NERDS AROUND TOWN
Nerds Around Town: New Found Glory, patriotism, instant replay
Jul 10, 2019, 6:52 am
ART BY JESUS RODRIGUEZ
NERDS
Born with a comic book in one hand and a remote control in the other, Cory DLG is the talent of Conroe's very own Nerd Thug Radio and Sports. Check out the podcast replay of the FM radio show at www.nerdthugradio.com!
Hey Nerds!
Wednesday is the halfway point and we're there now. Don't let this week slide away from you, let's crush it.
GOOD DEED OF THE DAY
The Stixx and Stonez Sundresses and Summershirts party is this Saturday and they're having a donation drive, so bring socks for men, women and children as well as toiletries for the needy. It's a good cause and sounds like a heck of a party. Head out there from 3-11p and have a good time on karma's dime.
HYPOCRITE ALERT
So I've been seeing a lot of people mad about the US Women's Soccer team still. A lot of salty memes and a lot of people playing the "patriot" card on them and hating on them for their critical positions of certain things most notably asking for equal pay from US Soccer. Keep in mind many of these people have never cared about soccer ever, but now they're experts. Some people didn't like that a few of the players let the flag fall to the ground and some of the players stood on it. I'm not ok with people walking on the flag, I think that's disrespectful but I also completely respect people's right to want to make a political statement with the flag, believe it or not, America is based on people making political statements. It was a political statement that our founding fathers made when they wrote a letter to a King, it was a political statement when some tea was dumped in a harbor, and it was those political statements that eventually started a revolution that formed our great nation. Forgetting those facts discredits anyone's "patriot" card, they should argue for equal pay, hell they should argue for unequal pay in their favor, they're doing things no one else in the world is doing, and we're having a dumb conversation about revenue? Pay them.
HOT TAKE
If a sport has instant replay, and a set number of challenges per team, then late in the game you need a challenge and you're out of them and the sport lets a bad call stand, why have instant replay? Letting bad calls stand simply because one team is out of challenges or something along those lines, goes totally against the spirit of using instant replay. The NBA is toying with a limited trial run of instant replay and they listed a bunch of things that won't be reviewable like uncalled out of bounds calls, traveling at all, and uncalled fouls or goaltending. What's the point then? If you can't point out that someone went out of bounds and should have been called out or called on a travel or a goaltend that wasn't called, what's the point? This is going to encourage referees to stop games more times because better to call it and be wrong than to not call it and it changes the outcome of a game, you know? This is the wrong way to do it.
NEW FOUND GLORY
New Found Glory is playing at the House of Blues tonight, which is awesome! They were such an important part of my teen years and early twenties. They also were an odd intersection of pop culture, the lead singer married the lead singer of Paramore, then very quickly afterwards they divorced, while they were married, they played a party cruise. I have to think that was a weird party cruise if they were already having problems. Also they just released an album and they cover a song from The Greatest Showman on it, it's such an odd intersection of pop culture this band is in the center of. Anyway, check them out tonight.
NOT THAT YOU ASKED
Just a quick tip to the world, White People of the world, you look foolish when you call the cops on black people in public. It's a bad look. Also, stop complaining about fictional characters changing gender or race, they're not real people or things lost, they're fiction. Seriously. Fictional.
Feel free to check out my digital short story The Wilson House or buy a shirt from Side Hustle Ts where some proceeds help people struggling with cancer or listen to Nerd Thug Radio. Thoughts, complaints, events and comments can be sent to corydlg@gmail.com.
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The data told the story all year on Duke, Houston, Florida and Auburn. In that regard, it shouldn't be a surprise to see them in the Final Four as only the second all-chalk set of 1-seeds to reach college basketball's final stage.
The Blue Devils, Cougars, Gators and Tigers had held the top four spots in daily rankings from KenPom since the first half of February, and their net efficiency ranks among the best ever charted by the analytics site going back more than a quarter-century. They were also the headliners on data-driven rankings from Bart Torvik and Evan Miyakawa as well, further confirmation of how good these teams have been from November, through March Madness and now entering San Antonio.
