It's May, that wonderful time of year when college basketball pundits grasp for anything resembling a commentary topic. Currently, that topic is the perceived explosion in the number of players transferring between schools. Example:

Transfers have increasingly become a fundamental part of the NCAA experience, so much so that coaches rarely escape a year without losing at least one underclassman looking for a fresh start. It's such a prevalent part of building rosters now that some programs market themselves as a place for transfers to land, and those coaches focus their recruiting efforts on landing players the second time around.

Few in college athletics, however, believe this is a positive trend. Most transfers happen because a player is dissatisfied, an acknowledgement of failure on the part of the coach or player. And though football sees its share of players changing programs every year, the problem is becoming especially visible in college basketball, where more than 400 players — an average of more than one per Div. 1 program — have already switched schools this offseason.

(HTs: Gasaway and Beyond the Arc)

Now, as it turns out, players aren't actually transferring at an increasing rate, at least from power conference teams:

Players leaving with eligibility left (excluding NBA draft early entrants)

2004: 174
2005: 197
2006: 185
2007: 192
2008: 160
2009: 137
2010: 203
2011: 165
2012: 113 (through April 30th)

Continue reading this post »

At NCAA headquarters

UPDATE: All clear. Great blogger reverse jinx success! Question stands.

DeAnthony Arnett announced he was transferring to Michigan State to be closer to his ill father four months ago, indicating intent to seek a waiver to play for MSU immediately at that time.

The formal application for that wavier was submitted a full two months ago, with the expectation that an NCAA ruling would take about three weeks.

Intelligent (and unbiased) observers noted the ludicrousness of how long it was taking the NCAA rule to on the request over a month ago.

Two weeks ago, we heard this:

"I have to send more transcripts from my dialysis doctor to the NCAA," William Arnett said. "I had sent all my transcripts to Tennessee, but the NCAA wants more from me. We'll do that this week.

"Right now, this isn't about DeAnthony. It's all about me."

According to William Arnett, he will be put on a kidney transplant waiting list after he has his blood tested this week.

"They need to get my blood and DNA so they can get a match," William Arnett said. "I had surgery for a catheter in my shoulder, so I go to dialysis Monday, Wednesday and Friday. If it weren't for dialysis, I wouldn't be alive today."

Arnett has also had heart surgery and remains on medication.

"It was hard last year, being sick and in the hospital," William Arnett said. "I planned on seeing my son play. I wanted to see my son play. But I was in the hospital and sick, and I couldn't be in a car eight hours to see him play at Tennessee.

"I had to do what my doctor told me to do."

Now this:

Nope. NCAA has asked for more medical info twice in past three weeks. RT @Shawn__Edward @joerexrode any update on deanthony arnett?

— Joe Rexrode (@joerexrode) May 10, 2012

Set aside the broader debate about the restrictions the NCAA puts on "student-athletes" while coaches and administrators are free to pursue their own personal self interest: What exactly is the delay here in interpreting a simple rule already on the NCAA books? Is the NCAA afraid the elder Arnett's doctors are lying about the nature of his medical condition? Do they have their own team of medical experts poring over the data to look for discrepancies and perhaps find that Mr. Arnett is, in fact, perfectly healthy and could easily have traveled to Knoxville eight times this fall?

If the NCAA really possesses this level of medical expertise, I can only hope they will be providing recommendations to Mr. Arnett for improved treatment options.

[Or vice versa]

The season recaps from our favorite Spartan writers have been both comprehensive and co-signable, so I'll try to keep this part short. This Michigan State basketball season was, in short, as successful as a season that ends short of April can be. Given that Tom Izzo has made it to the final weekend of the college basketball season six times in the last 14 seasons, that makes this a barely-more-than-median-level success story, but such is the burden of regular success.

Briefly: preseason unranked team earns two banners for the Breslin rafters, beating the conference favorite (and eventual Final Four participant) two out of three times and the program's arch-nemesis three out of three times in the process of doing so. As an added bonus, you have the team's senior leader producing more basketball value than any other player in the country, recording one of the four greatest individual seasons in the history of the program.

(By the way, this is a not a question. Two Final Fours. Three Big Ten titles. Conference player of the year, unanimous first-team all-American. Case closed. The more interesting case is still Kalin Lucas. By the standards of the jersey numbers currently hanging in the rafters, he's a slam dunk. But the bar may need to be raised for Izzo-era players. The new bar? Consensus All-American. If I recall correctly, North Carolina requires a player to be National Player of the Year to have his jersey retired. I think putting MSU's standard one step short of that is about right.)

