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It's time to talk some college basketball on Cougar Sports
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free Q and A. It is top a little college
hoops talk. We got to discuss just what the prognostic
games the men of metrics are saying about this Blau
basketball team. Now that Richie Saunders has gone down to
an ACL injury. How significantly do they drop in the
analytic ex portion of you know, Ken Palm and Evan
Mia cowa UH dot com. We're gonna get into it
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Let's get out to the hot Live Welcome in UH
college Basketball Analytics Guru Evan Miakawa to discuss this by
U basketball team and college basketball in general. Evan, how
the heck are you buddy doing great.
Speaker 2: We are, you know, less than four weeks away from
selection Sunday and the eyes of the nature and on
college basketball right now, so there's a lot of good
stuff going. Can't necessarily say the same for BYU. Tough
news over the weekend, it's been really disappointing to see.
Speaker 1: Let's just discuss real quick overall the college basketball season.
What has stood out to you? Which teams have stood
out to you, biggest surprises, things that maybe you prognosticated
in the preseason that came to fruition, anything come to mind.
Speaker 2: I think if someone is kind of tapping into college
basketball right now for the first time and they're like, hey,
what's going on, I think the big picture messages the
talent at the very top of the sport is as
good as any and there are probably about ten teams
this year that have really separated themselves from the rest
of the pack and are all at a very elite
level and in any other season would be potentially a
front runner, front runner to win the national title. I
think if you go back a year ago entering the tournament,
there was very clearly a solid like four to five
teams the all the one seeds maybe if you want
to throw in an Alabama in there. It was pretty
obvious going into the tournaments they were cut above the rest.
It was going to be pretty unlikely for someone to
win outside of those five. This year, I think it
is much wider than that. I think there are somewhere
between eight to twelve teams who are all good enough
to get it done, and so the I think the
talent at the top of the sport, certainly in the
Big twelve. We've seen this on a weekly basis. These
heavyweight clashes between really talented teams have just been really entertaining.
We're just going to get more and more of that
as we get closer into March. So it's been really
fun to see.
Speaker 1: How many top I'm looking at your top one hundred
players right the metric you guys can all find cougarnation,
evanmeia dot com, this efenmea dot com. The player ratings.
How many top one hundred players does a college basketball
team need in order to get deep into the NCAA
Tournament typically to say.
Speaker 2: Good question. Obviously there's different ways of rating players, but
on my website you can find a rating and ranking
for every single player in the country in terms of
the value that they bring to their team and where
that's plots them nationally. And often what I have found
is by the time we get to the end of
the season and we're looking at, you know, how, besides
star talent, how loaded are the top teams in the country.
I think it typically takes at least four to five
players being in the top one hundred. I'm looking at
Florida last year, they had five guys who were in
the top one hundred, and I think the year before Yukon,
the previous two years Yukon had at least that many
as well. Yeah, they had six the year prior. So
it may not look that way when you enter a season,
it's hard to say exactly which rosters are going to
have that many good players. But by the end of
the season, by the time we get to the tournament,
it's pretty obvious which rosters are obviously have the star talent, yes,
but to have the ability to you know, go five, six, seven,
eight guys deep and there's not really that much of
a talent drop off, And that's pretty key, especially if
you want to win six games in a row in
the tournament.
Speaker 1: BYUS in a unique situation. Right, they do have three
top one hundred players, but one of those players just
went down to injury. He's twenty eighth in your Evan
MEA player rating, Richie Sanders, AJ's at number eleven, and
Rob Right the third set number fifty six. How impactful
is this injury per your analytics?
Speaker 2: To BYU, this is about as devastating as it gets.
Richie Saunders obviously incredible player. If he was no matter
what team he was playing on, losing him for the
season would really really hurt them. You know, he finished
the season basically averaging almost twenty points a game, six
rebounds a game, great three point shooter, very efficient, good
on the defensive end as well, So you know, I
had him rated as a top thirty player in the country.
