Are We Still A 2 Seed,

[tower912]

Seeing how DG playing extended minutes leads to diminishing returns from him offensively and defensively, Buzz clearly knew what he was doing in how he allocated minutes at the 5.

[Henry Sugar]

Henry Sugar, is there a large enough sample size available yet to determine MU's defensive and offensive efficiency with and without Otule?

There is not a large enough sample size for significance.  However, I've been struggling with it as well, and just haven't had enough time to do a deep dive.   But here's the current level of thinking.

Simple Averages (pre vs post)

Offense
Efficiency (1.16 vs 1.07)
eFG% (56.5% vs 50%)

Defense
Efficiency (0.82 vs 0.97)
eFG% (40.9% vs 51.6%)

It's easy enough to just run an average and just say "hey, our offense and defense are both worse with Otule out".  One could say "boom - roasted"...  Otule made all the difference.   But there's not enough data to answer that definitively.

Washington was a poor game, but also the injury happened mid-game.  Looking a little bit deeper, the question for me was the cupcake games.  In the first half of both games, MU was really good defensively.  It was the second half where the defense suffered.  Was that bad defense, or was it just letting off the gas against a clearly overmatched opponent?  No matter what, the eFG% numbers against LSU really concern me.  62% allowed?  78% allowed in the 2H? 

So there's one game against UW where Otule first went out, two cupcake games where MU crushed in one half and was weak in the second half, and LSU, which was bad by any measure. 

Part of what I wanted to do was see how MU was comparing to how we were expected to do.  In other words, if MU was supposed to beat UWGB by an efficiency margin of 30, how much did we actually beat them by?  Just haven't done that yet. 

[ATWizJr]

Beware of the Panthers.

That, too.

[MattyWarrior]

Now we drop to 20, which is prolly where we should be, without a center.

[Silkk the Shaka]

Part of what I wanted to do was see how MU was comparing to how we were expected to do.  In other words, if MU was supposed to beat UWGB by an efficiency margin of 30, how much did we actually beat them by?  Just haven't done that yet. 

I have.  Using kenpom predictions from before the Washington game:

Beat Washington by 7 (Otule went down in the 2nd minute of play) - we won by 2
Beat UWGB by 22 - we won by 18 (got shat on by their C)
Beat Northern Colorado by 21 - we won by 21 (their starting C went down immediately)
Beat LSU by 11 - lost by 8 and got dominated in the paint


I think it would have been the same had Gardner gone down instead, too.  We're missing a dimension we absolutely need without a true center in the game for close to 40 minutes.  You can get by with Wilson or Crowder filling in for a few minutes, but if they're relied on for extended minutes at the 5, more times than not it won't turn out well.  When we had Hayward playing C we got abused in the paint, giving up 50% on 2 point shots, good for 263rd in the country.  With the way we extend our guards on the perimeter, we need a guy with Otule's size and shot blocking ability to maximize our potential.  Before he went down, we had gotten our 2P% defense down to 38% - 11th best in the country.  That's how you win games in March.

[tower912]

One point, Henry.  Otule went out 2 minutes into the Washington game.   Technically, he played, but for the purpose of your statistics, it should really count as a DNP. 

[wadesworld]

Now we drop to 20, which is prolly where we should be, without a center.

We will not drop to 20.  Xavier dropped 4 spots after losing at home to Oral Roberts by 20 points.  I get that their 2 best players were out, but my guess is the voters were looking to drop them as far as they could based on their fight with Cinci.  We lost a road game to an SEC team.  It is not going to drop us 10 spots.

[LAZER]

Should be interesting to see where we land in relation to Wisconsin

[bilsu]

I always thought we were a three seed, so I do not think this loss changes anything. However, we now have greater pressure to beat Vanderbilt. Even with Otule I did not think this team would get past the sweet 16. There are more than 8 teams that are better than us.

[StillAWarrior]

We're not as good as some people thought yesterday, and we're not as bad as some people think today. Fortunately, I think we're closer to the good side. This is a very good team and is going to be a lot of fun to watch this season.