This was a unique campaign for an Izzo team: an inexperienced team beats injuries and late-season depth concerns to earn a 1-seed in the NCAA Tournament. (MSU's depth ratio post-Dawson injury: 3.95.) This team posted the fifth highest win total of the Izzo era. We're not used to the dice going cold in the Big Dance, but that's the way the thing is designed to work. Consider this our penance for the 2010 tournament run.

If there's anything to feel melancholy about here, it's that the Draymond Green era has come to a close. Darn you, college sports, with your enforced individual transitoriness. The archetypical Spartan cager must move on.

Continue reading this post »

Following Michigan State's conference season-opening win against Indiana, Keith Appling had attempted 136 three-point shots as a Spartan. He had converted 53 of those, for a healthy shooting percentage of .390.

Since that game, however, Appling has made just 9 three-pointers in 53 attempts--a shooting percentage of .170. Those attempts span 22 basketball games, so this is not a short-term slump.

Needless to say, the near inability to drain a shot from beyond the arc puts a crimp in things when your primary job in the half-court offense is to initiate the offense at the top of the arc. Opponents have sagged off Appling to varying degrees, preventing him from driving to the basket and complicating efforts to get other MSU shooters open.

On Sunday, Saint Louis took this defensive approach to an extreme, outright daring Appling to shoot the ball from the outside. While Appling never looked totally confident shooting the ball, he still somehow managed to score a game-high 19 points against the Billikens. (This is why we have box scores, by the way. If you watched that game live and didn't attempt to keep track of how many points Appling had scored, there's no way you would have guessed he finished with 19.)

The big shot, of course, was the three-pointer Appling hit off a Draymond Green pass with a minute half to go to give MSU a 7-point lead and put SLU into frantic comeback mode. The ball hit every part of the backboard and rim possible before it dropped in, but dropped in it did. Appling also made 3 of 7 jumpshot attempts inside the arc, stepping into the space SLU left him at the top of the key before launching.

Continue reading this post »

[Really stretching my Blogger Emeritus privileges here.]

With 1:44 left to go in the Purdue-Kansas game last night, Robbie Hummel secured a defensive rebound with Purdue up by 3.

Of the 104 seconds that remained in the game, Purdue controlled the ball for 90 of them.

Kansas controlled the ball for the remaining 14 seconds.

Kansas scored 6 points in those 14 seconds.

Purdue scored zero points in its 90 seconds.

The risk of giving your opponent an extra 10 seconds to work with is perhaps being overestimated.

I'm beginning to think the best way to win a close college basketball game is to make sure your opponent has the ball with a one-possession lead with between 60 and 120 seconds left in the game.

Call a play Run your offense, Matt Painter. Robbie Hummel deserved better.

Here's your complete schedule for the day:

12:15 p.m. - North Carolina State (11) vs. Georgetown (3), CBS
2:45 p.m. - Saint Louis (9) vs. Michigan State (1), CBS
5:15 p.m. - Creighton (8) vs. North Carolina (1), CBS
6:10 p.m. - Norfolk State (15) vs. Florida (7), TNT
7:10 p.m. - Ohio (13) vs. South Florida (12), TBS
7:40 p.m. - Lehigh (15) vs. Xavier (10), TruTV
8:40 p.m. - Purdue (10) vs. Kansas (2), TNT
9:40 p.m. - Cincinnati (6) vs. Florida State (3), TBS

Mini-preview for the MSU game is here.

Pregame reading is here. Here's to the guys in the film room.

GO GREEN. BEAT THE BILLIKENS.

So that went to plan, more or less. After a first half that was slightly tighter than Michigan State fans would have preferred, MSU pulled away in the second half to conclude with a scoreline befitting a 1-vs.-16 NCAA game.

The stars for MSU were all along the front line:

• Draymond Green: 24 points, 12 rebounds, 10 assists. The third player to ever record multiple career triple doubles in NCAA tournament play. You may have heard of the first two: Oscar Palmer Robertson and Earvin Johnson, Jr.
• Adreian Payne: 16 points and 7 rebounds in 18 minutes.
• Derrick Nix: 18 points and 8 rebounds in 20 minutes.

If you're keeping score at home, that comes to what must be career highs for Derrick Payne by some distance: 34 points and 15 rebounds. When the team wasn't out in transition, the ball went into the post. LIU didn't offer much of anything in the way of strategic resistance, and the points in the paint flowed like honey.