I think the way this impacts BYU more than most
because the way that BYU has built a roster is
around this big trio of stars in aj de Bonta,
Rob Wright and Richie Saunders and all of them are
you know, some of the best players in college basketball,
especially on the offensive end, and then all these other
role pieces filling around them. Well, we have found that
in this season, if even one or two of those
guys aren't having a good night, YU can struggle to
stay in games. Do you take Richie Saunders out of
the equation, who maybe has been the overall most consistent,
reliable star on this team, certainly the most veteran experience
on this team, and we're talking about a drop from
in terms of like where the minute's gonna go. The
lack of depth on depth on this BYU team is
really bad. You go back a year ago and I
think I looked at according to my analytics, if you
looked at the strength of the eighth best guy on
BYU's roster last year, it ranked like top five in
the country in terms of how good their depth was.
That's not been the story this year. Before the Richie
Saunders injury, I think their depth was ranked seventieth or
eightieth best in the country on my website, and now
he's out for the season, so that's probably out. I
had the top one hundred, like this is a huge drop,
And actually on my website, I have injury adjusted ratings
and rankings for teams that basically says when a player
is either out for a period of time or out
for the season, how much does that impact what they're
predicted to do going forward, and at the time of
the injury, Saunders being out dropped BYU by twenty three
spots nationally, from twenty second to forty fifth nationally. So
that's going from a team that's a top twenty five team,
potentially Sweet sixteen or further to a team that would
in a normal season barely be good enough to make
the NCAA tournament. That's how much of an impact this
injury has for BYU.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's pretty devastating. Is there anyone on the
roster that you see has promise potential to step up
in a bigger way and try to fill the big
shoes and this is going to be by committee. I
don't think there's any one guy. But what else does
Bay you have on the roster that you're maybe optimistic
about that if given in more volume, given more minutes,
they could step up in trying to fill the shoes
of Richie Saunders.
Speaker 2: I wish I had a better answer to this, but
I think my answer is I can't find somebody like
the Kiva Keda has probably been their most reliable player
outside of the top four, and certainly his the value
defensively is probably the best on the team, but he
can't fill Richie Saunders role, and he's already playing a
good amount. You would love to see a little bit
more consistency from him, but he's not able to pick
up the offensive slack. But then going down the roster,
like in Boop, I guess is the player who's probably
the next most valuable on the team, but again more
of a defensive player. He's been really inefficient on the
offensive side of the court. And then looking at the
rest of this roster, like Cannard Davis has been inconsistent,
He's not as been as good as people wanted to see.
I think, honestly, the fact that you already had injuries
to guys like Dawson Baker like that would be the
obvious pick if he was still playing to pick up
the slack there. So I think combining that with saunders
injury and some of the other roster issues that they've
had to here, it's just there's really not a lot
of ways to kind of rejig the pieces here and
find a winning formula. Obviously, I think the goal is
hopefully just like let aj Debonta absolutely cook and see
what you can make around that, and maybe if they're
somewhere in the six to eight seed range in the
tournament and you're playing against the one or two seed,
maybe the star talent of aj Debonta can win you
again in that situation. But in terms of being able
to have continued success to the rest of the season
in a Big twelve postseason play making a Final four run,
I just don't really see a lot of ingredients there
that I'm really optimistic in.
Speaker 1: Cannard Davis Junior seems like the guy that's gonna possibly
step up. How good is Canard Davis been this year
and where can he improve? Well?
Speaker 2: I think, you know, one of the things that they
wanted from Canard Davis was to be a three point shooter,
and that's something that they certainly are going to have
to fill in. Richie Saunders was probably the best three
point shooter on the team, certainly in terms of volume
percon pective. But Cannard Davis, like I think he if
I'm looking at his you know, analytics from this year.
He started out the season really hot from three, but
he has really dipped as of late and has struggled
to find consistently shooting the three ball and right now
I project him on my site to only shoot thirty
four and a half percent going forward. That's a little
bit better than Division one average, but that's not like
elite levels. So if he were to you know, step
up and take more shots and hit them, he's going
to have to find a massive improvement from what he's
been doing recently and find some of that early season
form and part of why they brought him to BYU.
So there the ingredients are there. He's shown it at times,
but it's not been there for the last you know,
ten to twelve games, and maybe the coaching staff saying like, hey,
you need to step up and fill these shoes. Maybe
he's built that way and can respond. I just don't
necessarily think that's a guarantee.
