. Wins were in 2001, 2002, 2003 & 2007.
Three other possible games would be against Florida, Oklahoma or Kentucky.
5. Oklahoma - UConn is 13-0 all time.
6. Kentucky - UConn is 4-1 all time. Loss was in 1992.
7. Florida - UConn is 2-0 all time.
Overall, the Huskies have a great record against all of these teams. Of course, that means absolutely nothing in a game in 2022.
Go Huskies..!!
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UCONN LINKS
Several links are pay sites. Sorry!
Geno on Fairfields Joe Frager "Thrilled for him" NH Register
Is UConn a lock for Final Four - NCAA odds Draft Kings
Signs of normalcy for UConn as Tourney begins Republican American
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