Doggydaddy's Den: Doggy's Doghouse 2/2/2023

GO UCONN!!!!!

************************************************

Extended UConn/Providence Highlights

Game Replay

************************************************

GAMES

Upset noted with red **

No. 1 South Carolina 87 Kentucky 69

No. 3 LSU 82 Georgia 77 OT

No. 6 Iowa 96 No. 8 Maryland 82

No. 9 Notre Dame 72 Boston College 59

No. 11 North Carolina 73 Virginia 62

No. 13 Virginia Tech 78 Syracuse 64

No. 15 North Carolina State 62 Georgia Tech 68 **

No. 16 Duke 53 Pittsburgh 44

No. 17 Gonzaga 72 Santa Clara 77 **

No. 18 Michigan 74 Illinois 57

No. 21 Middle Tennessee 62 UTEP 65 **

No. 23 Florida State 72 Wake Forest 44

**********************************

Straight from the Dog

No. 3 LSU was taken to overtime by unranked Georgia before finally putting away the Bulldogs 82-77.

There was a time that I was hoping for an LSU loss so UConn would move past them in the polls as they so clearly deserve. But with the South Carolina game coming up, it's as simple as this. UConn wins, they move ahead of LSU, they lose they don't.

But my dislike for Georgia's Coach Abe made this win by LSU easier to take.

**************************************************

No. 6 Iowa took No. 8 Maryland to the woodshed behind another great game for my pick for POY Caitlen Clark. She had 42 points, 7 rebounds and 9 assists in the 96-82 win for the Hawkeyes.

**************************************************

The fear of South Carolina is really starting to bother me. Yes they are undefeated, yes they have a deep lineup, yes they still have Boston, but no team is perfect, every team can have an off game and they are playing UConn at home!! Come one fans, show some gumption!!

I'll have more details in my Pregame Report, but here are just of my thoughts on the Gamecocks.

1) South Carolina is not as deep as everyone says.

Like Tennessee, who had a ton of players with double digit minutes, teams tend to play a smaller rotation against better competition. Their depth in these kinds of games is overstated. Their starting lineup has been the same all season. Boston, Saxton, Fletcher, Cooke and Beal. So, who came off the bench against the better teams?

Stanford - Amihere with 28 minutes, Hall with 22 and Johnson with 18.

UCLA - Amihere with 17, Hall with 12 and Cardoso with 26

SD ST - Amihere with 17, Hall with 15 and Cardoso with 23

Georgia - Amihere with 17, Johnson with 13 and Cardoso with 20

Miss. St - Johnson with 21, Hall with 13 and Cardoso with 25

Alabama - Amihere with 13, Hall with 25, Johnson with 24 and Cardoso with 18

These are the players with double digit minutes. They do play others off the bench but not for extended time. Not sure that kind of bench depth is helpful.

Also, Fletcher, the starting point guard and Saxton, the starting power forward both only averages around 16 minutes per game each. They are pretty much sharing the position as opposed to Boston, Beal and Cooke, who got 30+ minutes in each of those close games.

2) South Carolina is a really bad shootoing team.

The numbers don't lie. Against the same teams I mentioned with only 8 (1 game with 9) players in the rotation here is how they shot the ball.

FG%, 3FG% and FT% in that order. Rounded up.

Stanford 38%, 29%, 68%

UCLA 39%, 9%, 67%

SD ST 34%, 13%, 67%

Georgia 44%, 41%, 74%

Miss. St 30%, 22%, 58%

Alabama 39%, 35%, 56%

Those are just some ugly, close to UGGY numbers. And none of those teams play defense like UConn.

South Carolina reminds me of the old Tennessee teams. Winning on rebounding and defense.

If UConn can have just an average shooting game and hit the boards hard they have a good shot at winning this game.

********************************************************

Speaking of South Carolina, they beat Kentucky 87-69. The Wildcats are close to the basement in the SEC and a team that the Gamecocks should beat easily and they kinda did that.

