Happy 131st Birthday/AR XA

With all the March Madness hype, I neglected to honor the 131st anniversary of a device that may have done more to bring pleasure and the arts into homes across the world than any other. Yes, phonographs or record players or turntables, if you will, have been now spinning the entire world over since a transcription proto-type called a phonautograph was patented on March 25, 1857 by Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville, a Parisian inventor.

Thomas Edison later added the ability to play back, as well as merely transcribing in the 1880s but Edison used cylinders instead of disks for play back. Emile Berliner then patented the still famous Gramophone in 1887.

While certainly records and players have improved over the interim, the basic technology has not changed, and is arguably the musical playback system with the best overall fidelity still in general use, given the demise of the reel to reel tape format that was formerly embraced by music aficionados, but seldom used or produced anymore. Even measuring from the invention of the Gramophone, this amounts to a run of over 120 years, perhaps only paralleled by its analog cousin, film, which has had a similar run and still is the preferred medium in Hollywood.

In honor of this amazing medium, I thought I would pay a special homage to what I consider to be essentially the zenith of the phonograph industry, which is the turntable made by Acoustic Research(AR), and which was called most famously the AR XA turntable, followed by its slightly better, but less attractive sibling known as the AR XB.

While these two turntables might have been slightly exceeded by future successors and copy cats, none would ever have the same influence that the AR Turntable had, given its prominence during the golden era of the LP record which started in the late 50's and ended around 1983, when it lost its position of prominence to cassettes and then CDs among the masses, if never among music aficionados, most of whom continue to swear by their collections of vinyl.

AR was perhaps the company most responsible for bringing high fidelity to the masses, by coming up with an entire new way of designing speakers so that they could be both small enough to fit into the average home and still be affordable. The Boston-based company would go on to dominate speaker sales during the 1960's and due to partner spin-offs, led to the formation of other well-known audio firms, most notably, KLH and Advent by Henry Kloss, both of which would be almost as influential in audio as was AR. Kloss would end up his career by designing and selling the Tivoli Model One retro table radios that you see everywhere that are a throwback to two of his earlier famous table radios at Advent and KLH.

Edgar Villchur was the founder of AR. An art major in college, Villchur began dabbling in engineering and electronics and started a hi-fi and radio shop, while teaching a NYU course on Reproduction of Sound. Henry Kloss was one of his students, and together they cracked the nut of a speaker design that could overcome the size and distortion problems prevalent in speakers during that era. Their creation, the AR-1, which became known as the first acoustic-suspension loudspeaker system was based upon relatively simple principles of physics that had just been basically overlooked by other designers. When they couldn't find any takers for their design, they started AR in the mid-1950s. Within ten years, AR would control one third of the speaker market. For interviews with two of the founders, see: http://stereophile.com/interviews/105villchur/index.html

Villchur then sought to do for the turntable market what he had done in speakers. He set out to design a low-cost machine that would exceed the RIAA(recording industry) specifications in every aspect. His creation, the AR XA was completed and ready for sale by 1961. Villchur had created a classic for the ages, a turntable with a simple elegance and minimalist design, which sold for $58 not including cartridge. The AR XA, with its reserved styling and wood base would go on to win design awards and seems to perfectly embody the time in which it was created. Here is a picture from a hobbyist site: http://www.vinylnirvana.com/ar_models_xa.shtml

The turntable was an immediate sensation and sold far more units than anticipated. It truly offered something to everyone. It was inexpensive. It was elegant. It was excellent in performance and it was a tweaker's paradise, and enthusiasts began swapping out the tone arms and trying different configurations to "improve" it.

You may have had a friend who had one, and, well, his dad liked the AR XA because it was cheap. Your friend liked it, because even though it was inexpensive, he knew that his friends were not going to disrespect it; it had great currency in the Hi-Fi community, unlike say one bought from Sears or JC Penny or even Radio Shack. Together with Advent and Dynaco, AR was a brand for people who knew the value of a dollar at the margin and knew what was "good enough."

Now, 35 to 50 years later, many of these units are still functioning perfectly happily, and those that have been placed up in someone's attic, generally only need a new belt or stylus to continue to emit their sonorous cadences. How can this be? Well, Villchur designed the AR XA so that there really was not much that could go wrong with it. Unlike so many of the mid-fi as well as some hi-fi turntables, the AR XA did not change records; it did not start itself and it could not stop itself. Having none of these likely-to-break features, the internally-grounded AR XA basically served only to spin records, and was only dependent on its reliable motor and regular belt changes, and maybe a little sewing machine oil now and again for its joints.

The AR XA didn't even have anti-skating controls, or cueing, for goodness sake. You actually had to have a steady hand ready to put the needle down and then to pick it up at the end of a record.(If somehow a person dropped the tone arm, AR had developed something called arm dampening to keep the needle from hitting the record at a high velocity.)

But this minimalist approach added to the machine's elegance and reliability, together with the XA's brilliant approach to platter and tone arm placement.

On the AR turntables, both the tone arm and heavy metal platter move together, vertically and horizontally, on a suspension of springs. This produced a playing stability almost unheard of back in the 1960s and 1970s, where you had to be careful not to dance too heavily upon the floor, lest one make the needle jump. Indeed, the XA could even be placed upon a large speaker that it was feeding, which would usually produce undue acoustic feedback with other turntables. The U.S. based company which was AR has now been gone for 25 or 30 years, but among many of the elite companies still producing turntables, such as Linn Sondek and Sota, the AR approach continues to form the basis for their turntable design, albeit often at a cost of ten to 50 times the cost of a used AR XA or AR XB.

Also remarkable is the fact that current turntable design seems to have almost entirely embraced AR's model for turntable design in terms of simplicity. It is now difficult, if not impossible to find a high-end turntable that changes records or that even has auto-stop. Some argue that such devices impact upon the ultimate sound quality, which seems questionable to me, but nevertheless, the AR model of simplicity, be it due to cost-cutting or its actual effect on the sound, has won out in the market place.

While the XA didn't have much in the way of criticism, some users didn't like the dampened tone arm and its lack of cueing. During the early to mid-1970's, AR addressed some of these concerns and came out with a successor model called the AR XB.(There were also some AR-branded successor turntables up to the mid-1980's that were approximately of the same or even better, quality, but that were not successful in terms of sales, and, generally when people refer to an AR turntable, they mean either the XA or XB and not the post-1976 versions).

The XB removed the arm dampening, which was really the only major critique that users had about the XA. Apparently, under certain circumstances, the dampening mechanism could cause the tone arm to lose some of its responsiveness, i.e., to become "sticky."

To incorporate these changes, AR moved the on-off switch to the right side of the turntable, placing it in front of the newly-added cueing control. AR also made a few other cosmetic changes, among them, removing the AR logo from the front, where it was liable to be knocked off during shipping. The headshell color was changed from beige to black; the tone arm weight was changed from gold to silver in color, the tone arm shape was almost imperceptibly altered and perhaps, the biggest and most disappointing change was the deletion of the option to buy the AR turntable with a wood base or veneer. You could have the XB with any kind of base that you wanted, as long as you wanted a faux vinyl wood veneer. While the XB was still okay looking, the changes had made it look a bit cluttered compared to the XA and the vinyl just didn't have the elegant sheen of the wood base.

Perhaps, it wasn't surprising. These were the 1970's where people thought that Tang, Astro-turf and Similac baby formula were all superior to the real thing. Advent made the same decision with its sensational Smaller Advent speaker: vinyl only. Thus, unfortunately people were left with the difficult decision as to whether to purchase the functionally superior XB, with its cueing and improved tone arm, or the much nicer looking XA without the improvements.

Hackers soon found a way to completely disable the dampening function on the XA, but it still wouldn't have cueing and you just know that at some time you are going to drop that tone arm with disastrous results on your mint copy of Help! Some thought about swapping out the bases, but even though most parts are compatible between the XA and XB, the bases are not, so this was no simple solution.

Thus, when I made my own individual purchase on Ebay, I was somewhat indifferent to which one I got. A local seller had an XB that I picked up for around $75, which is between a fifth and a tenth of what a comparable new table would sell for. I bought a couple of new belts for it on Ebay for about $12 and put a Shure M97x cartridge (another great audio company that dates way back) on it--generally considered to be one of the better cartridges for under $150 dollars--and I was in business.

It was a pleasant surprise when I found that virtually all of my albums from college that had been up in the attic played perfectly. Why did we think that CDs sounded better, anyway? Oh yeah, no noise between tracks, but with respect to what is in between tracks, down in the grooves, vinyl still reigns supreme and so--Happy 131st to the phonograph!--and may there continue to be just as many happy returns.

UNC Season Survey and Final Four Prospects

It is Final Four Saturday, I am just looking at the numbers and thought that I would point out a few things about the 2008 Tar Heels that might be of interest to UNC fans.

Ty Lawson's numbers on offense are going through the roof. He has almost tied Tyler Hansbrough as Carolina's most efficient offensive player. Hansbrough is rated 20th and Lawson 31st, although Tyler does use more possessions, which makes him more valuable at the margin.

Lawson also improved his foul shooting from 69 percent to 83% which is a huge facet of the game for a point guard. I think the numbers show that Lawson has surpassed former Tar Heel Ray Felton on the offensive end, with the exception of minutes played and three point shots, where the current Bobcat point guard still holds a big edge.

In this decade, Felton seems to have had by far the best 3-point shooting season, in 2005, hitting 44%. Wes Miller hit that one year, but shot slightly fewer and they tended to be easier shots.

Marcus Ginyard is puzzling. His overall offensive numbers are down this year. His free throw shooting has fallen from 79% last year to under 65% this year. His rebounding numbers are down also. His effective field goal percentage is down, in spite of his improvement from the 3-point line. Carolina fans would love to see the old Marcus back this weekend.

Pomeroy said this weekend that he was wrong about Carolina needing Brandan Wright. I guess he means needing Wright if they were to win it all, if I remember his earlier comment, but there is no doubt that Wright was a monster player last year. If you look at his numbers 2007, it was like having 2 Hansbroughs down low. Wright had almost identical offensive rating numbers, a better field goal percentage than Tyler Hansbrough, plus he blocked shots. Even his free throw shooting was improving at the end of the year.

I think that the Tar Heels might have gone undefeated if he had stayed in school.

Wayne Ellington and Danny Green both made significant improvements in their offense. With slightly more shots, Wayne's 3-point percentage went from .371 to .414, making him almost identical to sharp-shooter Rashad McCants in 2005 in numbers and percentage, who is currently starring for the Timberwolves. This is very nice improvement.

Danny Green improved even more from 3-point land, going from .296 to .376, while taking 60 more such shots. Danny Green really made himself into a star this year.

