Last season's predictions - Revisited

UNLV predictions, revisited

On October 23, 2011, Jason Taylor and myself kicked around out predictions about what this season would be like. Let’s find out how we did, and what we didn’t account for happening that created deviations in those predictions. For clarity, the black is Jason's (his comes first too), the dark red is mine (after Jason's).

Given that the Rebels will win 20+ games again, what match-ups are toss-ups or losses?


Shortened up, here are the teams I mentioned.
Toss up – New Mexico    Wins – USC, and Cal    Losses – UNC, Wisconsin, Illinois
Worried about – UCSB    Overall guess at our record… 28-5

So, for what I mentioned... not too terrible.  We won and lost to New Mexico (toss up).  We beat USC and Cal, as predicted, and we lost to Wisconsin as predicted.  I was worried about UCSB… fortunately we squeaked out an overtime win where we held a 10 point lead with 2 minutes to go in regulation.  The two I got wrong… UNC and Illinois.  It was so nice to be so wrong on those!  UNC was #1 at the time, and Illinois was ranked #19, undefeated (if I remember correctly), and we played the Illini “away”.

My biggest blunders came in failing to mention so many other teams that, not only should I have been worried about, but I TOTALLY underestimated.  I thought the conference was going to be weaker, where I predicted only losing 2-3 games.  We lost 5.  SDSU… wow.  Great job Steve Fisher.  CSU… I thought losing Andy Ogide would put them at a huge disadvantage.  WRONG!  How about Wyoming?  Phenomenal season considering the preceding year and the loss of Amath M’Baye to Lon Kruger’s Sooners!  TCU, too.  They had a really strong home performance this year, even though we blew… what, a 20 pt lead or so?  MAN, that one got me.

We went 26-9 through all games.  In all fairness, I wasn’t including D II games, so apples to apples the “Actual” record was 24-9, and I had us at 28-5.  That’s four full games the “wrong” way.  It felt worse than 4, though.

Here’s how I called it

UNC – loss (they’re just too good and we’ve not had good luck at the Orleans) -Wrong

USC – win

UCSB – win

Wichita State – toss-up (loss)

Wisconsin – toss-up (loss)

Illinois – win (revenge)

Cal – toss-up, win

UNR – toss-up, win

SDSU – win, both times Wrong, only once

CSU – win, both times Wrong, only once

New Mexico – split series (home win, road loss)

Not too shabby on my part, what I didn’t count on (and nobody else did) was the extreme fortune and whatever the team was drinking the night we beat UNC at the Orleans. Amazing. But, on the negative, who would have guessed losing to Wyoming and TCU? Head scratchers, games that I chalked up as ‘given’. The big surprise to many was that San Diego State would be a formidable opponent, spending some time ahead of UNLV in the national rankings. Clearly, SDSU can recruit and Coach Fisher is one of the best out there.

UNLV finished conference play with a record of 26-7, not quite the 28-4 I had predicted, but still good enough for Coach Rice to be among the best new coaches in college basketball, not to mention one of the best regardless. The Rebels spent more time being nationally ranked than they had since 1992, at one point #11 in the nation. The major hurdle for the Rebels was the MWC, as a whole, was completely legit and brought effort, intensity, and a lot of luck when they played the Rebels. 

Will the Rebels actually run?

I said:  We'll be playing bigger and faster.  Coach Rice has stressed style of play since day 1, and his style "Runs"!

The reality, in my opinion:  Yes, we Ran… Right out of steam!  I think the reason we did so well early in the season truly had a lot to do with “legs”.  I think we lost our legs late in the season because we were tired, and I think the biggest mistake Rice made was leaving fresh legs, much too often, on the bench.  Kruger used more subs on the average, and he wasn’t trying to run a high-octane offense.  I hope Rice and staff will consider this over the summer.  Lopez, Thomas, Smith, and even Wallace could have added much more depth and helped preserve the starters.  I think some of those huge leads we gave up are indicators of this notion.

I said they would, that losing Willis and Jasper, and gaining Moser and Smith would make the team more athletic, and could better execute the Runnin’ offense. 

