Clemson/Oklahoma Weather Delay: Game Suspended

So we are delayed right now but Clemson really came out and took it to Oklahoma. This weather delay is bad news because Weissman was doing well and could have gone at least another inning if not two innings. Frederick pitched last night and he is the best in our weak bullpen.

So the game so far was showing the weakness of our defense--Miller dropped a ball that would have gotten the runner trying to steal second. That fatboy for Oklahoma can run--a bunt and chopped infield single, plus a nice run into the gap to take away a double.

The game turned because Oklahoma pitcher Shore lost his control and threw 14 straight balls. Oklahoma scored a run off of Weissman who has been giving up a lot of fly balls, not keeping the ball down enough but getting some strikeouts and swinging strikes to put together a solid start.

I also had no problem with taking that error by the Oklahoma outfielder because the Kyle Paker bomb was clearly a home run--give me a break...Do we not have someone else to play SS--31 errors, give me a break. I'm not thrilled with Epps as the DH, I guess they are protecting Lamb to use in the bullpen or starting but I don't know.

Worst moment of the game--a double steal?? Boyd wasnt even close at home and you take the bat out of Freeman's hands. A Busch League managing move, you have momentum-with 2 outs, risking Keiboom getting caught stealing with a man on third makes little sense and statistically doesn't improve your chances unless you are close to 80% sure he will be able to steal the base.

Anyway, I would imagine Lamb goes tomorrow but its hard to tell and really a tough break when you have that kind of momentum. We are up 6-1 but that can quickly disappear with our bullpen, although perhaps Frederick can now be used. Winning this game means we get two chances to try to get one win to be in the finals with probably UCLA but need to make 12 outs before we can think of that...(oh wait Im already thinking ahead...)

But I should really leave this on a positive note--we are up 6-1 and poised to put ourselves in the drivers seat for the Championship game...KP hit a blast, we chased another starting pitcher, and KieBOOM is more awesome than Bushytail....

CLEMSON 2009 NCAA TOURNAMENT: Projecting Clemson's Chances

I’ve just finished running some simulations for 2009 tourney, and unfortunately my optimism from yesterday has been tempered somewhat. That being said, I still think Clemson’s got a pretty good draw here, and I’ll explain why in a second.

Let me start this post by saying that statistics-based projections like these are never going to substitute for a detailed look at the actual matchups. On the other hand, I don’t know anyone (including most national columnists) who has enough knowledge of all 65 teams to make a detailed matchup-based projection that covers all 63 games in the tournament. I see these projections as a supplement of sorts to aid in more detailed looks ate the weaknesses and strengths of teams that could matchup with one another.

Here’s a quick outline of what I’m doing. Every year I take the field and using a Markov-like process I start with the first round and go through all the games; picking winners based on the probability of a given team winning the game. Calculating the probability is probably the hardest part about this, and there are many ways to do it. The methods for this are a little dry for a blog post, but I’m more than willing to discuss the process with anyone who’s interested, just drop a comment or we can work something out via email. At any rate, after I get the probability of winning for two teams playing each other, I simply generate a random number. This number determines the winning team according to the probabilities (for example, if you think Clemson has a 70% chance of beating Michigan and the number you generate is 56, Clemson wins. If you generate 79, Michigan wins). Then I continue with the winners and move up round by round until finishing the tournament, keeping tally of which teams finished where. Then I rerun the process a million times; this gives the percent likelihood of each team advancing through to a round.

The chart below shows how well Clemson fares in the simulations, I’m showing it alongside Clemson’s numbers from the 2007 tournament for reference (initially I thought of showing the 2006 numbers as well, but yeah…)

The percentages in each column indicate the likelihood of Clemson making it through to that round. First thing to keep in mind is that all teams see substantial drops as they move through the bracket (well, except the 1 and 2 seeds in the first round) because with every round the pool of teams that can reach a particular spot increases. For example, there are eight teams vying for any particular sweet sixteen spot, so the percentages have to be divided up among all eight teams.

By my projections, Clemson is looking at about a 16-17% chance at reaching the elite eight. Oklahoma has the best chance in our group of eight, clocking in at about 32%, with Syracuse and Arizona State around 25% each and the other four teams at fractional percentages. Doesn’t sound like anything to write home about, yeah? But these are really fascinating results—you don’t usually see such an equal distribution for a sweet sixteen spot and that’s a pretty low percentage for a two seed. Moreover, Clemson comes out way in front of other 7/10 seeds, no one else clears 5% in the simulations. Clemson even equals or performs better than exactly half of the 4/5/6 seeds. I think we can take this as pretty strong evidence that Clemson is grossly under-seeded. If I’m an Oklahoma fan, I’m pretty upset about Clemson being in the neighboring game.

Well, I don’t want to dwell too long on this, because like I said, it’s a poor substitute for looking directly at the matchups. Tomorrow I’ll try to add to what ClemBen said about Michigan in his last post. If anybody has any specific questions about the simulations, drop a question in the comments. I’m probably going to tweak a few things in the next day and see how they come out. I don’t think it’s wise to post the entire projection before Thursday because I don’t want anyone taking this too seriously (just look at Clemson’s chances last year—we all know how that turned out). Plus, I can’t have ClemBen stealing any of my picks…

Purnell versus Beilein

So this isnt really all that fair to Purnell but I think its important to note that Beilein has been an absolute genius in the NCAA tourney. I got to say that Peter Tiernan has an interesting thing going with his Bracketscience.com but too much gives me a headache. He is doing four articles for cbssports.com now that espn has gotten rid of almost all their outside contributors, I really enjoyed this one but I digress...

Beilein is perhaps most known for taking a West Virginia team with a white kid named 'the Great Gansey', taking them to the brink of a final four birth as a seven seed in 2005, they were up against Louisville by 2o at one point, effectively turning them into repeat "Cinderella" disruptors. I really think that Michigan beating Duke early on had to do with a Duke team still finding itself...and a coach who can impressively gameplan given adequate time to prep. Beilein may be the best thing about this Michigan team.

Some of the strengths of this Michigan team and points Clemson needs to plan for are:

• Main guard Manny Harris--17 pts a game, 7 reb, 4 asts. That is impressive and we know how Clemson has trouble with scoring guards-Douglas, Downey, Clinch etc. Ft shooting is a crazy 85%-the entire team shoots a good percentage at 74%--could be pivotal down the stretch.
• This team loves to take three pointers. They arent the best or the worst three point shooters but everyone on the team can shoot. Thats classic Beilein style--think about that Pittsnogle guy, so we might be giving up a lot of easy threes in transition off of the press. If the press is porous and they are hot from three land we are one and done.
  
• What we have going for us is that as stated before is that we have a height advantage against this team especially when Michigan goes to its bench, everyone on the bench is short. Beilein likes to go nine deep, sometimes even 11 deep--so we arent going to wear them down. OP if the press aint working lets go full court man to man...
• Lastly Michigan cant rebound ranking 275th in the nation. That has to do with the 1-3-1 zone but also because they launch threes and dont get a lot of offensive boards. It would be absolutely criminal if Clemson allowed itself to get outrebounded.
  

Ultimately I think we can win if we have the right gameplan and then do some damage to a Oklahoma team that doesnt handle pressure as well. Got to have faith in this season! I feel a tiger rag coming on...Go Tigers!!