On the Road...
by Warden11 on Mar 9, 2010 7:20 AM CST
in Kansas Jayhawk Basketball
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With the team heading on the road, I began to wonder if Kansas is capable of winning nine straight away from Allen Field House. We know the Jayhawks are almost impossible to beat at home while both of their losses this year came on the road. Throw in the early season struggles with Memphis and UCLA outside of Lawrence and I think it's a valid question. The problem comes with how to accurately judge the results of the home and road games. Do they play better defense at home with the energy of the fans behind them or do they shoot better at home? Is there any way to tell?
In an attempt to judge their results this season, I separated all the home and away games and then found the efficiency margin for each game (KU points per possession - opponent points per possession). At first I wanted to eliminate all teams that were outside of KenPom's Top 100, but that gives a very small sample and makes comparisons a little tougher. Below are the numbers for home and road games for this season. At the bottom, I compared the numbers to the last four National Championship teams just to see if they're in the same ballpark.
| Home | PPP | OPPP | Eff Margin |
|---|---|---|---|
| HOFS | 1.33 | 0.86 | 0.47 |
| UCA | 1.45 | 0.68 | 0.77 |
| OAK | 1.37 | 0.91 | 0.46 |
| TTECH | 1.47 | 0.99 | 0.48 |
| ALC | 1.2 | 0.38 | 0.82 |
| RAD | 1.41 | 0.91 | 0.5 |
| MICH | 1.1 | 0.94 | 0.16 |
| CAL | 1.12 | 0.92 | 0.2 |
| BELM | 1.08 | 0.68 | 0.4 |
| CORN | 1.04 | 0.97 | 0.07 |
| TTU | 1.19 | 0.84 | 0.35 |
| BAY | 1.21 | 1.12 | 0.09 |
| MIZZ | 1.15 | 0.89 | 0.26 |
| NEB | 1.15 | 0.98 | 0.17 |
| ISU | 1.09 | 0.88 | 0.21 |
| COLO | 1.22 | 0.96 | 0.26 |
| OU | 1.29 | 1.08 | 0.21 |
| KSU | 1.3 | 1.03 | 0.27 |
| Away | PPP | OPPP | Eff Margin |
|---|---|---|---|
| @StL vs Mem | 0.86 | 0.83 | 0.03 |
| @UCLA | 1.06 | 0.88 | 0.18 |
| @ KC vsLAS | 1.27 | 0.92 | 0.35 |
| @TU | 1.27 | 0.79 | 0.48 |
| @TENN | 0.97 | 1.09 | -0.12 |
| @NEB | 1.35 | 1.16 | 0.19 |
| @ISU | 1.17 | 0.85 | 0.32 |
| @KSU | 1.16 | 1.13 | 0.03 |
| @COLO | 1.01 | 0.93 | 0.08 |
| @TEX | 1.14 | 0.97 | 0.17 |
| @TAM | 0.97 | 0.89 | 0.08 |
| @OSU | 1.08 | 1.2 | -0.12 |
| @MIZZ | 1.13 | 0.82 | 0.31 |
| PPP | OPPP | Eff Margin | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Home | 1.23 | 0.89 | 0.34 |
| Road | 1.11 | 0.96 | 0.15 |
Kansas did score more efficiently at home while also holding their opponents to fewer points per possession. However, there are a few things to keep in mind about that. First, the home games include all of the early season cupcakes. Second, the road games include the two losses, so it's going to be lower. One other item of note on the home/road split, Kansas does shoot better at home. Their 3 pt% at home was 42.7 and their effective field goal percentage was 57. The road numbers drop to 37.2% from the 3 point line and their eFG% drops to 52.
Recent National Champions
| PPP | OPPP | Eff Margin | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2009 UNC Home | 1.21 | 0.94 | 0.27 |
| 2009 UNC Road | 1.18 | 0.98 | 0.2 |
| 2008 KU Home | 1.23 | 0.82 | 0.41 |
| 2008 KU Road | 1.07 | 0.96 | 0.11 |
| 2007 FLA Home | 1.22 | 0.88 | 0.34 |
| 2007 FLA Road | 1.1 | 1.01 | 0.09 |
| 2006 FLA Home | 1.18 | 0.88 | 0.3 |
| 2006 FLA Road | 1.11 | 1.03 | 0.08 |
Last year's North Carolina team performed about the same at home and on the road. The other three teams had a split very similar to this year's Kansas team. Also note the opponent points per possession for all of the road games, the 2009-2010 Jayhawks tied the 2008 team for the lowest number. It's way too little data to draw any meaningful conclusions but it does make me feel a little bit better about going on the road over the next month.
