Tuesday, March 23, 2021

USC's Mobley Clearly Best Frosh, Hot Teams Cool Off In Tourney

After the blitz of games we now have four days with no March Madness games. While catching our breath, a couple of notes: 

As I tweeted last night, Evan Mobley of USC is clearly the best freshman in the country. While 2nd through 6th is very close, Cade Cunningham calculates as 6th, which is also where he ranks among Big 12 players. 


For the rankings going into the tourney above and at www.valueaddbasketball.com, he was worth three points more per game then the next five best. This is based on calculations similar to the www.kenpom.com AdjO for offense is AdjD for defense.

The top 6 all played two tournament games so far. On defense Mobley has been by far the best defender, with twice as many defensive rebounds (15) and blocked shots (6).  Cunningham was the second best defender with 7 steals and Suggs third best with 4 steals. 

In offense for the two games, the average rating at KenPom was Mobley first at 123, Thomas second at 120, Moody at 115, the other three were below average in double digits. 

Overall it was not close this year - Mobley was BY FAR the best freshman in the country both in the season and in the tournament first weekend. You can argue 2nd through 6th because they are very close.

As for our overall brackets, most rank very high - between the 87th and 98th percentile. The one that once again falls flat is the one adjusted for the hottest teams in the tournament. We always remember the occasional run by a hot team, like Louisville and UConn title runs in the last decade, but in most cases teams do not play better if they finished the season hot.







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