Comparing the programs during UA’s NCAA tourney run
By AzTransplant
Reader Blog
Last week’s article by Javier chronicling UA’s recruiting and subsequent team results, as well as New Order’s post about the success of former UA players in the NBA in comparison to other programs generated a lot of discussion about the overall success of the UA program and how the program measures up against the other top schools.
I thought it might be interesting to look at the overall numbers in several pertinent categories in order to compare the most successful programs over the last 25 years (i.e. the period of the UA tourney streak). I took into account the overall win-loss record, tourney records, Sweet 16s and Final Four appearances (and championships), as well as players drafted in the NBA draft. Just for fun and morbid curiosity, I also included ASU in the analysis. I was surprised to find that ASU was over .500 for this period of time.
I considered using a point system for the these categories to compare the programs, but in the end I couldn’t really decide on an appropriate metric. The data below is sorted by the “tourney record” category, which essentially sorts based on the number of tourney wins. While one can argue about which category would be most appropriate for the ordering/rankings, it would appear that this sorting leads to a pretty fair “ranking” of the programs when you take all the categories into account. Overall record isn’t as informative, as these teams play in differing competitive conferences and have unbalanced competitive non-conference scheduling. No matter how you slice it, Duke comes out on top. Also, looking at the numbers, it would be difficult to argue that Arizona is one of the top programs during the last quarter century. Feel free to argue, re-rank and discuss, or just appreciate what Lute Olson brought to the desert for us.
TOP PROGRAMS DURING NCAA TOURNEY STREAK FOR ARIZONA (1984-85 to 2008-2009)
This is how the top men\'s college basketball programs have performed during the 25-year NCAA Tournament streak. Stats courtesy of statsheet.com. The rankings are sorted by NCAA tournament win-loss percentage. Key: OVR REC: Overall record. NCAAT: No. of NCAA tournament appearances. SW16: Sweet 16s. FIN4: Final Fours. NBA: No. of players drafted.
| PROGRAM | OVR REC | PCT. | NCAAT | REC. | PCT. | SW16 | FIN4 | TITLES | NBA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Duke | 702-103 | .802 | 24 | 77-21 | .786 | 18 | 10 | 3 | 36 |
| N. Carolina | 658-205 | .762 | 23 | 67-20 | .770 | 17 | 9 | 3 | 34 |
| Kansas | 698-174 | .800 | 24 | 61-22 | .735 | 16 | 7 | 2 | 27 |
| Kentucky | 627-211 | .748 | 21 | 52-19 | .732 | 13 | 4 | 2 | 23 |
| UConn | 579-235 | .711 | 16 | 42-14 | .750 | 12 | 3 | 2 | 24 |
| Arizona | 631-201 | .755 | 25 | 41-24 | .631 | 12 | 4 | 1 | 34 |
| UCLA | 559-236 | .703 | 20 | 39-19 | .672 | 11 | 4 | 1 | 34 |
| Syracuse | 615-225 | .732 | 20 | 37-19 | .661 | 10 | 3 | 1 | 21 |
| Michigan St. | 536-256 | .677 | 19 | 37-18 | .673 | 10 | 5 | 1 | 23 |
| Louisville | 556-279 | .666 | 18 | 33-17 | .660 | 10 | 2 | 1 | 17 |
| ASU (comparison) | 381-356 | .517 | 5 | 5-5 | .500 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 10 |
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Tags: Duke, Lute Olson, NCAA tourney streak, North Carolina
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July 9th, 2009 at 10:56 AM
Once again, you are comparing apples and oranges when you include ASSU in the argument. Their record is deceiving when one thinks about their cupcake schedule against Arizona’s national schedule against top opponents. Then to be fair, you would have to compare their Pac-10 record against ours for identical opponents and that is a true measure of their program and not all the sisters of the poor pre-conference schedule that they play against year in and year out.
Also, you have to mention that Duke’s number of McDonald All Americans on their roster as some years that is all they had recruited and added to their roster. Duke is a failure if one takes the performance of their highly rated high school players and their success rate in the NBA. Coach K is the most overrated coach in the country adn there really is not a close second.
July 9th, 2009 at 11:07 AM
davidpk19: You have a point. In my analysis yesterday, it was noted that Duke has recruited the most 5-star athletes (10) between 2003-2008, but have no national titles to show for it. Kansas, UNC and Arizona are next with eight. Kansas and UNC have won titles. Two of UA’s 5-star recruits never attended school, and the Cats have been beset by coaching turnover. I would agree with you that, yes, Duke’s numbers look nice, but where’s the proof in the pudding? (And I know Coach K has won three titles but this is a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately business).
