LATEST STORIES FROM BIG TEN WONK
BONUS Where-the-hell-have-I-been? edition!Last night the Big Ten won its first-ever ACC-Big Ten Challenge.In today's less Wonk-ish venues....John Gasaway of Basketball Prospectus says that last night Bob Knight uttered the term "point per possession." This blog's funky lingo has come a long way, bay-bee! Wonk back!Don't just mutter ineffectually; email me!How...
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December 02, 2009
Discuss
My 598th post here This blog is no more. It has ceased to be. Bereft of life it rests in peace. Etc.My keystrokes can now be found at Basketball Prospectus. Hope to see you over there.
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October 15, 2007
Wonked out...for goodAs previously announced, today is the last day for Big Ten Wonk (though not for John Gasaway).So here are 11 valedictory posts, in honor of the conference that's given me a title and a topic for three seasons.1. There was a national championship game last night2. The Big Ten is better than people who link to me say it is3. Funky stats: don't wait for...
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April 03, 2007
There was a national championship game last night#1 in a series of last-day posts(1) Florida 84, (1) Ohio State 75The thing that was supposed to be so important turned out not to be. Greg Oden wasn't in any foul trouble the entire night and thus posted a 25-12 dub-dub with four blocks. And yet Ohio State lost, due to 10-of-18 shooting from beyond the arc by Florida.Thad Matta...
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April 03, 2007
The Big Ten is better than people who link to me say it is#2 in a series of last-day postsI'm certainly not one of those crude unlettered souls that judges "power" conferences based solely on their performance in the tournament.Oh, wait. (Crude grunt, unlettered scratch.) Yes, I am. Sometimes....SEC (11-4)Pac-10 (10-6)Big Ten (9-6)Big XII (6-4)Big East (7-6)ACC (7-7...
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April 03, 2007
Funky stats: don't bother waiting for the revolution, it's already here#3 in a series of last-day postsWe who follow college basketball confront an odd situation in April 2007. To the extent that stats can on occasion be of some use in following this sport, the numbers we need come from blogs and nowhere else. Even national sportswriters employed by the MSM get their numbers...
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April 03, 2007
Leave the tournament the way it is#4 in a series of last-day postsThere is grumbling every year in the immediate aftermath of Selection Sunday, of course, as to who gets left behind. This year the grumbling seemed even louder and was given a new sound bite: an unprecedented number of D-I teams, it is said, won at least 20 games.Meaning: 1) there are more D-I teams than there used...
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April 03, 2007
Regress your view of your coach toward the mean#5 in a series of last-day postsThere's a hoary old chestnut that says a quarterback receives too much credit when his team wins and too much blame when they lose. Said chestnut needs to be multiplied 100-fold and applied to college basketball coaches.A coach in basketball has significantly less in-game control than a football coach...
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April 03, 2007
Jane Austen, press conferences, and college basketball#6 in a series of last-day postsOne of the nice things about having these here newfangled internets and eleventy-gillion channels on your HD is the ability this explosion of offerings has afforded to eavesdrop on previously restricted events. Take press conferences....The last one I listened to start-to-finish was the one following...
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April 03, 2007
Glance toward your blogger without hope or despair#7 in a series of last-day postsI'm here before you today to defend the college hoops blogosphere.And it needs defending. It's become almost commonplace to decry the sorry state of blogdom where college basketball's concerned. (Hey, I've done it too.)It's true that if you throw a dart at the mass of college basketball...
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April 03, 2007
Nod perfunctorily toward your columnist#8 in a series of last-day postsFor decades the sports columnist, by virtue of their profession, enjoyed three effective though not total monopolies:1. The ability to see the games2. The ability to reach readers3. The ability to talk to players and coachesWhat we've seen over the past 20 years is the total breakup of monopoly number 1 by...
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April 03, 2007
Hug your beat writer#9 in a series of last-day postsI don't know what the near future holds for sports coverage but I do know that, because people will continue to be interested in the games, relatively small numbers of credentialed professionals will continue to be granted access to report on these sporting events. It's a challenging job done under tremendous time pressure...
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April 03, 2007
Later, Wonk#10 in a series of last-day postsThis blog had a good run: three seasons, 593 posts, and some page views by you all. The busiest month was this past March. The busiest day, February 21, 2006.For reasons I still don't understand, I spent the first season writing in the third person, with the result that I now feel an actual physical shudder when I have to reach back...
