Is It Really The Worst?
A glance at where Kansas stands according to advanced metrics, a look at current projected NCAA Tournament matchups, and an overview of the Bayesian Performance Rating site created by Evan Miyakawa
There’s a concept in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy that’s referred to as “catastrophization.” The basic idea is that a person turns everything into the worst possible scenario or paints something in the most negative light possible no matter how unlikely the worst-case scenario is. An example of this would be a high school student going to take the ACT or SAT and thinking, “I’m going to do poorly on this test, I won’t be able to get into college and never get a job.” For Kansas football fans, it would be, “Lance Leipold is going to leave for another job, and the football team will fall back to a 1-11 or 2-10 program.” Kansas basketball fans have taken to catastrophizing the outlook for this year’s team within games. The team is losing in the first half, and the takes begin to explode on social media: “Oklahoma made their first three, so now they’ll going to hit five of their next six,” “Dajuan Harris and KJ Adams are playing poorly and need to be forced to transfer after the season,” or, the most common, “There’s no way this team makes it out of the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament.”
While criticism has felt deserved at some points during the season (last week’s Texas Tech game in particular), the truth is this team was just placed on the two-seed line by the selection committee. While the advanced metrics don’t show this team is quite deserving of such lofty recognition (KenPom - 17th, Bart Torvik - 11th, NET Rankings - 16th, Evan Miya - 11th)1, Kansas does have one of the most impressive collection of wins at this point in time claiming victories over Connecticut, Houston, Tennessee, Baylor, and Kentucky. Part of the reason they have sunk in advanced metric rankings is the offense struggling against some of the best defenses in the country. That’s reflected in the advanced metrics with Kansas currently ranked 45th in offensive efficiency according to KenPom, 33rd according to Bart Torvik, and 22nd according to Evan Miya. However, writing this team off in mid-February feels like a short-sighted move. They’ve shown the ability to play at an extremely high level when they lock-in.
The second half of the Oklahoma game gave us another reason to look positively about the team as the defense only gave up four field goals in the second half, including only one in the last 9:49 of the game. Kansas’ defense ranks well in the advanced metrics, currently 10th on KenPon, 9th on Bart Torvik, and 8th per Evan Miya. This is despite the outlier shooting nights from West Virginia, Tre King at Iowa State, and Darrion Washington at Texas Tech. Even though it feels as though the defense has struggled at times, they’ve been the carrying the load for most of conference play. While not as strong as they’ve been in the past, this is a unit that might have to be what carries Kansas through games in the NCAA Tournament in order for them to make a run.
Speaking of the NCAA Tournament, the Selection Committee revealed their top 16 seeds over the weekend, with Kansas coming in at number eight overall or the worst two seed. Bracket Matrix is a site that consolidates bracket projections from 98 different sites into one easy-to-use tool. They also currently have Kansas at number eight overall, which makes sense as most projection sites would have updated their brackets to reflect what the Selection Committee revealed on Saturday. Because of where Kansas currently sits, it makes sense to look at both the projected six and seven seeds as potential second round matchups. Yes, this assumes that both favored teams would win in the first round which is far from a guarantee, but it at least provides an overview of the quality of opponent that could potentially be in Kansas’ pod.
Texas Tech and Oklahoma wouldn’t be included in Kansas’ pod in the bracket, due to long-standing rules of having conference teams avoid playing until the second weekend, but Kansas did just play both of these teams, losing by 29 at Texas Tech and winning by 10 at Oklahoma. One of those games was played within the same timeframe that these tournament games would be played (hint: it’s not the game Kansas won). Because we’ve seen those two recently and they won’t be matchup possibilities for Kansas, there’s not much to break down.
Kentucky is an extremely talented offensive team who has a poor defense. They did defend well this past week, but it’s still to be seen if that’s a true change or a one-off. Kansas did beat them early in the season, but it feels like Kansas’ offense has slowed down since that game. South Carolina has been one of the media darlings over the last month of the season, boasting wins over Kentucky and Tennessee, but their advanced metrics are underwhelming. On top of this, they had a rough past week losing by 40 to Auburn and to LSU. Colorado State and Utah State are both part of a surprisingly deep Mountain West Conference this year. Both teams finish extremely well inside the paint. Colorado State prefers to slow the game down, force long possessions for opponents, and get easy baskets on the offensive end. They rank third in the country in assists per field goal, behind only Kansas and Minnesota. Utah State plays a more up-tempo style of basketball, and they excel at limiting opponents 3 point shooting; however, they also shoot poorly from behind the arc (though that hasn’t stopped other Kansas opponents this season).