I was half right. The Rebels did run, but Smith was not the factor he was envisoned to be, not totally his fault – he was inserted into a high-octane team midway through the season and was unable to match what Oscar Bellfield brought to the table. Mike Moser on the other hand, was half-man half amazing for the first 75% of the season, and then a mere mortal the rest of the way. Changing systems takes time, Coach Rice increased the PPG dramatically in his first season, and he will continue to implement both his offense and defense more effectively when he has his handpicked guys running it, and more time to work it. 

Will this year's schedule be the RPI builder of years past?

I said:  The first half of the year will be an RPI builder, but the second half would be “fragile”.  

RPI of 20 most of the conference season.  I greatly underestimated the strength of the conference.

I said it was a mixed bag, and there was a serious gap between the quality opponents we faced and non-quality opponents in the nonconference schedule.

Mostly right on this – but I didn’t properly value the RPI. The opponents were either high quality or terrible, with no middle ground. The RPI, and the way the Rebels capitalized sent our RPI soaring and certainly helped with the consistant national ranking (that and beating UNC). This was Coach Kruger's schedule, 95% of it. Coach Kruger’s most genius move is putting together a schedule that creates 20+ win seasons and also boasts a great RPI at the end of the day. The man is most genius in this respect. Hopefully Coach Rice will keep a little of Coach Kruger’s magical RPI schedule building. 

Last year the average attendance at the T&M was one of the best on the west coast at 13253.  What will the average attendance be this year?

Due to a lack of Saturday games, I said:  We'll still be one of the best-attended basketball arenas on the west coast, but I think we'll maintain attendance numbers - until next year.  

Home attendance ended up at 13867.  I’d say that was a reasonably good prediction???  However, had I known that ticket prices for the Plaza level would increase so much, I may have been more skeptical.  Overall, the fan turnout was great.  We took some major strides in creating a better atmosphere this year, even coming up with a cool name for the student section:  The Rebellion.  The 20 ft “Mike Moser” was awesome!

I predicted 15,000, the real number was 13867. I totally agree with Jason Taylor’s assessment on why there was no boost. Frankly, he should be running their ticket sales / marketing department, he accurately predicted their failure, and the reasons why that failure occurred. 

Will Marshall be a better PG than Bellfield?

I said:  If Marshall can build his way into the NBA, the Point is the perfect position for him to do it from.  Try guarding him one-on-one and he'll end up cramming it down your throat with his speed, strength, and explosiveness.  Apply "help D", and he'll dish or kick.  

Bellfield is a very good "face-up" jump shooter, so I believe he'll actually benefit as well.

With that said, I don't think the switch means as much under Rice as it would have under Kruger.  Rice's offense will rely on multiple transition ball handlers, all the way up through the power forward position.  Guards, including Wallace, will immediately turn up court as they rebound, so Marshall will bring the ball up less often under Rice, I believe, than Bellfield brought it up under Kruger.

If I were asked the same question now, I’d say it depends on how you view the role of the point guard.  If it is to control pace, conserve a good assist to turnover ratio, and distribute the ball, I’d say Bellfield.  However, if you need a point that can force his will, then Marshall is the obvious choice.  I like them both, for different reasons.  I think having the power to use either style was a big plus for Rice.

Marshall would greatly increase his stock with a more consistent outside shot and better free throw shooting.  Bellfield was a very reliable guard, and played MUCH better than his high school recruiting assessment valued him at.  He will be missed.

I had predicted that he would be the same, but do it in a different way. Marshall is not a better point guard than Bellfield, main reason is turnovers. Offensively, Marshall was ahead of Bellfield, but that’s fine and good and they have a name for that – shooting guard. I don’t think that Marshall has the mentality to be a great point guard, but he is fantastic as a shooting guard, or in limited minutes as a point guard. I was wrong on this one. 

Which assistant coach are we likely to see standing up and being the most vocal during games?

I said:  My only guess is a long shot - Heath Schroyer.  He was a bit of a foot stomper as head coach at Wyoming, but who knows how he'll be as a non-alpha dog?  

I think this was right.  There were several times Schroyer was standing behind rice yelling out calls.  I think he was well behaved, but I’d say he was the most vocal.  Augmon – sometimes I wondered if his lips were glued shut!  Hutson – Reserved, but not bashful.  