[JTBMU7]

BTW, Parrish/Goodman have us at 12 after the loss. Still talking up Mayo as the surprise of the year...
http://www.cbssports.com/collegebasketball/rankings/top25

[reinko]

4Ever, you certain about this, as certain as you were that Bucky was going to curbstomp us a few weeks back?

[Hoopaloop]

Nope.  And we never were a 2 seed.  

People were basing our elite status on 6 cupcakes, and 3 decent wins: UW, Ole Miss, Washington.  Sorry, beating the crap out of cupcakes doesn't mean you are elite.

UW is clearly a great win.  But would anyone like to bet that if we played that game 10 times, UW wouldn't win most of em?  I wouldn't.

Washington?  Washington has been exposed as a bubble team, if not headed to the NIT, losing to Nevada and South Dakota State, among their 5-5 record.

Ole Miss is another bubble team, more likely NIT.  Add a loss to another NIT team, LSU, and that should not give anyone the idea this is the year we'll win the Big East, who oh by the way, has 6 top 15 teams.  

Just like always, we have a narrow margin of error in every top 20 game we'll play this year.

Don't get me wrong .. Marquette isn't terrible .. just not as elite as a 1-2-3 seed needs to be.

This

[Hoopaloop]

4ever asks, as he runs naked in the middle of Wisconsin Ave. with a hard hat on, screaming "the sky is falling".

Make sure to call him Chicos, too.   

[brewcity77]

I think it would have been the same had Gardner gone down instead, too.  We're missing a dimension we absolutely need without a true center in the game for close to 40 minutes.  You can get by with Wilson or Crowder filling in for a few minutes, but if they're relied on for extended minutes at the 5, more times than not it won't turn out well.  When we had Hayward playing C we got abused in the paint, giving up 50% on 2 point shots, good for 263rd in the country.  With the way we extend our guards on the perimeter, we need a guy with Otule's size and shot blocking ability to maximize our potential.  Before he went down, we had gotten our 2P% defense down to 38% - 11th best in the country.  That's how you win games in March.

I love DG, I think he's been playing far above expectations. I thought he had a better game against LSU than he's gotten credit for. But there's no way our defense tanks four games in a row if we lose him as opposed to Otule. And maybe our offense falls off a bit, but I think we'd still see production from the other 5 guys that were averaging more ppg than he was when CO went down.

I know...I've beaten the Otule injury to death, but if our precipitous drop in defensive ranking isn't clear evidence of how he was the most important part of our defense (and thus our team, imo) then I don't know what is. LSU and Washington gave us fits with length and pounding us inside. Alec Brown had career highs and as a team, Northern Colorado was far more efficient than I'd have liked. It's not like all our opponents were chopped liver before, either -- we held down Bucky at the KC and dominated a pretty solid Ole Miss team that has similar length to the two that gave us fits in the past couple weeks.

*Sigh*

I really hope he can get back this year. This feels like Dominic James, only with more time to mull over how much it sucks to be tied down to these railroad tracks.

[brewcity77]

And in response to the original question, we haven't been a 2-seed since CO went down. I felt like with him we were a definite 2-3, possibly a 1 if all went well, without him we're a 5-6. Nothing has changed.

As far as comparisons...with Otule we absolutely pounded a mid-level SEC opponent away from home, without him we lost to a mid-level SEC opponent away from home. With Otule we controlled one of the best teams in the country start to finish on their floor, without him we white-knuckled our way to a win against a good-not-great Washington team.

With him we were a dominant force against NIT teams and still fairly comfortable against the NCAA-level teams we faced. That's pretty much the recipe for the NCAA. Beat the teams you should beat, which we did with ease, and do well enough against the quality opposition.

Bottom line, Otule is worth 3-5 seed lines come Selection Sunday. Nothing changed after LSU...it's been this way since the second minute of the Washington game.

[ringout]

Make sure to call him Chicos, too.   

We all know who Chicos is