The last two potential matchups could be Michigan State and Saint Mary’s. Michigan State is an experienced team led by an experienced coach whose KenPom numbers actually place them above Kansas. Despite this, they only have three wins over teams that are projected to be in the NCAA Tournament, with only one of those coming in conference play. They have two more chances to pick up similar wins before conference tournament play with Purdue and Northwestern still on their schedule. They have gone 7-2 in their last nine games and have the talent to hang around teams, they just haven’t put it all together yet.2 Saint Mary’s has been Gonzaga’s understudy for the past decade and, like Kansas, has unbalanced KenPom metrics (62nd in offensive efficiency and 8th in defensive efficiency). The issue with their credentials is they’ve only played one projected tournament team in the last two months. That being said, they are 17-1 in their last 18 games and will challenge anyone that gets the opportunity to play them in the tournament.
Evan Miyakawa is a Ph.D. statistician and data scientist who has created an advanced metrics website that not only breaks down teams’ efficiency ratings, but also individual player efficiency ratings. To do this, he looks at three main areas:
Historical Stats
Individual Stats
Play-by-Play Impact
Something that needs to be noted is that one of the main differences between Miyakawa’s site and KenPom is the use of tempo. Miyakawa chooses not to use tempo to adjust numbers, but instead rates every team and player on a per-possession basis. This means that a team who has 70 offensive possessions and scores 90 points, would have a similar offensive efficiency rating as a team who has 50 offensive possessions and scores 64 points. A team won’t get a boost based on playing at a higher or lower tempo because the possession is the tracking metric.
To simplify his ratings, the number you see in the columns highlight how much more efficient a team or player is when compared to the average team or player. Below are the Kansas player ratings.3 The first rating column is the Offensive Bayesian Player Rating, the second is the Defensive Bayesian Player Rating, and the third is the cumulative Bayesian Player Rating.
In the Miyakawa ratings, Hunter Dickinson is currently the 18th best player in the country, Kevin McCullar is 33rd, and Dajuan Harris is 98th. Kansas’ top five players currently all rank with in the top 253 players in the ratings. 19 teams currently have five or more players that rank in the top 253 players per the Miyakawa ratings.4 If you want to get even more restrictive, Kansas has three players in the Top 100, which is something only 14 teams can say.
All of this makes sense when you realize that the player ratings are what drive the team ratings. The teams with the highest number of players in the top 100 or 250 are going to rate higher than teams who don’t have players who rate highly.
Overall, the ratings utilize similar concepts as KenPom and Bart Torvik, but they have the added benefit of breaking it down at an easy-to-digest player level, which the other two sites lack. It’s a fun new tool that can give fans another way to dive into the game at a deeper level.
It’s easy to point to the negative when it comes to sports. Whether it’s not wanting to raise your hopes or your team has constantly let you down in the past, it’s easy to focus on everything that is going or could go wrong. However, that doesn’t help anyone. The catastrophization directed towards your teams only causes you to enjoy the game less than you could. It may not be easy, but try to focus on the positive during the game against Texas on Saturday. If they fall behind, don’t worry. Kansas has a history of coming from behind to win especially in Allen Fieldhouse. Heck, they were losing by double-digits against Oklahoma on Saturday only to turn it around and win by double-digits. It’s easy to root for Kansas because the worst is usually the best for other schools. It’s also hard to root for Kansas because the worst is usually the best for other schools. This year’s team might not be the best team Self has coached, but is it really the worst?
Rankings were pulled on February 19th.
This is one of the main differences between Kansas and other “high-tier” schools. Kansas’ version of struggling is a top 15 team who loses some inexplicable games. Michigan State’s version is a team somewhere between the 7-10 seed line who might make it out of the first weekend. The “January, February, Izzo” takes are overblown for a guy who hasn’t made a national championship game since 2009 and hasn’t won one since 2000.
To only capture players who have played a significant amount of time, only players with over 400 possessions are included in these rankings.
You can also see the significant drop-off to Nick Timberlake and Elmarko Jackson, which highlights the bench issue.