July 9th, 2009 at 12:53 PM
davidpk19,
I was adding in ASU for a laugh, just as New Order did in his post. It was funny to see the ASU fans going nuts w/ their posts on Azstarnet for the last 2 years bragging about their program. In reality, if you look at the big picture, their program has been pitiful.
davidpk19 & Javier,
As for Duke, I hate them just as much as the next guy. I was seething after the 2001 title game when Coach K bragged about the effort of his kids saying, “this certainly wasn’t one of our most talented teams…”. At the time, I think there were 8 or 9 McD’s All Americans on their team. But, in defense of Coach K and the Duke program, I will say that they tend to shy away from questionable recruits and obvious one-and-done players. You don’t hear them in the discussion for the Lance Stephensons of recruits. Also, I think Coach K and Duke actually do hold their athletes to a higher academic standing than many other universities and recruit accordingly. But I agree that they have had some down years (by Duke’s standards) recently. However, you can’t argue with their tourney success- 18 Sweet 16s adn 10 Final 4s in 25 years is very impressive. The tourney is a crapshoot. One off day or a red-hot opponent and your season is over. No one knows this better than UA.
Also, I considered adding McD’s AAs as it is a good measure of a program, but in the end it was too much work. It was pretty time-consuming just collecting all this data. It would be an interesting addition…..so feel free to look it up and post it.
July 9th, 2009 at 12:53 PM
Tournament wins are a tricky business. Requires not just skill but also a lot of luck. Duke is certainly a great program. I’m happy if Arizona is mentioned in the same breath. And I’m thrilled that little Tucson has managed to keep its hoops program competitive from one great coach to the next.
Despite all the optimism in advance of the next season, I assume there will be growing pains. I also assume there will be a drop off, not from the last few years, but from the gravytrain days of this program. After all, Lute was a better coach in his prime than Williams, Callipari, K., Howland — any of them. It would be a lot to expect Miller to entirely fill those enormous shoes.
Nevertheless, I’m thrilled we landed Coach Miller and I’m excited to see what he can do with this program over coming years.
July 9th, 2009 at 1:48 PM
AzTransplant,
I find your chart very interesting but why do you Arizona ranked #6?
July 9th, 2009 at 1:55 PM
AzT,
Sorry I thought you were ranking them by tournament win-loss percentage, not wins alone.
July 9th, 2009 at 2:00 PM
Saguaro,
I mentioned this a bit in the 3rd paragraph, but these aren’t necessarily rankings. I simply sorted the chart on the number of tourney wins. However, when you look across all the categories involved, it does seem a pretty fair way to “rank” the programs. It would be difficult to argue (other than consecutive tourney appearances) that UA has been more successful than Duke, UNC, Kansas, Kentucky, or UConn. But, it is all open for interpretation/discussing/arguing. Or if someone wants to create a point system for these categories and re-sort the programs accordingly, that might be interesting as well. I was just trying to give an overall picture of the top programs during the UA tourney streak.
July 9th, 2009 at 2:31 PM
Not that I necessarily disagree with any of your analysis, but I think it should also be considered how some teams (Duke in particular) benefitted from favorable seedings, locations, and matchups in the tournament. That allows them to face easier roads to the Final Four and *possibly* rack up more tournament wins than a team like Arizona.
I mean, how many times have Duke and N.C. played outside of their state in the early rounds in recent years?
July 9th, 2009 at 2:31 PM
interesting read, nice work AzT!
i find it encouraging that we stack up competitively with the most storied programs in the nation. i’d of course love to see UA move up that list in tourney wins (NCs to be specific), but i don’t think there’s any shame in falling where we do on that list.
for all the recruiting talk the past few months (which i love and am not disparaging), it’s nice to see actual results and team production over a long span. tying it all together, though, i think one of the more encouraging stats for the UA program is the # of NBA draftees. coupled with the other #s, it is an important recruiting tool and will contribute to continuing this type of success.
July 9th, 2009 at 2:40 PM
FriendofDamon–
i agree that location of tourney games is a great benefit. it’s probably debatable, but i would say that those seeds/locations are almost always “earned”. the NCAA has some mythical equation for rewarding top teams with favorable locations, and until that rule or trend or whatever it is is retooled, or someone takes those seeds away from them with their play on the court, we will undoubtably see much more of it. UA could probably play in AZ or SoCal every year if we earn a top seed, and i doubt anyone here would cry about that.
no offense or anything, i just wanted to play the other side of coin here.
