ESPN.com - ncb - Revising 'The January 20'

Regular readers will recall that, in mid-January, as conference play kicked into high gear, we here at Box Scores and More decided to undertake a little experiment. We took that week's ESPN.com Sweet 16, added four wildcard teams of our own, and labeled these 20 schools the most likely to win the national championship in April.

Here are the original 20 teams (in alphabetical order):

Arizona, Connecticut, Duke, Florida, Georgetown, Illinois, Iowa, Iowa State, Kansas, Maryland, Michigan State, Mississippi, North Carolina, Seton Hall, Syracuse, Stanford, Tennessee, USC, Wake Forest, Wisconsin.

(For the record, the "wild card" choices were Arizona, Iowa, Iowa State and USC. I was stuck with Connecticut, among others, who have since faded fast).

Inevitable duds notwithstanding, it still seems quite likely that the 2001 national champion will come from this group. We called them "The January 20" and promised to re-visit all of their significant metrics again in February and also just prior to the start of the NCAA Tournament in March.

We started by introducing a new statistic last month called Adjusted Winning Percentage. This stat gives double weight to wins over RPI Top 50 teams and triple weight to wins over RPI Top 25 teams. It also gives double weight to sub-100 losses and quadruple weight to sub-150 losses, as well as subtracting all sub-150 wins.

(Records through games of Feb. 10. Each team's adjusted winning percentage from January is in parenthesis.)

	Winning D-I Record	Adjusted Percentage	Adjusted D-I Record	Adjusted Percentage
Stanford	20-1	.952	27-1	.964 (1.000)
Duke	21-2	.913	29-2	.935 (.944)
North Carolina	21-2	.913	28-2	.933 (.857)
Michigan State	18-3	.857	24-3	.889 (.923)
Kansas	17-3	.850	22-3	.880 (.889)
Iowa State	20-3	.870	21-3	.875 (.833)
Mississippi	18-4	.818	22-4	.846 (.923)
Illinois	19-5	.792	26-5	.839 (.842)
Syracuse	19-4	.828	19-4	.828 (.917)
Tennessee	18-6	.750	24-6	.800 (.950)
Wisconsin	15-6	.714	24-6	.800 (.824)
Arizona	16-6	.727	23-6	.793 (.667)
Iowa	17-6	.739	27-8	.771 (.867)
Georgetown	19-4	.826	12-4	.750 (1.000)
Florida	16-5	.762	14-5	.737 (.800)
Wake Forest	16-7	.696	15-7	.682 (.938)
USC	15-6	.714	12-6	.667 (.700)
Maryland	14-8	.636	9-8	.529 (.556)
Seton Hall	12-8	.600	9-8	.529 (.625)
Connecticut	13-9	.591	8-9	.471 (.778)

RISING: Arizona, North Carolina.

FALLING: Connecticut, Georgetown, Iowa, Seton Hall, Tennessee, Wake Forest.

HINDSIGHT: We picked the wrong Big East teams for this list!

Now lets move on to the "offensive quotient" of these 20 teams.

It's one thing to score a bunch of points. But how much is a team scoring ABOVE or BELOW what its opponents typically allow? This isn't scoring margin, but the incremental offensive advantage (or disadvantage) for any team against a given set of opponents. For example, if Duke scores 12 points more than North Carolina A&T typically allows, that represents a significant incremental offensive advantage. The opposite would be true if Duke scored 12 fewer points than North Carolina A&T allows.

We call that Offensive Quotient. Let's take a look at how "The January 20" stack up, one month later (January figure in parenthesis):

	Average Ppg	Opponents Ppg Allowed	Offensive Quotient
Duke	93.4	70.4	+23.0 ppg (+24.7)
Maryland	89.6	72.4	+17.2 ppg (+18.8)
Kansas	84.2	69.7	+14.5 ppg (+15.1)
Tennessee	88.4	69.4	+14.0 ppg (+19.7)
Iowa State	82.2	69.4	+12.8 ppg (+16.2)
Stanford	83.7	71.1	+12.6 ppg (+13.4)
Florida	84.5	72.2	+12.3 ppg (+19.9)
Arizona	80.3	68.6	+11.7 ppg (+14.6)
USC	79.4	67.9	+11.5 ppg (+15.1)
Michigan State	80.8	69.4	+11.4 ppg (+11.3)
Georgetown	83.0	72.8	+10.2 ppg (+7.8)
North Carolina	80.3	70.5	+9.8 ppg (+10.4)
Seton Hall	80.7	71.0	+9.7 ppg (9.9)
Illinois	79.0	70.7	+8.3 ppg (8.6)
Wake Forest	78.5	70.2	+8.3 ppg (+12.4)
Iowa	75.5	69.0	+6.5 ppg (+8.2)
Syracuse	75.5	70.1	+5.4 ppg (+18.4)
Connecticut	76.0	71.8	+4.2 ppg (+5.7)
Mississippi	73.2	70.5	+2.7 ppg (+3.6)
Wisconsin	60.0	67.7	-7.7 ppg (-6.0)

FALLING: Florida, Iowa State, Syracuse, Tennessee, USC, Wake Forest.

