Historic ratings of teams in top 25 of Ken Pom AdjO & AdjD...

[CU44SE]

You can use archive.org to get data right before the tourney for some years.

Personally, I think you are focusing too much on balance in terms of the National champion. You need a good defensive team (top 20 or so) but you also need a more elite offensive team (top 10 or close to it). That has been the more typical profile of the national champ.

Yes, the champs of the last 11 years are all 25/25 teams. But 9 of the 11 champs have had top 10 offenses (most top 5) the other 2 (uconn and syracuse) were top 15. Quite a few more had sub 10 defenses (6 vs 2).

I would say balance is important, but top 10 offence is also needed.

Also using archive.org we can find that uconn did not fit this profile entering 2011. They were 12 in offence, and 27 in defense entering the tourney. Another team weighted to offence.

There have also been more final 4 teams that are offensive;y oriented rather than defensively oriented (top 10 in one, sub 40 in the other). Theory is that teams can play harder defence in the tourney. Not that either is optimal... but two teams ranked the same in KP, the team with the better offence will tend to do better.

There are outliers everywhere, but you definitely need balance. 2 years ago, Missouri was a 2 seed with I believe the number 1 offensive efficiency in the country but was bounced in the first round to a 15 seed Nichols state because their defense was so bad. So its not just about offense; hence he does the 25/25. I looked a little bit yesterday and its so hard to gauge because we don't have pre-tournmanet numbers. I tried using a different source which reports individual games, but they had very different numbers from Kenpom. It also showed that Louisville outperformed their season average Offensive efficiency in just about every tournament game, which ultimately inflated their Kenpom numbers to number 4 offensive efficiency.

Welp.. so much for that. While I was looking at it tonight, SU moved down to #26 in AdjO... We'll need an improved offensive performance to get back into the Top 25. Cooney getting hot from 3 like Maui would be fine.

In regards to our offesnvie effeciency being 26, that includes the games we missed Grant where our Offensive efficiency numbers plummeted. Actually, now that I look at it, it started right around Kieta's injury which is very strange. We went a stretch of 6 games with and offensive efficiency under 100. NC St 91.8, BC-95.2, Duke-96.8, Maryland-86.4, Virginia-96.6, and GT-93.9 before finally cracking 115.6 at FSU.