KenPom has a luck metric for a reason.
Last season, Wisconsin won a B1G title. This year, the same team finished sixth. Analysts say the Badgers schedule, especially in the back half of the conference season, helped them.
Michigan skipped road games at Northwestern and Penn State.
That was lucky. After all, Ohio State & Maryland both lost at Northwestern. Penn State won five games against teams that received at-large bids to the NCAA Tournament.
But Michigan also lost at Minnesota. It was unlucky that they caught the Gophers on a good night, and before key MN players were lost to injury.
When you look at opponents stats in games played against the Wolverines as compared to games played against all other teams, you might find some anomalies. Did they shoot worse because they were having a bad night, or because of great defense? It's hard to prove either way.
Michigan never looked like a dominant team to me. That's my subjective opinion. I think they got lucky, a lot.
I don't think anybody in the BT ever looked dominant. I thought all year the league seemed over rated. A lot of shit ball IMO.
Illinois was slipping toward a 5 seed until they apparently got her ass handed to them by Coach Hulka at Nebraska for fuckign off.
We had a great run after that minus the MSU assault and battery game. Until we fcked the dog vs Loyola doing the fck the dog thing.
There needs to be a Fck The Dog metric. We would have led the league.
Michigan was pretty damn good. They took us lightly up there and we had our best defensive game in last 16 years - minus Ayo which was maybe not a coincidence.
Michigan lost the second MSU game after clinching the BT title and having a letdown.
Minnesota was pretty good at home before the injuries. They beat Iowa also.
They were the most well balanced team in the league with Livers IMO.
As far as the luck thing- KenPom actually had UM ranked lower than us in terms of the luck factor.
Luck – A measure of the deviation between a team’s actual winning percentage and what one would expect from its game-by-game efficiencies. It’s a Dean Oliver invention. Essentially, a team involved in a lot of close games should not win (or lose) all of them. Those that do will be viewed as lucky (or unlucky).
We did win 3 OT games and escaped a loss vs Ohio.
UM had one OT game when they were not yet starting Dickinson and people didn't think they were that good. They had no other close wins, but two close losses.
The schedule thing has some merit. You play more road games you certainly can lose more.
As far as Wisconsin- they were mediocre and had easy schedule last year and were mediocre this year aside from their apparent big win vs Loyola. They were 0-8 vs Top 5 teams in BT.
I dunno. I liked UM. Fun to watch.
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