Deon Thompson essentially stayed at about the same efficiency on offense, although he is using more possessions, which implies tougher shots at the margin. His free throw percentage dropped from 65% to 59%, although he shot almost twice as many. Lately, Thompson has been doing better on the offensive end, but it is his defense and rebounding that make his so valuable. He is Carolina's top shotblocker and his offensive rebounding has been very good.

Deon Thompson and Alex Stepheson are almost twins out there. Alex is slightly taller. Neither is great offensively at this point but they both still seem to have much more unshown potential. They are about equal at shotblocking and free throw percentage (not so good). Alex is more of a demon on the boards, with per minute numbers that are actually better than Hansbrough's.

Who would you guess is the most offensively improved player on the UNC squad? Yes, it is Q!. Way to go, Quentin Thomas. Q made it to an offensive rating of 1, up from a miserable .83 last year. He doesn't shoot much, but when he does, he makes over 58% of them and over 78% from the line.

Along with Q, my vote for most pleasant surprise this year for Carolina goes to redshirt freshman, Will Graves. He is tall for a wing man and can provide instant offense, with an offensive rating that is fourth on the team, given his minutes. He is hitting over 45% of his three's and has taken more than Ginyard and about half as many as Lawson. Of course, Carolina doesn't shoot all that many three-point shots, which looks good for next year, when they move the line back. Graves has only taken 12 free throws and only made seven. Maybe he should step back and take them from the 3 point line.

So, we can really see how UNC took a step forward this year. They lost a great player in Brandan Wright and several excellent defenders and role players in Wes Miller, Reyshawn Terry and Bobby Frasor, none of whom was particularly good offensively last year, but the loss of Wright and Terry probably accounts for last year's team being better on the defensive end.

But Tyler, Ty, Wayne, Danny, and Q all made real improvements in their performances, with Deon and Alex making lesser improvements. Marcus certainly has the talent to be performing at a higher level and I wonder if injuries have hampered him all year.

With the exception of assists and blocks, where he went down slightly, Hansbrough improved his game significantly in almost every category. Over 3 years, his free throw percentage has improved from 74% to 77% to 81%, a subtle and steady improvement that makes a huge difference when you shoot them as much as he does. His minutes have gone up significantly this year without Wright. He is playing even more minutes than Felton did on the title team, which shows just how important he is. Like Felton in 2005, Hansbrough is someone they don't really have a replacement for this year.

Here are the keys the way I see them. This team is steady. With the exception of the first Duke game, and the VPI game in the tournament, UNC has been above a 100 offensive rating every game since December 1. There are really only three guys who seem to vary much in performance, and they are Ginyard, Thompson and Stepheson and I see them as key in terms of "guaranteeing" a title. All four of the teams remaining are excellent and all four can defeat each other when they play their game.

However, Carolina fans have seen a handful of games the past couple of years that appeared to be tough going in, like playing at Arizona last year without two starters, or the game against the athletic Razorbacks in this year's tournament, but that turned into laughers when Thompson and Stepheson had big offensive games. If Thompson is hitting his bank shots and ten footers, there simply are too many guys to defend, especially when you are talking about a team that is already the top offensive squad in the country. If Thompson and Stepheson don't step up, it could be a real grind for Carolina, as all of these teams are excellent defensively and have significant post presences.

I think it is still a real question whether this year's team is better than last year's team. There is no question that that team was more talented and better offensively, while this team is more seasoned and better offensively. The 2007 Heels lost virtually every close game they had all season. Pomeroy still has the 2007 Heels rated higher, although I am not sure if you can compare across seasons.

I think the big difference is that this 2008 team is far better from three point territory and from the free throw line and that makes it much more difficult for teams to pack it in down low.

In terms of playing against good defenses, here is a list of top defending teams that have bitten the dust against Carolina in the last month: Louisville, ranked fourth nationally; Washington State, ranked 7th defensively; Duke, ranked 9th defensively, Clemson, ranked 12th defensively, and VPI, ranked 8th defensively, and the games have actually gotten less close against Louisville and WSU, who were supposed to be superior to the ACC opposition.

UNC and Memphis have played by far the superior teams in the first four rounds of the tournament. I won't count the first round since all those games are easy, but since then UNC has beaten a 37, a 10 and a 6 in Pomeroy's rankings, while Memphis has beaten a 33, a 15, and a 9. Kansas and UCLA both faced mediocre competition in their brackets.

Pomeroy has Kansas and UCLA in the Finals. Like all games in the NCAA tourney, it is one and done, and maybe Tyler trips and falls on the way into the arena or maybe Kansas pulls a Tyrese Rice and hits ten 3's in the first half, or maybe they channel all of that anti-Roy fury into an amazing win, but under most scenario's, I think UNC is just a little too good for this opponent and look for them in the final against Memphis, which is what Vegas is predicting as well.

Kansas and Roy Williams

Journalists love stories that can easily be pegged to headlines in a way that is not complicated. In the week-end NCAA Regionals, most were hoping to see Davidson end up playing in-state rival, UNC, so that they could write Davidson versus Goliath stories all week. Davidson fell just short, so the journalists are making due with their next best story, which is the match-up between Roy Williams and the team that he led for well over a decade, the Kansas Jawhawks in the National Semi-final.

So, why should I be any different?

The two schools, North Carolina and Kansas have a fairly long history of trading favorite sons as coaches back and forth. Originally, UNC's Frank McGuire, fresh off an undefeated championship in which his team defeated Kansas, 54-53 in triple overtime, hired Kansas grad Dean Smith to be his top assistant back in the late 1950s. Kansas would later attempt to lure Smith back home, but would settle for one of his former assistants and players, Larry Brown, who took Kansas to its only championship since Smith had been a player at Kansas.

The peripatetic Brown decided to quit at the top, and Kansas then hired Roy Williams, another Smith assistant and J.V. player, who had been expected to take the top job at George Mason(that certainly might have changed history). Smith, himself, during this period, requested that his former Kansas coach, Dick Harp take a position as UNC assistant coach. After Williams returned to Carolina, his coaching staff was made up of, you guessed it, primarily Kansas grads.

The two universities rarely play, due to the lack of inclination by Smith and Williams to face their alma maters, but have played 3 times in the Final Four previously, with UNC getting the better of it and defeating Kansas twice on the way to national titles in 1957 and 1993. Williams and Kansas defeated Smith and UNC in 1991 but then lost to Duke in that year's title game, something that was hard for both Kansas, as well as Carolina fans to swallow.

Roy Williams took Kansas to the greatest sustained period of excellence in its last 50 years, but could not quite win the championship. After spurning one attempt by UNC to hire him in the wake of Dean Smith's retirement, Williams then finally decided to return home to North Carolina.

To put it mildly, many of his former idolizing fans in Kansas were not happy with this development. I don't want to paint all Kansas fans with this brush. Some continue to be both Kansas fans first, and Roy Williams fans, second; and they are almost certainly the happiest and most psychologically well-adjusted among those interested in the outcome next week-end. http://pod01.prospero.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?msg=23947.15&nav=messages&webtag=kr-kansastm

http://www.kansascity.com/159/story/554954.html

I am assuming that anyone reading this has a bit of background already, but even though coaches change jobs and universities all the time, for those disaffected Kansas fans, this was of a different order. Williams is known for wearing his emotions on his sleeve and this unusual vulnerability, together with the incredible triumphs and a few devastating defeats, had apparently resulted in a bond between coach, team and fans, almost unparalleled in college sports history.

While fans generally harbor some resentment when a coach leaves, I personally, have never seen bitterness to this extent. Some have mentioned Rick Pitino who left Kentucky and then took the job with Kentucky's chief rival as a parallel, but that is a bit different. Pitino seemed to be looking to deliberately antagonize his former school, as might have been the case with Frank McGuire taking the South Carolina job after leaving North Carolina.

Roy Williams, on the other hand, refused to schedule his former school and continues to profess his devoted affection to Kansas and its fans. To little effect--at least with respect to many of them. Virtually every Kansas newspaper that prints a story about UNC playing in the NCAA tournament every year since he left, carries the requisite quote from some unhinged Kansan with words to the effect of, "well I sure hope Kansas can win, but if not, at least, please God don't let North Carolina win."

Kansas basketball site and newspaper forums bristle with the interaction among those who still admire Williams and those who simply cannot get over his leaving. Try as I might to avoid them I am mesmerized by the depth of feeling on all sides.

See generally, comments at the bottom:, http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2008/apr/01/new_chapter ("Get some therapy!")

and another about Kansans for Roy, well, sort of:
http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2008/apr/01/taking_two_sides/

The psychological issues present here are fascinating. Mack Brown, UNC's former football coach, and Bill Self, Kansas's current basketball coach, left programs that they never made any great pretense of loving, and although not particularly popular in the places they left , UNC and Illinois fans don't seem to have anywhere close to the animus that Kansas fans have.

My own feeling as a UNC grad is that Texas's Mack Brown is basically someone over whom it is not worth wasting much in the way of emotional resources, not to mention probably the most likely current coach to join the guy from Miami as a national title-winner on the unemployment lines since he can't seem to beat Oklahoma consistently, but I digress.

And of course, one thing, if the only thing, that North Carolinians and Kansans can agree about, even in those few and far between seasons of football success--Kansas just had one--is that there are exceedingly few football coaches worth crying over.

Roy Williams, on the other hand, had essentially told the Kansas fans that "I will always love you and never leave you," and then did. I guess part of the moral of the story is never to make promises you cannot keep.

I think the other thing that is apparent, is that Roy Williams is worth crying over.

Unlike Mack Brown, Roy Williams is a truly remarkable coach and human being and not being wanted by him hurts and perhaps implies that Kansas wasn't good enough to keep such a stellar person, not to mention having him leave for the "younger, more attractive trophy wife. "

Kansas and Roy had enjoyed the years of unparalleled success and suffered the agony of coming so close so many times, and Kansans had grown affectionate of Williams' not inconsiderable idiosyncricities. Kansas wanted to win a title with Roy Williams, not some other guy, and Kansas definitely did not want to see Roy's new bride carry away the ultimate spoils of his success as he moved into the peak of his coaching prowess with one national title winner in his name, finally, at UNC, and top five finishes in three of his first five years. It also didn't help that UNC seemed to be on television virtually every time Kansans turned on their sets. Kansas, on the other hand, was in another time zone and while certainly featured more than most basketball programs, many of its games were only regionally televised.

Bill Self, the new coach, who has pretty much equalled Williams' success at Kansas, has certainly had his own share of coming close and not quite getting over the hump, but it will never quite be the same with him and Kansas. He hasn't shown the same vulnerability as Williams, the kind of uncomfortable and yet, endearing vulnerability that most of us only share with our closest friends and relatives.

