NCAA Quality And Talent Are Down... Right?

[InstiGATOR1]

I found this article about college basketball in general quite interesting. Here is basically the intro:

NCAA Quality And Talent Are Down... Right?

We all know that there's been a talent drain in the NCAA, and the result has been reduced quality and reduced scoring. It's getting to the point of a crisis. Eric Sharp wrote in the Detroit Free Press about the embarrassing play in the most recent Final Four in an article called "Revise rules to help woeful shooting":

But the three Final Four games were a microcosm of the entire season's ills: Nobody could shoot the ball. Shooting percentages overall plummeted to depths not seen since the days when the dunk was prohibited. Everyone gasped in horror when only twice during Final Four games did a team shoot better than 40 percent....
The college game's apologists [like Dick Vitale] point out that improved defenses have made it harder for players to get open shots. That's ridiculous. The open shots are there. The good shooters aren't. We saw enough air balls heaved from open three-point shots that they could have inflated the Goodyear blimp.

In a piece for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution called "Amid Game's Flash, Scoring Slows", Tony Barnhart suggests some ways to improve the dramatic reduction in scoring and shooting percentages, about which:

The guardians of the game are more than embarrassed. With television ratings down for this tournament, they are worried that the game could be in a decline and are wondering if anything can be done about it.
Barnhart suggests that we consider reducing the shot clock from 35 seconds to keep inferior teams from taking the air out of the ball. We need to get the "grabbing and holding and banging" out of the game, because it's no longer fun for anybody, even the players. But of course, the elephant in the room is that the talent just isn't there. As tv ratings decline, the reality is that it's all about:

Talent drain. Early defections to the NBA are starting to take their toll on the quality of play. The ACC, for example, should have had a senior class of 29 this season. Instead, there were 12 seniors playing meaningful roles on [an ACC team].
Steve Wieberg wrote in the USA Today about the impact of reduced quality of play on television ratings and crowds. Attendance is down for the fourth time in five years and CBS NCAA Tournament ratings are down almost 40% since 1992-93. And everybody knows the reason why:

The college game takes a double hit to its star power and, less noticeably, to its quality of play.
[Mike Krzyzewski warns] "The game keeps getting hit, over and over. People don't look for ways to improve things. All of a sudden, you can have a castle that looks like it's falling apart."
As Stephen A Smith wrote in the Philadelphia Inquirer about the exodus of talent from the NCAA game: "The current version of Hoop Dreams is turning into a nightmare for college basketball." Terence Moore of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution sees an even more dire situation, in an article titled "Collegiate early exodus for NBA bankrupts programs":

Mediocrity will get you far these days in college hoops
...
This actually is an epidemic with no cure in sight, and everybody knows the problem. Many of this season's All-America players are in the NBA. Most are doing well only in their bank accounts.
So the epidemic will continue, with more quality players skipping either some or all of their years of college eligibility to create future Utahs, Clemsons and New Mexicos to bore the rest of us.
In Sports Illustrated, Jack McCallum rued the one-and-done NCAA player in an article called "Going, Going, Gone; The growing exodus of star underclassmen to the NBA is ripping the heart out of the college game":

The sad truth is that one-year plans aren't even news anymore. And while there are coaches, such as Georgetown's Thompson, who can talk about education and not sound like complete hypocrites, there are few, if any, who will turn down a player even if he's almost certain to leave early.
As Rick Pitino added in that same article: "Quite frankly, I think college basketball is in serious trouble." McCallum repeated the stat about the dramatic reduction in NCAA Tournament television ratings on CBS.


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You may or may not have realized by now that all of those articles were written last century. Those articles cited were all written between 1996 and 1999. Of course, scoring is down. But why? Let's look at some statistics. Below are plots featuring the average data from all Division I games going back more than 60 seasons. The year on the x-axis refers to the calendar year that the season ends (so "1950" means 1949-50). All of the data is normalized to 1980, which is a nice middle ground that also happens to be near the beginning of the "modern era" of college basketball. Go watch college basketball from 1950 - it looks like a rec league. Note also that I have labeled the implementation of the shot clock (originally 45 seconds), the 35 second shot clock, and the implementation of the three-pointer. You can click to embiggen:

The meat of the article is here:

http://ht.ly/hfeiD

[jeffphillips21]

People forget how much defenses have improved too. I think if anything good shooters now are as good as they've ever been, it's just now someone is closing out on them quicker. Just watch a game from 2 or 3 decades ago and see how many OPEN shots clanked off the rim.