Continue reading this post »

Today's schedule:

12:15 p.m. - Kansas St. (8) vs. Syracuse (1), CBS
2:45 p.m. - Gonzaga (7) vs. Ohio State (2), CBS
5:15 p.m. - Murray State (6) vs. Marquette (3), CBS
6:10 p.m. - Vanderbilt (5) vs. Wisconsin (4), TNT
7:10 p.m. - VCU (12) vs. Indiana (4), TBS
7:45 p.m. - Iowa State (8) vs. Kentucky (1), CBS
8:40 p.m. - Colorado (11) vs. Baylor (3), TNT
9:40 p.m. - New Mexico (5) vs. Louisville (4), TBS

With MSU on its off day, here's to maximum MADNESS.

So the only damper on what was otherwise the BEST SELECTION SUNDAY EVER was the realization that the selection committee had dumped a bunch of distinctly-underrated-by-the-RPI mid-majors into Michigan State's section of the bracket. Seven of KenPom's top 20 teams are in the West, with the winner of a Friday game between #9 Memphis and #15 St. Louis awaiting the Spartans after LIU-Brooklyn.

Kevin Pelton's take:

The West's real strength is its depth. Seven of Pomeroy's top 20 teams were sent out West, including sleepers Memphis, St. Louis and No. 7 seed Florida. All are the top-rated teams on their respective seed lines. By contrast, the Midwest boasts just three of Pomeroy's top 20 teams because Michigan is rated as a particularly weak four seed. In fact, both Belmont and Purdue (a 10 seed) rank ahead of the Wolverines in the Midwest.

The deepest region may not necessarily be the most challenging one to navigate for a top seed. After all, the No. 1 seed can only face one team from the opposite half of the bracket, and no more than four teams total. For example, while Michigan State is assured a difficult third-round matchup against either Memphis or St. Louis, counting both teams doubles how problematic this really is because the Spartans can only face one of them.

He concludes that MSU actually has the second toughest draw of the 1-seeds, behind Syracuse. So, given the elation of earning a 1-seed, the draw is a bad one, but not a horrific one overall. After all, the same system that thinks Memphis is the 9th best team in the country thinks MSU is the 3rd best team. Indeed, Mr. Pomeroy's calculations have MSU as the third best shot in the 68-team field both to advance to the Final Four (35.2%) and to win the whole tournament (12.5%).

That shouldn't stop us from ranting, though. Even the RPI thinks Memphis is the 17th best team in the country, which would equate to being the top 5-seed. (And the Tigers have won 20 of their last 23 games, so there's no discount for ending the season poorly.) For as much time as these guys spend locked in a room, engrossed in data, they sure seem to ignore an awful lot of it.

The positive spin is that Memphis may be getting some of the Wisconsin treatment from KenPom. They've generally dominated against weaker competition, but they also sport a 2-5 record against top-50 opponents (the last of whom they played in December). Margin of victory definitely matters, but 20-point wins against Conference USA opposition only tells you so much.

Continue reading this post »

Points Over Replacement Per Adjusted Game (PORPAG):

• Estimates the average number of points a player has produced above "replacement level" in a typical game--i.e. what the 10th guy on an average team would get you if you had to use him instead.
• Like all basketball statistics, occurs within the context of a team dynamic (particularly true for low-usage guys).
• Tells you absolutely nothing about a player's defensive performance.

The numbers below are based on conference-only data from StatSheet. Replacement level is set at 88.0; pace is set at 62 possessions/game; minimum minute percentage of 40.0%. Last year's numbers, along with links to previous PORPAG posts, are here. Data dump after the jump. (Also: Drew Cannon at BP has made an interesting adjustment for replacement value based on usage rate. I haven't attempted anything like that here. Just making the adjustment intuitively.)

Continue reading this post »

Every few years, Ken Pomeroy produces a chart that tells you something that seems simultaneously counterintuitive and plainly obvious. Four years ago, it was a chart that demonstrated that 3-point attempts are generally a much better bet than mid-range jumpers (and layups are where it's really at, of course). Now, it's this:

and this:

Three-point shooting is a crapshoot. Particularly on defense, where teams appear to have about as much influence as they do over their opponents' free throw shooting percentage.

Continue reading this post »

Did not see this coming:

78% of the way into the Big Ten schedule and MSU is in the driver's seat. Now, that still leaves four games for things to go in any number of directions. But, to date, the team's results have been better than any objective observer could have predicted and any biased observer could have hoped for going into the season. (Now, just imagine if that overinflated ball could have dropped into the rim just one more time for MSU in Champaign. Sorry, deep breath, again: better than we could have hoped for.)

