College Hoops 3rd Best Conference History - Big 12

Amazing that a conference as dominant as the Big 12 could in turn be so dominated by one team. Kansas record streak of 14 consecutive titles finally ended in 2019. That year Iowa State won the tournament title after Texas Tech won the regular season title and then just missed the National Title.

However, from Wilt Chamberlain in 1957, to Paul Pierce in 1997 and Mario Chalmers in 2008 - three of the top six teams are from Kansas and those teams have combined for a 17-7 mark with a 5.5 rating, the third best in the game.

When you consider that Texas Tech team, Baylor's dominant 2021 national champs, and Wayman Tisdale's 1985 Sooners are the others in the Top 6, you can see the top six is tough to beat.

The 2008 national champs from Kansas ranked 2nd in the game with a 15.2 currently, but that is a bit suspect. In typical Kansas fashion they rolled up huge margins of victory against the other 21st century Big 12 teams to pass shoot up through the rankings.

Note I do list Danny Ainge's Brigham Young team with the Big 12 teams rather than in the "other" grouping since they are joining the Big 12. I did not include the American Athletic Conference teams that are moving to the Big 12 since they are in a conference list I include.

Rnk	Great Team	Year	Key Player	W	L	Pts	Allow	Rate
	Top 6 Big 12			17	7	74.1	68.3	5.5
1	Kansas	2008	Mario Chalmers	5	1	74.7	56.0	15.2
2	Kansas	1997	Paul Pierce	3	0	75.3	60.3	10.1
3	Baylor	2021	Jared Butler	2	2	86.0	78.5	7.1
4	Oklahoma	1985	Wayman Tisdale	3	1	75.3	73.8	1.9
5	Texas Tech	2019	Jarrett Culver	3	2	65.6	67.2	0.3
6	Kansas	1957	Wilt Chamberlain	1	1	67.5	74.0	-1.5
7	Oklahoma St.	2004	John Lucas	1	3	68.8	71.0	-3.1
8	Kansas St.	2008	Michael Beasley	1	1	75.0	75.5	-3.3
9	Oklahoma	2016	Buddy Hield	1	3	60.3	67.3	-4.4
10	West Virginia	2010	Kevin Jones	1	3	70.3	76.0	-4.6
11	Oklahoma St.	1946	Bob Kurland	0	1	80.0	82.0	-5.0
12	Texas	2003	T.J. Ford	1	2	68.7	76.3	-5.3
13	Kansas	1988	Danny Manning	0	1	58.0	67.0	-7.6
14	West Virginia	1959	Jerry West	0	1	68.0	69.0	-8.4
15	Brigham Young	1981	Danny Ainge	0	1	67.0	77.0	-8.6

We invented the Value Add Basketball Game, and since then have grown it to to 135 teams of all-time great teams and players. We have played 188 games to date, and 63,000 unique visitors have clicked on the game. 

Seven current conferences have at least six all-time great teams in the game. We decided to rank those conferences based on the average rating of their top six teams so far in our games against other teams.

Click on the game to play yourself - it contains everything you need to play the Value Add Basketball game, which lets you pit any of 136 great all-time college teams against each other. To pick your two teams it is best to click on this Google doc and print the pages of the teams you want (each team is one page). I track my games on this google sheet, but play your own for free!

Baylor Champs vs. Kareem's UCLA to Preview Tonight's ESPN Match-up

In tonight's great ESPN doubleheader, Baylor is favored by one against UCLA at 5:30 pm ET, then Gonzaga is favored by one against Kentucky at 7:30 p.m. ET. We mirrored the double header this weekend by taking all-time match-ups of the same schools in the Value Add Basketball Game. Kentucky 1996 already beat Gonzaga 2017 by a 81-75 score, and now we match up Kareem's 1967 UCLA squad against the recent 2021 Baylor champs - definitely a height against speed match-up.

One thing I should have made clear is you do not need to kill a ream of paper to print all 136 teams if you just want to play a match-up there or there. You just go to the google sheet of all 136 teams and see what pages each team is on - in this case Baylor is page 9 and Kareem's UCLA squad is page 117. You go to print and enter those pages, and have the two teams you want for a game. You do need to also print this scoresheet to play a game.

I'm mainly trying to go through and get any of the great teams up to at least three games played. 

Note we include regularly: Click on the game to play yourself - it contains everything you need to play the Value Add Basketball game, which lets you pit any of 136 great all-time college teams against each other. To pick your two teams it is best to click on this Google doc and print the pages of the teams you want (each team is one page). We track the games we play on this google sheet.