I had predicted Hutson, but it turned out to be Jason’s pick – Heath Schroyer. The guy couldn’t help himself, and the way the Rebels sometimes played – I don’t blame him in the least. 

Whose game will improve the most over last season?

I said:  I'm going to cheat on this one a little bit and look at a transfer.  For comparison, since he sat out last year, I'm borrowing UCLA's stats from 2009-10.  My prediction:  Mike Moser WILL WIN this category, assuming he stays healthy.  He didn't get much playing time at UCLA... only 4 minutes per game.  He shot 20% from the field and made less than 10% of his 3's.  My prediction:  Moser will go from averaging less than 1 point per game for the Bruins, to leading the Rebels in rebounding and scoring for UNLV this year, and will compete for "MWC Newcomer of the Year" honors.

Crazy?  Maybe, but I'm stickin' with it!

Uh-hem…

Leading scorer for the Rebels?  Mike Moser.

Leading rebounder for the Rebels?  Mike Moser.

MWC Newcomer of the Year?  Mike Moser.

Ya Baby!  Cheater or not, I’m braggin’ about that one!  Nobody around the conference called Moser a pre-season MWC Award winner, or likely to be the best overall player for UNLV.  

As John Sandler would say:  SLAAAM, DUNK!

During the fan scrimmage, I saw a good 10-12 pts per game that you can’t take away from him.  He’s too long, energetic, and can hit free throws.  Rebounds… that was obvious.  After the scrimmage I told him I was looking at the MWC Newcomer of The Year.  He smiled and said, “I wish.”  Cool kid.

I picked Mashour, but he was never given the playing time to improve and has essentially been removed from garbage time duty due to to an incident mid-season. 


The clear most-improved candidate was Brice Massamba – he was everything we wanted him to be this season. I am really, truly, sorry to see the big man leaving.  I think Justin Hawkins also raised his game considerably, and had Massamba not done it as a starter, I might named Hawkins instead. 

Is bringing back ‘the shark’ the right thing to do moving forward? 

Is there any greater respect we could give to Tark?  Loved it!

I was cautiously optimistic about the shark. Now, I’ve totally jumped on the bandwagon. It makes us unique, it a a very good thing, and it pays homage. I love the shark, even more than I love Mozilla. Long live the shark. 

Congrats to Chace Stanback

Chace had 16 points in a great effort in the Reese's College all-star game. I'm fairly certain (coverage is spotty) that he was the third leading scorer in the game, and second on the West team. 


I watched a good amount of it, and Chace looked like he was healthy and playing well, stroking the three, rebounding, and the occasional 2 point jumper. His team, the West, lost 103-99. 


Chace's performance should increase his stock. Way to represent UNLV, thanks Chace!

 http://www.nola.com/ncaa/index.ssf/2012/03/east_team_defeats_west_in_rees.html

Off-season format

Another exciting season has come and gone, but this off-season is shaping up to be plenty entertaining - hopefully not as intriguing as last off season, but positive expectations, growing, and preparing for dominance in Coach Rice's second season. 


There will be a lot of exciting things to look forward to in the off-season at Rebel Reign. We will be looking back at the regular season, recruiting, conference merger, more interviews, and generally getting better - like the Runnin' Rebels. We will try to have a new article posted each Sunday, but obviously if recruiting news or movement otherwise occurs, that story will break as it happens. 


Keep coming, and we will keep delivering the goods, as always membership and advertisement free. 


RebelReign

All the stats from the UNLV v. Colorado game

Here's the numbers - now you can draw your own conclusions!

NCAA Basketball

NCAA Basketball

College Basketball Stats

NCAA Basketball Stats

College Basketball

NCAA Basketball Stats

The little engine that couldn’t: UNLV played like the underdog and couldn’t overcome deficiencies, lost 68-64 to Colorado

The wheels have been loose all conference schedule, oh the humanity!

The perfect opportunity to advance in the NCAA tournament was squandered by the Rebels tonight. So many stars had aligned to make the path easier – matching us up with a Pac 12 opponent, putting us in a very familiar and close venue, giving us a not well deserved 6 seeding. The problem is when the Rebels play the way they played as of recent, they lose basketball games. Tonight the Buffalos bested the Rebels, and our season is over.