Many of these drops are the result of a significant difference in conference vs. non-conference competition. Thanks to research assistant Jamie Yannacone for compiling the Opponents PPG information above (and below).

Now, to be fair to Wisconsin in particular ... let's look at the "defensive quotient," which is simply the reverse of "offensive quotient." We'll measure the incremental defensive advantage of one team versus a given set of opponents. (January figure in parenthesis)

	Average Ppg Allowed	Opponents Average Ppg	Defensive Quotient
Wisconsin	55.7	73.5	+17.8 ppg (+17.7)
Stanford	62.3	74.2	+11.9 ppg (+14.0)
Michigan State	61.4	72.2	+10.8 ppg (+13.8)
Mississippi	64.4	74.2	+9.8 ppg (+12.8)
Wake Forest	64.9	74.5	+9.6 ppg (13.1)
Arizona	66.5	74.5	+8.0 ppg (+6.8)
Illinois	67.1	74.4	+7.3 ppg (+8.1)
Syracuse	65.7	72.6	+6.9 ppg (+6.3)
North Carolina	68.9	75.6	+6.7 ppg (+2.8)
Florida	66.0	72.5	+6.5 ppg (+6.5)
Kansas	68.4	73.4	+5.0 ppg (+9.8)
Duke	70.5	75.2	+4.7 ppg (+4.8)
Georgetown	67.1	71.6	+4.5 ppg (+7.2)
Iowa State	68.3	72.6	+4.3 ppg (+5.9)
Iowa	68.6	72.5	+3.9 ppg (+6.0)
Connecticut	68.9	72.5	+2.7 ppg (+2.4)
USC	70.3	73.7	+2.4 ppg (-0.3)
Tennessee	73.5	75.2	+1.7 (+3.9)
Maryland	73.4	74.9	-1.5 ppg (+3.2)
Seton Hall	77.2	75.0	-2.2 ppg (0.0)

RISING: Arizona, North Carolina, USC.

The final "major" category is Adjusted Scoring Margin, which combines the offensive and defensive quotients for that team. It is a much more accurate representation of a team's relative strength (or weakness) vs. its own schedule.

Non-adjusted scoring margin is certainly of value, but adjusted scoring margin puts that team in the truer context of its opposition. In other words, did your team overachieve (or underachieve) against the hand it was dealt? Once again, the comparative January figure is in parenthesis:

	Scoring Margin	Offensive Quotient	Defensive Quotient	Adjusted Scoring Margin
Duke	22.9 ppg	+23.0	+4.7	27.7 ppg (29.5)
Stanford	21.3 ppg	+12.6	+11.9	24.5 ppg (27.4)
Michigan State	19.4 ppg	+11.4	+10.8	22.2 ppg (25.1)
Kansas	15.8 ppg	+14.5	+5.0	19.9 ppg (24.9)
Arizona	13.8 ppg	+11.7	+8.0	19.7 ppg (21.4)
Iowa State	14.0 ppg	+12.8	+4.3	19.1 ppg (22.1)
Florida	28.5 ppg	+12.3	+6.5	18.8 ppg (26.4)
Maryland	16.2 ppg	+17.2	+1.5	18.7 ppg (22.0)
Wake Forest	13.7 ppg	+8.3	+9.6	17.9 ppg (25.2)
North Carolina	11.4 ppg	+9.8	+6.7	16.5 ppg (13.2)
Tennessee	9.8 ppg	+14.0	+1.7	15.7 ppg (23.6)
Illinois	11.9 ppg	+8.3	+7.3	15.6 ppg (16.7)
Georgetown	15.8 ppg	+10.2	+4.5	14.7 ppg (15.0)
USC	9.0 ppg	+11.5	+2.4	13.9 ppg (14.8)
Mississippi	8.9 ppg	+2.7	+9.8	12.5 ppg (16.4)
Syracuse	9.8 ppg	+5.4	+6.9	12.3 ppg (24.7)
Iowa	7.0 ppg	+6.5	+3.9	10.4 ppg (14.2)
Wisconsin	4.3 ppg	-7.7	+17.8	10.1 ppg (10.7)
Seton Hall	3.5 ppg	+9.7	-2.2	7.5 ppg (9.9)
Connecticut	6.2 ppg	+4.2	+2.7	6.9 ppg (8.1)

So, what have we learned from all these numbers? Well, re-visiting "The January 20" in these new categories suggests the following (in no particular order):

Stanford and Michigan State remain the most balanced teams in the land.

North Carolina has done its best work against the toughest competition.

Duke is still terrific.

UConn is not (and never was).

We need to recheck the data for Syracuse (from January).

Arizona has returned and Iowa State has risen to the list of legitimate Final Four contenders.

Florida, Maryland, Wake Forest and Tennessee are not on that list.

We should have included Boston College and Virginia last month.

Joe Lunardi is a regular in-season contributor for ESPN.com. Write to Joe at jlunardi@home.com.

ALSO SEE

Bracketology Banter

Box Score Banter archive

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