SpartanDan will have his more rigorous take on the state of the Big Ten race up tonight, but for now, I thought it would be fun to take a graphical look at how the three contenders for the conference title have gotten to where they are now. After the jump, I've charted each team's offensive and defensive efficiency marks on a game-by-game basis and then applied polynomial trendlines (order of 2, meaning they can only bend once). This is an exercise we've undertaken in the past--mainly because the charts are fun to look at/converse about. I don't pretend they have any predictive power. But, if we're going to nervously speculate about title chances, it's as good an approach as any.

Blue is offense; you want that to be higher. Red is defense; you want that to be lower.

Continue reading this post »

Entering the season, the unexpected (but entirely understandable) decision by Delvon Roe to end his basketball career a year early created a pretty big hole in the Michigan State lineup. Both Derrick Nix, after two seasons in the program, and Adreian Payne, after one college season coming off some very impressive high school accolades, remained major question marks in terms of being able to provide consistent, sustained productivity. Still, Tom Izzo had little choice but to hand the 5-spot in the lineup over to the two of them, and see what the results would be.

While there have been a few bumps along the way, the results have been about as good as we could have hoped for. Through 12 games of Big Ten play, Nix and Payne are averaging a combined 15 points and 7 rebounds in 37 minutes per game. The table after the jump provides a rough comparison of total production from MSU's center spot this season (Nix/Payne) and last season (Roe/Nix/Payne)--using conference-only numbers:

Continue reading this post »

Mr. Rexrode was kind enough to mention us on his blog today. The blurb:

Before going any further, I'd like to appease the TPS Police before they come after me (no, I'm not talking TPS Reports, I'm talking tempo-free stats). I enjoy them, believe in them, still reluctant to use them in stories and spend several grafs explaining them. Here's a glance at them. And as I've said to the folks at TOC and elsewhere, when Izzo stops citing dinosaur stats such as rebounding margin and plain old FG percentage, I'll consider doing the same.

Rexrode is apparently a closeted tempo-free fan. I agree with him that most tempo-free numbers are more complex than what the median college sports fan is looking for. Explaining points per possession or effective field goal percentage in a newspaper column probably doesn't work all that well.

But I do think there's some middle ground for using tempo-free concepts to enhance the experience of the great unwashed masses without unduly confusing them. The two areas that rank highest on my wish list:

• Report two-point shooting separately. Pointing out that Michigan State made 22 of 36 attempts inside the arc on Sunday does a much better job of communicating how well they were able to create good shots close to the rim than saying they shot 52.2% from the field but only 20.0% on three-pointers does. And the former is actually a lot easier to wrap your head around numerically.
  
• Report offensive and defensive rebounding separately. Sunday's game isn't a good example here, since MSU dominated the boards on both ends, but often times a team is very good on the glass on one end of the court but not the other in a given game (offensive and defensive rebounding are distinct skills). Giving specific numbers on one end (e.g., MSU grabbed 28 of 31 defensive rebounding chances) paints a much clearer picture than rebounding margin does.

Rexrode obviously doesn't need any journalism advice from me, a purportedly-retired blogger. (His good deed is not going unpunished, as I pick on him regarding this general topic for the second time in two months.) But I spend a lot of time thinking about the most effective way to present data to people. And I think there's room for improved reporting of basketball statistics that falls well short of dumping PORPAG figures on people. (Another sign of progress and/or shark-jumping: Dick Vitale plugged John Gasaway during the Kentucky-Florida game tonight.)

Continue reading this post »

Always focus on the bright side of life, right? Coming out of Tuesday night's stinktacular in Champaign, that's approach to life requires a pretty narrow focus. The only glimmer of brightness for Michigan State against Illinois was Branden Dawson (on offense, at least--we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that the game was actually MSU's best defensive performance of the Big Ten season to date, by a decent margin).

Dawson was the only Spartan to make more than 33% of his field goal attempts (not even a 1-for-2 to be found in the box score). He just cleared that bar, making 4 of 11 attempts from the floor. Add in 4 points at the free throw line, and Dawson posted a line of 12 points, 13 rebounds (7 of them on offense), and just 1 turnover.

Over the last three games, Dawson is averaging 14.0 points per game on 60.7% field goal shooting. Those performances came following a two-game stretch--the losses at Northwestern and Michigan--in which Tom Izzo only put Dawson on the floor for a combined 29 minutes. He's played nearly that number in each of the last two games (27 and 28).