Roy Williams is basketball's version of Sally Field, shouting to the Academy, "you like me! You actually like me." Field has been laughed at and lampooned for years for basically losing control over her emotions in front of her professional peers upon receipt of her Oscar. And yet, I would submit that she may very well be the most popular actress of her generation, precisely because once people get over their discomfort from having someone let down their guard in front of them, many of these people will form a psychological attachment due to the shared intimacy of such unguarded actions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Field#Film

Williams made no secret during his tenure at Kansas of his less than affluent upbringing and his generally absent, alcoholic father. Like many such children, he doesn't drink alcohol at all and some may see classic, pattern attributes in him as a child of an alcoholic. http://alcoholism.about.com/cs/adult/a/aa073097.htm

Unlike so many coaches who strive to be seen as generals, both on the floor and off, Williams, always the general on the floor, was known for crying in public after some of basketball's tough knocks. You've probably never seen Bobby Knight cry in public, but then again, Bobby Knight, owner of the most wins in history, has a winning percentage that is mediocre compared to Williams' career winning percentage. There is probably no fiercer competitor in basketball among coaches than Roy Williams.

He was also a known "mama's boy." Williams never denied the truth of the Coca-Cola story published in Sports Illustrated in 1997, and even later did an advertisement which kiddingly reflected upon his deep devotion to his mother who ironed shirts so that he could drink a Coca-Cola after school with his friends, spending the few extra dimes she earned doing so.

Just to make the point crystal clear, friends says that Williams is known for always having cases and cases of Coca-Cola in his home, lest he run out at an inopportune time.

That story might even have been enough to embarrass Sally Field, but for Williams and Kansans, it just bound them even closer together, as did the crushing defeat to Arizona, just a few weeks after the SI article.

Williams, who had been on the way to a season, even his mentor Dean Smith had never quite had, seemed destined for both a national title and a new record for wins, becoming the first team to win more than 40 in one year. Unfortunately, 37-1 Kansas ran into eventual National Champion and highly underrated Arizona, which went out to a double digit lead in the last minutes. Probably most teams would have been done at this point, but Kansas put together a remarkable comeback, erasing ten points off the deficit and possessed the ball with just seconds to go, in a position to tie.

It was not to be and in some ways, the valiant comeback just made it worse--just that much more of a tease and obsession for Williams and the Kansas fans who wanted that to be his year. What had gone wrong? What could Williams have possibly done differently to prevent the upset? Ultimately, Williams took refuge in the notion that there wasn't a single thing he would change.

The NCAA tournament's one and done format is a harsh mistress and a beguiling mistress, but most of all, she is a mysterious mistress, often favoring the less worthy and the weak as she spurns the Sampsons and Chamberlains who would seek to enjoy her whims, while extending her favor to the Lorenzo Charles's and Harold Jensen's of the world.

There would go on to be two more such disappointments as Kansas would lose in the Final Four in 2002 and then in the National Final in 2003, when his team uncharacteristically could not make any free throws, resulting in a bitter loss to Syracuse, after once again another great comeback that fell just short.

But maybe even more agonizing to the Kansas fans was the rumor that Roy had been in renewed discussions to take the UNC job. This was after previously turning down his alma-mater in 2000, in another of his almost patented public displays of insecurity during which he wavered back and forth between going and leaving and then ended up turning down UNC during a nationally-televised "I'm Staying!" pep rally that seemed to cement his fortunes in Kansas, while kicking dirt in the faces of his North Carolinian suitors and particularly angering his former colleague Bill Guthridge, Dean Smith's successor.

But people in North Carolina, apparently, are are quite forgiving, especially when it comes to basketball, and in 2003, on the eve of the Final Four, with the once hallowed UNC basketball program in almost total chaos, UNC came again bidding for Williams' services. Torn between two sick family members back in North Carolina and his love for his alma mater, and his "oath" to Kansas, Williams opted this time to take the job, leaving Kansas in the immediate wake of a defeat, perhaps almost as painful as the loss to Arizona back in 1997.

Kansas continued in its basketball tradition with almost no change after Williams' departure. Kansas has been in the top ten virtually every week since Williams left and has also suffered the same crushing losses that have been a state tradition going back to the loss by Wilt Chamberlain and the Jayhawks in triple-overtime to UNC in 1957.

Unique among the so-called five top programs in college basketball, which include UNC, Duke, Kentucky, UCLA and Kansas, only Kansas has not won multiple championships since the demise of the UCLA dynasty in 1974, winning only as an upset winner in 1988, when little was expected of them. Each time that Kansas has been touted as the best team in the nation, or at least, arguably the best, the Jayhawks have gone down in smoldering flames, since Dean Smith played 29 seconds for them when they won the title in 1952.

Now, Kansas is, arguably, the best team in the country this year, and Kansans have a shot at Williams in a competitive game for the first time since he left five years ago. With a win, Kansas might win a title for the first time in 20 years and perhaps finally put to rest the demons of its former beloved son's infidelity. But I don't think so. Sure, it would be fun for some to stick it to the wayward son and even more fun to finally garner another title.

But this thing goes too deep. For many, I believe that what these "haters" unknowingly hope for is that UNC will once again thwart their Jayhawks, allowing them to continue to brandish their anger against the Prodigal Son who this time is never destined to return, because they actually get more emotional return this way, and Williams is more than happy to accomodate them, because as much as he might have wanted them to "like me," there is only one thing that Roy Williams hungers for more than acceptance, and that is victory.

Still More March Madness Math

Let's go through the four Final Four teams and see how they play, because the media and announcers routinely mess this up:

From Slowest to Fastest in Terms of Possessions Averaged per Game:

1. UCLA -- 65 possessions
2. Kansas -- 68 possessions
3. Memphis --70 possessions
4. UNC -- 75 possessions

Because of the way that normal distributions fall, the rankings of the four vis-a-vis all Division I teams is 258 for UCLA, 127 for Kansas, 64 for Memphis and 5 for Carolina. It is interesting to note that UNC is playing almost identically fast to its 2005 national title team.

In terms of Offensive Efficiency:
1. UNC
2. Kansas (tied for first)
3. Memphis
4. UCLA

There is not much difference among these squads in terms of offense per possession.

In terms of Defensive Efficiency:

I am not going to break this out completely because the top three are essentially tied at the top, with UNC somewhat behind, but still in the top twenty.

In terms of rebounding, UNC is the best on the offensive boards; UCLA is the best on the defensive boards, and Kansas and Memphis are a bit farther back, but still very good.

Ultimately, I think that UCLA and UNC both have the edge in their games against Memphis and Kansas, due to their each having an All American guy to go to on offense, with UCLA having Kevin Love and UNC having Tyler Hansbrough. Memphis doesn't have any offensive players of this caliber, while Kansas has Mario Chalmers, who is just a step back, but doesn't get the ball nearly as much as Love and Hansbrough.

But if you want to look for an upset on Saturday, slight upset though it may be, it is likely to be Memphis over UCLA, due to UCLA's low-scoring pace and generally high inconsistency rating. I don't think Kansas can work out its scoring problems well enough to defeat North Carolina. Kansas didn't have anybody who seemed to want the ball down the stretch against Davidson and putting Sasha (no relation to Chaka) Kaun up against Hansbrough seems likely to expose Kaun's lumbering lack of mobility.

Kansas beat a 12 and a ten seed in the regionals to get to the Final Four, while UNC defeated a Louisville team regarded as at least the fifth best team in the country. UNC and Kansas are currently 1-1 in the Semi's of the Final Four, with Kansas defeating perhaps Dean Smith's worst Final Four team ever, in 1991 and then losing languidly to Duke; and with UNC beating a far better Kansas team in 1993 and then defeating Michigan and the Fab Five for the title that year.

In 1957, in one of the most famous games ever, UNC completed an undefeated year by beating Wilt Chamberlain in Kansas in triple-overtime, 54-53 for the national title under Frank McGuire.

Only one Big 12/Big 8 team has won the national championship since Dean Smith left Lawrence, Kansas back in the early 1950s and that team had Danny Manning. Apart from the generally weaker competition that the Jayhawks generally face in the Big 12 (Texas got annihilated in its home state by Memphis, which hardly could have given Kansas much confidence), this Kansas team doesn't have a single player in Danny Manning's zip code. Bill Self is likely to have to content himself with making the Semi's this year and save avenging Wilt and the 1957 Jayhawks for another day.

More March Madness Math

There seems to be a fair amount of interest in the statistical analysis of basketball these days, although the sport is still way behind baseball in terms of the issues being analyzed. The guys at basketball prospectus are doing some good things, but currently, in my opinion, a lot of their work is simplistic and repetitive and caters to the casual bracket-playing public, but not to those of us who really want to understand basketball.

In truth, we probably also must admit that basketball is less susceptible to sweeping statistical generalizations than is baseball. Does anybody doubt anymore the lack of importance of the RBI stat? But ultimately, baseball is a team sport that sums up for the most part the individual actions of separate players.

Basketball, on the other hand, is a team sport played collectively. That is why dogmatic characterizations about who is better or best are rarely appropriate. Recently, one commentator opined that Kevin Love was better than Tyler Hansbrough, no doubt whatsoever in that commentator's mind. Now aside from the insufficient data upon which this commentator, John Gasaway based his conclusion, he also forgot something key. Basketball is a team game, not an individual sport. http://www.basketballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=232

Last night, the North Carolina Tar Heels defeated the Washington State University Cougars by a score of 68-47. At half time, Carolina led the game 35-21, and their star player Hansbrough had two points. But how could this be? If Carolina's POY candidate had been completely stiffled, how could the Tar Heels possibly be leading at halftime by such an onerous margin?

Well, its a team game. Gasaway might have you believe that Hansbrough had a horrible half. A more sophisticated view of what happened might be, however, that Hansbrough had a sensational first half, after all, his team had a lead that was equal to 67% percent of the Cougars's first half total. Washington State put so much focus on stopping Hansbrough, that they couldn't stop any of the other players for UNC. This is a team game and Gasaway ignores this reality with his brash and unwarranted, sweeping conclusions about which player is best.

Kevin Love and Tyler Hansbrough are both sensational players and UNC deeply wanted to see Love in Carolina Blue and I doubt UCLA would have turned Hansbrough away, had he shown up on their front door.

Second point: Points per possession analysis is a fundamental analytical tool used by basketball coaches to evaluate their team's play. Coaches in the know have been utilizing PPP analysis for over fifty years, as a means of evaluating a team's play independently of how quickly the ball is changing hands from team to team during a game.