July 9th, 2009 at 3:11 PM
thx for the effort AZTP, the most glaring numbers to me was the tourney win %, THE U dropped off significantly from the regular to post season. other schools on the list don’t come close to the same rate of drop off, the ‘cuse and kansas are close. uconn and unc actually win at a better clip in march. any one with some insite on why this is, i’m sure it’s been talked about before, some may say ZONA was soft, but i could never figure out why the CATS could dominate a regular season then sh** the bed in march.
maybe i’m bitter too, but it always did seem the dookies always had an easier road…referees and location.
July 9th, 2009 at 3:21 PM
True enough about tourney seedings and locations. As with almost all NCAA decisions, it comes down to economics. The NCAA got tired of having arenas below capacity for opening rounds of the tourney. So in order to “reward” top seeds, they started keeping them close to home. In reality, all this is meant to do is to encourage more fans from the top seeds to travel to these closer destinations and buy tix. I have hated this move from the start as it puts the lower seeds at a bigger disadvantage. Partisan crowd support definite influences the refs, plus having a large number of fans from the top seed schools stems the wave of crowd support from neutral fans that start pulling for underdogs.
UA has directly suffered from this twice as they were forced to play Illinois and Villanova on courts less than 30 miles from their respective campuses in the tourney. The vociferous crowd support and subsequent horrific officiating during the last 5 minutes of the UA/Illini Elite 8 game was more responsible for the final outcome than any of the players.
Then again, the counter argument would be that if UA took care of business during the season and earned a top seed, they would be playing in front of partisan crowds for these games. Duke and UNC have certainly benefited from this rule change, but they didn’t make the rule and they almost always earn their high seeding.
July 9th, 2009 at 3:32 PM
There’s no doubt that Duke has been helped by home court advantage in the NCAAs, and moreso than Arizona could ever possibly achieved even if they were the consensus #1 team every single year. Almost every year there’s a subregional held in the state of North Carolina, and Duke almost always gets assigned to it. Outside of Phoenix there just aren’t any possible host venues that Arizona fans could easily drive to.
Over the past 10 tournaments Duke is 12-0 in tournament games played in the state of North Carolina, and 13-9 in games played outside it. That’s even counting 2 games they played in South Carolina under the “outside” column, even though it’s only a 4 hour drive from Durham.
July 9th, 2009 at 4:50 PM
That 12-0 vs, 13-9 is a real eye opening stat. Guess I knew they always got a favorable deal, but that shows how large. I am among the Devil haters- both Sun and Blue
July 9th, 2009 at 4:55 PM
Yes, the system is not entirely fair. We’ve benefited in some ways over the years. But there are teams that have benefited even more.
As for why we seemed soft in the Tournament, some of it would seem to have to do with Pac-10 officiating. When a team is used to ticky-tacky calls and then, suddenly, the refs let most things go, it’s a big adjustment. But that’s only a part of it.
Coach Olson’s weakest skill as a coach was in firing up his team to play. When he tried, the kids didn’t take it seriously. The ’97 Championship team was loose as a goose, and that seemed to work to their advantage. But they were also the Cardiac Cats, nearly losing in each of the early-round games.
We had powerhouse teams that bowed out in the second round and reasonably strong teams that went out if the first. Such things can happen once in a while, but it happened entirely too often at Arizona.
July 9th, 2009 at 5:26 PM
WallyOPD said it right. It seems that most years there is, at most, one western subregional within what we could consider a drive (say, 8 hours) of Tucson. On the other hand, not only is there almost always a subregional in North Carolina, there are usually several more within a half-day drive (DC, South Carolina, etc).
As to the drop-off in win percentage, I’ve always felt that UA’s success during the season, even its bad seasons, hurts it in this regard. Every one of the programs with a better tournament winning percentage over that period had at least one bad season and missed the tournament (and in most cases, many more). When those teams miss the tourney, their tourney win percentage isn’t hurt, even though their season was a failure. UA, on the other hand, in its worst seasons, ends up (deservedly) making the tournament, but getting sent to a difficult location to play a tough team (Ill. in Chicago isn’t a good example, since that was the Elite 8, but Nova in Philly, Miami of Ohio in Dayton, and West Virginia in DC (3 hour drive from Morgantown) come to mind right away), which puts an already “weak” AZ team in a position to hurt their overall tourney win-loss record. Moreover, with a seed of 5 or below, that same “weak” AZ team is supposed to go, at best, 1-1 if the seeds hold up, which would hurt our tourney win percentage since it’s above .500.