Continue reading this post »

With a 25-point blowout of a pretty good opponent between us and the loss in Ann Arbor, we can go back to what we were doing before: marveling at just how good this basketball team has been, preseason expectations to the contrary. Despite the back-to-back losses to Northwestern and Michigan, MSU remains right on the edge of the top 10 nationally according to the human pollsters and has actually risen to #4 in the country by KenPom's calculations. (We'll have to take a temporary hiatus from giving Mr. Pomeroy such a hard time about overrating Wisconsin.)

An interesting aspect of MSU's unexpected emergence as a national contender is that there really hasn't been a breakout star in the mix. Draymond Green has been very good, but his numbers are basically right where they were last year. (MSU's team success does have him flying high in KenPom's Player of the Year rankings, though.) Keith Appling's development has probably been the biggest individual factor in the team's success, but 12.6 points and 4.0 assists per game don't exactly knock your socks off--and are well short of what Kalin Lucas posted last season.

Beyond those two players, no Spartan is averaging more than 10 points or 4 rebounds per game. That means a larger number of players are contributing smaller amounts of production.

The details after the jump

Continue reading this post »

In-state rivalry game! Both teams ranked! Which hasn't happened very often! Couldn't pass up doing the traditional Q and A with Dylan! Below, I'm in bold. My answers to his questions will be up at UMHoops later today.

1. Coming into the season the big question mark for Michigan was how ably freshman Trey Burke would be able to replace Darius Morris as the starting point guard. By all accounts, the transition has gone very well, with Burke posting a 108.4 offensive rating to go with a very healthy usage rate of 26.1. Tell us about Burke's strengths (and, we hope, a deficiency or two that remains in his game).

Trey Burke has played as well as anyone could have imagined before the season. Burke has been almost as productive as Morris was as a sophomore last season but his approach to the point guard position is completely different. Morris was a bigger guard that thrived finishing creatively around the basket and using his size to pass the ball on the screen-and-roll. Burke is a smaller and much quicker guard that can shoot the three (34%) but also use his quickness to get in the lane. His favorite shot is probably the pull-up jumper from the elbow but his offensive game might be most effective when he’s pushing the ball in transition.

Where Burke struggles is passing the ball out of the pick-and-roll. The Wolverines run screen-and-roll action as a significant portion of their offense and recent opponents have begun to defend the look with a hard hedge, forcing Burke to beat them with the pass to the roll man. His size makes this a bit difficult and the hard hedge has not only limited Burke, it has limited Jordan Morgan, who gets most of his offensive production off the roll. I would be shocked if Tom Izzo doesn’t attempt to defend Burke like this and it will be a storyline to see how Burke, and Beilein adjust. [Ed. - More on this from MGoBlog.]

Much more after the jump!

Continue reading this post »

The list of things that have gone right for Michigan State so far this basketball season is a long one (look at ALL THAT GREEN). Nearly every player in the rotation has met, if not exceeded expectations, and received corresponding praise by the media and fanbase. Perhaps overlooked in the early success have been the contributions of one Austin Thornton.

Over the last couple years, I've been skeptical about Thornton's potential to be a regular positive factor on the court (despite my wife's affection for him, and walk-ons generally). While no one could question Thornton's effort level, his proclivity to turn the ball over on offense and foul excessively on defense, to me, signaled a fundamental problem in terms of matching up physically with good Division 1 competition. On top of that, he's never been able to show any of the shooting ability that defined his (very, very good) high school career.

So, entering his fifth season in the MSU program, I expected that, if anything, his playing time would decrease, as players like Russell Byrd and Brandan Kearney emerged as alternatives off the bench. To the contrary, however, Thornton has earned a regular spot in the rotation as one of the first options off the bench, playing between 12 and 24 minutes in every game but one (the Florida State game).

A look at Thornton's major tempo-free indicators over the last three seasons is after the jump.

Continue reading this post »

Rexrode:

Shooting was near the top of the list [of needed improvements] for the season's first few weeks. MSU's 53.3 percent accuracy in the past six games has penciled a thick line through that item.

That includes a 45.7 percent showing from 3-point range - after the Spartans shot 42.3 percent overall and 23.8 percent on 3-point tries in the season's first six games.

This is a incontrovertibly happy development. But the numbers cited paint only a partial picture of just how much happier we are and to what extent different types of shooting are making us happy.

The fuller picture (eFG% = effective field goal percentage):

Analysis after the jump . . .

Continue reading this post »

[Hey, remember me? I had a thought that didn't fit in 140 characters.]