It can help provide insight into the relative strengths of teams that play at different tempos or paces. It is not a secret, but like OBP in baseball, some people think it is such a cool way of looking at the sport, that they overwork the concept.

Or, to start with a joke, only a statistician could make us believe that leading a game by ten points is just as good as leading it by twenty points.

PPP differential is important, but it is not as important as absolute point differential, regardless of what anyone tries to tell you. Why not? Let's look at a simple arithmetic example involving two college teams, the Cheetahs and the Terrapins.

The Cheetahs play fast and have lot's of possessions on average in their games and they average a lot of points as well. By the end of the year, statistics show the Cheetahs score an average of 80 points per game, while giving up only 70 to their opponents in the first 38 minutes of their schedule in the fast and tough, African Coast Conference.

The Terrapins play slow. They have a coach who loves the movie, Hoosiers and believes every bit of that movie is true. Their team averages 40 points per game in the first 38 minutes of their games in the slow and rough, Equatorial Coast Conference, while rendering 35 to their opponents and they only utilize half the possessions per game that the Cheetahs use.

Now which team is better? Advocates of strict PPP analysis will tell you that these teams are equal, because their point differential per possession is exactly the same.

They are wrong.

Why?

Let's see what can happen to both teams in a game where they are especially unlucky down the stretch in the last two minutes. In the first game, the Cheetahs's opponent, the Salukis, hit three three-pointers in the last two minutes, after having only made three in the entire game that far. For the Cheetahs, there seems to be a lid on the rim and they don't score a single point down the stretch, laboring to hold on, 80-79.

In the second, game, the Terrapin's opponents, the Sloths hit three three-pointers down the stretch, after having only made three in the entire game that far. For the Terrapins, there seems to be a lid on the rim and they don't score a single point down the stretch, and they lose a heartbreaker, 44-40.

Why the divergence in outcomes? Simple mathematics. The Cheetahs were able to overcome a somewhat unlikely series of outcomes in the final two minutes, because their absolute lead was much greater. The Terrapins could not, even though up to then, their PPP differential had been exactly the same as the Cheetahs.

Thus, the mathematics are basically simple. The better (more talented?) a team is, the faster the tempo they should employ, ceteris paribus, because it gives them an extra cushion against unlikely events occurring to take the game's outcome away from the expected mean. Ceteris paribus is Latin for all other things being equal.

Let's look at some real world examples. In the current Kenpom.com basketball ratings, Wisconsin is ranked number 3 and North Carolina is ranked number four. These teams make for good examples because Wisconsin plays much like the Terrapins above, while UNC is more of a Cheetahs-type squad. North Carolina has the better record at 35-2, while Wisconsin has the stronger power index, in spite of having lost twice more and having been blown out in one game.

Basically, this is because Pomeroy has not found a way (or has chosen not to) to incorporate the mathematical notion of standard deviation from the expected outcome into his ratings. I will use his words here:

"Consistency is basically the standard deviation of scoring difference by game for a team. Again, it’s not included in the ratings calculation. It can be an aid in determining which teams are overrated by my system. Highly rated teams that are inconsistent tend to look beatable more often. As of this writing, Georgia is ranked 329 in consistency and Oklahoma is at 334. They’ve played their best games against poor teams, and their worst against good ones.

Ideally, I’d synthesize the consistency and rating into one number, but I haven’t found a way I’m comfortable with. So right now, I’m throwing this system out there with all its warts for everyone to see. The warts tend to decrease as more games are played, but at least I’ve made you aware of them and where they can pop up." http://www.kenpom.com/blog/index.php/weblog/ratings_explanation/

First, I would like to point out, consistent with the above, the fact that WSU was one of the least consistent teams in all of college basketball this year, which may account for a lot of the head scratching by people who could not figure out what was wrong with Pomeroy's rankings here. I would argue that the rankings were wrong with respect to WSU and I think he admits why here, although you have to go trolling into the dark recesses of his fantastic site to find this. I am not sure, however, why he continues with the pretense of multiplying out the logs, given this fundamental defect.

So, getting back to Wisconsin, whom Pomeroy rates above UNC, while the USA Today computer rankings have Wisconsin fifth, with UNC, first, what is the truth of the matter?

Well, there may not be any ultimate truth. If a team is incredibly good but very inconsistent, they might be very likely to be ranked number one all year but then get upset in the tournament, which is a simple one and out format, not best of seven as in the NBA.

And just so I don't get a lot of I-told-you-so emails from either UNC or Wisconsin fans, when one or the other loses, one loss, without more is not enough to defeat the analysis. Unlikely events happen all the time and if they didn't, life would be quite strange and boring!

Nevertheless, here, I believe that Wisconsin being rated more highly is due to a flaw in Pomeroy's system. Not only does UNC have, in fact, fewer losses, their style of play seems to insulate them more from upsets. And if we look at his other catgories, we see it. Carolina is the 56th most consistent team in the country, 2nd only to Memphis among teams still playing, while Wisconsin is the 205th most consistent team. Wisconsin's slow style of playing provides them with less of a cushion against upsets. On the other hand, their style is probably fairly efficiently tailored for their talent composition, and for them to change it, would violate the ceteris paribus part of our mathematical example.

So, what does it all mean? A team like Wisconsin is far less likely to be able to go through an entire season unbeaten, compared to a Memphis or UNC, which have high consistency ratings. Thus, when people say UNC is clearly "better," what this should mean is that UNC is likely to pass through the year with fewer losses. But this does not mean that UNC is necessarily likely to beat Wisconsin in a head to head match-up.

And to take the analysis one step further, let's ask ourselves, who is better between the real Terrapins of Maryland and the inappropriately named Cougars of WSU. Which of those two teams is better? Well, surely you say, it has to be WSU, since they made the NCAA tourney and had a fairly high ranking, while Maryland went out in the second round of the NIT. And yet, Maryland beat UNC and most Carolina fans would probably tell you that they would rather face WSU any day, over Maryland.

I will let the reader puzzle over that one, but will finish by stating that it seems that teams that play slow will generally be more at risk at the ends of games when playing inferior opponents. While this might not be a huge problem over the course of an 18 game regular season schedule, it can be huge when the rule is one and done. That may help explain how Georgetown got upset by Davidson and why Wisconsin could be at risk today, as well as UCLA against Xavier.

Ultimately, it's because, no matter how you slice it, leading 50-40 is not as good as leading 100-80 and don't let anybody lie to you with statistics and imply that it is.

Washington State versus UNC

Washington State travels to Charlotte as a number four seed to face UNC, the number one seed in a Sweet 16 match-up that pits virtually the fastest playing squad in college basketball against the Cougars, who are near the bottom in tempo among college teams.

Thus far in the tournament, both teams have won their games easily, leading some to pick WSU as an upset possiblity, while a few others (very few), such as Ken Pomeroy, see the game as a virtual pick 'em match-up.

Let's look a few things about this game to get an idea of some of the factors. First, of all, neither team has defeated many top twenty-five teams. Carolina has four or five such wins, if you count the Tar Heels win at Davidson, while Washington State beat USC twice and won at Gonzaga, and now Notre Dame, three teams sort of on the fringe of the top twenty of the various polls and rating organizations.

In terms of elite wins, say among the top 15, Carolina won at Duke, while WSU doesn't have any elite wins, having lost 3 times to Stanford, and twice to UCLA. Of these games, only their loss to Stanford at home was close, coming in over-time. They also lost to Cal and barely beat rival UW at home. They also have beaten Baylor, Oregon, Winthrop and ASU.

Surprisingly, Pomeroy believes that Washington State is better than Stanford. I know that styles make match-ups and all that, but Stanford has beaten them 3 times, the last 2 convincingly, and finished two games ahead of them in conference and also went farther in the Pac Ten tournament, so once again this year, Pomeroy's ratings have some rankings that make very little sense. One wonders exactly what Stanford would have to do to be ranked ahead of WSU by Pomeroy if beating them 3 times and finishing two games ahead of them in a conference where everyone plays each other twice, is not enough!

Sagarin's ratings are much more likely to be in line with reality this year than Pomeroy's. Why this is so, I do not know, but something has gone badly askew this year with the Pomeroy ratings. While no one knows his exact ranking formula, there appears to be some system bias in favor of teams that play in conferences in which the play is slower, in that he has the two fastest-paced teams in the tournament rated far more lowly than other ratings services, while UMass, another team that plays at lightning pace is also rated less highly. On the other hand, plodding teams, such as WSU, Wisconsin and Illinois, all of whom play at a snail's pace, are rated more highly by Pomeroy than by fans and the experts in the field.

While his data collection is still top-notch, Pomeroy probably needs to tinker a bit more with his ratings. He truly may be the only single person in the entire United States who believes that Washington State is better than Stanford and essentially as good as UNC.

In terms of defense, Pomeroy has WSU slated as a far better defensive squad. In terms of offense, he has UNC as the better squad. However, there may be some other clues as to why UNC is more likely to win.

First of all, UNC has much better talent. Almost everyone agrees that for WSU to have any chance, it probably needs to be a game in the 50's or 60's, to keep Carolina from having extra possession and a fast game in which it can exploit its depth. This is a fancy way of saying that Washington State doesn't have all that many good players so they have to try to take the air out of the ball to have any chance to win.

I have to admit that I am a bit more biased against this team than perhaps against other foes, because they pride themselves on their plodding way of playing. They are pretty much the slowest-playing team in the entire NCAA Division I, brandishing a style of basketball that, if further adopted, could be a new non-narcotic form of sleep aid. Their coach is already trying to turn this into some sort of grudge match against Roy Williams, who he claims, was disrespectful to his father back in the 1990's, and apparently, said father also taught players to play as though they had on muddy workboots.

Well, as pathetic and boring as WSU's style of play might be, it is still within the rules, so let's look at some other factors.

Looking at something Pomeroy calls consistency rating, we see that UNC is the 59th most consistent team, which is pretty good--only Memphis and Western Kentucky are ranked ahead of them among teams still in the tourney. WSU is 311th, which is very poor--only West Virginia is less consistent among tourney teams.

Now, I suppose consistency can cut both ways when looking at a one game match-up, as opposed to winning the entire tournament, where it is essential to be consistent. We can expect North Carolina to be pretty good, just like they have been all season. But WSU, will it be the team that beat Notre Dame badly, or the team that lost badly to a mediocre Arizona team twice.

Pomeroy also has a figure called luck rating in which he rates UNC as being one of the luckier teams left in the tournament, which is most likely due to a slew of close games they had while Ty Lawson was hurt. He also has WSU as being relatively unlucky this year, which is truly puzzling. A glance at their results indicates that they split two overtime games this year and that most of their losses have been by more than three points. Their schedules appear to be relatively even, with UNC playing tougher defensive teams and WSU playing tougher offensive teams.

