W
wisconsincougsSeason long lurker, first time poster here. Like most of you I spend way too much time reading about BYU sports, but don't post all that often. I will occassionally on cougarboard, but threads get buried so quickly there so I've started migrating over here more frequently.
I put together some tourney analysis that true stat nerds like me will appreciate, and thought I'd share here in this forum.
So a few months ago on vacation, I had some time to kill and started wondering how our recent tourney success (4 straight bids, 1 win) compared nationally.
With the help of this tourney history link from ESPN (http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/tournament/history?team1Id=5437 " onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;) and the ever reliable wikipedia to fill in gaps, I started putting together a google doc capturing the season by season results of the nation's top programs.
I started with what one website called the top 30 programs from the past 30 years, but realized it fell woefully short as that list has a number of teams with 80's and 90's success that have recently been more irrelevant (Iowa, Virgina, Arkansas, Cincy, Michigan).
So I started adding in other teams with success this decade, others with local interest, and then wound up with a list of 80+ schools.
I enjoyed this research so I thought I'd share. I think it provides context for BYU's historical place in college basketball (not even top 50) and shows why the Dave Rose era has been so impressive thus far.
https://spreadsheets0.google.com/ccc?hl=en&key=tEse1l9YxV31YwrnIMWRrJw&hl=en#gid=1 " onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Here's a few key observations.
1) Only 13 teams have been to the tourney the last 4 years straight (unless I'm missing some lower tier schools). Of those, 4 are at risk this year (Final 4 teams Michigan State and Butler, then Gonzaga, Marquette). So we'll likely finish the year as one of only 12 teams with 5 straight bids. Impressive consistency.
2) However, something close to 80+ teams have reached the second weekend of the tourney in the last two decades. We have not. Another 50+ have reached it in this decade, and just eyeballing it, maybe 30 or 40 in the Dave Rose era. It's not a surprise that our tourney success is not strong nationally, but I was a little surprised at the sheer volume of teams that have enjoyed more success than we have. This just means...WE ARE DUE!
3) Basketball is incredibly competitive and more difficult to reach the top 25 than football. College football (D1) doesn't have teams like Xavier, Gonzaga, Georgetown, Villanova, Butler, Marquette, Missouri Valley and A-10 schools. Then there are plenty of others that are terrible in football but strong in basketball (Duke, Vanderbilt, Memphis, etc.). Sprinkle in your occassional George Mason, St. Joseph's, Davidson, St. Mary's, Kent State type tourney run and you have a long, long list of competitors for the upper tier of college bball.
In other words, the list of schools with a decent brand for basketball (or some success that's relevant to a HS kid) is quite a long one.
4) Because of this, sustained success is very difficult. Here's a list of teams that have made the Final Four THIS DECADE, but have also had seasons of either NIT bids or losing records...again, this decade. There are 18 programs that have reached the pinnacle, but haven't been able to even get back to the dance every year.
UCLA
UConn
North Carolina (2 titles)
Indiana
Georgia Tech
Butler
LSU
Illinois
Arizona
Florida (2 titles)
Oklahoma State
Syracuse (nat'l champs)
Maryland (nat'l champs)
Lousiville
Memphis
Ohio State
George Mason
Stanford (okay it was '98, elite 8 in '01, but still...)
There are dozens of others with big time success prior to 2000 that have a similar fate. And a dozen or so others with great tourney runs (Oregon, Wake Forest, and Oklahoma's Elite 8 runs for example) that have dropped off.
This puts our tourney consistency in a more positive light. We're there every year, when some of these upper tier schools are not.
5) For strictly consistency, some impressive programs are Wisconsin, Gonzaga, Marquette, Xavier, Texas, Pittsburgh, Tennessee, and Texas A&M (besides the obvious Duke, KU, Mich State). They are there every year, picking up wins.
My conclusion:
I think it's well chronicled on this board the reasons why BYU can't be a consistenly elite program. We'll never get the talent of a Kentucky, UNC, Duke, Kansas, etc. We're all excited (rightfully so) about our big signings like Harrison and Carlino, but even Harrison is just barely in the top 100 by ESPN. Meaning there are 100 other guys out there other programs are equally excited about. So I don't think it's realistic to expect BYU to be pushing top 10 on a regular basis.
However, after looking through all of this, my hope for BYU is to be one of those programs I just mentioned. I would hope we can be a Gonzaga, Marquette, Xavier, A&M type school that's on the fringe of the elite, consisently in the top 40 every year picking up bids and a tourney win or two, with occassional magical runs.
If this year's team can make a significant run and leverage the attention to continue to improve the recruiting pipeline, I think we can move our program a notch up from where we've been thus far in the Rose era (after next season's rebuilding). I used to think our constraints prevented us from getting to a Gonzaga/Xavier type level, but Rose is showing what can happen once all the players in his system are recruited for his style.