Speaker 1: By Ane, Alexi Coastick, Tyler Marass. I mean, Tyler, we
do have some eight points from from Idaho right like
what he was doing last year, and I don't know,
I didn't prep you with this, but I wonder how
could he was last year and he can get back
up to that this year at b YU election Costik
is an interesting study. Obviously, coming from overseas, he looks
to gain a few more minutes of production and opportunity there.
But if you were to, you know, maybe put a
bet on any one of these guys to maybe step
up or see more minutes, who would it be and why?
Speaker 2: Well, I would like to say it would be Cannar Davis,
like we talked about. But the problem is he's already
playing a good.
Speaker 1: Amount of playing forty minutes a game.
Speaker 2: It looks like yeah exactly, so like there's not you
can't really give more to him. I think from an
offensive perspective, Rus is probably the answer outside of the
Big Three. He has the highest offensive rating in terms
of his predicted offensive impacts going forward to the team,
but again it is a far cry from what you're
seeing from those Big three. And he in terms of
his efficiency last year he was below Division one average. Again,
he played on a bad team and some of that
was probably situational, but he's not improved that much on
a per possession basis than last year. So again I
think that's probably the direction you go there. But there
is a massive gap between what he's doing and you
know what Richie Saunders was doing, so again probably a
big ask. And also he hasn't played a ton so
you're taking a bit of a gamble on a guy.
But obviously, like you said, there's not really they don't
have another choice. They got to have someone step up here,
So you know, I think that's probably the most likely answer.
Speaker 1: Evan Miakawa here on your Utah ESPN Radio Network dok
in some BYU basketball, the Big Twelve has been a
bit of a gauntlet, no doubt for these teams. We
see ASU knocking off teams, We're seeing a little bit
of cannibalism and parody. But how would you describe the
Big Twelve this season and how does it compare to
the Big Ten, the SEC, the ACC and others.
Speaker 2: The Big Twelve and the Big Ten this year have
been unquestionably the best conferences when it comes to the
overall like upper talent in the conference and who's most
likely to cut down the nets. I think every single
week it's like, Wow, look at this amazing matchup in
this amazing team of the Big Twelve, and then you
go to the Big Ten and back and forth. They've
both conferences have been really, really amazing. I think Arizona
has obviously been the story of the Big Twelve so far,
but they're coming off of, you know, to the first
two losses of the season too, albeit very good teams
in Kansas on the road, in Texas Tech at home,
but they're they're obviously the best. They're probably still the
best team in this conference. Houston I think would be
right there with them. I have them ranked third and
fourth in the country in terms of how good they're
supposed to be going forward. Both those teams play this weekend.
Arizona's traveling to Houston. That's gonna be a big game.
But Iowa State just beat Arizona or sorry, just beat
Kansas and Houston, and so they're obviously very strong. Texas
Tech takes a massive blow if JC Toppin is indeed
out for the season, which some people are speculating might
be the case. And then you've got Kansas, who has
been a top fifteen team this season, and when Darren
Peterson is playing well, they're as good as anybody. You've
got five teams that are all probably title threats at
this point if healthy. Inside the top fifteen nationally. There
was a massive drop after that. There's a lot of
middling teams like outside of BYU, like Cincinnati, TCU, Baylor,
who may or may not make the tournament there, but
the top of the Big twelve has been extremely impressive
this year. Honestly, must watch TV anytime that these teams
are playing, especially against each other, and in this February
stretch they have all been playing each other and it's
been an absolute gauntlet.
Speaker 1: This is an intriguing situation for me. How many Big
twelve NCAA tournament bids do you think come down the
pipeline this year? What's your prognostication there.
Speaker 2: As of right now? I would have six teams comfortably in,
or sorry, seven teams comfortably in. That would be Arizona, Houston,
Iowa State, Kansas, Texas Tech, BYU and UCF has played
far above what I think their roster people expected from
the roster. They have done really well this year overall.
But then outside of that, TCU, West Virginia, Oklahoma State
are probably have a chance at making the tournament, but
they've got a lot of work to do. I think
it's going to settle at seventeen. I think it's going
to be those seven that I mentioned. There's a pretty
clear divide between that group and the rest. So that's
what my prediction would be as of now.