There have recently been some articles published that state that Vegas uses the Pomeroy ratings to set its lines. Vegas is currently predicting a 142.5 over/under, which is 2.5 points higher than the Pomeroy prediction, so that could possibly be the case here.

However, if Vegas used the Pomeroy predictions to set its points plus or minus, then the public immediately moved the line far away from the Pomeroy setting.

Pomeroy predicts that UNC will only win 71-69, which seems frankly amazing. His system predicts that WSU will be playing in a site three time zones away, on a highly partisan "neutral" court, against a team that everyone agrees has far more talent and that UNC, with all those advantages, is only a 2-point favorite.

This is ludicrous and indicates something deeply wrong with the manner in which he is currently rating teams. WSU has an excellent shot at winning. In a one game and out tournament, unlikely events occur somewhat frequently. Davidson beat Georgetown, albeit while playing in Davidson's home state. Nevertheless, there is a huge difference between a team winning an upset and being deemed essentially an equally good team, which is what Pomeroy would have you believe is the case in the WSU-UNC match-up.

It is difficult to perceive how Pomeroy's system could predict such a thing, about as difficult as figuring out why he ranks them above Stanford. The current Vegas odds are Carolina by 8 points, which seems about right given that WSU will try to hold down the score as much as they possibly can.

Everyone seems to agree that Washington State is a very unselfish team that maximizes their chances to win, given the talent at their disposal. But is that likely to be enough? Pomeroy says almost, and he means this in general, seeing them beating Carolina 43 times out of 100.

While I am definitely not neutral in terms of my rooting interests, I am not sure any other neutral observer can agree with Ken Pomeroy.

Washington State has not beaten any of the supremely talented teams that they have faced this year, losing all 7 games against UCLA, Stanford and Arizona, a disappointing team with injuries, but top-notch talent. They may finally achieve that break-through win Thursday night in Charlotte, but if they do, it will be a huge, overachieving upset, not a battle between two even teams.

I have to believe that WSU has not shown much ability to beat teams that exceed them in talent. They have beaten decent squads like Arizona State, Baylor, Winthrop, Oregon and now Notre Dame. They have not, however, beaten anyone that would surprise you while reading your morning newspaper. With virtually all the intangibles leaning UNC's way, it's hard to see them doing that now.

More Math and March Madness

One of the interesting things in life is when a person becomes a leader in a field and develops devoted accolytes and then changes beliefs, or "sins", if you will in the eyes of his or her accolyes.

Robert Nozick, was a noted libertarian philosopher, famous for his debates with John Rawls concerning the proper reach of government. Nozick is noted furthermore by hoops fans for using the unmatched talent of Wilt Chamberlain as one of his main analogies against government, in his opus, Anarchy, State and Utopia. Unfortunately, Nozick later had the temerity to sue his landlord for violating a rent-control statute, and his libertarian followers were not happy.

In the field of sports statistical analysis, Bill James is king. Dean Oliver wrote an excellent, aforementioned book, extending statistical analysis to basketball, called Basketball On Paper, which caught the eye of Ken Pomeroy, someone who is well known to virtually all college basketball fans who are interested in the statistical analysis of college basketball. His site, Kenpom.com, is a smorgasborg of interesting data, with link data, which leads to predictions of upcoming games, although for most, it seems not used for gambling, but simply to buttress arguments about which team is truly superior in the world of college basketball.

This is all well and good enough, except lately some of Pomeroy's accolyes, if you will, are beginning to question some of his methods and some of the conclusions reached by him and other commentators at basketballprospectus.com.

Recently, John Gasaway, another writer and commentator at this web site, known to many college hoops fans formerly as the entertaining and irreverent, Big Ten Wonk, wrote an article asserting that basketball writers were wrong to award Tyler Hansbrough the 2008 Player of the Year Award.

Based upon Gasaway's analysis of their statistics. Kevin Love of UCLA, and nephew of the Beach Boys, believe it or not, deserved the award, Gasaway tell us, and that is that. Love is best--wasn't that a Beach Boys' song or was it the Monkees?--and Hansbrough should be happy being second best. After all, it was good enough for Avis, wasn't it?

http://www.basketballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=232

Now to be fair, Gasaway has made his name by being hardhitting and writing with a certain verve and flair and this article seemed to get plenty of attention. Somewhat like J.J. Redick or Bobby Hurley, Hansbrough seems to be the kind of person that many people dislike because they feel like he gets too much media attention, although it is hard to believe that a 6' 10", basketball-playing, nephew of the Beach Boys is likely to be underexposed by the media. Happily, there doesn't seem to be any racial issues at play, as both Love and Hanbrough are, well, kind of big, goofy-looking white guys.

I am a big fan of revisionism, myself, so what's the problem you might be asking,

Well, Gasaway tries to make statistics do something that they simply can't do here. First of all, he really didn't have a lot of data upon which to base a conclusive determination. While snarkiness is a trait that I highly admire, the emperor needs to have a bit more clothes on before engaging therein--Gasaway is scarcely wearing a banana hammock with the data he presents.

UCLA and UNC, the teams of the two players that Gasaway compares, haven't played this year and they play in two different conferences whose teams rarely play head to head. Gasaway never tells us how reliable his data are, whether they are significant, or how he can compare two guys conclusively who are not playing in the same league. This differs greatly from baseball, where until recently, all teams in the same league played exactly the same schedule with a number of iterations (162) which produces much nicer and more reliable data sets.

Perhaps even more importantly, Gasaway fails to discuss the defensive sets that UCLA and UNC both employ and how that might affect defensive rebounding, nor does he alert the reader to the facts, as to whether or not Hansbrough's team, is indeed, the better rebounding team overall, perhaps due to Hansbrough place in that scheme.

Secondly, the data Gasaway did have, seemed pretty even. Perhaps he knows so much more than the rest of us about the value of defensive rebounding, which is basically the crux of his argument against Hansbrough and in favor of UCLA post man, Kevin Love, that he doesn't feel the need to explain. Nevertheless, not all that many people seemed convinced by his argument. A quick internet search shows even Duke people deriding Gasaway's arguments.

One sentence particularly stands out for me: "The Player of the Year award rightly belongs to the player who's as good as Hansbrough on offense, but vastly superior to Hansbrough on defense. It rightly belongs to Kevin Love." This stands out because it reminds me of what legal writing teachers and many judges often point out.

When lawyers don't have cases or statutes that are open and shut, they tend to fall back upon words such as "clearly," or "vastly," because in fact, they implicitly recognize that the case they are arguing is far from open and shut. Some judges go as far as telling their law clerks to circle it in red every time a lawyer uses the word "clearly" in his legal briefs, just so the judge can be clear about what the proponent's weakness in fact, are. Recently, another writer at the site has tried to tip-toe away from what Gasaway in fact said, but Gasaway's article makes it clear that he will brook no debate.

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/chat/chat.php?chatId=438

I won't go into a full statistical rebuttal, as others have done this, but I will reiterate that while Gasaway makes some good points on behalf of Love, ultimately, his article fails because it doesn't carry its premise.

http://jackiemanuelsposse.wordpress.com/2008/03/12/basketball-prospectus-is-smarter-than-i/


Surely, I am biased. I am a Carolina and ACC fan, but that doesn’t mean that I am not also a basketball fan first and that I don’t want to know what really makes the game tick. Nevertheless, when things don’t make sense to me, I am not just going to receive the wisdom from on high. The baseball stats guys generally don’t do that. They argue about everything, from the value of base stealing to whether pitchers can cause ground balls or prevent home runs, until people are generally convinced of the truth of their assertions.

One reason, in fact, that Pomeroy has many Carolina fans as readers is because his site has tended to advocate many of the basketball insights utilized by North Carolina coaches such as Frank McGuire, Dean Smith and Roy Williams, and Carolina fans are more than willing to debate these issues, but understandably did not much like it when Gasaway laid down the gauntlet and essentially said, "if you are a stats guy, then you support Kevin Love as player of the year over Tyler Hansbrough.

The other important point is that I don’t believe that Gasway realizes that he has traded in his Big Wonk hat for a different one at Basketball Prospectus, where we expect him to develop detailed arguments with data, not to decide things for us based upon his seeming whims, likes and dislikes. He had that freedom as the Big Ten Wonk, but now he should be applying sounder principles or at least, how about a disclaimer?

I will give him credit for starting a debate about the true worth of players, although let the record reflect that the awards are generally called either Player of the Year or Most Valuable Player, not most efficient, and may indeed, include recognition for attributes such as exceptional hustle or guts.

He starts out by making some interesting arguments that made me want to watch Kevin Love some more and which make me wonder if Love isn’t the top player this year. Thankfully, Gasaway only obliquely makes the often prevalent and irrelevant and unprovable argument ad hominem, that Love will be a better professional player than Hansbrough.

But Gasaway ends up precluding you and me from deciding for ourselves based upon watching the two of them and their teams play, and then taking a look at their stats. Gasaway has determined that Love is better and there simoly is no way around that.

This is silly because first of all, there is not a lot of difference that I can see between the numbers Gasaway presented. Secondly, unlike a full season of baseball where raw data is more persuasive, Gasaway seems to think that we don’t even need to watch the guys to know who is better.

This seems especially specious, given that virtually everyone who watches Hansbrough comes away impressed by the sheer audacious will and tenacity that he shows on the court. Love looks good out there too, but not in the crazed, frenetic, win at all costs manner that Tyler has. Coaches and commentators from Dick Vitale to Billy Packer to Coach K have all expressed the notion that Tyler Hansbrough is sui generis and they derive this belief from having watched him and thousands of other players in person during their lifetimes.

But according to Gasaway, their eyes deceive them. Hansbrough isn't so special at all. Just look at the stat sheet, you dunces, and you will see it.

I guess there was a similar argument years ago regarding East coast and West coast jazz and we all knew who won that one.(East coast). But just imagine if someone told us we should just look at the sheet music without ever actually listening to it, in order to decide which was “best.”

Gasaway’s approach, whether he realizes it or not, is anti-basketball. You don’t even need to watch the games and just based upon a few statistics, he can tell you who is better.

This is not the way that Dean Oliver did it. Take a look at his book. He talks about stats being persuasive but doesn’t tell people that it is his way or the highway. I recently did a short review of one of his chapters where Oliver purports to tell us who was better, Wilt or Bill Russell, and guess what, Oliver goes through all the arguments and then makes a hypothesis but lets us draw our own conclusions. That is how you do it, not by trying to shove it down people’s throats.

Well, that is enough for now--I won't even go into the issue of Ken Pomeroy's allegedly fudging his possession calculations, which makes Carolina look even worse on defense than it actually is, and to those who think that I am making mountains out of unimportant molehills, well that is true, but I can't always be writing every article about the incredibly large U.S. prison population as it gets depressing after a while, no?

