West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

[Columbuseer]

Impressed by the players at wlu who excelled academically despite long hours required as a basketball player.
?Congrats to all!

2021-22 MEC ALL-ACADEMIC TEAM (3.70-4.00 GPA)
Men's Basketball (3)
Bryce Butler, Zach Rasile, Austin Webb


2021-22 MEC COMMISSIONER'S ACADEMIC HONOR ROLL (3.25-3.69 GPA)
Men's Basketball (4)
Garrett Denbow, Pat Robinson, Ben Sarson, Will Yoakum

[Columbuseer]

Bryce Buter was voted MEC male athlete of year across all sports.
Well deserved Bryce!

https://hilltoppersports.com/news/20...-the-year.aspx

[Columbuseer]

https://twitter.com/garrisonkisner/s...7eupFMu2GlDIsQ

Imho great potential. Great fundamentals that is rare at 6-7. 3.92 GPA

[Layton]

https://twitter.com/garrisonkisner/s...7eupFMu2GlDIsQ

[Columbuseer]

FYI
Seems like many Elite 8's have a team that represents a once in a career opportunity for a coach - such as Augusta in 2022, with a 7-2 strong center and #1 in nation in 3 point shooting.

It takes some luck to avoid these bad matchups as long as possible in the tourney.

Witness NWMSU, who had a once-in-a-generation D2 team, with 3 straight national titles.

WLU lost by 21 to NWMSU in first round of Elite 8 in March 2021. Although it is small consolation, no other team in Elite 8 lost by less LOL.

Although not playing them in the first round would have helped WLU's chances, due to less time for NWMSU to prepare, IMHO it would not have changed the final outcome as they had two players who are now playing in the NBA summer league.

Trevor Hudgens signed a two-way contract with the Houston Rockets (Rockets only had 2 two-way contracts to give).
Ryan Hawkins is playing for the Warriors in the California Classic and will play with the Raptors in the summer league.

[Columbuseer]

New women's basketball coach at wvu is Dawn Plitzuweit.
She coaches her team to be aware of a stat that was new to me - TKOs.
As I understand it from the interview, a TKO is when you stop your opponent from scoring on three consecutive possessions.

It reminded me of the blackouts of WLU, where WLU forces turnovers, gets easy baskets and the opponent's shooting % drops significantly.

Using Excel and the play by play data I looked at Davis and Elkins at WLU game on Dec 4,2021.

There were 5 TKOs by WLU.

If a consecutive possession without a score is called a punch,
In this game, WLU had:

3 three-punch TKOs
1 four-punch TKO
1 Twelve punch TKO

WLU won 100-69.

[Columbuseer]

As most know Will was injured for much of the season.
it is a testament to the coaches and team that they still had a great regular season at 29-3 .
The overall team average true shooting % for the entire roster was 60.9%.
Impressive!

Countdown # 1 - top 7 WLU Players based on True Shooting Percentage in 21-22 season

1. Will Yoakum 67.7%
2. Zach Rasile 66.7%
3. Bryce Butler 64.7%
4. Garrett Denbow 64.2%
5. Malik McKinney 62.2%
6. Ben Sarson 61.9%
7. Patrick Robinson III 59.2%

[Columbuseer]

Countdown # 2 - top 7 WLU Players based on True Shooting Percentage in 21-22 season

2. Zach Rasile 66.7%
3. Bryce Butler 64.7%
4. Garrett Denbow 64.2%
5. Malik McKinney 62.2%
6. Ben Sarson 61.9%
7. Patrick Robinson III 59.2%

[Columbuseer]

Countdown # 3- top 7 WLU Players based on True Shooting Percentage in 21-22 season

3. Bryce Butler 64.7%
4. Garrett Denbow 64.2%
5. Malik McKinney 62.2%
6. Ben Sarson 61.9%
7. Patrick Robinson III 59.2%

[Columbuseer]

Countdown # 4- top 7 WLU Players based on True Shooting Percentage in 21-22 season

4. Garrett Denbow 64.2%
5. Malik McKinney 62.2%
6. Ben Sarson 61.9%
7. Patrick Robinson III 59.2%

[Columbuseer]

Countdown # 5 - top 7 WLU Players based on True Shooting Percentage in 21-22 season

