What a very handsome man. Thanks. 
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This is the thesis of the upset-picking model formerly known as as Giant Killers, now known as Slingshot:
Start here: Underdogs everywhere win by playing high-risk/high-reward styles. Widening the variability of a team’s scoring gives a longshot better odds to overcome a generally superior opponent. Smart Cinderellas take risks — and often flirt with danger — to increase the volume and value of their possessions. They force turnovers, crash the boards and launch 3s. Of course, when tactics like these don’t work, the results can turn ugly. But who cares about that in a win-or-go-home scenario? Davids have been knocking out Goliaths with fortunate slingshot strikes ever since Biblical days.
On the other hand, heavy favorites win by avoiding chaos and smoothly converting their natural advantages into point differential. Top seeds are safest when they pile up offensive rebounds (which provides themselves with second chances and insurance against poor shooting performances) and avoid turnovers (which limits extra possessions and easy transition chances for opponents). Favorites — overdogs, if you will — want to turn every matchup into just another day at the office.
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It’s all about what you’re trying to measure. This guy seems to want to measure possessions so he’s using the right measure. (I’ve never bought the low possessions theory, but it has its adherents)
If you’re trying to measure how fast or slow our offense moves, there are stats that can measure that. Kenpom’s offensive possession length is a good first stop (query how it deals with offensive rebounds). Then you can look for various transition measures. We are 149. (Defense is 364)
But if one’s theory is just that low possessions is a problem, then you need to look at total possessions.
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Thanks for posting. He’s no Cuts, but then again, reading through a Cuts’ level production on all 68 teams would probably take until May…
Nothing in this scares me.
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I think this is a good basis to feel that this UVA team is less prone to an upset than past teams, and that this Wright State team is not as likely to pull an upset.
UVA dominated the offensive glass against smaller teams in the non-con. Turnovers can be a bit of an issue at times but still above average there (and was better in non-con play). 2nd nationally in block rate I think is huge. They are 3PA heavy and have gotten in trouble with that in some games but I think against a smaller team TDR will be able to just take over if shots arent dropping. Feels like this version of UVA will be more able to just impose its will on a smaller team as opposed to having to go small to match up.
On the flip side, Wright State doesnt take many 3s and they allow opponents to shoot 53% from 2. In 2 matchups against top 100 opponents (Cal and Butler), they were 354th in FTA/FGA on offense and 321st on defense, and their offensive rebounding rate was only 25%. It looks like they did resort to chucking more 3s (41.5% 3PA/FGA) but only made 28.6%. These matchups were against teams with significantly less size than UVA though (they only got blocked on 3.8% of 2s). Also Cal and Butler shot 61.8% from 2 against them. Obviously this is a very small sample size, but this just does not feel like a team that’s built for an upset.
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Yeah, the upset formula is: they’re hot / play well and/or we are not / don’t.
From the little I’ve dug so far, it seems to be a matchup tailor made for us.
Plus they’re VERY young
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I’m as shell-shocked as the rest of us by first-round failures, but I am supremely confident in this matchup. This is the most telling statement from the article:
It is worth noting that Wright State has not faced a ton of opponents who limit shots at the rim well, though. The Raiders only played nine D1 games vs. teams in the 46th percentile or better at limiting at-the-rim attempt rate, and went just 3-6 in those contests (18-5 otherwise).
We are not just good, we are elite at rim protection. Moreover, Wright State’s usual starting lineup runs 6’ 1”, 6’ 2”, 6’ 7”, 6’ 7”, 6’ 9”. Their top three coming off the bench are 6’ 3”, 6’ 6”, and 6’ 5”. So right off the bat, we take away what they do best, and tower over them in the paint.
If they want to shoot a ton of threes to compensate (as suggested in the Athletic article quoted by @AdventiveQuasar above, they have the shooters, but we’re also excellent at defending the three point line. They’re basically going against our strengths either way, without the length or athleticism to challenge us.
The other salient quote from the article is this:
Two potentially key traits to watch in Wright State’s future draw are the opponents’ offensive rebounding rate and 3-point percentage. The Raiders are 2-5 against the top-85 for OR%, with the wins coming by a combined five points. They are 2-6 against the top 40 for 3P% (19-5 otherwise) and 7-9 against the top 140 (14-2 otherwise).
Nuff said. Hoos by a couple dozen.
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A post was merged into an existing topic: 
NCAA Tournament Men’s Basketball - Outside UVa Thread
I’m glad y’all are doing deep dives on Wright State, but, no, this is an easy win.
Wright State is in the same ballpark on the three basketball-number sites as Boston College and slightly better than Georgia Tech on all three. I’m not learning a damn thing about these guys this week.
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Yeah doing this number of teams and getting it out right after Selection Sunday is nutty. He must have 10 videos left on the cutting room floor due to needing to prep some contingencies.
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We probably should have lost to BC.
I will say that looking at Wright States KenPom/Torvik, they look like more of a 175 ranked team than where they’re actually ranked. Haven’t shown an ability to compete with teams in the top 150.
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Some teams are more built to potentially get hot. UMBC shot and made a lot of 3s in 2018, for instance. Wright State feels like a lower variance team, which is what you want in the first round as a 3 seed.
Obviously I’ve got a lot of first round upset trauma or I would probably not be thinking about this as much as I already have.
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This makes me feel better about the matchup with Tenn.
I want to see Ugo with 15 blocks.
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Took a quick look at Torvik and that was our worst 3PT shooting in a win this season (4/23, 17%) just barely ahead of the Northwestern game. I don’t recall the specifics of the BC game off the top of my head other than it was an ugly game, but my general point is that Virginia should easily win this game against Wright State (despite, you know, the fact that weird things can happen in any given game).
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I generally don’t like to do the whole Bennett/Odom night-and-day comparison thingy, but this kind of project would’ve never happened in the CTB era.
Hope the extra exposure helps in the upcoming recruiting battles.
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Oh I think it’s only getting worse. The gap between haves and have nots is growing, and this is a more top heavy season than we’ve probably ever seen. I’d bet chalk
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We probably should have lost to a team that didn’t hold a single lead in the last 11 minutes of the game?
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We have no chance.
Matt Hart!
Don’t give away the special sauce, man!
Before the season, Hart said, he spoke to counterparts in the NBA to gain some insight on how to use the challenges and looked at analytics suggesting that the value of using the challenge was much greater the closer you get to the end of the game.
“Each possession is worth more when you get down to one minute, two minutes,” Hart said. “So we’d only use it in the first half if you’re 100 percent positive. If it’s questionable, it’s not worth it. I haven’t used it a lot where I was unsure. It’s really only been when I’m positive we’re going to get it. So that’s how I view it unless we’re down and it’s just a Hail Mary.”
Another piece of data Virginia has collected is that roughly 90 percent of the calls they’ll challenge are out of bounds and that 75 percent of the challengeable calls happen on the baselines. So when Hart is watching the game on the iPad, he’ll do it almost exclusively via the baseline camera angle to speed up the process. All in all, Hart has access to six different cameras that he can check with a swipe of the finger.
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