Looking at the faces of the Rebels at the start of the game, nobody really looked excited. The only player I saw even look at ease, was Anthony Marshall. After the Rebels by Massamba won the tip-off, the only offense to come for the longest time was from Brice, with two layups to give the Rebels 4 points. In the meantime, the Buffalos had the hot hand and simply tore through the Rebels defense. The early part of the game essentially went like this, Rebel player shoots a three – misses, Colorado rebounds the ball and scores. The biggest early lead by the Buffalos was 19-7 with 9:51 to go in the first half. The Rebels got it down to 4 with about five minutes left, but then Colorado pushed the lead out to 11 to finish the half.

The problems UNLV encountered were numerous and not at all unfamiliar. A large part of the Rebels offense was run by way of kick out threes. These attempts remained only attempts. The Rebels couldn’t buy a rebound, no rebounds means two things – no second chance points, more opportunities for the other team to score the basket. Coach Rice’s ‘Runnin’ Rebels’ looked more like Coach Kruger’s half court Rebels, minus the efficient defense. When these Rebels don’t run, only one guy can create his own shot – Anthony Marshall. Everyone else looks quite uncomfortable shooting in that style of offense. For the half, the Rebels shot 27% versus the Buffalos 50%, over half of the shot attempts were three point attempts (16 of 29), and the Rebels were out rebounded 27 to 12. With numbers like these, the Rebels were lucky only to be down 11 points at the half, you would expect 20.

Coach Rice was interviewed after coming back from halftime, and said the Rebels would come back – a seemingly unbelievable statement given the state of play earlier in the game. But, the Rebels eventually did make a run and closed the gap considerably. But, it would have to get worse before it got better.

The Rebels further squandered their 11 point hole by posting only 2 points in the first five minutes of the second half. Looking very much like a continuation of the first half, Colorado pushed the lead to 20 points, 49-29. Many likely called it a day when they saw what was happening – hell I was tempted to try and watch Tower Heist to cleanse my eyes of this horror. But I didn’t, I couldn’t – I watch every game including garbage time, and this may have been the last garbage time of the season. But it was not.

With about 10 minutes left, the lackadaisical Rebels did what the announcing crew said they should be doing from the beginning of the second half – play full court trapping defense. Once the Rebels did it, turnovers came in bunches. Once the turnovers came, the Rebels scored. They scored so much that they had a 14-1 run and brought the score to within 2 points, 57-55 on a Justin Hawkins 3 pointer.

So 2 point game, 5 minutes to go, momentum on the Rebels side – completely doable. Incorrect assumption. From this point out the Rebels for whatever reason abandoned all that worked for them during the 14-1 run and again played man-to-man half court defense. The result, while it was close and within reach for the rest of the game, it would take epic failures the likes of what was seen in the First Four to get us to the promised land. Most everything that was working during the 14-1 run vanished, and we were stuck in a 1-2 possession game  for the remainder of the game.

As for final statistics;
Shooting UNLV - 32%, Colorado 45% (UNLV jacked up 23 more shot attempts than Colorado!);
Rebounding: UNLV 33, Colorado 46
Assists: UNLV 13, Colorado 12
Blocks: UNLV 8, Colorado 3
Steals: UNLV 14, Colorado 4
Turnovers: UNLV 8, Colorado 23

Along the way in this aggravating game were some good things. Various Rebels, Justin Hawkins, Anthony Marshall, and Carlos Lopez all were successful in goating fouls or giving up their bodies in the name of drawing offensive fouls. Anthony Marshall had a dominant block and a circus shot layup near the end of the game. Mike Moser intercepted an inbounds pass and nearly pulled off a sweet pass back on a steal to Bellfield, but Bellfield was poked in the eye and not ready to receive said pass, resulting in a giveback.
This is essentially how we lost 68-64 to the Colorado Buffalos in the struggling Pac-12. In the coming days lots of data will be up about this game, and various aspects will be highlighted as areas for improvement. Too fed up right now to name Reign Men, that will come later when a little time has passed.