Math, March Madness and Michael Jordan

Given that we are in the midst of March Madness and that I am a huge basketball fan, I thought that I might address some of the things going on out there in the college basketball world.

One of the more interesting trends to me, is the continuing adoption of applying statistical methods to basketball, in an attempt to follow in the footsteps of baseball, which has a big headstart over its basketball stats devotees. For those interested, the Bible would be the book, Basketball On Paper, by Dean Oliver, in which the author attempts to combine the methods of Bill James with the coaching philosophy of Dean Smith. http://www.basketballonpaper.com/

It is a great and instructive book whose only lacking is that it focuses on the NBA instead of the vastly more interesting college game, presumably due to the greater availability of statistical data from the professional league.

One thing in the book that I found especially interesting is that Oliver attempts to answer the decades old question as to who was better between Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell. He doesn't really answer the question, which may be to his credit, as basketball is a team game after all. We have lately seen other writers who make a pretense of using statistical analysis to give definitive answers as to which of two excellent players is better, which actually ends up being more opinion than statistics based.

For examples of this, see a recent article on Basketball Prospectus, a little brother of Baseball Prospectus, trying to find its feet: http://www.basketballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=232, in which the writer makes some jarring leaps to conclusions based upon fairly even and imperfect statistical data, and does this without even deeming it necessary for a person to have seen the two players in question in game action. This is the misuse of statistics and it obscures rather than elucidates in helping the fan understand what makes players and teams successful.

Oliver, by contrast, uses the numbers to try to analyze each player's strengths, recognizing that the numbers are not enough to carry the day either way.

What Oliver concludes about Russell and Chamberlain, is that basically Russell played on teams that always had several Hall of Famers on them during his career, while Chamberlain did so only a couple of times.

When Chamberlain was accompanied by Hall of Fame caliber talent like Billy Cunningham, Chet Walker, Gail Goodrich and Jerry West, he broke through and won two championships, altering his game to focus more on defense and rebounding in the process.

By winning two NBA titles, Chamberlain stands among the few all time greats who have even won more than one, given the Celtics dominance up to about 1975. His two championship are more than this following Hall of Fame contingent, all of whom were his contemporaries, and who either won only one title or none at all: Jerry West, Elgin Baylor, Nate Thurmond, Walt Bellamy, Jerry Lucas, Oscar Robertson, Elvin Hayes, Rick Barry, and Wes Unseld. And yet, none of these great players has ever been deemed a "loser," in the way that Chamberlain has. Also peculiar is the way that Chamberlain was derided for his foul shooting, when he was essentially even with Russell statistically in free throw percentage.

It is also worth noting that Chamberlain bridged the careers of Bill Russell and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the two most successful centers in NBA history in terms of winning titles and Wilt's teams dethroned both of them, in 1967, with the 76'ers annihilating the Celtics in five games, and in 1972 with the Lakers defeating the 66-16 defending champs, the Bucks, in 6 games.

But unlike the 7' 4" Tom Burleson with NC State, who along with David Thompson dethroned the smaller Bill Walton and UCLA after years of Bruin dominance, did Wilt ever get his due for ending the Celtics string of 8 titles in a row? Not really.

Ultimately, for Oliver, Russell may have been better for a team like the Celtics, which had many great shooters and scorers, while Wilt was the player who could take a team to respectability overnight all by himself.

But to me, what was even more interesting is that Oliver then ends up more focused on evaluating Wilt, who retired in the early 1970's, as compared to Michael Jordan, the greatest player of more recent times.

Just looking at the raw numbers, one wonders how anyone could compare to Wilt, who scored 100 points in a single game while playing for coach Frank McGuire's Philadelphia Warriors, and who averaged over fifty points that season while carrying his team to an excellent second place finish to the Celtics, of course.

But what Oliver points out, is something completely counter-intuitive. Basketball was played much faster in the 1960's than it is today. There were far more shots taken per game back then, which resulted in higher scoring and higher rebounding averages. It's just those jerky film clips that make them seem so awkward and slow!

After adjusting the numbers garned by Chamberlain during his career and then adjusting for the difference in tempo in the way the game was played, Oliver discovers that Wilt was indeed overrated and nowhere close to the unmatchable titan that we all imagine when looking at his raw stats.

Wilt was human,and after adjusting his statistics downward to account for all the extra shots and rebounds, it turns out that Wilt in actuality was probably only a little bit better than Michael Jordan!

But if anyone out there saw both of them play and wants to make an argument the other way, Oliver gives us the tools to help make more concrete arguments with data about which player we ultimately prefer. But let's not get the horse before the carriage.

Basketball is a beautiful thing to be watched first and enjoyed and then just maybe, the data can help us understand and appreciate the sport even more. But you have to watch and see the players to really know and for those of us too young to have ever seen Chamberlain, we will just have to read the accounts of those who did and watch old game films. The numbers by themselves will never be enough.

ACC Coaches versus Dean Smith

One of my favorite things about ACC basketball over the years has been the rich personalities in the league, particularly among its coaches, who have always been excellent, both in coaching prowess, but also in the give and take among the different coaches.

You had to love some of the things you saw in the 60's and 70's that we don't have today, for example: Bones McKinney of Wake Forest, and Lefty Driesell of Maryland, were two of the most interesting coaching personalities ever, and to boot, neither coached his alma mater, which became a big conference rival, UNC for McKinney and Duke for Lefty.

I think the relative level of coaches was just as good or better back than than now. You had Dean Smith of UNC, Frank McGuire of South Carolina and Norman Sloan, of NC State, all of whom would win titles; you had Terry Holland of Virginia, and Vic Bubas of Duke, and Bill Foster, of Duke, all of whom made it to the Final Four; you had Lefty Driesell at Maryland, who did everything but make it to the Final Four; Carl Tacy at Wake Forest was at the tail end of this period and class of coaches, but still took the Deacons to the Final 8, twice, I believe, farther than Tim Duncan could; you had Press Maravich, Tates Locke and Bill Foster at Clemson, where Locke probably had the best Clemson teams ever back with Tree Rollins and Skip Wise, and Foster had less success there but had built the UNCC program from nothing, leaving the year before Charlotte went to the Final Four, in 1976.

The amazing thing to me is the way that Dean Smith buried all his rivals. Partially, it was on the court, but that came in the overwhelming sense only after 1975. Dean was simply so good at, I won't say manipulating the media, because that has a negative connotation, but he made it difficult for his rivals to feel comfortable in the conference, even when they were either outdoing him or at least performing equally. Coach K was essentially the only one with the will to go head to head with Smith, not counting Valvano and Lefty, who had unfortunate demises, and had to leave NC State and Maryland after being accused of not monitoring their players to a great enough extent.

For example, here is a list of the excellent coaches, who essentially desisted from competition against Smith, in spite of some decent successes:

Vic Bubas at Duke had a winning record against Smith and equal or better success in the 1960's but then retires unexpectedly at a very young age in 1970.

Frank McGuire of USC, establishes South Carolina as a national power, and beats Smith four out of their last five contests in the ACC, after going undefeated in conference in 1970 and winning the ACC tourney and achieving the number one ranking in 1971, but his team left the conference at the end of the year and he would only face Smith one more time in their careers.

Norm Sloan beats Smith 9 times in a row and wins 57 out of 58 games in the early 1970's and wins the greatest NCAA title since 1957 after going undefeated in conference two years straight and winning two ACC tournaments in a row, during a period when Smith had never done any of these things, except win consecutive tourney titles. And yet, Sloan was gone from State within four years of his amazing title run, leaving to try to establish the program at Florida, where he had just so-so success.

Bill Foster at Duke, had a period from 1977 to 1980 where his teams are either equal to, or exceed, Smith's teams on the court depending on your point of view, going to the Finals and the Final 8 during this period and yet by 1981, he has gone to USC to succeed McGuire and is unable to maintain or restore the high levels of success achieved by McGuire.

Terry Holland never quite equalled Smith on the court, but did have pretty good success against Carolina, tormenting them in the ACC tourney with mediocre Cav teams in 1976 and 1977 and then taking 3 out of 6 against the incredibly talented UNC finalists from 1981 and 1982. Granted, Smith won the bigger games in 1981 and 1982, but Holland's upset in the 1976 ACC tourney ruined Ford's greatest team, which had a record of 25-2 after losing just once in conference, and which thought it might be able to compete with eventual undefeated champion, Indiana. In 1984, when Carolina may have had its most talented team ever, UNC flamed out against Indiana, while Holland went on to beat Indiana and on to the Final Four and almost the finals, with a very mediocre Cav team, that had a .500 record in conference. Holland would then quit just a couple of years later.

Carl Tacy at Wake Forest, filled this bill to a lesser extent, going to the Final 8 twice and dropping huge defeats on Carolina in 1978 in the ACC tourney, in Ford's final ACC game, and in 1982 against the eventual national champs, and like UVa, went further than Carolina in 1984 and yet, he too would be gone in a couple of years, citing burn-out.

Only Coach K at Duke, whose tenure started rather horribly, was able to avoid scandal, burn-out or general exasperation, among those coaches who were able to compete at least fairly equally with Smith.

Nevertheless, Smith, who at one time had close to an equal record versus K, finished up from 1993 through 1997 on a big streak and ended up with an 11 victory margin, overall, and for once things went the other way. Duke's program although certainly already excellent, went into the stratosphere when Smith retired, benefiting from the vacuum at UNC and it has only been the return of Roy Williams to some extent, that has brought Duke back down to earth.

So what was it about Dean? Obviously talent, innovation and hardwork were the most important factors, but it seems that many of his peers just couldn't stand Smith or abide his presence, and ended up fleeing the competition to what appeared to be greener pastures, most probably to UNC's benefit and leading to a 30 year run of success never before seen.

Indiana in 1976 and the Dwindling Importance of the ACC tournament

I have previously discussed just how amazing the 1976 Indiana Hoosiers' achievement was and why it is unlikely to be equalled, but apparently many in the media still are under the illusion that the NCAA tournament is more difficult today than back then. On average, this is probably true, but no one is ever likely to have a more difficult path than Indiana did in 1976, or North Carolina, which fell just short the following year, did, having to play Purdue, Notre Dame, Kentucky, UNLV and Marquette in succession, ultimately being edged by Marquette in the final.

Let me add this link though to show how much more important the ACC tournament was before 1980, even after they started allowing a 2nd team, because the regions were unbalanced. Given travel costs in the past, it is understandable that such was the policy but it makes it difficult to compare across eras without looking more closely, as some regions could be easy and others hard.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_NCAA_Men's_Division_I_Basketball_Tournament

This shows just how great Indiana was in 1976 and why UVa's upset of UNC in the ACC tournament final was so crushing. The regions were unbalanced then and Indiana winning the region was much tougher than winning the Final Four.