And I like it :). I'm still getting used to actually following and rooting against the top 5 schools this time of year, and not caring about stuff like Bubble Watch.
What a great ride so far.
I put together some tourney analysis that true stat nerds like me will appreciate, and thought I'd share here in this forum.
So a few months ago on vacation, I had some time to kill and started wondering how our recent tourney success (4 straight bids, 1 win) compared nationally.
With the help of this tourney history link from ESPN (
I started with what one website called the top 30 programs from the past 30 years, but realized it fell woefully short as that list has a number of teams with 80's and 90's success that have recently been more irrelevant (Iowa, Virgina, Arkansas, Cincy, Michigan).
So I started adding in other teams with success this decade, others with local interest, and then wound up with a list of 80+ schools.
I enjoyed this research so I thought I'd share. I think it provides context for BYU's historical place in college basketball (not even top 50) and shows why the Dave Rose era has been so impressive thus far.
Here's a few key observations.
1) Only 13 teams have been to the tourney the last 4 years straight (unless I'm missing some lower tier schools). Of those, 4 are at risk this year (Final 4 teams Michigan State and Butler, then Gonzaga, Marquette). So we'll likely finish the year as one of only 12 teams with 5 straight bids. Impressive consistency.
2) However, something close to 80+ teams have reached the second weekend of the tourney in the last two decades. We have not. Another 50+ have reached it in this decade, and just eyeballing it, maybe 30 or 40 in the Dave Rose era. It's not a surprise that our tourney success is not strong nationally, but I was a little surprised at the sheer volume of teams that have enjoyed more success than we have. This just means...WE ARE DUE!
3) Basketball is incredibly competitive and more difficult to reach the top 25 than football. College football (D1) doesn't have teams like Xavier, Gonzaga, Georgetown, Villanova, Butler, Marquette, Missouri Valley and A-10 schools. Then there are plenty of others that are terrible in football but strong in basketball (Duke, Vanderbilt, Memphis, etc.). Sprinkle in your occassional George Mason, St. Joseph's, Davidson, St. Mary's, Kent State type tourney run and you have a long, long list of competitors for the upper tier of college bball.
In other words, the list of schools with a decent brand for basketball (or some success that's relevant to a HS kid) is quite a long one.
4) Because of this, sustained success is very difficult. Here's a list of teams that have made the Final Four THIS DECADE, but have also had seasons of either NIT bids or losing records...again, this decade. There are 18 programs that have reached the pinnacle, but haven't been able to even get back to the dance every year.
UCLA
UConn
North Carolina (2 titles)
Indiana
Georgia Tech
Butler
LSU
Illinois
Arizona
Florida (2 titles)
Oklahoma State
Syracuse (nat'l champs)
Maryland (nat'l champs)
Lousiville
Memphis
Ohio State
George Mason
Stanford (okay it was '98, elite 8 in '01, but still...)
There are dozens of others with big time success prior to 2000 that have a similar fate. And a dozen or so others with great tourney runs (Oregon, Wake Forest, and Oklahoma's Elite 8 runs for example) that have dropped off.
This puts our tourney consistency in a more positive light. We're there every year, when some of these upper tier schools are not.
5) For strictly consistency, some impressive programs are Wisconsin, Gonzaga, Marquette, Xavier, Texas, Pittsburgh, Tennessee, and Texas A&M (besides the obvious Duke, KU, Mich State). They are there every year, picking up wins.
My conclusion:
I think it's well chronicled on this board the reasons why BYU can't be a consistenly elite program. We'll never get the talent of a Kentucky, UNC, Duke, Kansas, etc. We're all excited (rightfully so) about our big signings like Harrison and Carlino, but even Harrison is just barely in the top 100 by ESPN. Meaning there are 100 other guys out there other programs are equally excited about. So I don't think it's realistic to expect BYU to be pushing top 10 on a regular basis.
However, after looking through all of this, my hope for BYU is to be one of those programs I just mentioned. I would hope we can be a Gonzaga, Marquette, Xavier, A&M type school that's on the fringe of the elite, consisently in the top 40 every year picking up bids and a tourney win or two, with occassional magical runs.
If this year's team can make a significant run and leverage the attention to continue to improve the recruiting pipeline, I think we can move our program a notch up from where we've been thus far in the Rose era (after next season's rebuilding). I used to think our constraints prevented us from getting to a Gonzaga/Xavier type level, but Rose is showing what can happen once all the players in his system are recruited for his style.
And I like it :). I'm still getting used to actually following and rooting against the top 5 schools this time of year, and not caring about stuff like Bubble Watch.
What a great ride so far.