While the Rebels made it again to the dance, and won 26 games in the process, it is a bitter sweet day when you lose in the first round of the tournament as the 6 seed to an 11 seed. The little engine that couldn’t showed up today, hopefully it will retire and leave far more exiciting times ahead. Congrats to the Rebels for a great season, and for putting together a run in this game and at least making it interesting,

UNLV, The RPI, and NCAA Tournament Seeding

The Rebels and the Buffalos can both give “Thanks”

- By Jason Taylor

Every year there’s a lot of talk about which teams deserved what seed in the NCAA Tournament.  This year, UNLV fans feared falling to the normally relegated dreaded 8 or 9 seed. 

The 8 and 9 play each other in the tournament, and the winner of this pair moves on to play the #1 seed (assuming of course the 1 seed wins their first game).

It is actually better to be a 12 or 13 seed in theory (vs. and 8 or 9), because the highest possible seed you would meet in your first 2 games is a “4”. 

An 11 or 13 is better as well, because the highest you would play in the same scenario is a “3”.  This is exemplified in the UNLV (6) vs. Colorado (11) game.

The tension for UNLV fans over seeding is rooted in a couple of worries… 1) UNLV hasn’t seemed to get a fair shake from the Tournament Committee in recent years, 2) We had a terrible conference road record, and 3) We didn’t make it into the MWC championship game.

UNLV’s strengths were in its RPI ranking and in the non-conference schedule/record.  The bottom line is, we had a good overall record combined with the fact we beat the #1 team in the nation at the time, and a current #1 seed, UNC… Thank goodness!

The Rebels finished the season with an RPI ranking of 19^th.  In theory, if the committee only used this mathematical computation to produce seeding, UNLV would have been a 5 seed (1-4 would be 1 seeds, 5-8 would be 2’s, etc).  So, it appears we were bumped out of the 5 spot, but were likely somewhat anchored by our non-conference record, and only slipped 1 seed. 

Colorado was somewhat the opposite.  They received an 11 seed even though their RPI is higher than any 11, 12, and 13th seeded teams except one, Montana (13 seed, RPI 74).  Mathematically, they should have been a 15 seed.  Their strength came from season-end, where they unexpectedly ran through the Pac 12 field to win their conference tournament. 

So, it’s apparent that the committee, contrary to popular opinion, does have subjective intelligence.  How much so, is certainly up for debate, which I’ll leave for you and the talk show.

Here, however, is information you can use in the discussion.  These are the tournament teams, placed in the order of seeding, with their respective RPI’s.  Have fun making your case, whatever it is!

	SEED	RPI			SEED	RPI			SEED	RPI
SYRACUSE	1	1		CINCINNATI	6	42		CALIFORNIA	12	37
KENTUCKY	1	2		GONZAGA	7	25		VCU	12	38
MICH ST	1	3		ST MARYS	7	28		S FLORIDA	12	52
N CAROLINA	1	4		FLORIDA	7	30		OHIO	13	47
DUKE	2	5		N DAME	7	39		NEW MEX ST	13	59
KANSAS	2	6		MEMPHIS	8	16		DAVIDSON	13	63
OHIO ST	2	7		CREIGHTON	8	24		MONTANA	13	74
MISSOURI	2	10		IOWA ST	8	33		IONA	14	40
BAYLOR	3	8		KANSAS ST	8	45		S DAKOTA ST	14	43
MARQUETTE	3	9		SO. MISS	9	21		BYU	14	46
FLORIDA ST	3	11		ST LOUIS	9	31		BELMONT	14	58
GRGETWN	3	15		CONN	9	32		ST BNVNTRE	14	72
LOUISVILLE	4	13		ALABAMA	9	36		LOYOLA MD	15	78
MICHIGAN	4	14		XAVIER	10	41		LEHIGH	15	91
INDIANA	4	17		PURDUE	10	48		DETROIT	15	125
WISCONSIN	4	23		VIRGINIAL	10	53		NORFOLK ST	15	128
WICHITA ST	5	12		W VIRGINIA	10	57		LNG ISLAND	16	80
TEMPLE	5	18		COLRDO ST	11	29		UNC ASHVLE	16	104
VANDERBILT	5	20		TEXAS	11	49		LAMAR	16	108
NEW MEX	5	26		NC STATE	11	49		VERMONT	16	135
UNLV	6	19		COLORADO	11	61		MISS VALLEY	16	144
MURRAY ST	6	22		LNG BCH ST	12	34		WESTERN KY	16	189
SAN DGO ST	6	26		HARVARD	12	35