Why? Look at the Mid-East regional line-up and the UPI rankings: Indiana(1), Marquette(2), Alabama(6), and UNC(8). That is the two best teams in the country were in the same initial bracket, and four of the top 8 teams were in that one regional, and if you go by the AP, it was five of the top ten teams in that regional.

It took 5 wins to win it all then.

Indiana's first win was against a top-twenty team, St. John's (18). Its second win was against Alabama, number (6). In the regional final and pseudo-national championship, Indiana beat the number (2) team in the nation, Marquette. In the National Semi-final, they took out defending champ UCLA (5) easily and then beat Michigan, who was only number (9) for the 3rd time that year in the finals. Indiana finshed 32-0 with Bob Knight tying Frank McGuire's record for most wins in a season without a loss and did it by facing the most brutal post-season schedule, but at least, unlike the ACC, Indiana didn't have three extra bruising games back to back to back.

For ACC teams to win back then, like NC State in 1974, they had to win 7 post-season games in a row, since the ACC had a bye then for the champions. That is brutal.

Had Carolina beaten UVA, they would have had a virtual walk to the Final Four. Rutgers had not played anybody all year and was way, way overrated, getting pummeled in the Semi-finals by Michigan. Rutgers beat, get this, VMI in the Regional Final. UConn, pre-Big East was another "power" in the region. For the most part, during the unbalanced region phase, winning the ACC tournament almost guaranteed a spot in the Final Four.

Another thing that shows the importance of the tournament then versus now, is that unlike what we often hear, upsets were not very common in terms of the tournament winner. The best team during the regular season almost always won the ACC during the period between 1963 and 1975.

Carolina finished first in the ACC during the regular season in 1967, 1968, 1969, 1971 and 1972 and won the tournament every year except 1971, losing to the Gamecocks who were only 1 game back in the regular season. Duke finished first in 1963, 1964, 1965 and 1966 and won the tournament every year except 1965, when State won, who was only 1 game back. State finished first in 1973 and 1974 and won the tournament both years. This is why the 1970 loss by the Gamecocks was such a big deal. It was a rare loss by the regular season champ, and an undefeated one at that.

After the NCAA expanded in 1975, it quickly became common for the top regular season team not to win the tournament. Coaches are not dumb and just as in horseracing, most of them know that if you apply the whip too much, you will wear out the ride. 3 of the last 4 national champions from the ACC did not win the ACC tournament and the smart money now says that expending any energy or risking injuries in winning the conference tournament is simply not worth it if you are already guaranteed a number one or two seed. Duke seems to be the only major national program that continues to place great emphasis on winning the conference tournament. Roy Williams has never made the Final Four, after winning his conference tournament, nor has Gary Williams or Terry Holland. In 1984, UVa had a losing record in conference and lost in the first round of the ACC tournament and then went on to the Final Four.

The last ACC tournament that had much meaning at all in terms of winning the NCAA's was probably the 1982 tournament, where Carolina edged UVA, 47-45. This allowed them to stay at home in the East Regional, where they barely edge JMU in Charlotte and Alabama and Villanova in fairly tight games in Raleigh, while UVA lost to Birmingham.

UVa was a team that had ACC tournament "magic dust" on them in 1976 and 1977. They were mediocre in 1976 and downright awful in 1977 and yet won five out of 6 tournament games over two years against topflight competition. In the NCAA's, however, the Cavs reverted to form and went out in the first round against a weak Depaul team.

Matt Doherty

Former University of North Carolina coach and player, Matt Doherty was back in North Carolina yesterday, for his SMU team's game against East Carolina, one of their Conference USA rivals. Remarkably, there was not much press attention, as Doherty attempts to recover from his ouster as UNC mens's basketball coach in 2003.

Although North Carolina alumni and fans are deliriously happy with Roy Williams and the results he has gotten in putting UNC back on top in the college basketball world, they are less certain about the treatment that Doherty received and whether he will ever be comfortable returning to his alma mater for alumni functions.

I honestly am not sure whether we will see Mr. Doherty at UNC anytime soon. This is a complicated issue. Essentially, Carolina never got over a similar riff that it had with Frank McGuire until last year. Frank McGuire led UNC to the 1957 national title, going 32-0, which is still the record for most wins without a loss in a season, and became a state hero, before encountering some mild rules violations and fleeing for the NBA, leaving Dean Smith as head coach.

The former McGuire players like Lennie Rosenbluth, Larry Brown (less so), Doug Moe, and Billy Cunningham have generally not been as beloved as the Smith guys by Carolina fans. Some of this is simply due to temporal proximity, but a lot of it is because Frank McGuire did a Rick Pitino squared, by taking the South Carolina job, and hiring UNC alum, Donnie Walters as chief assistant, in the mid-1960's, and escalated the bad-boy aspect of his personality, as well as the South Carolina versus North Carolina state rivalries, thereby elevating USC almost instantly into everyone's biggest rival in the conference. By the time South Carolina left the ACC in 1972, McGuire may have been less popular in Chapel Hill than Coach K is now. Some of the 1957 guys have said that they have never felt particularly welcome at UNC until last year's celebration.

With respect to Doherty, things were a mess on several levels. He was an excellent recruiter and doing well at Notre Dame, which seemed a great fit for an Irish guy from New York.
I love Dean Smith, and I think he is a great human being, but he is human and from what I have read, he did not want Doherty to have the job from the beginning, and may not have been particularly helpful to Doherty.

Smith had already essentially forced Carolina to hire Guthridge and was still the power behind the scenes and some of the problems Doherty had seem trivial and stupid, but had to do with things like angering Smith's secretaries and the like. Adam Lucas covers much of this in his book, but essentially Roy Williams did much of the same things as Doherty--i.e., refusing to hire assistants from UNC, but no one complained because he was a famous coach.

Apparently, Doherty's worst trait was an Irish temper(hey, I am part Irish and I sometimes have it, too) that could explode in all directions, even at his chosen assistants in the huddle. He had a penchant for using the "P" word, it is said, at players who displeased him. After playing for the subdued and grandfatherly Guthridge, some players like Forte, apparently couldn't stomach Doherty's intensity.

His first season ended poorly, but going 13-3 and first in the ACC and taking 3 out of 4 from eventual Final Four teams, Duke and Maryland was pretty darn good overall. The 26-7 record was far better than the 22-14 record of the year before, although that team made it to the Final Four (and no one has any idea how to this day).

His second season was strange. Yes, the Heels went 8-20, but they still won 4 conference games, keeping them far above the Duke 2-14 fiasco or the Wake record under Skip the year after Chris Paul left, of 3-13. Carolina played just about the toughest schedule in the nation that year and also played about the fewest games possible, leading to the perfect storm that made them look worse than they actually were. For example, State will probably finish 4-12 in the ACC this year but with a record much closer to .500.

What is forgotten is that aside from his driving Forte away, which was a tragedy for all involved, Doherty also inherited years of neglect by Guthridge on the recruiting trails. All of this came to a head in 2002. Perhaps he should have sought treatment for a bad back.

Doherty, however, did not rest on his laurels and garnered one of the greatest recruiting classes ever, probably better than any by his successor, Roy Williams at Carolina thus far. The Heels rebounded to 6-10 in the ACC, 19-16 overall, winning the pre-season NIT, beating Williams' Jayhawks, and going into the second round of the ACC tourney and the post-season NIT. They beat Duke and while they were erratic, who knows how much better they might have done had Sean May not been injured for much of the season.

Using mostly the same, more-experienced talent the next year, Williams was unable to do much better, finishing 19-11, and 8-8 in conference and losing in the first round of the ACC tourney, without beating Duke, although Carolina did get a NCAA tourney bid, where they underperformed and went out in the second round.

The conventional wisdom is that Doherty had the players so screwed up that it took Roy Williams over a year to turn them around. The facts are probably somewhere in between.

The real truth is that Carolina fans were never going to be comfortable with Matt Doherty because he was too much like Coach K, a working-class Catholic kid who had made good but who simply makes us feel uncomfortable. North Carolinians are more laid-back and the Kansan Smith was a good fit. McGuire was popular and fiery in his day, but he got away with it by being erudite and stylish, ultimately losing that good will when he went to USC. Roy Williams is fiery, but has learned how to use his "Ole Roy" persona to deflect some of his aggresiveness.

Matt Doherty was too much like Bobby Knight and K, with the profanity and hystrionics and making fun of cheerleaders, and I believe that many of us were secretely happy that the 2003 team performed slightly below its level, which should have been the final 32 in the NCAA, because it gave us a reason to fire Doherty besides the fact that he was simply kind of "icky." As much as Carolina dislikes Duke, many of us couldn't quite stomach the near brawl that occurred during a 2003 game against Duke. It just wasn't classy and was a throwback to an earlier time 25 or 30 years earlier, when even Smith got into it, apparently, with a UVa player, a time that had been long forgotten by most and such actions, if once tolerated, were no longer appropriate, regardless of who was to blame.

But looking back, had Carolina upset Duke in the second round of the 2003 ACC tourney, they very well might have snuck into the NCAA tourney and the story would have been the great turnaround, even without Sean May.

But, because Carolina did not win 20 games and did not make the NCAA tourney, the administration had an out, they could fire him because "he was mean to the players" and the players did not like him. Doherty had committed no recruiting violations and had just assembled two excellent recruiting classes after years of mediocre recruiting, but we (including me) just didn't feel comfortable with him as coach. We had made a mistake and wanted a divorce and now Roy Williams was available.

I truly feel sorry for Matt Doherty because he was put in over his head. Had he stayed at Notre Dame, he would probably be reaping the rewards that current Notre Dame coach Mike Brey is. A lot of this unpleasantness could have been avoided had Coach Smith, I think somewhat selfishly, somewhat selflessly, not decided to quit right before the 1998 season. His decision essentially forced UNC to hire Guthridge and forced Guthridge to take the job and I am not sure either party wanted him to be head coach, but Coach Smith had forced the scenario.

What should have happened is that Smith should have announced his retirement but coached that year, allowing a proper replacement decision. It probably would have been Williams, but possibly Larry Brown or Eddie Fogler. Instead, Carolina ended up with its initial Roy Williams rejection fiasco and then the negotiations in the middle of Kansas's season in 2003, which gravely injured strong ties between the two universities.

Given a second chance at the universally-admired Roy Williams, Carolina could not say no, and Doherty was thrown on the trash heap and possibly treated unfairly in terms of severence.