There's only a few minor variations in those comparisons. Duke is No. 1 for KenPom and Miyakawa ahead of Houston, while the Cougars are No. 1 in Torvik ahead of the Blue Devils. And the offensive and defensive efficiency numbers are all in the top 10 except for Torvik having the Gators at 15th in adjusted defensive efficiency.
Otherwise, the data matches the eye test.
College and NBA TV analyst Terrence Oglesby, who played at Clemson, pointed to all four having “big, switchable guys who can make shots" as a common thread between the teams operating at elite efficiency on both sides of the ball.
“Outside of that top four, a lot of people were depending on runs,” Oglesby said. “You have to be able to play both sides of the ball with consistency. And these four do that so much better than everyone else.”
And that applies over years, too, when it comes to KenPom's long-running data.
KenPom bases efficiency metrics on points scored or allowed over a standardized 100-possession pace, which eliminates tempo as a factor in high averages boosted by playing at a faster pace or numbers depressed by grind-down-the-clock styles. The overall rankings are determined by net efficiency in terms of how much a team's offensive data outpaces its defensive numbers.
In that regard, Duke's plus-39.62 rating is the second-highest net efficiency recorded by KenPom in data back to the 1996-97 season. Only the Blue Devils' 1998-99 team (plus 43.01) that went 37-2 and lost in the NCAA title game ranks higher.
Duke is coming off a defensive masterclass in the East Region final against 2-seed Alabama, which had scored 113 points and hit 25 3-pointers in its Sweet 16 win against BYU. The Blue Devils have the nation's tallest roster with every rotation player standing 6-feet-5 or taller, and they're an elite switching group with bigs using their length to capably contest against smaller, quicker guards out to the arc.
That helped them smother the Crimson Tide: Alabama went 8 of 32 from 3-point range, made just 45.4% of its two point shots and averaged .942 points per possession. Its 65-point output joined a January loss to Ole Miss (64) as the only times the Tide failed to reach 70 points in the past two seasons.
“Duke is as good a team as we’ve seen all year,” Alabama coach Nate Oats said. "We’ve got some really good teams in the SEC, and they’re at that level.”
Houston (plus 36.49), Florida (plus 36.05) and Auburn (plus 35.25) currently have their own lofty perch, too, with historically elite KenPom numbers.
Consider: only six teams have finished with a net efficiency of at least plus 35 in KenPom's history: Duke 1998-99, Duke 2000-01 (37.32), Kansas 2007-08 (35.21), Kentucky 2014-15 (36.91), Gonzaga 2020-21 (36.48) and UConn 2023-24 (36.43).
Of that group, three teams — Duke 2001, Kansas and UConn — won a national title.
Of this year’s Final Four teams, Duke, Houston and Auburn have ranked inside the top five in all of KenPom’s daily rankings. Florida started the year at No. 26, but cracked the top 10 by late November.
“You need to have depth and need to have multiple guys that can step up when other guys aren’t playing their best,” Florida coach Todd Golden said after Saturday's comeback win against Texas Tech for the program's first Final Four trip since 2014. “That’s why we’ve been good all year and consistent, why we haven’t lost two in a row. We haven’t got in any droughts or situations where nobody’s stepping up.”
Now the Gators are part of a quartet ranked 1-2-3-4 in some order of KenPom’s daily rankings dating to Feb. 12, while Auburn (80) and Duke (50) have combined to hold the No. 1 spot 89.7% of the time in the 145 rankings dating to Nov. 4.
Along the way, Duke (Atlantic Coast Conference ) and Houston (Big 12 ) went 19-1 in league play before winning three games for their league tournament title. Auburn won the regular season and Florida claimed the tournament title in the a Southeastern Conference that produced a record 14 NCAA bids.
The only other time a Final Four featured four 1-seeds came in 2008, with Kansas, Memphis, UCLA and North Carolina making it to through the first two weeks of the NCAA Tournament. Coincidentally, that Final Four also came in San Antonio.
This time could mark a coronation for a team that, from a data standpoint, ranks among the sport's best teams in decades.
“It's been the most dominant run by four teams that I can remember,” Oglesby said. “It's amazing to see really.”