Re: Louisville 2/8, Virginia 2/13, @UNC 2/17, @Louisville 2/
rome8180 said:
As for Amile this year vs. next year -
Not convinced the loose math of "he increases our title chances by 5% next year" is accurate or based on anything concrete. We'd go from a team with one potential fatal flaw to one without any (besides K's inability to coach defense).
Also, one of the things we and Amile missed out on when he got injured was a full senior season. He looked ready to have one those legendary senior years. As much as I want to see him increase our title chances, I also want to see him in as many games in peak form as possible.
I'd estimate he increases our chances by 25% next year, not 5%. That's a lot. It may not register as a lot when someone sees 20% increase to 25%, but going from having $100 to $125 is much better than going from having $100 to $105. One player isn't going to increase an already-great team's chances of winning a crapshoot single elimination tournament by much more than 25%. I think I'm being generous to Amile, considering the decent chance of Duke's optimal lineup not even including him next season (Jackson/Thornton, Allen, Kennard/Jones, Tatum, Giles for the spacing K usually wants).
The defense issue is big. Duke's not going to be very good defensively next season. Again, I can't see this being a Kentucky 2015 season when Duke is bad defensively. We're effectively replacing Ingram with Tatum, and Plumlee with Giles. That's just not going to be a positive defensively, and Duke is bad defensively even with Ingram and Plumlee. The improvement by the returning players should make up for some or all of it, but Duke isn't suddenly going to become a great defensive team next season.
Setting a cap of 35% to win the title is based on Pomeroy's data. That's the highest chances a team has ever had going into the Tournament since Pomeroy started doing his log5s. I can't see a bad defensive team being the one to break that ceiling. There are other factors that matter, like not having as much competition as Kentucky had last season - Wisconsin, Arizona and Virginia were also great teams going in, and next season there probably won't be 3 other teams that good to compete with Duke. However, this was neutralized by having Wisconsin and Arizona in the same region, where only one of them could ever be in Kentucky's way. We also should consider Vegas setting 11/10 odds on Kentucky pre-tournament - that's nearly 50%. However, Vegas obviously needs to imply higher chances than reality for each team in order to make any money, and futures bets are inherently sucker bets since dumber people generally bet them (smart bettors would simply bet each game and roll the winnings over to the next game's bet for that team if they wanted to back them to win the title). I think 50% on the Vegas futures bet is in line with 35% in reality.
So start with 35% as the max for Duke next season, with Allen and Jefferson. Then look at the baseline for a 1-seed, which has historically been 15%. Let's say Duke next season will be significantly better than a typical 1-seed, relative to the field. This seems reasonable, since everyone but Jerry Meyer seems to agree that Giles and Tatum (along with Josh Jackson) are head and shoulders above all other freshmen next season. But I don't buy Duke being the best team in several years when the defense can't be expected to be great. A reasonable compromise is pegging Duke right between 15% and 35% with Allen and Jefferson.
Without Jefferson, isn't Duke still supposed to be better relative to the field than a usual 1-seed? That would peg them somewhere above 15%. Lineup is probably Jackson/Thornton, Allen, Kennard/Jones, Tatum, Giles. An injury to Giles is crippling, but that seems to be Amile's greatest value next season - insurance against a Giles injury, since the replacement options are otherwise so awful.
Even if we think Duke without Jefferson is only as good as a usual 1-seed, and even if we think Duke with Jefferson is at the level of Kentucky 2015 (so we're being as generous to Amile as realistically possible), Duke's chances go from 15% to 35%. That's a giant impact, but it's not as big as Amile coming back this season, which I estimated at taking Duke from 1.5% to 9%.
The bottom line in my mind is that, with or without Amile, it's very unlikely for Duke to win the national title in either season. If college basketball had an NBA-style playoffs, where one of the 2-3 best teams always wins the championship, this would be different. I would definitely want to maximize Duke's chances in a top 3 season like next season, at the expense of a non-top 3 season like this season. Having the best team going into the Tournament doesn't mean much in college basketball, so going from elite to super-elite isn't as helpful as it might feel like - in 14 complete Kenpom seasons, the pre-Tournament #1 team has made the Final Four 6 times and won the national title 3 times. We root for the dominant program in the major sport where being the dominant program brings the least happiness.