But giving up 69 points is way out of character for South Carolina. But going 2-19 on threes was certainly in character.

And to add to the myth of a deep bench, South Carolina played 10 players double digit minutes and 14 players got into the game for the Gamecocks.

Good for them. I'm jealous they have that many healthy players. But nothing that happened in this game made me thing any different about the game Sunday.

**************************************************

By PHIL

Losses by Ranked Teams

What do these 25 teams have in common?

1. Marquette
2. South Florida
3. Oklahoma State
4. Texas Tech
5. Louisville
6. Boston College
7. Wash State
8. Colorado
9. Kansas
10. Mercer
11. Texas
12. Toledo
13. Duke
14. Florida State
15. Oregon State
16. Clemson
17. Miami
18. Purdue
19. DePaul
20. Nebraska
21. Colorado
22. Kansas St
23. Illinois
24. Michigan St
25. USC

I’ll give you a few minutes to think about it.

Okay, time’s up. Every one of these teams beat one of the top 25 (AP as of 30 January) as an unranked team. Yes, some such as South Florida, Florida State and Texas are currently ranked, but while they were unranked they knocked off a ranked team.

The next list is a subset of the list above, but what do they have in common?

1. Marquette
2. Oklahoma State
3. Texas Tech
4. Boston College
5. Texas
6. Florida State
7. Miami

Each of those seven teams have not just knocked off a currently ranked team as an unranked team but they did it more than once. In fact, exactly twice.

That means there are 32 games where an unranked team beat a team that is currently ranked.

The currently ranked teams have lost a total of 84 games (an average of 3.4 games each)

That means 34% of the losses (32÷84) suffered by the current top 25 were to unranked teams. I wish I had made an independent guess before doing the calculation, but I think that value is slightly higher than I might’ve guessed.

Given that we are now in the thick of conference games (one notable exception coming up soon) it may be interesting to see whether that ratio goes up or down, which will be an indication of whether these upsets are more likely to be within conference or outside the conference (of course if I wasn’t so lazy I could probably track that myself)

What do these seven teams have in common? I will give you some time to think about it.

1. South Florida
2. Villanova
3. Duke
4. Notre Dame
5. UConn
6. LSU
7. South Carolina

Time’s up.

None of these teams have lost to an unranked team, with the last two by definition, because they don’t have a loss yet. That means 18 of the current top 25 have lost to a team unranked at the time while only seven have not yet managed to lose to an unranked team.

What do these two teams have in common?

1. Indiana
2. Stanford

They are the two teams with the most wins over ranked teams. Each of them can point to six wins over ranked opponents. Interestingly, Indiana has only a single loss and that was to an unranked team.

What do these two teams have in common?

1. UConn
2. North Carolina

They are tied for second place in terms of number of ranked teams defeated, each having defeated five of the current 25 ranked teams. UConn didn’t surprise me, but I’m not sure I would’ve guessed that North Carolina was tied for second place.

What do these five teams have in common?

1. Texas
2. Middle Tennessee
3. Villanova
4. Virginia Tech
5. LSU

They are the five ranked teams with the fewest number of wins over ranked teams, each with exactly one win. Yes, as is commonly reported, LSU has no wins over the current top 25, but when they beat Arkansas, the Razorbacks were ranked. It would probably be nice if I could redo this analysis based on current rankings but it’s frankly easy to use the ESPN records which shows the ranking at the time of the game.

I’m not going to completely redo the analysis but just looking at this list of five:

• LSU, Villanova and Middle Tennessee now have zero wins over the current top 25

• Texas and Virginia Tech each have a single win over a team that is still in the top 25

Stanford is the highest ranked team (#2) with a loss to an unranked opponent, and Indiana (#4) is the second highest.

Iowa is the highest ranked team (#6) with more than one loss to an unranked team followed by Maryland (#8), each of which has lost twice to an unranked team.

Texas has the dubious distinction of the most losses to unranked teams with four.