[GatorLurker]

Duh.

Just watch some footage of NCAA basketball from 20 to 30 years ago.

I still love the college game, but it was WAY better back then.

[InstiGATOR1]

Originally Posted by GatorLurker

Duh.

Just watch some footage of NCAA basketball from 20 to 30 years ago.

I still love the college game, but it was WAY better back then.

You need to read the article. The data do not support your conjecture according to the author of the linked article.

[themistocles]

Very interesting Insti.

First - don't say "Normalized" - say what you did "Standardized."

A better term is "equalized."

Nothing can be normalized, because there ain't no such thing as "Normal."


I think you missed something.

To me it appears that the 35 second shot clock had a rather immediate impact on several things you tracked.

A real problem from an analysis perspective with this stuff is that there aren't an adequate number of years from the implementation of the 45 second clock to the 3-point shot, to the 35-second clock to effectively determine which or what is having the greatest influence and the use of inordinately improved digital media has clearly had an incredible impact on the game, which I think you showed quite well.

That Assists/Turnover ratio trend is rather astounding from my perspective.

[xenythx]

People keep saying it's a down year but I honestly think the teams this year outside of Kentucky and UNC are better than their counterparts last year.

Lots of great defensive teams with strong upperclassmen leadership on teams like Florida, Duke, Louisville, Indiana, Ohio State, Kansas, and Michigan. All better than they were last year IMO.

[iam4uf]

Overall, just based on observation, I do see a lot of ugly looking jump shots & they seem to be increasing. I only had time to skim the article. Was there any mention of the 3-pt shot which naturally has a lower percentage made? What about the lane being more open which allows for more layups by guards & dunks by bigs, thus making it look like players are making a high percentage of shots, but the shots aren't jumpers? Another thought I've had is that players practice shooting threes or layup, no mid-range shots, so that any time a mid-range shot is taken it looks horrible.

[InstiGATOR1]

Originally Posted by themistocles

Very interesting Insti.

First - don't say "Normalized" - say what you did "Standardized."

A better term is "equalized."

Nothing can be normalized, because there ain't no such thing as "Normal."


I think you missed something.

To me it appears that the 35 second shot clock had a rather immediate impact on several things you tracked.

A real problem from an analysis perspective with this stuff is that there aren't an adequate number of years from the implementation of the 45 second clock to the 3-point shot, to the 35-second clock to effectively determine which or what is having the greatest influence and the use of inordinately improved digital media has clearly had an incredible impact on the game, which I think you showed quite well.

That Assists/Turnover ratio trend is rather astounding from my perspective.

Economists say normalized when we make the intial value 1 or 100, so perhaps the author has an empirical economics background.

While I am an economist, I am not the author of this. Someone retweeted this arcile to me and I had never seen this site until today. I did just follow him on twitter.

I noticed he did not mention that the 3 point line was moved back a few years ago. All these changes with little data in between muddles our understanding of what is going on, as you suggest.

Finally, I agrree the turnover rate falling, the assit to turnover rate soaring, the offensive rebound rate falling are all astounding. They indicate to me we are seeing a "better" brand of basketball these days.

[GatorLurker]

Originally Posted by InstiGATOR1

You need to read the article. The data do not support your conjecture according to the author of the linked article.

Better has nothing to do with scoring.

[jagervol01]

Originally Posted by InstiGATOR1

You need to read the article. The data do not support your conjecture according to the author of the linked article.

I don't care what any data says the Final Fours since 2009 have royally sucked. The NCAA needs to return the Final Four to made for basketball arenas instead of modifying massive NFL stadiums such as Lucas Oil Stadium and Ford Field to accomodate 60,000 fans in mostly bad seats. The Butler vs UConn 2011 Championship game is the worst and most boring NCAA Tournament game ever played. I would easily rate the Final Fours played between 1982-1999 as more exciting and better played... Imo, the Duke vs Kentucky 1992 East Regional Final played at the old Spectrum in Philadelphia is the best college basketball game ever and nothing in the last ten NCAA tournaments even approaches it. There is something wrong with today's game.

[REM08]

Originally Posted by xenythx

People keep saying it's a down year but I honestly think the teams this year outside of Kentucky and UNC are better than their counterparts last year.