-All numbers from Statsheet
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Great info, Warden
Obviously, your recent promotion has unleashed a torrent of creativity and analysis. I can hardly wait!!!
Seriously, though, this is very good stuff. Obviously, a team expects to play better at home, and the numbers bear that out. The efficiency margin on the road, though, at .15, is pretty darn good, especially when you consider the games we’ve played on the road. This analysis gives me a lot of confidence that our team can beat really good competition away from AFH.
Operation Final Four is a go. Proceed to target.
yep the .15 comparitively...
looks pretty good for road trips when you put it in the context of those past title teams. I’m a little surprised that ’07 Florida is so low as hyped as that team was.
53 Conference Championships!! and now 6 IN A ROW!!! Holy Hell...Good Luck with That!!
That team coasted through the regular season
And only played hard in the SEC tournament and NCAA tournament. John Gasaway at Basketball Prospectus did a piece on it a couple months ago. They are pretty much the only team in the last 10 years that could turn it on when they wanted and not get burned.
by 2.1 seconds left on Mar 9, 2010 8:19 AM CST up reply actions
I want a team that can turn it on when they want...
where do we sign up for one of those?
53 Conference Championships!! and now 6 IN A ROW!!! Holy Hell...Good Luck with That!!
That team was really sick in that regard
They played poorly (by their standards) for so much of the year, but once the tournament started, you just couldn’t see anybody they played actually beating them. My hope was that KU would make it to the final four and play them in the championship game, since we had beaten them earlier in the year, but alas, UCLA got in the way.
Florida didn’t even play very well against us in Las Vegas in November that year either. We played really well (Arthur had a coming out party, and Julian was downright awesome in that game), but we did not get Florida’s best shot by any stretch.
Operation Final Four is a go. Proceed to target.
We also compare favorably to both Syracuse and Kentucky
We have higher PPP and our opponents have lower PPP in home and away games than either Kentucky or Syracuse. Our away margin is just .01 better than Syracuse, but we have a solid .05 over Kentucky. Our defense is better than either of theirs, and our away PPP is better than Kentucky’s.
the comparison with Syracuse is interesting b/c of their apparent home/away consistency
would you rather have a higher average Eff Margin (KU: 0.245, Syr: 0.200) or a more consistent performance home and away, i.e. Eff Margin difference (KU: 0.19, Syr: 0.12)?
Zapp Brannigan/Dayton Moore quote of the day: "[my most important sabermetric stats are] runs scored and runs driven in"
by SagehenMacGyver47 on Mar 9, 2010 12:08 PM CST up reply actions
I guess I'd lean toward consistency
53 Conference Championships!! and now 6 IN A ROW!!! Holy Hell...Good Luck with That!!
A higher average would mean you've kicked more ass,
I might lean that way.
Glad I came, just wish I hadn't stayed so long.
People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.
even better would be consistent ass kicking?
53 Conference Championships!! and now 6 IN A ROW!!! Holy Hell...Good Luck with That!!
tough to say.
on one hand, it’s good to have consistency, even on the road; but on the other, having crazy-long home winning streaks is pretty cool too.
Zapp Brannigan/Dayton Moore quote of the day: "[my most important sabermetric stats are] runs scored and runs driven in"
by SagehenMacGyver47 on Mar 9, 2010 6:55 PM CST up reply actions
Another interesting stat
Another thing I found interesting was the number of games where the opponent’s points per possession was at or over 1.0:
Kansas: 7 (with 1 opponent at 0.99)
Syracuse: 10 (with 3 opponents at 0.99)
Kentucky 13 (with 1 opponent at 0.99)
It really seems like that KU is going to have an easier time scoring on either of these teams than they will on KU.
very nice thanks
53 Conference Championships!! and now 6 IN A ROW!!! Holy Hell...Good Luck with That!!
yeah..guess so...
thought it was a good stat and just wanted to say thanks for pointing it out, guess I didn’t have a whole lot more to add. : )
53 Conference Championships!! and now 6 IN A ROW!!! Holy Hell...Good Luck with That!!
hahahaha
Isn’t that what the “rec” button is for?
by PDXJayhawk on Mar 9, 2010 4:08 PM CST up reply actions 2 recs
Kentucky's defensive efficiency
has been problematic all year. On the other hand, they’ve played a lot of close games and have only lost two of them, so they’ve got a lot of experience in late-game situations. KU hasn’t had all that many close games, if I recall. Cornell, Memphis, @K-State, @Colorado, @A&M are really the only games that came down to the wire. Throw the two losses in, and that’s a total of 7 close games out of 31. That could be a concern down the road.
Or, we could beat everybody by double digits like UNC did last year in the NCAA Tournament. I think we’d all be okay with that, probably.