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April 03, 2007
Yo, John#11 in a series of 11 last-day postsLast week I said that next year I plan to write about college basketball, the whole thing. What that usually means, of course, is "all the good teams, irrespective of conference."That will indeed be my starting point. (Maybe I can branch out past that eventually.) Anyway, hope to see you there. Watch for a referral.Take care and...
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April 03, 2007
A preface to previews(1) Ohio State vs. (1) Florida (9:21pm ET)Don't read any preview today without this handy accompanying piece at your side....1. Accept no discussion whatsoever of defense in any preview.Florida's players and coaches will mouth the right words at press conferences and say how important defense is, how it leads to transition opportunities, how it all starts...
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April 02, 2007
All other D-I schools can just withdraw from every sportIn lacrosse, tennis, field hockey, baseball, and volleyball, we'll just cut to the chase from now on and have Ohio State play Florida for the championship right at the start.(1) Ohio State 67, (2) Georgetown 60Forget Greg Oden, never mind Mike Conley, look past Ron Lewis, and even ignore recent Packer fixation David Lighty...
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April 01, 2007
BONUS all-red edition! Why has capitalism failed me?Note: the Final Four preview was yesterday.This evening, like every year, I'll grit my teeth and watch the games, knowing that a certain analyst comes with the games as a multi-decade package deal.I didn't do any big wacky gimme-hits torch-and-pitchfork post about that analyst this year and that's a departure from tradition...
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March 31, 2007
The only Final Four preview I've read so far I know everybody's doing previews and I thought about setting mine apart by doing, say, a very special vowel-free preview ("Grg dn nds th bl!") or some such. But, in the end, I decided that not reading anyone else's preview is gimmicky distinction enough. So if I'm out in left field it's because I'm clueless...
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March 30, 2007
If the moving van goes from Morgantown to Ann Arbor....Michigan has reportedly zeroed in on West Virginia coach John Beilein.First order of business: Beilein's Mountaineers will play Clemson in the NIT title game tonight in Madison Square Garden. But once that's over and done with we should know within a few dozen hours if the reports are accurate.Canonical blogger Brian...
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March 29, 2007
Do "hot" coaches stay hot after they're hired?Some don't. No one could be hotter than Steve Alford was eight years ago this month. His 12th-seeded Southwest Missouri State team (since morphed into simply Missouri State) had beaten 4th-seeded Wisconsin and 5th-seeded Tennessee to reach the Sweet 16, before falling to 1-seed Duke.And Alford's team did it with...
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March 28, 2007
Lincoln was right!Judging from reactions to the past two NCAA tournaments, it would seem, just as the 16th president said, that you can please all the people some of the time and some of the people all of time. And that's as good as it gets.Recall that last year with George Mason crashing the party, there was an insistent undercurrent of grumbling and even (I'm serious) talk...
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March 27, 2007
I demand golf clubs! Rocking chairs! Liquor!I've decided that this will be the last season of "Big Ten Wonk."Next season I'll continue to write on a regular basis on college basketball. I just don't know where, exactly. Watch this space for a referral.Regular readers know that this past season I spent less time on, say, Northwestern than on North Carolina, Florida...
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March 26, 2007
The return of scoring margin as a March advisorIn 2005 the top four teams in "power"-conference hoops nationally in terms of tempo-free scoring margin (i.e., efficiency margin) during their respective conference seasons were Illinois, Louisville, North Carolina, and Michigan State. Every one of those teams went to the Final Four that year. So the five or so of us tracking...
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March 26, 2007
Ode to an Odenian turnJust 23 short days ago I wrote this about Greg Oden:Greg Oden's been merely outstanding. Don't get the "merely" wrong, I want him on my team. Oden's an efficient scorer who leads the conference in defensive rebounding (now that Brian Butch is out) and, of course, shot-blocking. So, yes, he's been outstanding. It's just that I thought...
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March 25, 2007
The year of Lawrence WelkIn three of the four regional finals: and a 1 and a 2. (In the fourth region? A 1 and a 3. That hoops-ignorant weenie in your office pool that just picks the four 1-seeds every year has never been more smug than right now.)(1) Florida 65, (5) Butler 57The Gators have the template down. Come out slowly, cough up a lot of turnovers (six in the first eight minutes...
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March 24, 2007
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