I would be curious to see how that tourney win-loss percentage number would change if a missed tourney counts as a tourney loss (although, as an Arizona fan, I’d suggest you count it as 5). You could call it an “adjusted tournament win percentage.” If postseason success is the measure of a team, then I think the ATWP would provide a slightly better measure of “postseason success,” since missing the tournament is decidedly NOT postseason success.
July 9th, 2009 at 7:04 PM
the_dude said:
no offense or anything, i just wanted to play the other side of coin here.
—————————————————————————-
Of course no offense, and I actually don’t have a strong opinion about the whole thing. I see points to both sides of the coin, that was why I thought it was an interesting point of debate. I think WallyOPD sums up the best argument for which way I slightly lean, just because even an LA venue for us (which is usually thought of as great for us) is significantly further than any number of places that Duke/NC get to go to.
July 9th, 2009 at 7:41 PM
It is not that difficult for Duke or any other team to be consistently good in the tournament when they consistently recruit only McDonald All American players. If one thinks about the fact that we were just starting to gain traction with high profile recruits at the end of Lute’s rein, then we may have had much better results for the long haul. Unfortunately Lute got old and I am hoping that Lute’s work will give Sean Miller a foot in the door and name-recognition with the Arizona brand. He can elevate the program to degrees that we had never reached and it would all be because of Lute as he laid the foundation.
July 9th, 2009 at 9:00 PM
AzTransplant,
chicago is a lot further away from champaign than 30 miles.
July 9th, 2009 at 9:37 PM
I also reject that we were soft in the tournament. Were we soft in the duke game in 2001? Were we soft in the same tournament against the Bill Self led Illini? They had two starting line-ups that year, and were sure to use every foul they had. But in the end, we were too talented and too tough ourselves. What about gonzaga in 2003? I don’t recall ever losing a game in the tournament because we got pushed around. Some teams just played great defense which coupled with cold shooting on our part. Look at who we’ve lost to over the years (not counting the last few, although we did lose to the overall #1 seed last year, and by enough to lose many times over):
-Oklahoma with Stacy King who lost to kansas in 88′
-A heartbreaker to UNLV in 89′
-A Seton Hall team that pushed the runnin’ rebels to the brink in 91′
-The N.C. Arkansas with corliss williamson in 94′
-A really good Kansas team in 96′
-We lost to no one 97′, (suck it, kentucky)
-Utah went to the title game with andre miller in 98′
-Wisconson went to the final four in 00′ (god, that was brutal!)
-Duke won the NC in 01′ (still hate j. will and it killed me to see the bulls draft him, though i do feel bad for him)
-Oklahoma who went the final four in 02′ (man, they kind of have our # in the tourney)
-Kansas who went the title game in 03′ (that one really killed me because i raelly thought we were gonna run table that year)
-Ourselves…i mean Illinois who went to the title game in 05′ (don’t get me started)
-A really good Villanova Team in 06′
Now, there were some painful losses to teams we had no business losing to, but as you can see, we met up against some really good competition.
July 9th, 2009 at 9:40 PM
Think how good Standford was during that stretch in the late 90′s early 00′s with Mike. They were #1 a lot, and always lost early in the tournament.
July 10th, 2009 at 12:04 PM
Arizona under Lute was a guard-oriented team, which made them vulnerable to cold shooting. In a one-and-done format, it’s harder for guard-oriented teams because you cannot afford a single bad game.
None of which is to say Olson didn’t stress rebounding and defense. He did in his prime as much as one could with a guard-oriented team.
My sense is Miller will build his teams differently, with more inside muscle and a bit less emphasis on pure athleticism. Perhaps that’s not quite a fair assessment in that Lute was master at taking whatever talent he had and using it to the team’s advantage. He could coach big men just fine, but for whatever reason we got a rep as Point Guard U and so it became easiest to recruit guards.
At any rate, I would expect Miller’s teams to play slower than Olson’s, to focus more on set plays but take open shots when they come, to rebound well and to play more man-on-man D. While Olson’s best teams were a threat to score triple digits on a given night, Miller’s will score less points in a more consistent manner. While Olson recruited the best talent that wanted to play at Arizona and then molded his approach to fit the talent, Miller will recruit players that suit his system.
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