Speaker 1: What's your seeding for BYU right now, and what do
you prognosticate in their final six games that they end
up in the win loss column with their regular season games.
Speaker 2: Right now, I would have BUYU right on the cut
line between a five and sixty. The thing about BYU
is that you know they don't have any massive wins,
but their losses have all been very respectable. Really outside
of the road loss against Oklahoma State, they've lost to
Houston again. Houston is a fantastic team. Arizona fantastic team,
at Kansas, at Texas Tech on a neutral versus yukon.
All of these teams are elite teams, so they're not
really being bogged down by a lot of losses like
some of these other teams are. Texas Tech is kind
of the slip side of this, where Texas Tech has
some incredible wins but some really bad losses. So right
now I would say THEIU is probably on that five
to sixteen Cup six seed cut line. Obviously, with the
Saunders injury, I would expect for them to likely drop
and lose a game or two more than they would
have if you were healthy, and so we're probably looking
at more like a seven seed is probably the most
likely outcome for them on Selection Sunday, but I don't
hate that spot for them. I think if you're in
a seventh seed, you're able to get past your first
round matchup and play a two seed and you've got
aj Debonta like that is going to be a scary
site for any one or two seed. So I kind
of like them in that spot to be a potential
upset pick, if you want to call it that, just
because of the way that this roster has made up.
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen so many season ending injuries from
a college basketball team since you've started doing what you
do and monitoring some of these these injuries and rosters
and and their their efficiency metrics that are associated with
their rosters.
Speaker 2: You know, I think when you are watching a team closely,
like BYU, and you see these players go down, you think, wow,
this has never happened to anyone before. The reality is
it's more common than you think. And oftentimes it's that
these injuries happen earlier in the season and the team
just kind of falls off the map and we're not
really talking about them by March, but they have a
much bigger impact on their overall season. I think Louisville
last year was a decent example of a team that
still made the tournament, but they lost close to half
their roster at a given point in the season was
unavailable either out for the season or out for long
stretches of time, and that really dramatically changed their season there.
This year, USC has been absolutely wrecked by injuries. They've
had two of their top four or five players out
for the season, another player who may not be back
for the entire rest.
Speaker 1: Of the year.
Speaker 2: And this is a team that started the year winning
the Maui Tournament and you know, was probably hoping to
be a five or six seed in the tournament. And
let's see when we check their resume status. As of
right now, they're in the nine to ten feet category.
But based on who they have on their roster, it's
possible they could miss the tournament entirely. So it's more
happens more than you think, but certainly for it to
be this prolific towards the end of the season pretty rare.
Speaker 1: It's it's pretty crazy. I don't know if BYU has
ever had this many injuries then yeah, I mean, if
this is fairly common, you know BYU has been able
to experience more often than not health right, and it
has been able to maybe they've made At one point
early in the season right BYU fans were hoping that
they could get the monkey off their back. They have
gone to more in CAA tournaments than any other team
without a five four appearance. Now that looks that opportunity.
That light looks a whole lot more bleak and it's darkened.
They are not as optimistic, and neither is Evan Miakawa
and the metrics right now, but they could possibly with
their their two headed monster right, AJ Debonsa and Rob Right.
Rob Wright seems to be trending in an elite direction.
What do you see as far as his trajectory is concerned.
He's kind of taken over in the scoring category whenever
Aj is struggling a little bit, or when Richie is struggling.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love what Rob Wright is doing. And I
think the fact when you play on a team with
Aj Debonsa and Richie Saunders, you're not going to get
as much credit as you should. But I think what
he has done at the UYU and his second year
in college has been tremendous. He is for a point guard,
is more gifted as a scorer than most. But I'm
i'm if you look at his statistical profile, he's a
amazing scorer. He's an elite, elite three point He's also
a very good playmaker fory point guard. He doesn't turn
the ball over very much. He's shown the ability to
also you know, cause turnovers on the defensive end. So
he's really doing everything for this team. And I think
we saw this back at Baylor. You know, I watched
him closely in his freshman year at Baylor. Baylor was
up and down last year, and there were often games
when a very they had a lot of veteran players,
it seemed like Rob Wright was the only one keeping
them in games. He has shown an ability to kind
of always put you know, his his you know, keep
his foot feet on the ground and pedal to the
metal and just grind and will result in the right direction.
