The Highs and Lows of LaQuinton Ross' Weekend

LaQuinton Ross sent Ohio State to the Elite Eight with a three pointer against Arizona. Just type his name into Google and you can pick from tons of articles that tell you that. However, Ross was involved in an equally as crucial three pointer that played a tremendous role in sending Wichita State to the Final Four. Ross' shot may have gotten the attention of the media, but his defense went virtually unnoticed (to my knowledge).

With 2:30 left in the game, Ohio State had nearly completed their comeback. Wichita State was up three and had the ball. Ohio State was really one stop away from getting in great position to win the game. Wichita State broke the pressure and with 17 seconds left on the shot clock had the ball pulled out:

In the photo above, you can see the start to Wichita State's high pick and roll. Ross is circled and at this point is in reasonable guarding position on Tekele Cotton considering the context of the play.

Continuing on with the play, off of the pick and roll Ross does the right thing by sinking into the lane. It looks like he had the defensive assignment of showing on the roll man. His job is to be in a position where he can make the pass to the roller difficult while also being able to close out on his actual man. At this point in the play (above), Ross is in position to do just that.

The pick and roll ultimately proves unsuccessful for Wichita State. Ohio State switched the screen and Deshaun Thomas winds up guarding Fred Van Vleet (the ball handler). It appears that Wichita State is content with simply spreading the floor and letting Van Vleet create as the shot clock winds down. However, before Van Vleet looks to make his move, this happens:

Maybe somebody reading this can shed light on what exactly Ross is doing in the GIF above. The pick and roll is over, so he should be closer to the passing lane between Van Vleet and Cotton. He points at a screen occurring behind him and then right after points at his man (Cotton). I think he just got mentally lost on the floor and pointed at Cotton only to realize at the last second that was his man.

The point here is not that Ross is a bad defender. Obviously this one play does not define Ross as a defender or as a player in general. The real point is the focus on offense over defense. In my opinion, Ross' defensive blunder was just as important as his offensive heroics. However, the two plays were not treated close to equally in the analysis of Ohio State's weekend performance.

Final Four Values

The running narrative for the NCAA this season has been all about the parity at the top. Yet here we are in mid March and despite "the field being wide open", everyone is taking Louisville. Now I'm not saying this is a bad idea. Louisville may end up cutting down the nets in Atlanta. However, by picking Louisville you are forcing yourself to have a "near" perfect bracket in order to win your pool. In a standard scoring system, you generally have to get the national champion right to win it all (with an example of an exception being if Butler had won). If you are one of the few people in your pool to take a unique team to win it all, you don't have to be all that great with your earlier picks. With Louisville, however, you're going to have to somehow pick up points on other people with Louisville.

On ESPN, you can currently look at the percentage of people in the country taking any team to reach any round. I thought it would be interesting to compare the average person's picks to Ken Pomeroy's log 5 projections. This will help determining the "value" of final four picks. If a team's value is especially high, it might be worth it to take the gamble in order to attempt to position yourself better among other Louisville brackets. Obviously the log 5 projections aren't perfect. Thus, I decided to include the Vegas odds that each team reaches the final four in the table too. The Vegas odds weren't actually used in finding value teams, but they can either reinforce (or not) the log 5 rankings.

The DIFF column on the right is simply (log 5 final four%) - (ESPN final four%). The thing that jumps out is the "Florida Effect". Not only does Florida shatter the top spot for best value, but they also turn Georgetown and Kansas into bad values. There's a whole bunch of uncertainty surrounding the Gators, but if you trust log 5 (and Vegas) they are nearly a must in your bracket. Miami and Ohio State are the other two that stand out. The conference tournaments have a ridiculous amount of pull on ESPN brackets, or so it seems. Ohio State, Miami, Kansas, and Louisville are all in the top five most picked final four teams (with Indiana) and are coming off conference tournament championships. Syracuse has struggled, but they seem like a much better alternative to Indiana in the East than Miami. Finally, if you decide to go with Pitt in your final four, log 5 says you have an 11.7% chance of taking a commanding lead in your pool.

A Video Charter’s Guide To The Final Four | Stat Geek Idol

The following is the third (Final Four) post I wrote for TeamRankings' Stat Geek Idol. For more information on the competition click here.

Last week, I attempted to quantify Wisconsin’s Swing Offense through the use of video charting. With the Final Four, I set out on a similar goal for Louisville, Ohio State, Kentucky, and Kansas.

To analyze each offense I watched each offensive possession from the Elite Eight of the Final Four teams in slow motion and charted categories such as: number of passes, shot location, defender proximity, number of dribbles the shooter takes, time of possession, number of players crashing the boards, and more. When it was all said and done, I was about 3% closer to becoming a video charting expert.