I have shown how you can put coins on the players to keep track of who is in the game and use dimes for those who get the ball on a 6, 7 or 8 roll on the 8-sided die. Another way to do it is write out your line-up and on which possession you will change players. We did that for this game and here is the line-up for each team.

On the 8-sided die, if the roll is a 1-5, then the ball goes to the player based on who is in that column. If the roll is 6, 7 or 8 then look for that number - only the players with an extra number on their actual card above can have an extra number, but as you see Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has two extra numbers so actually gets the ball on a 5, 7 or 8.

Top Small Forwards in College Basketball This Year

Note: While www.kenpom.com and www.valueaddbasketball.com analytics flagging Chattanooga's Malachi Smith as the 2nd best small forward in the country, we have been informed that in fact he plays point guard - where he would also rank as the 2nd best player at the country barely behind Villanova's Collin Gillespie. We will update for his next post, but we would still consider Smith a 2nd Team All-American at this point - just at a different position. (The analytics are thrown off because he grabs so many defensive rebounds that he appears to be a small forward rather than a point guard statistically).

 In Value Add Basketball we consider the team's "small forward" the player who has some combination of more defensive rebounds, blocked shots and height than two guards on the team, and typically more assists and steals then the two players on the team we consider the center and power forward. In many cases in modern basketball this is really a third guard, but either way it is the "3" position on the court.  (for a summary of the top players at each position, click here).

Because www.valueaddbasketball.com calculates how many points per game a player improves his team compared to if a typical replacement player took his place, the raw value add is adjusted by position since the replacement player would be at the same position. Therefore, once the formulas are run, and other positions are adjusted, but the average Small Forward actually is right about the average overall player, so their calculations are not adjusted before being entered at  at www.valueaddbasketball.com.

In general, freshmen make so many mistakes (turnovers, bad shots etc.) the first half of the season that they do not rank nearly as high as more experienced players. However, they tend to improve more at the end of the season, so we watch for breakout freshmen first when looking at brackets. Therefore we start with the 10 most valuable freshmen small forwards in college basketball, starting with one of three Arizona players we would put on the Freshman All-American team - Bennedict Mathurin - who improves his team by 7.32 points per game. This means Arizona would have LOST any game that they won by fewer than seven points if he had not played..

In his case, he improves the Arizona's offense by 5.55 points per game, while his defensive rating of -1.77 indicates he takes one to two points more away from the opposing team then a typical replacement small forward. Here are the most valuable 10 freshmen small forwards through games of February 15.

Rnk	Top Freshmen Small Forwards	Team	VA5	Conf	HtText	Cl
9	Bennedict Mathurin #0	Arizona	7.32	P12	6'6"	Fr
17	Kendall Brown #2	Baylor	6.07	B12	6'8"	Fr
38	Ricky Council #4	Wichita St.	4.97	Amer	6'6"	Fr
53	Alijah Martin #15	Florida Atlantic	4.41	CUSA	6'2"	Fr
56	Jadon Jones #12	Long Beach St.	4.4	BW	6'5"	Fr
90	Zeke Mayo #2	South Dakota St.	3.44	Sum	6'3"	Fr
93	Houston Mallette #0	Pepperdine	3.41	WCC	6'5"	Fr
100	Caleb Houstan #22	Michigan	3.28	B10	6'8"	Fr
101	Bryce McGowens #5	Nebraska	3.27	B10	6'7"	Fr
105	Ra'Heim Moss #0	Toledo	3.21	MAC	6'4"	Fr

If you were picking an All-American team based by position, the Small Forward or "3" spot would be the toughest choice. Mathurin certainly is close enough to the top players to be considered due to freshmen surging at the end of the year. However, Wisconsin's Johnny Davis, San Diego State's Matt Bradley, Chattanooga's Malachi Smith, Loyola's Lucas Williamson and Iowa State's Izaiah Brockingham could all be serious considered as the most valuable small forward in college basketball.

 

