Doggydaddy's Den: Doggy's Doghouse 1/2/2024

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Even my daughter (mother to Logan and Barrett)

is looking for my Blog!!!

GO UCONN!!!!!

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Here is my UConn/Creighton Pregame Report

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A post shared by Azzi Fudd (@azzi35)

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A post shared by UConn Women's Basketball (@uconnwbb)

Paige was on the Honor Roll

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** Designates Upset

Monday January 1st, 2024

NO GAMES

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🙏🏽🙏🏽 #nextchapter pic.twitter.com/WoNrc0FoG3
— Qandace Samuels (@QandaceS) March 9, 2023

Q's little sister!!

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Straight from the Dog

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POLL

Slowly but surely (please don't call me Shirley) UConn is moving up in the poll. In the latest AP Poll the Huskies have moved up to No. 12. I had predicted that they would be unlucky 13 but they jumped ahead of Virginia Tech even thought they won their game. I guess the 31 point win over a ranked team was just that impressive.

Marquette only dropped one spot to No. 19 even with a 31 point loss to UConn. Interesting. I think that means more respect for UConn? Makes sense to me.

So, who were the big movers?

On the positive side, Colorado moved up 3 places to No. 5. After their big win over shorthanded Texas, Baylor moved up 4 spots to No. 6. UConn moved up 3 and Indiana, Louisville and Gonzaga all moved up 2 spots.

On the down side of the ledger, USC dropped 3 spots, Texas dropped 5 spots, Utah, Notre Dame and Ohio State all dropped 3 spots.

North Carolina dropped from 24th to out of the Top 25. And they had won their game. Syracuse took their place after beating Notre Dame. Now, if you look at the week before poll, Syracuse had 1 vote and was sitting in the "others receiving votes" area and if I counted correctly they were 39th. So this win, at home, against a depleted Notre Dame team deserved to make them move up 14 spots? I don't think so.

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By PHIL

NET Moves

(with apologies to Bob Segar)

I’m still trying to wrap my head around NET rankings. It’s well-known that it replaced RPI, a seriously deficient metric. However, while the RPI formula was straightforward and public, the components of NET are a little more mysterious and as I recently learned, have changed significantly over time.

My main criticism of RPI is that it ignored the margin of victory. While I understand the rationale, as someone who’s dabbled in information theory, that’s throwing away a lot of useful information. The first implementation of NET, introduced for the NCAA men, did include margin of victory.

I decided to do a little bit of research to see if I could find the exact formula, and while I did not find that, I did find some interesting nuggets. In a recent article titled “College basketball's NET rankings, explained”, I was startled to see, “…in May 2020, the NET will no longer use winning percentage, adjusted winning percentage and scoring margin.”(emphasis added).

I also read an older article, “NCAA Evaluation Tool to replace RPI as team sorting tool for women's college basketball”, which help me understand some aspects of the changes over time. The women did not adopt NET at the same time the men did, and when they did decide to use an NET metric, they didn’t simply copy the men’s but used a different formulation. Interestingly, and worthy of a separate stand-alone discussion, it appears that the men looked at what the women were using, decided it was better, and modified their formula to replicate more closely what the women were doing. (How often does that happen?).

What I learned between the two articles that while scoring margin is not explicitly used, the formula uses adjusted net efficiency which is “the difference between offensive efficiency (points per possession) and defensive efficiency (opponents’ points per possession)”. That’s not explicitly margin of victory, but it seems clear that winning by double digits as opposed to a buzzer beater will contribute to net efficiency.

My motivation for doing some research was the observation that UConn moved up from 12 to 10 in the NET ratings, moving past USC and North Carolina State. The movement past USC was easy to understand as USC had just lost, but NC State won their game. To be sure, UConn beat a ranked team in Marquette and NC State been an unranked team Virginia, but NET doesn’t look at AP rankings.

I did know that NET cared about wins by quadrant, which are defined as follows:

Quadrant 1 (Q1)

Home (1-30)

Neutral (1-50)

Away (1-75)

Quadrant 2 (Q2)

Home (31-75)

Neutral (51-100)

Away (76-135)

Quadrant 3 (Q3)

Home (76-160)

Neutral (101-200)

Away (136-240)

Quadrant 4 (Q4)

Home (161-360)

Neutral (201-360)

Away (241-360)

Although Marquette is number 18 in the AP poll, they are number 36 in NET, and with the game at home, that makes the win a quadrant 2 win. Virginia is number 73 in NET, which also makes the win a quadrant 2 win. Both wins ought to be worth the same based only on the quadrant measure, so I was puzzled that UConn moved ahead of NC State.

I think I now understand, without seeing the specific numbers, that the 31-point win over Marquette contributed a lot more to the net efficiency than NC State’s 11-point win over Virginia.

Speaking of NET moves, I see that Tennessee beat up on NET number 165 Liberty. They won by 35 points, a whopping four more points than the UConn margin of victory. That’s a quadrant 3 victory, not worth a lot by itself but the 35-point margin of victory probably contributed to the net efficiency, and they leaped up to NET 74. However, on the same day, Harvard had a 30-point win over Delaware, and that moved them up 19 points, pushing them ahead of Tennessee.

How often has Harvard women’s basketball been ranked ahead of Tennessee?

Milestone watch

• Aaliyah Edwards had 1400 career points after the Toronto Metropolitan game. She scored 19 in the Marquette game to reach 1419. This moves her past Tamika Williams, Chris Gedney, and Peggy Walsh. She now needs 25 points to tie Kalana Greene.

• Nika Mühl had 492 assists after the Toronto Metropolitan game. She had 7 assists in the Marquette game to reach 499 assists. She is now in 14th place. She needs 32 to catch Laura Lishness in 13th place.

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SPIDER STATS

Plus one for every assist block point rebound and steal. I don’t add extra for offensive rebounds as it already seems to favor the bigs. Minus one for every missed shot (2, 3 or foul), turnover or foul committed.

UConn 112 Marquette 43.

Great crowd! Paige is incredible!!

Net positives/minutes: Aaliyah 29/30, Paige 27/31, Nika 17/34, Aubrey 11/19, KK 7/25, Ashlynn 7/33, Qadence 5/14, Amari 2/3, Ines 1/2, Ice -1/9.

Aubrey uncharacteristically poor foul shooting, Ice 0 rebounds 4 fouls, Nika 10 rebounds.

Super aggressive defense after the opening 0-10 debacle. Play fast and win.

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UCONN LINKS

Several links are pay sites. Sorry!

Edwards and KK win weekly Big East awards

How UConn has made the four guard lineup work

Nika evolving into new role and other takeaways from the Marquette win

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