OK, so that was a brutal loss. Nothing's going to make it better except time, drinking, or distractions. I can't shift time or buy you all a drink, but I think I can provide a distraction.

You know that every single one of your 28,317 brackets is already busted, so why not make some new picks?

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I like tempo-free stats. Here's what they tell me to expect from VCU.

On offense, their four factors numbers are surprisingly similar to Purdue's: 

(1) They take care of the basketball (17.2% turnover rate; Purdue's is 15.9%)

(2) They aren't great on the offensive glass (31.4% OR%; Purdue's is 32.4%)

(3) They are a decent but not great shooting team (EFg of 50.7%; Purdue's is......50.7%).  

Defense is where we see the differences:

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I wrote a little program to use Ken Pomeroy's tempo-free stats to simulate the outcome of the Big Ten tournament.  If you're interested, the results are after the jump.

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Purdue has opened the B10 season 4-0.  Surprisingly, that's something that the Big Three had not managed to do until this season.  Moreover, two of the wins have been on the road and by large margins--23 over Michigan and 15 over Penn State.  

To put those victories in perspective, the Boilers' biggest conference road win last year was by 12 over Michigan State.  The year before, it was by just 8 over Minnesota.  Only by going all the way back to the 2008 conference season can we find road victories of comparable margin.  That year, the Baby Boilers went on the road and spanked Penn State by 22, Northwestern by 15, and Michigan by 14. (Damn, sometimes I forget how awesome they were that season.) In any case, starting this season with two dominating road victories is pretty impressive.  Add that to a hard-fought but solid victory over Northwestern and a beat-down of Iowa, and things are looking good.

No one would dispute that all four of these wins have been against the bottom half of the Big Ten.  The question is whether they can still tell us something about this year's Boilers.  To take a stab at answering this question, I'm going to compare this season's four conference victories with four conference games from last season against teams of similar quality (according to KenPom's rankings).  Specifically I'll look at the 2010 games vs. Michgan, @ Illinois, and both home and away against Penn State. 

 As always, if you don't like numbers, beware.  Now, on with the stat-laden pontificating.

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About a month ago I wrote an analysis of the boxscore from one of the Boilers' exhibition games. At that time I said it looked like we might see a Boiler defense that forces fewer TOs than in years past but which cleans the defensive glass better. I also said that I thought (and hoped) we might shoot fewer 3s this year than last.

Well, we're now 6 games and 1 loss into the season.  Let's see how my initial thoughts have panned out and what else can be gleaned from the games played so far.  Once again, I live out of the US, with little TV access.  I've watched about 30 minutes of Boiler basketball this season, so these thoughts are wholly based on box score skimming.  If you hate that sort of analysis, consider yourself warned.

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I should preface this by noting that I didn't watch last night's game. I don't live in the US, and it's difficult enough to get any US college sports, let alone exhibition games. I'm a pretty dedicated box score cruncher, though, and here are my thoughts on that.  Numbers aren't everything, but they do sometimes tell you things that your eyes just don't pick up.  Last year, for instance, the numbers stubbornly refused to corroborate my belief that Purdue's 3 pt defense was better than the previous year.  Anyway, if you like reading kenpom, you'll probably enjoy what follows.  If not, well, beware...

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