The script has been performed for so many years, it seems almost inevitable: high preseason expectations turn to a disappointing string of nonconference results, only to be followed by a resilient (if uneven) Big Ten performance and then, more often than not, a deep tournament run.

This Michigan State basketball campaign deviated from the script right from the start. For only the second time in 14 years, MSU entered the season unranked by the pollsters. This was to be a rebuilding year. Like the 2006-07 season, just making the NCAA Tournament would be, if not fully satisfactory, at least acceptable. With only two starters returning and six scholarship players taking the court for MSU for the first time, I, for one, was hoping to just scrape out one quality nonconference win and see if a stable rotation could emerge in time for conference play.

It's gone quite a bit better than that now, hasn't it? The losses against North Carolina and Duke on opposite coasts to start the season were frustrating--but mainly because MSU actually looked capable of pulling out the upset for substantial portions of each game. From there, a series of 20-plus point wins ensued, and the last two weeks have brought a pair of fairly comfortable wins against quality opponents--the most recent of which was earned in front of one of the more raucous crowds college basketball has to offer.

To see just how unusual these results have been, I've compiled data on MSU's pre-conference results over the last 10 seasons ("the KenPom era"), sorted by KenPom rank:

Continue reading this post »

To me, the sports blog has two great advantages over other mediums.  First, a good blog post can examine the performance of a given sports team at a level of depth beyond the casual analysis found in most corners.  Second, a blog can collect a community of fans that exchange ideas, memories, and emotions in a quantity that less obsessive types would find tiresome.  In short: sports blogs are for sports fan(atic)s in the original sense of the term.

Many mainstream sportswriters do, of course, have unique insights to offer, but generally people in those positions are writing for a broader audience not interested in much more than cursory explanations for what transpired on the court/field/ice the night before.  (Notice how all of Joe Rexrode's really interesting observations are on his blog, rather than in his newspaper articles.)  And message boards can serve a useful function in terms of information exchange, but the dialogue there tends to lack focus.  (The top-ranked Spartan message board would be Exhibit A of that phenomenon.  Random thread title on the front page there as I write this post: "Why haven't there been any REALLY good movies about Napoleon?")  Finally, sports talk radio is, well, what it's advertised to be: a lot of talk.

When I started blogging about Michigan State basketball three and a half years ago, the goal, which seemed pretty enormous at the time, was to bring those two elements together: in-depth analysis and a spirited community for the fanatics.  Slowly but surely, we got there.  And, in the process, I'm quite certain I've gotten a lot more out of this than I've put in.  I've learned a ton, made some real, live friends, and become even more fanatical about the Green and White.  (I didn't used to go to every football game, believe it or not.)  You, gentle readers (and even you not-so-gentle readers), have been what's made this site and the one that preceded it much more than mere repositories for my scribblings and scatterplots.

Meanwhile, in a period of time shorter than a single presidential term, tempo-free stats have somehow gone mainstream.  (Did you notice how CBS was showing 2-point shooting numbers during yesterday games?)  In the terminology of Mr. Gasaway, more and more people are basing their views regarding basketball performance on, like, reality.  It's been fun playing a (very) small role in that development.

(Aside: Now that we've got a consensus on the way to determine why a team has or has not been successful, it seems like the next step is finding ways to identify how a team can become more successful.  You can see the first steps in that direction in the analysis of specialty data and UFRish Xs-and-Os breakdown featured in Luke Winn's work--with a couple local bloggers following suit.  This is where basketball still trails baseball in the level of utility advanced statistics bring to the table.  The more I've learned about college basketball, the more I feel like there's that much more I don't understand.  Not that that's entirely a bad thing.  It may be that the magic of the game that crops up each March lies in those very vagaries.)

For reasons previously articulated, the time has come for me to step aside.  Before I do, please allow me my moment at the Oscars (sans the orchestra).

Building a blog is inherently a network-based endeavor, and the list of people who have helped me out along the way is too long to publish in its entirety.  But I do want to publicly thank a few people in particular:

• John Gasaway, whose absconding was the original impetus for all this,
• Bill Ferris, whose site served as a model for the kind of fan community I wanted to build,
• Kurt Mensching, who is the only person I know who roots for all four of my favorite sports programs/franchises: MSU, the Detroit Tigers, the U.S. Men's National Soccer Team, and the Liverpool Football Club,
• Dylan Burkhardt, who started blogging at almost exactly the same time I did and is now deservedly benefiting from taking Brian Cook's "buy low" advice,
• (speaking of which) Brian Cook, the Godfather of the Big Ten Blogosphere, who's directed more eyeballs to my work than anyone else,
• Mike Miller, who somehow found, and linked to, my recap of the 2007 win against Texas when the original blog was only a few weeks old,
• Eamonn Brennan, who's generously linked to my work--including a cell phone photo taken on a tense June evening--at the website of The Worldwide Leader,
• and Steve Hendershot, who made it possible for me to see my byline on a rack at Barnes and Noble.

