Underachievers

Last night, Michigan lost by 15 points to future Big 12 school UCF. Now UCF is not a bad team, in fact they rank 55th and are in the hunt for an NCAA berth. But losing by 15, even on the road is pretty bad. So what, you say? Well, last season the two coaches that received the most press were Juwan Howard and Penny Hardaway. They were the prodigal sons returning to save their alma maters. Both men were bona fide college and NBA stars. Both have strong brands dating back to their time in college. I get that these are nice local stories. But the way the national press fawned over these guys was a little annoying given that they had proven basically nothing at the college coaching level. They impressively used their notoriety and personal brand to land some very good recruits. There is no doubt they were able to recruit at a high level. But last I checked, winning games is the ultimate goal. No one can hold a candle to the recruiting successes of Duke and Kentucky over the last 14 years. But how many Final Fours and NC's do these guys have to show despite thoroughly dominating the recruiting scene? I do not begrudge the fawning coverage of Juwan Howard and Penny Hardaway's recruiting successes. But to extend this to lauding their coaching abilities is just irresponsible. Coaches like Bill Self and Tom Izzo have spent 30+ years honing their skills and building a resume of consistent and continues greatness. Coaches like Chris Beard had to endure stints of coaching High School or JC and many years as assistant coach to build a suitable resume to step up to the top job. These, to me, are the real coaching stories. But in the end there is nothing quite like poetic justice. I spent a great amount of time compiling the roster data for each of the top 100 or so teams. Basically the top 80 teams in the DPPI and any team that has at least 1 consensus top 100 HS recruit on the roster (as per RSCI). I developed a "Roster Score" for every team. It gives value to top recruits based on a sliding scale ( i.e. a top 10 recruit gets a higher value than a 90th recruit. It also assigns value based on grade level. In other words, seniors get a higher value than juniors who get a higher value than sophomores and so on. Theoretically, if you have a high roster score you should be ranked higher. So if a team has a high roster score yet is ranked low (think Memphis) then it could be one of three things, A) the coaching stinks and is unable to capitalize on all the talent), B ) the talent evaluators were stupid and misjudged the HS rankings, or C) the Davis roster score is crap and we all know that is not the right answer. So for now, we will say that where a team lies in ranking compared to roster score is a proxy for coaching. The following chart shows the roster score for these teams ordered by current team rank in the DPPI. Any team that is above the expected range means they have a high roster score relative to their rank or in other words, they are underachieving. Likewise, any team that has a roster score below the expected range means they have a higher rank then there roster score would indicate meaning they are overachievers. Four teams jump off the page as massive underachievers this season (and a fifth is just barely behind these 4). They are Louisville, Memphis, Michigan and North Carolina and that 5th team is Kentucky. Gonzaga, Duke, Kentucky and UCLA are also well above the expected range but they are at least ranked in the top 20 teams even though with their lofty recruiting roster scores they should be at the very top. Do you recall several seasons ago there was another favored son made good return home to save the alma mater named Kevin Ollie at UConn? I am not prognosticating that Penny Hardaway and Juwan Howard are going to flame out like Kevin Ollie did. But hey, it is an example worth looking at. So I hope you enjoy this chart. It is crude at this point but it took many many hours to compile.

Will be fun to see this further into the season and at the end to see which coaches did more with less. Sampson at Houston looks good.

Good catch Hoshi. I forgot to mention the overachievers. In order of differential, here are the significant overachievers (getting more with less.

1. Kelvin Sampson (Houston)
2. Matt Painter (Purdue)
3. Tommy Lloyd (Arizona)
4. Drew Valentine (Loyola (IL)
5. Niko Medved (Colorado St.
6. Mike Young (Virginia Tech)
7. Greg Gard (Wisconsin)