He has bounced around a bit and is now at SMU, his second job since leaving UNC. The SMU team is horrible this year, but apparently has mostly freshmen and sophmores and Doherty still appears to have his recruiting touch, so I am hopeful for his future there, as the univesity attempt to recharge its sports program which was at the very top in both football and basketball in the early 1980's, by bringing in Doherty and the football coach from the successful Hawaii program.

Transitioning from the impersonal journalistic attempt to describe in an unbiased way what led to Doherty's leaving Chapel Hill, I would like to end on a more personal note.

Matt Doherty was a couple of years ahead of me at UNC and truly was a key cog when Carolina made the transition from being merely one of many excellent basketball programs to being at the very top with the UCLA's and the Kentucky's. I will never forget his big shot on Senior Day back in 1984 that led to our comeback against Duke and preserved our second perfect season in conference. I know he is a fighter and I will be rooting for him at SMU and expect that one day he will be back on college basketball's big stage. Many of us take a few tries before we find our dream job or perfect fit at a job. He is a Carolina guy and hopefully knows that many of us still admire him and want to see him back in Chapel Hill for all of his accomplishments.

UNC Tar Heels hit the 26-2 Mark

It is interesting that the 2007-08 UNC Tar Heels have gotten a fair amount of criticism from fans and writers alike for having had a lackluster season, particularly on the defensive end. What this probably indicates more than anything else is just how spoiled Tar Heel fans have gotten.

I am only going to go back as far as the 1970's but let's see what this team has accomplished so far by seeing what other Carolina teams have achieved a record of 26-2, or close to it, missing it by one win at most, at some point during a season. These numbers are off the top of my head but I am sure that they are pretty much on target:

1. 1976--The Tar Heels, who featured four future NBA'ers and Olympians, were 25-2 and number two in the nation before losing in the finals of the ACC tourney and having Phil Ford get injured, finishing 25-4. They weren't going to beat Indiana that year anyway, who went 32-0.

2. 1982--UNC wins it all and finishes 32-2. This is Carolina's second best record ever, just short of the 1957 team's record, shared with 1976 Indiana, of 32-0, for a champion. This team had only one loss, at UVa when it had its starters intact, also losing at home to Wake, 55-49 without Perkins who had influenza(the real kind that makes you go to the hospital), and thus they came very close to going 33-1. I won't say that they came close to going undefeated, however, because they got pasted by double digits in Charlottesville in a game that they were never really in.

3. 1984--UNC finished up 28-3, after going 14-0 in conference. Dean hints that he brought starting point guard Kenny Smith back as a starter, which may have been a mistake, given how well back-up Steve Hale was playing(hmm). Indiana and Dan Dakich ruined my freshman year during the round of 16.

4. 1987--UNC finished 32-4, after going 14-0 in conference, losing to NC State in the ACC tourney finals and losing to Syracuse in the round of 8. This team had Kenny Smith, J.R. Reid and Scott Williams, all of whom had decent pro careers, especially Kenny Smith, as well as highly recruited Dave Popson, Joe Wolf and Jeff Lebo. The ACC was a little down this year and Carolina surprised somewhat, given that they had lost the number one draft pick, Brad Daugherty from the year before.

5. 1993--UNC finished 34-4, after going 14-2 in conference. This team lost to Michigan in December by one point at the buzzer and then to Duke and Wake in the first go round in conference. They ended up losing a heartbreaker in the conference tourney final to GIT, after playing without Derrick Phelps, in a game in which Donald Williams bonked three after three after three, something he wouldn't do again until the next year. My recollection is that this team was 25-3 at this point in the season.

6. 1998--UNC finished 34-4, losing to State, Maryland, Duke and Utah in the semi's. Carolina beat Duke in the finals of the tourney, after losing the Senior game at Duke the week before in a total collapse. My recollection is that this team was 26-2 at this point in the season. This team was somewhat of a mystery team, with the losses to Duke and Utah being somewhat inexplicable; they also came very close to going out in the Second Round against Charlotte in the NCAA tourney.

7. 2005--UNC finished 33-4, losing to Santa Clara in its first game, which I believe Quentin Thomas started, since Ray Felton had been suspended for one game for playing in an unauthorized summer game, and then lost to Duke and Wake in the first go round in conference play and then to GIT in the semi's of the tourney. Carolina was 25-3 at this point in the season. Discounting the game that Felton missed, this team came reasonably close to winning all the rest of its games,losing heartbreakers to Duke and GIT and a foul-marred game at Wake Forest. The 2005 team won the title by beating one of the best second place finishers in recent memory, the 37-1 Illinois Illini. Had Illinois won, it would have been a new record for most victories by a champion.

So, looking back, Carolina teams achieved a record of 26-2 in the 1982, 1984, 1987, 1998 and 2008 seasons. Smith did it three times, Guthridge once and Roy Williams has now achieved it with the 'Heels and at least once with the Kansas Jayhawks, in 1997, who only lost twice the entire season.

Looking at how those teams did, we see a national championship in 1982, Sweet Sixteen in 1984, Final Eight in 1987, and a Final Four in 1998. Roy's 1997 Jayhawks had the misfortune that Dean had so many years, in that they played Arizona, the eventual title winner, in the round of 16 and lost a heartbreaker to the Wildcats, who went on to defeat Carolina and Kentucky in the Final Four. Judging by history, Carolina should expect to at least get to the Final Eight and probably to the Final Four, although after that (and of course, really these are just probabilities) there are no guarantees.

Memphis Vs. 1976 Indiana

The guys at Basketball Prospectus are debating the merits of Memphis' basketball season, given their status as the top team in a very poor conference. Should they go undefeated, how does that relate to the last team to go undefeated, the 1976 Indiana Hoosiers, of the perenially strong Big Ten, who went 32-0.

Ken Pomeroy states that it would be, obviously, quite an achievement, and states that it is even more impressive given that "IU's tourney run was in a different era: five games with a field that wasn't as deep, due to different selection rules back then. Winning the tournament carrying a zero in the loss column in 2008 would be an amazing achievement to me...." http://basketballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=164

Ken Pomeroy is a giant in the field of basketball analysis, but perhaps not history.

Ken actually does not know what he is talking about here when discussing 1976 Indiana, something I would rarely say about someone I greatly admire.

Indiana faced one of the most difficult journeys to their title in 1976 in the history of basketball, far more difficult than anything today. Ken is thinking of UCLA, which often did have a cupcake path to the Final Four in the West back then. Ultimately, after its grueling five game path to the title, Indiana tied 1957 UNC's record by achieving the most wins in a season without a loss by a national champion.

Just take a look at who Indiana beat in 1976 to win the title. Because the regions were not seeded, Indiana had to face the number two team in the country, Marquette, in their regional final. Should I repeat that? Number one played number two in the nation in the Mideast regional final, not the Final Four or the Final game. I remember watching it, and yes, everyone in the country figured it was probably for the national title.

Indiana's region had, overall, depending on the poll, five of the top ten teams in the country, including a 25-3 North Carolina with four future Olympians and NBA players, and Alabama's best team probably ever, with Leon Douglas. Alabama gave Indiana its toughest test, with the Hoosiers edging the Crimson Tide.

In the Final Four, it got easier. Indiana only had to defeat defending titlist, UCLA and then a Michigan team that it had already faced and beaten twice (although this was something Georgetown could not pull off in 1985 against the similarly twice-defeated 'Nova).

I don't even like Indiana and I despise Bobby Knight, but at some point you have to give the Devil his due. Should Memphis go undefeated this year, it will not even be close to comparing to what Indiana did, after a grueling 18 game Big Ten schedule, followed by the incredibly loaded Mid East regional.

Political Markets

The New York Times has done an interesting article on political markets, such as Intrade, something that I have been interested in for awhile. I wrote the author an email with respect to my own experience with such markets, which are valuable but still far from completely useful:

I share your interest in this, but one thing you fail to mention is the embarassment that many of us experienced on election day in 2004 when Intrade jerked around from one extreme to another. Intrade was worse than useless on that day. Another occasion on which it was similarly useless was during the Allen-Webb Senate election on election night where Intrade seemed to simply jerk back and forth based upon the reported returns--hardly the kind of predictive vehicle one can have faith in.

For what it is worth, my opinion is that Intrade does a good predictive job under a variety of situations but is basically useless once the polls open.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/13/business/13leonhardt.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Chesapeake Primaries and Beyond

As we go into today's primaries, more and more is becoming apparent about the most interesting Democratic primary in a generation. Look for Obama to win handily in D.C., Maryland and Virginia, as black voters make up a large percentage of voters in this region.

Hillary Clinton is banking on a comeback in March and April, in the states of Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania, all of which look to be much more sympathetic to her candidacy than the mid-Atlantic region.

Obama has one of the least likely coalitions imaginable, constructed of both the richest and the poorest that the Democratic Party has to offer. Clinton,on the other hand, has a much more traditional coalition based upon feminists, Hispanics, union-members and working class whites, especially Catholics.

Perhaps most diappointing of all for those of us who see American support for Obama as a sign of change is the failure of Catholics to support Obama. Catholics areas such as Boston, Pittsburgh and Chicago have historically been noted for their extreme racism, but one always hopes for attitudes to change. Unfortunately, according to the data we have, they apparently have not. What we don't know is whether this pattern will carry so far as to lead such voters to cross party lines in the fall, for the presumably Catholic, McCain.

While Clinton probably will do better in Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania, it is unlikely to be enough of an improvement to give her the delegates she needs for the nomination. These three states all have double the number of African-Americans per capita that California and Massachusetts had, not to mention that Texas has an open primary system likely to favor Obama. Clinton will benefit from the larger number of Catholics and union members in these states, but it probably will not be enough to give her the lead.

At that point, in spite of all the horror scenarios, it is difficult to envision seeing the Democratic Party give Clinton the nod via Super Delegates, because to do so would virtually ensure defeat in the fall general election, as it would alienate the independent and black voters that the party desperately needs to win in November.

For blacks, it could be the catalyst to finally severe their unswerving support for a party that always promises them so much, while delivering so little. I just don't think that Bill and Hillary could get away with what Walter Mondale pulled in 1984, given the open media we have now and the racial implications that were not in play in 1984.

What Hillary would do if she were smart, is to stand down and support Obama in the name of party unity. Were she to do so, she and Bill would immediately reclaim the love and admiration of blacks across the nation. Furthermore, should Obama lose, she would be well positioned to run in four years, when she would be only 64, or to receive a prominent cabinent position should he win. At this point, the Clinton's standing among many Democrats has plunged; such a pro-active out-of-the-box reversal could cement her party power for years to come.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/horseraceblog/2008/02/the_state_of_the_democratic_ra.html