Rnk	Top Overall Small Forwards (3)	Team	VA5	Conf	HtText	Cl
1	Matt Bradley #3	San Diego St.	9.3	MWC	6'4"	Sr
2	Malachi Smith #13	Chattanooga	8.84	SC	6'4"	So
3	Ochai Agbaji #30	Kansas	8.6	B12	6'5"	Sr
4	Lucas Williamson #1	Loyola Chicago	8.28	MVC	6'4"	Sr
5	Johnny Davis #1	Wisconsin	7.9	B10	6'5"	So
6	Izaiah Brockington #1	Iowa St.	7.79	B12	6'4"	Sr
7	Keon Ellis #14	Alabama	7.48	SEC	6'6"	Sr
8	Wendell Moore #0	Duke	7.34	ACC	6'5"	Jr
9	Bennedict Mathurin #0	Arizona	7.32	P12	6'6"	Fr
10	Darryl Morsell #32	Marquette	7.04	BE	6'5"	Sr
11	George Papas #5	Monmouth	7.04	MAAC	6'5"	Sr
12	Tevin Brown #10	Murray St.	6.92	OVC	6'5"	Jr
13	Isiaih Mosley #1	Missouri St.	6.58	MVC	6'5"	Jr
14	Julian Strawther #0	Gonzaga	6.49	WCC	6'7"	So
15	Kameron McGusty #23	Miami FL	6.4	ACC	6'5"	Sr
16	Davonte Gaines #3	George Mason	6.08	A10	6'7"	Jr
17	Kendall Brown #2	Baylor	6.07	B12	6'8"	Fr
18	Colby Jones #3	Xavier	6.04	BE	6'6"	So
19	Mark Smith #13	Kansas St.	6.04	B12	6'4"	Sr
20	Jules Bernard #1	UCLA	5.94	P12	6'7"	Sr
21	Kyler Edwards #11	Houston	5.91	Amer	6'4"	Sr
22	Taz Sherman #12	West Virginia	5.88	B12	6'4"	Sr
23	Teddy Allen #0	New Mexico St.	5.85	WAC	6'6"	Jr
24	Johnny Juzang #3	UCLA	5.78	P12	6'7"	Jr
25	Cam Spencer #12	Loyola MD	5.78	Pat	6'4"	Jr
26	Aaron Estrada #4	Hofstra	5.74	CAA	6'3"	Jr
27	Daylen Kountz #1	Northern Colorado	5.7	BSky	6'4"	Sr
28	Hakim Hart #13	Maryland	5.66	B10	6'8"	Jr
29	Tyler Burton #3	Richmond	5.59	A10	6'7"	Jr
30	De'Monte Buckingham #10	UNC Greensboro	5.49	SC	6'4"	Sr
31	Brandon Slater #3	Villanova	5.45	BE	6'7"	Sr
32	Sasha Stefanovic #55	Purdue	5.37	B10	6'5"	Sr
33	Adrian Delph #20	Appalachian St.	5.3	SB	6'3"	Sr
34	Kellan Grady #31	Kentucky	5.13	SEC	6'5"	Sr
35	Drew Peterson #13	USC	5.07	P12	6'9"	Jr
36	Tanner Holden #2	Wright St.	5.04	Horz	6'6"	Jr
37	Drake Jeffries #0	Wyoming	5.01	MWC	6'5"	Sr
38	Ricky Council #4	Wichita St.	4.97	Amer	6'6"	Fr
39	Charles Pride #5	Bryant	4.92	NEC	6'4"	Jr
40	Hyunjung Lee #1	Davidson	4.88	A10	6'7"	Jr
41	Andrew Jones #1	Texas	4.88	B12	6'4"	Sr
42	Chuck O'Bannon #5	TCU	4.87	B12	6'6"	Sr
43	Taze Moore #4	Houston	4.84	Amer	6'5"	Sr
44	Gabe Brown #44	Michigan St.	4.77	B10	6'8"	Sr
45	Jared Rhoden #14	Seton Hall	4.76	BE	6'6"	Sr
46	Ethan Wright #14	Princeton	4.61	Ivy	6'4"	Sr
47	Erik Stevenson #10	South Carolina	4.6	SEC	6'4"	Sr
48	David Jones #32	DePaul	4.59	BE	6'6"	So
49	Alex O'Connell #5	Creighton	4.53	BE	6'6"	Sr
50	Kane Williams #12	Georgia St.	4.52	SB	6'4"	Sr

Baylor 2021 beats Isiah Thomas 1981 Indiana in Sweet 16

We focused on the current great season this weekend, including the story below on this CBS Site with a photo of Shaka Smart, this earlier piece on the most valuable 43 players in the country, and an update to all player rankings at www.valueaddbasketball.com. However, we capped the night by playing one of our All-Time Sweet 16 games with two historic teams whose fans might want to forget their teams getting blown out today and focus on a past championship team.

Below the photo are the results of Isiah Thomas' leading his defensive minded 1981 Indiana team against last year's champion, the 2021 Baylor squad in the Value Add Basketball Game.

This all-time Sweet 16 game was not close, with the defensive minded Indiana team completely thwarted by Baylor's 4-guard attack that jumped to a 40-25 lead at halftime and never looked back en route to a 82-64 win.