The folks at SB Nation have been great--Peter Bean and Joel Hollingsworth, in particular.  This platform has allowed me to write for the last couple years without having to worry about all the techie stuff.  (I still remember staying up until like 3 in the morning one night when the old site was temporarily redirecting to a very sketchy-looking website based somewhere in Southeast Asia because of a random glitch in the works at the server company.)

And I couldn't have lasted this long in the blogosphere without Pete and LVS (whom I roped into this against his better judgment) agreeing to start TOC with me two years ago.  And Josh, Tim, Dan, and Patrick signing on over the last year has made the experience that much richer.  I've always said that if there were a high-quality MSU sports blog out there for me to read, I'd quit.  Now there is, and I am.

Finally, my wife and kids are owed a big thank you.  They've spent far too much time waiting for Dad to get done with whatever it is he's doing on the laptop.  Luckily, they all just happen to bleed green, so they've been willing to overlook it.  (On that note, my green blood was passed down to me by my parents, who have been a source of great encouragement in this endeavor, and many others, and have made much of the MSU-based traveling over the last several years possible.)

In closing: I couldn't have picked a better four years to blog about Spartan athletics.  Four banners have been raised to the Breslin Center rafters (with a fifth, bearing the number "1," expected at some point in the future), and the first Big Ten football championship trophy in 20 years found its way to East Lansing.  There have been few times over the last century when the words "Their specialty is winning" have rung more true.

I'll be rooting and reading along with all of you as those Spartans look to continue that trend in the years to come.  Go Green.

Me, last November:

To repeat something I've now written probably a half dozen times since the loss to Butler in March, a 2011 MSU basketball season that ends short of the program's third national championship will not necessarily be a failure, but it will be a disappointment.  There's only one way to beat back-to-back conference championships and Final Four appearances.

You can't finish much more short of a national title than a first round tournament loss (although MSU came perilously close to not even getting that close).

I had hoped for a 27-6 record going into the Big Dance.  Try 19-14.

So, yeah, disappointment.  Of the utter variety.

What went wrong?  Well, just about everything.  The team regressed in nearly every area of its tempo-free profile: 2-point shooting (5 full percentage points there), offensive rebounding, free throw rate, three-point defense (3.5 percentage points), defensive turnover percentage, defensive rebounding, and defensive free throw rate.  Even in areas where the numbers improved slightly, there were stretches of sustained frustration during the season: turnover percentage and three-point shooting.

The numbers are skewed slightly by the brutalness of the schedule.  MSU somehow actually ranks one spot higher than last season in adjusted defensive efficiency.  On offense, it's not even close: down 34 spots.  Those rankings are based on averages, though.  Over the course of the season, the team rode a rollercoaster of inefficiency: failing to hit an offensive efficiency mark of even 90 against two nonconference foes, going through a stretch of six Big Ten games in which all but one opponent hit the 110 offensive efficiency threshold, and then--even as the team found some defensive identity--falling short of the 100 mark on offense in five of the team's last six regular season games.

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The most exhausting Michigan State basketball season in memory ends in quite possibly the most exhausting manner possible.

From the beginning: It turns out that a defense designed to funnel players into the lane and block shots, without fouling a lot in the process, matches up quite nicely with an offense that's highly reliant on a point guard whose primary instinct is to drive the lane looking for shots around the rim and/or opportunities at the free throw line.  Game preview FAIL.

The final game of Kalin Lucas's Spartan career ended without about as dismal an individual performance as you could have predicted.  Lucas finished the game with 11 points, but it was well into the second half before he was even on the scoreboard.  He shot just 4-14 from the field and turned the ball over 4 times.  This game should do nothing to detract from the individual and team accomplishments Lucas posted during his time at MSU, but I'm sure it will be a while before that's of any comfort to him.

Meanwhile, in a development that is very nearly the definition of irony, Durrell Summers was the only MSU player who could buy a basket early on.  In the first half, Summers converted 5 of 9 field goal attempts, while the rest of the roster shot just 3-19 from the field.  Unfortunately, Summers couldn't keep it going, scoring only 3 points in the second half to finish with 12 for the game.

