When you fill out your NCAA Tournament bracket this week, you will no doubt revert to the Ten Commandments of Office Pools.
You know, the ones including Thou Shalt Not Pick Teams That Were Club Sports Five Years Ago, Thou Shalt Not Pick Teams Whose Starting Five Don’t Shave Yet, and the First Commandment: Thou Shalt Not Pick Teams Without Great Backcourts.
So how do you handicap the tournament? This is the year of the big man in college basketball. That’s a good place to start.
Examine at the top six ranked teams in the country, and they’re all led by dominant big men: North Carolina, Tyler Hansbrough, 6-feet-9; Pittsburgh, DeJuan Blair, 6-7, 265 pounds; Connecticut, Hasheem Thabeet, 7-3; Memphis, Robert Dozier, 6-9; Louisville, Earl Clark, 6-9; Oklahoma, Blake Griffin, 6-10.
OK, big men or backcourts? Backcourts or big men? Your office kitty is on the line. Fear not, however. There is an explanation.
“The few good teams that separate themselves have both in the NCAA Tournament,” Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said on a conference call last week. “You can negate a big guy if they don’t have a good backcourt with pressure. But if you have both, you take advantage of the big guy.”
Guards early, bigs late
LSU coach Trent Johnson has seen both sides of the fence. He put Nevada on the national map in 2004 when his guard-oriented team upset Michigan State and Gonzaga to reach the Sweet 16. Then last year, his Stanford team, led by the 7-foot Lopez twins, Brook and Robin, also made the Sweet 16.
“Obviously, good guard play keeps you in games,” Johnson said on a conference call. “Post play changes what you can do defensively. It’s six of one, and half a dozen of the other.”
University of Denver coach Joe Scott has a theory that is backed by statistical data. Great guard play is important in the early rounds, but if you want to reach for the brass ring, you had better have someone tall enough to reach it.
“Those midmajors don’t have the big guys,” Scott said. “Teams that are, quote unquote, better teams with better big guys, to handle midmajors they have to have good guards. The midmajors do have good guards.
“That’s why they’re there.”
In 2004, Scott pulled off one of the most remarkable coaching jobs in the country, lifting Air Force into its first NCAA Tournament in 44 years. If you’ve seen the cockpit of your average fighter jet, you know the Falcons weren’t very tall. In the first round, they played North Carolina, featuring 6-9 Sean May.
North Carolina won 63-52, but May wasn’t the main reason.
“It wasn’t like they ran stuff through Sean May,” Scott said. “They were playing their style of basketball. Our concern was: How would we stop their transition?”
So you had better have good guards early but you had better have good bigs the further you advance. You can look it up. Pete Tiernan of Ann Arbor, Mich., has been an NCAA “bracketologist” for 19 years and has tracked back 24 years to the start of the 64-team format.
According to his findings in , backcourt scoring has gone from 44 percent in 1985-92 to 52 percent since 2001. However, using a formula called PASE (Performance Against Seed Expectations), Tiernan found that frontcourt-dominant teams have overachieved in every eight-year period since 1985.
Guard-oriented teams, Tiernan’s data show, have never overperformed.
“By the time you get to the Sweet 16, all teams have good players,” Tiernan said. “You’re going to have to have a good guard. But it just might not be (that) you rely on them for your points.”
In other words, if you’re looking for a key to your bracket success, find teams with dominant big men with steady, veteran backcourts, even if they don’t put up Stephen Curry-type numbers.
Inside/outside threats
And don’t get sucked into dominant big men who are statues. Northern Colorado coach Tad Boyle was an assistant on the 1988 Kansas team that won a national title behind 6-10 Danny Manning, an atypical big man.
“What made Danny Manning so effective was he could play inside and outside,” Boyle said. “Blake Griffin (of Oklahoma) is tough to get out of the game because he can go inside and outside. A low block player, you can game-plan against him.”
Griffin’s problem is his backcourt has been shaky of late. So, too, has been Villanova’s.
“I’m a little leery of Villanova,” Tiernan said. “They rely a lot on (6-2 Scottie) Reynolds. They rely a lot on their backcourt.”
North Carolina and Pitt obviously fit the mold of a team that can go all the way, with quality big men and solid backcourts, but you want a sleeper? Try Gonzaga, where ThunderRidge grad Matt Bouldin is having a breakout junior season in the backcourt, and 6-11 Josh Heytvelt and 6-10 Austin Daye are tough inside.
So add a new commandment when picking your bracket: Thou Shalt Not Look Down at Size.
Sky-high statistics
A look at some of the top big men who will lead their teams through the NCAA Tournament:
Hasheem Thabeet, Connecticut, 7-feet-3 – Stats: 13.7 pts. per game; 10.9 reb. per game; 142 blocks
Blake Griffin, Oklahoma, 6-10 – Stats: 21.9 ppg; 14.3 rpg; 39 blocks
Earl Clark, Louisville, 6-9 – Stats: 14.0 ppg; 8.8 rpg; 48 blocks
Robert Dozier, Memphis, 6-9 – Stats: 12.8 ppg; 7.2 rpg; 59 blocks
Tyler Hansbrough, North Carolina, 6-9 – Stats: 21.4 ppg; 8.2 rpg; 12 blocks
DeJuan Blair, Pittsburgh, 6-7 – Stats: 15.6 ppg; 12.2 rpg; 31 blocks
