Article: Why The Gators Can (Or Can’t) Win A National Championship This Year

Fun article Eric. One question I have is about the stat that usually only teams in the top 3 of KenPom rankings win the dance. Is that top 3 before the tournament starts? Because usually teams that make the final four have moved up quite a bit during the tournament due to the wins that it takes to get there. If Florida won the tournament, it almost a lock that they would end up in the top 3 afterward.

 

What matters most is, was the team really good all season, and have they continued to get better, and are they peaking in late February?
We check all those boxes.

All that aside, the odds are against any one team winning it all, even though one of them has to. But without doubt we're one of the handful that have a good shot at it. Maybe the best shot at it.

 

Nice article. Thanks.
Can or Can't often comes down to a lucky bounce, shot, or call.
Odds are not in our favor.
What is in our favor are the many ways this team can win and how resilient they are.
I love this team.

 

Yeah I don't even like talking about stuff like this. The team just needs to keep working hard and improving.

 

I think the talk about our 3 losses is over played.

Of course they are L’s but scoring 100 points at Kentucky and still losing isn’t your typical L that should be held against a team the same as being blown out would.

Losing by 1 to a good Mizz team which appeared like they could not miss a 3 in the 1st half with one dude coming out of no where this season and shooting them lights out with defenders all over him.

We are still up by 10 pts on Tennessee. Honestly both of those games were freak games, they couldn’t get a basket to save their lives one game, and then it flipped on us the next game.

Ultimately our losses came from having an off night in some way, FT’s, rebounding, or just shooting in general. I think this team has a hell of a chance regardless of what the metrics say

 

Teams that win their final game have a higher chance of winning the National Championship.

 

I love this team when they play loose and push the ball up and down the court, but the half court offense concerns me. We don’t have that low post presence like we had last year with Tyrese Samuel. Our bigs are not particularly good in the post up game. It worries me that some team will execute the Tennessee game plan in defending us and the outcome will not be good.

 

Please just stay healthy. I may be in the minority but I think we had a team capable of a Final Four run last year if we hadn't lost Micah in the SECCG. Sky's the limit if we go in with all our guys feeling good.

 

Fawcett is great, but some of this doesn't make a lot of sense. Florida's goal is to get in the top 3 of KP so they can win a championship? No coach would view it that way. KP reflects a team's ability to win, but it doesn't determine it. FWIW, we are at 33.66 right now, higher than 5 of the last 10 champs. And we just whipped top-2 Auburn on their home floor, without Martin. Metrics are reflective, not predictive.

Ultimately, it's March. Anything can happen. Kelvin Sampson year in, year out puts phenomenal teams on the court, but he can't break through. Same with Pearl. You can name dozens of others. It's really, really, REALLY hard to win six games in March. Odds are pretty high that we don't this year for any number of reasons.

One thing I recall Donovan saying frequently is that you can't judge a team by its last game of the season. We are 23-3 with a top 10 offense and defense in the toughest league in America. We have legit candidates for AA (Clayton), SEC DPOY (Martin), and sixth man (Haugh). Condon could be all league and all D. Richard, Aberdeen, and Klavzar have all made huge strides. And we've done all that without a single kid ranked in the top 100 in his class. Barring something unforeseen, we will at least be a 2-seed. Since our only losses have come to top-20 teams this year, I can't imagine anything stopping us from getting to the second weekend. From there, it's about matchups and making shots.

For my money, what happens a month from now happens. I am just enjoying the run. We have a minimum of 7 games left with these guys, a max of 14--probably somewhere in the middle. The season has been so much fun that I don't want to see it end, but it will, and probably not how we want it to end. But I don't think anyone could have predicted where he would be right now.

 

What? That's not statistics work, lol

 

I won't debate the meaning of "odds," but the chances of any given 1-seed team winning the title are historically just 15.8%. The chances that the champion coming from 1 of the 4 1-seeds is 63.2%. So I stand by my statement.

 

you might be that crazy uncle no one talks about

 

I questioned Fawcett once and got blasted , good luck.

 

Right re: versatility. That’s one thing I posted about several times at the outset of conference play. If I were to design a team in a lab that could compete in this league, it would have a mix of a deep post rotation, veteran guards, and the ability to win games with offense or defense, tempo or half court, on the perimeter or in the paint.

