Why Boston College is never mentioned in the same breath as Illinois and North Carolina
You hear complaints from Boston College fans all the time on how they are disrespected and not given the credit deserved for a good season. It is a fair complaint. You don't see too many schools with 1 loss this late in the season from a major conference. There is a reason why Boston College does not get the same hype as North Carolina or Illinois. They are not as good as those schools. Let me explain.
There has been one indicator over the years that has been common among championship caliber teams. It is the average margin of victory. Lets take a look at some recent champion's margin of victory.
2004 UConn (+14.9, 3rd)
2003 Syracuse (+10.0, 17th)
2002 Maryland (+14.1, 5th)
2001 Duke (+20.2, 1st)
2000 Michigan St. (15.1, 5th)
1999 UConn (15.9, 4th)
1998 Kentucky (13.1, 10th)
While margin of victory alone does not determine the champion, it gives a good indication to who has the best chance to cut down the nets at the end of the season. Below is the margin of victory for Illinois, North Carolina and Boston College.
North Carolina (21.6, 1st)
Illinois (17.3, 4th)
Boston College (10.3, 33rd)
Breaking down the numbers further into double digit wins we find
Illinois 23
North Carolina 21
Boston College 10
Single Digit wins:
Boston College 12 (plus1 loss)
North Carolina 2 (plus 3 losses)
Illinois 4
The reason North Carolina and Illinois are so good is that they give opponents very few chances to win down the stretch. Therefore those teams games are less likely to turn on a bad ref calls or bad bounce in the final moments.
Conversely Boston College has had a lot of close games and won almost all of them. You have to give them credit for winning them, but history has shown that teams that have a lot of close victories won't win the tournament.
Why is that? There are two reasons for this.
- Good team win. Great teams win big. Especially in college sports.
- Teams that play a lot of close games wear down as the season goes on. That is why Illinois even though their starters have logged a lot of minutes will be fine come tournament time, because a lot of those minutes did not occur under high stress situations unlike Boston College.
Even though the average margin of victory for Boston College now stands at 10.3 it will be much lower by the time their season is over based on the quality of competition they will face the rest of the way.
To sum up, Boston College is a good basketball team. They are just not in the league of North Carolina and Illinois.
posted by Big D @ 2:04 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
Dave,
Your thoughts are appreciated but you speak as if they are facts. What evidence do you have to support the idea that teams that play close games where down by the end of the season? Where is your history that teams that have a lot of close victories won't win the national title? What is the common thread in margin of victory? They win by 15 points? 10 points, they are in the top 5 by margin of victory? I don't see a common thread at all. I'm sure you can find teams that will fit your assumptions but let me suggest 2 other reasons that also fit your stats: 1) Some of these schools play lousy out of conference schedules, which makes their MOV look better. 2) Some of these schools play lousy conference schedules, which makes their MOV look better.
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