Lots of great defensive teams with strong upperclassmen leadership on teams like Florida, Duke, Louisville, Indiana, Ohio State, Kansas, and Michigan. All better than they were last year IMO.

There are definitely teams that are better this year than they were last year, but by NO means does that mean talent isn't down. The best teams this year aren't comparable to last year.

IMO, last year had two teirs of elite teams. Kentucky and UNC at the top, Ohio State, Kansas and Syracuse in the next teir. All five of these teams are worse this year (including Kansas but they're the closest). Also, all 5 of these teams, if they existed this year, would be the best team in the nation by a decent (or big) margin. Talent is way down. Every year is going to have a lot of teams worse than the year before, and a lot of teams better than the year before. This just doesn't have anything to do with the talent level - two different things.

I agree with the above poster about the final four locations being part of the problem. Isn't that changing from now on? I think I remember that last year was the last mega-crowd, but I'm not sure about that.

[GatorLurker]

I disagree. I think that this year's UF team handles last year's UK team. YMMV.

added in edit: I have a minority view on the board. I think this year's team is better than the '07 Gator team, so there you go.

[REM08]

Originally Posted by GatorLurker

I disagree. I think that this year's UF team handles last year's UK team. YMMV.

added in edit: I have a minority view on the board. I think this year's team is better than the '07 Gator team, so there you go.

Yeah, I'm usually fairly close to agreement with your takes on things, but not this time. The difference between the 07 UF team and last years UK team are negotiable, but either team handles this year's UF team almost every time IMO. We'll never know because it'll, obviously, never happen. But I don't see this years UF team (no disrespect) beating either team mentioned more than twice out of ten.

[GatorLurker]

Originally Posted by REM08

Yeah, I'm usually fairly close to agreement with your takes on things, but not this time. The difference between the 07 UF team and last years UK team are negotiable, but either team handles this year's UF team almost every time IMO. We'll never know because it'll, obviously, never happen. But I don't see this years UF team (no disrespect) beating either team mentioned more than twice out of ten.

I disagree.

I was going to post a long reply, but I have a game to go to soon.

[ApexNC]

It's still sooo much better than the nba

[GatorRade]

Originally Posted by REM08

Yeah, I'm usually fairly close to agreement with your takes on things, but not this time. The difference between the 07 UF team and last years UK team are negotiable, but either team handles this year's UF team almost every time IMO. We'll never know because it'll, obviously, never happen. But I don't see this years UF team (no disrespect) beating either team mentioned more than twice out of ten.

It is an interesting question to me, because this year's Gator squad's KenPom Pythag rating is actually higher than either the 12' UK team or 07' UF team. (It's actually the highest rating KenPom has recorded at this moment)

This year's Gator team doesn't have any super stars (like Noah or Davis) or near the national hype, but I wonder how much these matter? All these squads are relatively balanced on offense, have elite three point shooters, and enforcers under the basket. This Gator team is actually a bit deeper than either of the other two teams (they run 8 deep; whereas the other two ran 7 deep).

So would last year's UK team really beat this year's gator team 8-9 times out of 10? Or might this be in our intuition for the wrong reasons? I'm not sure, but I don't think it is as open and shut as you do.

[InstiGATOR1]

Originally Posted by GatorRade

It is an interesting question to me, because this year's Gator squad's KenPom Pythag rating is actually higher than either the 12' UK team or 07' UF team. (It's actually the highest rating KenPom has recorded at this moment)

Keep in mind that UF's SEC schedule is back loaded. Still even if their Pythag were cut in half, it would still be excellent and competitive with other NCAA tourney winners.

[GatorLurker]

kenpom has only quantified what I have seen with my own eyes. This team is really special. You can go back and look at my post from the beginning of the season and I have been saying this all along.

Then again 1991 UNLV was one of the best college teams ever and they didn't win it all. 1975 Indiana is another example. Some UK magic prevented them from winning it all.

[GatorLurker]

Originally Posted by InstiGATOR1

Keep in mind that UF's SEC schedule is back loaded.

kenpom is weighted against the opposition. Back loading is not an issue.

[GatorLurker]

Originally Posted by GatorRade

So would last year's UK team really beat this year's gator team 8-9 times out of 10? Or might this be in our intuition for the wrong reasons? I'm not sure, but I don't think it is as open and shut as you do.

I think that this year's team is WAY better than last year's Vandy team. ;^)