Quote: In short, [Boeheim’s] won a lot more games than the odds say he should have. To measure just how many of those each coach has racked up going back to 1985 (the start of the 64-team tournament era), we used our Elo ratings to generate pregame win probabilities for each tournament game.1 The coaches with the biggest differentials between their actual and expected tournament wins are the ones who have the strongest March Madness resumes — and sure enough, Boeheim shows up at No. 1

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/jim...h-madness/

Tom Izzo has really disappointed of late. I keep picking them to win it all knowing they’re capable and overdue.

Without crunching any numbers, my opinion about JB in the tournament has been that in the 80s and early 90s, he was a tournament choker - often had very talented teams, but frequently failed to impress in the tournament.

As he's gotten older, he's reversed that - the last 20 years or so, he's taken less talented teams farther than one would have expected.

Of course, this whole method isn't the best way to judge who is best in the tournament, as part of a coach's job is to recruit really good players and develop really good teams, so that you are expected to win lots of games in the tournament. So JB has to be ranked behind guys who have done that beter than he has, like coach K, Calhoun, Williams, Pitino*, at least.

(03-22-2018 04:01 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  Without crunching any numbers, my opinion about JB in the tournament has been that in the 80s and early 90s, he was a tournament choker - often had very talented teams, but frequently failed to impress in the tournament.

As he's gotten older, he's reversed that - the last 20 years or so, he's taken less talented teams farther than one would have expected.

Of course, this whole method isn't the best way to judge who is best in the tournament, as part of a coach's job is to recruit really good players and develop really good teams, so that you are expected to win lots of games in the tournament. So JB has to be ranked behind guys who have done that beter than he has, like coach K, Calhoun, Williams, Pitino*, at least.

I think that's a fair measure.
In the period measured by 538 Syracuse won a regular season conference title 24% of the seasons and the conference tournament 12% of the time.
Years he won his conference and NCAA result
1986 Lost second round
1987 National runner-up
1990 Lost in Sweet 16
1991 Lost in the first round
2000 Lost in the Sweet 16
2003 National Champions
2010 Lost in the Sweet 16
2012 Lost in the Elite 8.

There's nothing "new" about Jim Boeheim.

(03-22-2018 12:27 PM)orangefan Wrote:  

Quote: In short, [Boeheim’s] won a lot more games than the odds say he should have. To measure just how many of those each coach has racked up going back to 1985 (the start of the 64-team tournament era), we used our Elo ratings to generate pregame win probabilities for each tournament game.1 The coaches with the biggest differentials between their actual and expected tournament wins are the ones who have the strongest March Madness resumes — and sure enough, Boeheim shows up at No. 1

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/jim...h-madness/

Interesting. Yesterday I decided to look at JB's record in the tourney over a specific period of time. I decided to begin with SU's first major run in the tourney under Jimmy, which was 1987 forward overall (the article's data began two years earlier). I was going to wait until this tourney was over before posting this, but since I believe the data supports the above article, I will post now.

My approach was based upon seedings. I divided it into three seed-levels. How well the Orange did against teams that were seeded at least two levels below SU (e.g. 1 vs 3 or lower), against teams that were seeded at least two levels above SU (e.g. 4 vs a 2 or a 1), and against teams which were seeded at the same level or "+" or "-" one (e.g. 2 vs 2, 10 vs 11, or 9 vs 8).

Overall, the data is for 32 seasons of which the Orange made the tourney 25 times (the 7 seasons not part of the tourney include 2 seasons of probation and 5 not being chosen)

For all 25 seasons the Orange made the tourney, the overall records currently (through the round of 32 this year) stand at:

Against teams seeded at least two levels below SU:

37-9 - 80.4%

Against teams seeded at least two levels above SU:

7-6 - 53.8%

Against teams seeded at the same level or within 1 of SU:

9-7 - 56.3%

Then I divided the 32 seasons into two groupings of 16 seasons and the results for the 1986-87 through 2001-02 seasons were as follows:

Against teams seeded at least two levels below SU:

21-3 - 87.5%

Against teams seeded at least two levels above SU:

0-5 - 0%

Against teams seeded at the same level or within 1 of SU:

4-4 - 50%

For the seasons of 2002-03 through the round of 32 games of 2017-18 the results were:

Against teams seeded at least two levels below SU:

16-6 - 72.7%

Against teams seeded at least two levels above SU:

7-1 - 87.5%

Against teams seeded at the same level or within 1 of SU:

5-3 - 62.5%

What I found interesting with the "two eras" breakdown was that JB has done much better recently against teams the Orange should not have beaten in the tourney but slightly less well against those teams that theoretically they should have beaten.

I believe the former is the result of having two decent runs (2016 and the current one) as a double digit seed. As for the latter (which somewhat brings into question the notion of the Orange not losing to teams seeded below them as much as we did in the past) I sum up to the Orange being overseeded in 2005 up against an A&M team that was even more vastly underseeded that year and of course Onuaku's injury in 2010. Take either one of those losses and toss it into the more evenly matched category and the only standout statistical imbalance would be how much better the Orange is performing against teams we shouldn't be.

Cheers,
Neil