Draymond Green was the closest thing to a consistent offensive factor for MSU, posting the second triple-double of his career (based on this box score, at least): 23 points, 11 rebounds, 10 assists.  He spearheaded the 22-point comeback over the game's final 8 minutes to draw MSU within one point with 4.4 seconds to go.  Alas, it was a bridge just a tad too far.

I'm not going to do a full recap of individual player contributions--for the most part, the MSU reserves were simply overmatched by UCLA's size and athleticism--except to say: Delvon Roe (11 points, 2 blocks, 2 steals) looked spry, and Keith Appling (three 3-pointers late) was clutch.  I look forward to what should be, knock on wood, a pain-free senior season for Roe and the full three seasons Appling has remaining as quite possibly the next in a series of great MSU guards.

UCLA was much more impressive than the team's numbers indicated they were coming into the game.  Josh Smith overwhelmed the MSU big men when he was on the court, scoring 14 points on 5-7 FG shooting.  Tyler Honeycutt, meanwhile, took advantage of his mismatch at the 3 spot, scoring 16 points on just 9 FGA and dishing out 5 assists.  MSU evened the numbers out quite a bit by the end, but the Bruins were dominant on both the boards and on turnover margin for most of the game.  UCLA came out as the much more aggressive, decisive, and composed team to start the game and, as a result, will advance to the next round of competition.

The fact that this season is over is a source of frustration and relief all at the same time.  The lack of quit exhibited by the team eases the sting some; it also provides a final, haunting demonstration of how good the team could be when it was able to shed the burden of expectations and play the game with energy and a sense of excitement.

It's apropos, I suppose: A team that disappointed relative to preseason expectations for an entire season but never quit completely on that season disappointed but didn't quit in the final game of that season.

But just because you don't quit doesn't mean the season doesn't end.

We've already received a nice little scouting report on the UCLA players from our friends at Bruins Nation, so I'm going to try to stick to high-level analysis here.  To put it concisely, UCLA's lineup is on the young side (no seniors in the rotation), balanced (all five starters averaging between 9 and 14 points), fairly long (starters: 6'0", 6'4", 6'8", 6'8", and 6'10"), and starter-intensive in terms of playing time (all non-Joshua Smith starters average 29+ minutes/game).

Coming off a subpar 2010 season (14-18 overall), UCLA went 13-5 in Pac 10 play this season, finishing one game behind first-place Arizona.  This will be the Bruins' sixth NCAA Tournament appearance under head coach Ben Howland; three of the previous five appearances ended in the Final Four.

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Here's your official post-conference tournament bulletpoint dump:

• Ka-lin Lu-cas! Clap, clap, clap-clap-clap.  The story of the tournament was obviously Lucas' scoring explosion vs. Purdue--a career-high 30 points--despite playing on what reports had indicated was a pretty severely-sprained ankle.  (I was somewhat surprised he hadn't scored 30 before.  He'd scored 25 or more in seven previous games this year, but had maxed out at 29 vs. Washington.)  The silver lining to the ankle sprain was that it forced Lucas to do something that several stat-head types (not including me--no self-horn tooting here) have suggested he do: shoot more threes.  13 of Lucas's 28 FGA vs. Purdue and Penn State were three-pointers; for the season, Lucas has taken over twice as many FGA from 2-point range as 3-point range.  The results were obviously pretty good.  For the tournament, Lucas scored 57 points on 38 FGA and was quite deservedly named to the all-tournament team.  His performance against Purdue will not be soon forgotten.
  
• Draymond Green carried the scoring load vs. Iowa with 21 points (although it took him 23 shots to get there).  His scoring touch disappeared in the next two games (5-19 from the field), but he finished the tournament with 34 rebounds, 12 assists, 6 steals, and 8 blocks, so there was no shortage of contributions from the man.
• Durrell Summers.  I'm not sure what's left to say about Summers that hasn't already been said, but I'll give it a shot: My sense is that Tom Izzo is trying to put Summers in a position for the game to come to him, rather than heaping more pressure on him by running a lot of set plays specifically designed for him.  It worked in spurts, but they were limited: 26 points over 89 minutes of BTT play.   Seven of those points came at the end of the Iowa game when it looked like the season could be completely unraveling, so give Summers credit for overcoming whatever psychological barriers he's dealing with at a very key moment.  15 defensive rebounds in the three games, so he's putting in the effort there, as well.
  

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