For all the knocks our halfcourt offense gets, the only games where that was even remotely a problem was at Tennessee (in part because of Clayton getting hurt, but also on the road against the country's best defense) and at South Carolina (where we still won after they tried to slow it to a crawl). The fact is, good offensive rebounding and high shot volume/pace makes you an effective offense even when you can't shoot efficiently. As long as we aren't turning the ball over, we are fine (especially once Condon gets back to improve our work on the offensive glass).

I also think the improvement of Klavzar and Aberdeen has really helped us in the halfcourt because we now have multiple guys who can turn the corner on those hard hedges and blitzes to get downhill. Clayton really struggles in that regard, and that's been how teams have taken him away at times. But now you can still run your continuity screen stuff with Martin, Aberdeen, and Klazvar to get penetration and take advantage of the lane because of the big who is out of position.

Love where we are. Love our versatility, experience, toughness, and depth. Something will get us eventually--cold shooting from the arc, our high foul tendencies, average post presence, something--but right now we have a lot going for us. Auburn has more offensive balance and length, Duke has the best player in the country, Houston has the best coach with the best offense-defense balance, but those are the only three teams more "bullet proof" than us heading into March.

 

Nah, it's all good. He is terrific at what he does and there is no ill will intended. I just think that argument is off.

 

Valid points, though I will push back on one comment:

"Metrics are reflective, not predictive."

This is not true with your KenPom statement--KenPom IS a predictive metric (as opposed to a resume based metric such as Wins Above Bubble that is a reflective metric that evaluates a resume). The +33.66 number you referenced is a direct reference come KenPom to what the Gators would be expected to do against the absolute average D1 team which is beat them by 33.66 points (which speaks to how dominant the Gators are in this metric).

Here is an article from Ken Pomeroy explaining his metrics:

https://kenpom.com/blog/ratings-explanation/

This is the first sentence of his article:

"The first thing you should know about this system is that it is designed to be purely predictive."

He goes on:
"If you’re looking for a system that rates teams on how “good” their season has been, you’ve come to the wrong place. There are enough systems out there that rank teams based on what is “good” by just about any definition you can think of. So I’d encourage you to google college basketball ratings or even try the opinion polls for something that is more your style.

The purpose of this system is to show how strong a team would be if it played tonight, independent of injuries or emotional factors. Since nobody can see every team play all (or even most) of their games, this system is designed to give you a snapshot of a team’s current level of play."

 

Guess I'll respond to one more thing: "Florida's goal is to get in the top 3 of KP so they can win a championship? No coach would view it that way."

I can promise you Golden looks at KenPom every single day and his goal is to be in the top three (well, #1 obviously). He thinks this way.

 

Appreciate the responses, Eric, but it feels like we are kinda debating semantics here. You quoted me saying metrics are not predictive, but the earlier comment I made is obviously how I am using "predictive": determinative.

Ofc KP thinks his stuff is predictive. It's how we makes money and gets people to bet, lol. But it's not determinative. And he concedes that when he excepts things such as injuries or emotional factors. You could add a ton of things to that bucket that the metrics can't account for: situational coaching decisions, matchups, officiating, changed rotations due to foul trouble, etc. And it's a false dichotomy to say "resume based vs. predictive." What basis do we have to predict what someone is going to do other than what they have done? But it doesn't determine anything, strictly speaking. There is far more at play, which you understand well as a coach. Otherwise, we would just seed based on KP. That's what I meant in that first para.

I also don't think it's fair to say since Golden values a top 3 ranking in KP that it means his goal is to get in the top 3. If it were, Clayton and Richard would have played more against Oklahoma, we wouldn't have taken the air out of the ball against MSU, and we would have our best units out there until the last whistle each game. We did that a little in non-conference play, but that hasn't been the case for obvious reasons recently.

To invert the argument, would Golden say he couldn't win the national title if he wasn't in the top 3? Or look back on the season and say they reason they didn't win is because they were not efficient enough at #4? We both know that's not the case.

All that to say, I am hardly an "eye test" guy. I love the advanced metrics and the (better) rankings that use them (KP, Torvik, less sure about Miyakawa, if I am honest). And it's not like your essay argues that we can't win it all if we aren't top 3. I just see the differences at the top of the country to be somewhat negligible.