2021 MVP Mobley and USC edge Dayton and 2020 MVP Toppin 79-76 in OT

With Dayton 2020 leading 52-46 with 7:03 to play, Evan Mobley (19 points, 17 rebounds, 10 fouls drawn) drew a 5th foul against Obi Toppin. 

With Toppin in the bench, USC 2021 exploded for a 19-11 run to go up 65-63 with 16 seconds left, but Jalen Crutcher hit a buzzer beater to force overtime. 

USC dominated the boards in OT for a 79-76 road win. The game last 57 minutes from first dice roll.

Pregame write up

In 2020, Obi Toppin was picked as the top player in the country by the Naismith Committee, but Covid kept him from trying to lead Dayton to the national title. In 2021, Evan Mobley was calculated as the top player in the country by www.valueaddbasketball.com. Both are newer teams in our game and won their opener, so we played them against each other to determine which would then play 2-0 Colorado 2021 to see which of the new teams started 3-0.

The following is the line-up rotation we decided to use for each team. You do NOT need to be this precise in playing time - you can just play the bottom five players on the sheet from the 44th to 38th possession and the top row of starters from the 37th possession to the 1st (actually last and final) possession.

Results will be posted later tonight. 

Four Teams Vie to Join Kansas 1997 and UCLA 1972 as 3rd All-Time Unbeaten

After a great day of college basketball, we flipped back to a couple of Value Add Basketball Games. Only six of our 136 teams are still undefeated.

UCLA is 6-0 due to winning the big tournament we did of the first 96 teams we created. Kansas 1997 is 5-0 after winning the second tournament we did after creating new teams. 

While those two teams rank 1st and 3rd, the other four teams have played only a game or two and rank between 44th and 71st in our all-time rankings. We decided we should at least let these teams play until they've lost at least once, so we are pitting 1982 Missouri against 2021 Colorado, and then 2021 USC against the team that might have won the tournament if not for Covid - 2020 Dayton.

At that point only two of those four will be undefeated, and then they can play each other and we will have one 3-0 team (or if Missouri wins both a 4-0 team) as the only undefeated team except for 1997 Kansas and 1972 UCLA).

Rank	Next Game	Year	Player	Won	Lost	Score	Allow	Rating
44	Missouri	1982	Steve Stipanovich	2	0	69.5	65.5	1.5
62	Colorado	2021	McKinley Wright	1	0	86.0	82.0	-0.6
	Game After
71	Dayton	2020	Obi Toppin	1	0	87.0	82.0	-1.6
56	USC	2021	Evan Mobley	1	0	77.0	67.0	0.0
	Not playing, only other undefeated
3	Kansas	1997	Paul Pierce	5	0	76.8	62.2	14.7
1	UCLA	1972	Bill Walton	6	0	72.0	62.0	15.5

As a reminder, to play you click on the Value Add Basketball Game to print scoresheets or review the rules and charts, then click on the 136 all-time great teams and you will see on page 1 that you click pages 16, 23, 82 and 123 to print those four teams.

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. 

Wooden Award Finalists, KenPom, Value Add Ranks Top Hoops Players

The following 33 players are considered one of the top 20 players in the country by at least one of three evaluations.

Each player is awarded 50 points if one of the 20 Wooden Award Finalists, then 50 points for being ranked 1st by www.kenpom.com or www.valueaddbasketball.com, 49 points for being ranked 2nd by either, etc. A player received no points if not listed as a Wooden Award finalists, or failed to make Pomeroy's top 10, or finished lower than 50th at www.valueaddbasketball.com.

For example, Luka Garza scores a perfect 150 points for being on the Wooden list and calculating as the No. 1 player at both www.kenpom.com and www.valueaddbasketball.com, 50 points each for 150. Baylor's Jared Butler is second with 50 points for making the Wooden list, 48 points for ranking 3rd at www.valueaddbasketball.com and 49 points for ranking second at www.kenpom for 147 points, followed by USC's Evan Mobley with 140 points etc. 

 

Rnk	Player	Team	Wooden?	Value Add	Ken Pom	Total all 3
1	Luka Garza	Iowa	Yes	1	1	150
2	Jared Butler	Baylor	Yes	3	2	147
3	Evan Mobley	USC	Yes	4	8	140
4	Trayce Jackson-Davis	Indiana	Yes	8	5	139
5	Ayo Dosunmu	Illinois	Yes	14	3	135
6	Drew Timme	Gonzaga	Yes	23	4	125
7	Kofi Cockburn	Illinois	Yes	29	10	113
8	Collin Gillespie	Villanova	Yes	7		94
9	Corey Kispert	Gonzaga	Yes	12		89
10	Justin Champagnie	Pittsburgh	Yes	13		88
11	Marcus Carr	Minnesota	Yes	19		82
12	Jay Huff	Virginia	No	18	9	75
13	Charles Bassey	Western Kentucky	Yes	28		73
14	Carlik Jones	Louisville	Yes	37		64
15	Ron Harper Jr.	Rutgers	Yes	38		63
16	Cameron Krutwig	Loyola Chicago	No	42	6	54
17	Hunter Dickinson	Michigan	Yes	62		50
18	Jeremiah Robinson-Earl	Villanova	Yes	85		50
19	Cade Cunningham	Oklahoma State	Yes	94		50
20	Jalen Suggs	Gonzaga	Yes	114		50
21	James Bouknight	Connecticut	Yes	336		50
22	Quentin Grimes	Houston	Yes	473		50
23	Chris Duarte	Oregon	No	2		49
24	Oscar da Silva	Stanford	No	5		46
25	Jose Alvarado	Georgia Tech	No	6		45
26	Trevion Williams	Purdue	No	71	7	44
27	Miles McBride	West Virginia	No	9		42
28	Kendric Davis	SMU	No	10		41
29	Matthew Hurt	Duke	No	11		40
30	Tyson Etienne	Wichita St.	No	15		36
31	DeVante' Jones	Coastal Carolina	No	16		35
32	Quincy Guerrier	Syracuse	No	17		34
33	Alex Barcello	BYU	No	20		31