And I think that is the type of mentality that
BYU needs. And I think he has built to step
up more into the moment. You know, we were talking
about all these who what role players can step up.
Rob Wright's already been tremendous this year. I think I
think mentality wise, he is built to take even more
of a big role on this team. So I really
like what he's been doing. And I can't really imagine
where a BYU would be without him.
Speaker 1: No doubt about it. Love what I've seen from Rob
Wright the third and maybe there's still hope for a
run in the NCAA Tournament. Let's discuss college basketball as
a whole again. Who are your favorites right now to
maybe make an Elite eight appearance and or Final four
appearance right now? Do you have some favorites right now
that you can lean into with your metrics?
Speaker 2: Well, I can't look past Michigan. I was in the
arena Tuesday night for their win over Purdue in a
game that Perdue is about as hostile an environment as
you can find. Perdue as the preseason number one team,
Michigan comfortably won that game and it didn't really feel
that close. They are an absolute wagon. I've actually had
Michigan rated as the number one team in the country
since late November, even though they this is their first
week actually being ranked number one.
Speaker 1: In the A.
Speaker 2: People this team is really really good, best defense defense
in the country. Their front court is super imposing, so
I really like them, and they're playing against my number
two team in the country, Duke, this weekend and on
Core in DC, so I like both those teams. Cameron
Boozer has been by far the best player in college
basketball this year. But then outside of that, I think
the the the top echelon is really Michigan, Duke, Arizona, Houston, Florida.
That's who I would put as my top five right now,
and I think I would likely pick a title a
championship to come from that group. But then you've got
some other teams that are really dangerous, especially offensively like Illinois,
Yukon obviously with the pedigree under Dan Hurley. And I
still am not out on Purdue. I think they have
a great offense, and I think, you know, against the
you know, maybe against a team it's not Michigan, they
can have some success. But then even like a team
like Gonzaga. Gonzaga, I think it's been kind of off
the radar for a while. They've not even been fully
healthy in this conference stretch. They're missing one of their
best players and scorers in Brandon Huff, but they have
been getting a lot of big results done the WCC.
I think they could be a menace in the tournament.
So there's a lot of teams that I really like
in this tournament, and there's it's gonna be it is
going to be hard, harder than ever this year to
pick a final four. There's gonna be like nine teams
I want to put in the final four and you
can only pick four. It's really devastating.
Speaker 1: I love it, man, Evan meat Cow. I nobody does
it better than you, brother. The best way to support
you what you do, how you do it. For all
of our listeners, well.
Speaker 2: You can find everything at Evanmea dot com all the
metrics and stuff we're talking about, links on all my
social pages. I also launched a new weekly college basketball
show called the Evanmea College Basketball Podcast, which is coming
out every Tuesday morning once set back in January. So
if you're you want to get more of a hoops fix,
be sure to check that out. But you can find
all that stuff at Evanmea dot com.
Speaker 1: I got one more question for you. I felt like
I was like one of the first to hop on
the Evanmea train, following you, retweeting you, engaging with you,
trying to get you on my show? Is that Is
that an accurate depiction? Was I one of the the
early adopters of evanmea dot com?
Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely, I think you were. You were one of
the early people to you know, have me on the
show and be really really plugged in, and so I
really appreciate, I really appreciate you believe it in me
and supporting me in that way.
Speaker 1: It's been awesome. You do fantastic work man. That gave
me some validation. You know, every once in a while
you need a little validation of like, hey, I think
I was one of the first, you know, primary adopters
at vanmea dot com. Check it out vanmea dot com.
That's vanmea dot com. Thanks so much, Evan. We appreciate
your time as always. Thank you. There you go. That's
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Brett always bringing the hammer, Vic Cram. We had some
great soundbites from Kevin Young as well as a star
studded lineup. It was awesome. Brian Jefferies' voice of the
Ears on the podcast, Brandon Gurney, the g Man, Brian Logan,
former YU defensive back