Operation Final Four is a go. Proceed to target.
Agreed
As cool as it was….I’d be very content winning a NC without seeing Henry or Collins have to pull a Chalmers miracle Three….or suffer watching another Davidson shot for the win at the end of regulation….
Great review, btw.
I'm Your Huckleberry.
interesting thought for Warden
Statistical question:
At what point does the number of under 10-point wins in the regular season stop predicting success in under 10-point games in the tournament?
And, on our games, I felt like the K-State, Colorado and A&M games were true learning experiences, where the whole team played and didn’t say, “Eh, Sherron’s got this one. I’m going to daydream about the PiPhis waiting for me back at the Towers.”
Are you asking about whether close wins in the regular season help predict success in the tournament?
Glad I came, just wish I hadn't stayed so long.
People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.
Anyway, if I'm understanding you correctly-
I’d think a lot of close wins would be a bad sign heading into the tournament. Yes, you need to be able to win close games but having a lot of close games could be an indication that you’re just not that good.
Glad I came, just wish I hadn't stayed so long.
People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.
My thought would be that there would be a curve. A team with 6 close wins would be less likely to win a game than a team with 10 close wins, but a team with 14 close wins would also less likely to win a game.
My wife started talking about single variate vs multi-variate regression and my eyes glazed over, so maybe there’s no way to tell.
by PDXJayhawk on Mar 9, 2010 6:12 PM CST via mobile up reply actions
I'm going to have to go pure Pomeroy
For “fun” I was looking at Pomeroy’s (Adj. Offense – Adj. Defense) in the 2004-2010 Final Fours, and so far this season:
Some of this is apples and oranges since the values on the left are skewed a bit by the tournament games, but I think it’s clear this is a more crowded year, like 2006 or 2009. So I’m hoping we look like UNC or Florida from those years.
For this post at least I’ll believe that the numbers are telling the truth, and that Kentucky doesn’t have an invisible +9 adjusted margin points. I’ll also go ahead and believe that everyone’s underestimating Duke.
(UNM’s 3 seed looks pretty silly. Wisconsin at 4, Maryland at 6? It’s like they just gave up in the South bracket and threw in a bunch of teams with random numbers assigned to them.)
hate to point this out, Warden, but...
You’ve got a math error/typo in the chart for FL2007HOME:
2007 FLA Home 1.22 0.88 0.44
Should be .34, not .44.
Thanks, fixed it.
Glad I came, just wish I hadn't stayed so long.
People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.
I think on this subject
It is key to remember that KU isn’t going to play 9 true road games. We have three games in Kansas City, two games in Oklahoma City, then 2 games in St. Louis (assuming all goes to plan knock on wood).
KU will be playing at sites that will be (likely) 75% pro KU from here until the final four (knock on wood). Its one thing to step into an environment like Manhattan where the fans’ day-to-day happiness hinges on their team beating you, loud, people going nutts, other team feeding off that, etc. Its completely different when the place you play at is neutral at worst, almost a home game at best.
the one thing to beware
is that if a game is close even for a little bit every fan there that isn’t a bigtime Kansas fan will be cheering against us. Kinda like the 1st round game against NDSU last year. Granted it being in Minneapolis helped and that will be somewhat eased by being OKC and St. Louis, but it could still be a problem.
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I believe the last time we were in OKC was Bucknell. Okie Lite was at the same location, but in a different bracket. Obviously they had a ton of fans there, and they led on the anti-Jayhawk crowd. Anyone without a rooted interest in the game was going for the upset. So even that close to home, I would say it was 40% pro-KU tops.
This year, I expect KState fans to be there en masse, and will obviously be strongly supportive of our opponents.
By the time you get to the domes for Regionals, however, I don’t think the crowds make much of a difference either way. Even if KU got 25k in STL, that’s not enough to overpower everyone else, IMO.
"Here are our top priorities: recruit, beat Missouri, recruit, win the North, recruit, win the Big 12, and in most cases if you win the Big 12 then you're playing for a National Championship. And then we're going to recruit."
by KennyGregoryRockThaCradle on Mar 10, 2010 8:00 AM CST via mobile up reply actions
Yep I'd expect us to play in a hostile environment...
if we fall behind in the early rounds, especially with K-State likely in OKC. As far as St. Louis, I’m not as worried, that should be a pro KU crowd.
53 Conference Championships!! and now 6 IN A ROW!!! Holy Hell...Good Luck with That!!
Yeah but lets not forget how well KU travels
Especially to locations only a couple hours away. I have faith our fans will be there and drown out the jealous/bitter/still insanely struggling with an inferiority complex fans of other schools
by Andrew Clark on Mar 10, 2010 8:42 AM CST up reply actions
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