5. Malik McKinney 62.2%
6. Ben Sarson 61.9%
7. Patrick Robinson III 59.2%

[Columbuseer]

Countdown # 6 - top 7 WLU Players based on True Shooting Percentage in 21-22 season

6. Ben Sarson 61.9%
7. Patrick Robinson III 59.2%

Here is rank order of true shooting % using Ken Pom's 0.475 factor for FT attempts

True Shot %
67.7%
66.7%
64.7%
64.2%
62.2%
61.9%
60.9%
59.2%
58.9%
57.2%
56.4%
54.3%
54.1%

[Columbuseer]

Countdown on top 7 WLU Players based on True Shooting Percentage in 21-22 season

7. Patrick Robinson III 59.2%

Here is rank order of true shooting % using Ken Pom's 0.475 factor for FT attempts

True Shot %
67.7%
66.7%
64.7%
64.2%
62.2%
61.9%
60.9%
59.2%
58.9%
57.2%
56.4%
54.3%
54.1%

[Columbuseer]

Here is something to pass the time....

True Shooting Percentage is a measure of offensive efficiency for a player (and team) that combines scoring via 2pt, 3pt and free throws.
Higher % 3 pt shooters often have higher True Shooting %; however; a person who scores inside and/or gets to the FT line a lot could also be very high.
What is interesting about WLU is how many players have a very good true shooting %.

Here is the rank order of True Shooting % for WLU for 21-22 season, as well as the team total, from highest to lowest.
One of the values is the team percentage.




Can you guess the top 7 players according to shooting %?
Can you guess the Team's True Shooting %?

Here are the %.

Rank	True Shooting %
1	67.7%
2	64.2%
3	62.2%
4	61.9%
5	60.6%
6	59.2%
7	58.9%
8	57.2%
9	56.4%
10	54.3%
11	54.1%
12	45.7%

Here are the players in alphabetical order:

Denbow,Garrett
Kovacevic,Viktor
Mckinney,Malik
Montague,Christian
Moore Jr. ,Marlon
Powell,Luke
Robinson III,Pat
Sarson,Ben
Watson,Elijah
Webb,Austin
Yoakum, Will
Overall Team Total

[boatcapt]

I've run the Pick 'Em on the PSAC side for the past 5 years.

Picking straight winners in PSAC football is incredibly easy for about 90% of the season. There's an occasional upset and the occasional big game between, say, IUP/SRU. But, the boring part of having straight picks was about 95% of the players would pick the same side every game. Clarion at IUP, straight, isn't going to get many people taking the Golden Eagles.

Four years ago I started putting point spreads on the lopsided games. Clarion (+28.5) at IUP all the sudden becomes a much more interesting proposition.

Once the spreads hit, most people went from picking 9 of 10 games correctly to about 3-5 games correctly. I don't work at Mandalay Bay, but I know enough D2 football to make the spreads fairly accurate -- and, hard to pick.

I'll put some crazy numbers out for the really big mismatches ... Lock Haven at Shepherd ... may set that at Shep -49. And, of course, Shep wins by 55 but the comments during the week are that 49 points are way too high, etc. There are some really knowledgeable football fans that just get crushed by the spreads. I think they fall in to that 'emotional picking' category you mentioned. I've noticed, too, over the years that big spreads tend to freak people out. People are are afraid to lay those big numbers -- despite the fact most years Shepherd is 7+ TDs better than LH.

I typically then add 1-2 D1 games but will put the actual Vegas spread on those games. They typically get split about 50/50 by our players.

Yep...That's what the line is supposed to do. Get to 50/50 on the handle. The line has almost nothing to do with an assessment of which team is better. The house has done a masterful job of convincing bettors that their lines have something to do with which team is better (and therefore, likely to win).

As you point out, picking winner/loser is shockingly easy with most games. Don't need advanced stats to do it...just look at the teams W/L record and pick the team with the better % and 9 times out of 10 you'll land on the winner. In the 10% (?) of the games were the two teams have the same record, flip a coin...or take the home team. May not be a cool way of picking winners, but is your goal to pick a winner or work a formula?

It would be interesting to do a season long comparison between PPP as a predictive tool and using comparative W/L only to make your picks.