Isiah Thomas did have a nice 17 point, 4 steal game - just above his average - but Indiana lost the turnover battle 21-14 and were crushed on the boards by the smaller Baylor team 34-25. This was mainly due to Vital grabbing 10 rebounds. Teague was MVP with 25 points, 6 rebounds and 3 steals.

The following scoresheet is below the player cards. We recommend using 5 coins for each team on the players getting the ball on the 1,2,3,4 or 5 rolls from left to right on the 8-sided die. The dimes are used to show the players still in order who get the ball on the 6,7 or 8 rolls.

Baylor's win sets up an Elite 8 showdown between the highest two all-time ranked teams in the tournament. We now calculate the Duke 2001 team is the 5th ranked team all-time and the Baylor 2021 team is the 6th ranked all-time. The top 4 teams all played in our first all-time tournament, which was won by the 1972 UCLA team. Kansas passed UCLA in the standings by blowing out all their Big 12 opponents by huge margins.

Baylor Replaces Illinois in All-Time Great Tournament

Our first 2021 Value Add Basketball Game player cards will be used in a game. We have substituted the 2021 National Champions from Baylor into our current tournament as the No. 7 seed in place of Nick Anderson's 1989 Illinois team. 

In recent blogs we announced we added four teams from 2021 as well as Obi Toppin's 2000 Dayton squad to bring our total to 134 Great All-Time teams. It turned out Baylor and the 1989 Illinois squad were tied for 34th in our simulated KenPom Ratings, and since Illinois had yet to play their opener against Orlando Woolridge's 1981 Notre Dame team, we discovered that the Challong.com site I use to set up my brackets does allow you to edit teams in a bracket that have yet to play we subbed them in as an equal level replacement.

Below is the new bracket. As the 7-seed, a Baylor win would mean the top seven seeds will all play in Round 2. However, because of many upsets in other games, a Notre Dame win would mean the worse seeds would be 6-5 in the tournament to date. In our original tournament of 96 teams the favorites 63-32.

Cards for Epic Players and Team from 2021 Season to Print

We finally selected an calculated four great teams from the 2021 season to bring the total teams you can choose from to play in the Value Add Basketball Game to 128, going back in history to the inventor of the jumpshot (Kenny Sailors, Wyoming 1943 team). All four teams not only had great seasons, but each had one of the 6 most valuable basketball players in the country last year in the all-time Value Add Basketball Player ratings (click here, then put "2021" in the year search box).

Baylor 2021. The champs certainly earned a spot with their complete domination of excellent Final 4 teams Houston and Gonzaga. Jared Butler ranked as the 6th most valuable player in the country at Value Add Basketball, and www.kenpom.com had him even higher as the 4th best player.

Baylor starts out in our game rankings as the 29th best all-time team in the game, though we don't have games scheduled yet for these four new teams to see if they move up or down.

Colorado 2021. We loved watching McKinley Wright run point guard for Colorado, and ranked him as the 4th most valuable player in the country. He scored 24 points to eventual Elite 8 team USC in the Pac-12 tournament. Then we publicly picked him to destroy a red hot Georgetown team in the NCAA tournament, which he did with an amazing 13 assist performance.

While being a great team is one factor in adding new teams, we also factor in great players like him (e.g. Pistol Pete's LSU team was barely above average but we wanted him in the game). We also factor schools that have not yet had a team in the game. We passed over Final 4 teams UCLA and Houston because they already have multiple teams, and Gonzaga's other National Runner-Up from just a few years ago is in the game - so it was nice to add the first team from the state of Colorado.

Iowa 2021. The National Player of the Year Luka Garza was such an treat to watch his entire career. Even though both Value Add and www.kenpom.com ranked him 2nd in the country last year, KenPom ranked him 1st and Value Add 4th the year before to make him the rare player to be in the top 5 out of 4000+ players in consecutive years.

Even as his final game turned into a 1-on-5 against a great Oregon team in the tournament, watching him score 36 points on the way out was a fantastic sendoff.

USC 2021. As great as Garza was, we calculated 7-footer Evan Mobley was the most valuable player in the country last year. We would have still voted for Garza as the 4-year star against the freshman Mobley, but with the highest possible shot block ranking possible (21-30), a great steal guy for a 7-footer, and scoring or being fouled 65% of the time it gets to him on the 20-sided die (1-13), and an incredibly dominant rebounder at both ends (1-9 offensive and 1-8 defensive), he is the complete package. Seeing a 7-footer then dish out seven assists in a Sweet 16 win (vs. Oregon) just added to the complete picture.

His 13 rebound, MVP performance in the incredible 85-51 win against Kansas to move to the Sweet 16 was epic, and his brother Isaiah has kept it up by leading USC to a 12-0 start - the last undefeated team besides Baylor.