I’m planning to do all of my independent writing at Substack this season. You can see my piece on the results from the H.U.M.A.N. poll there ..read more

Welcome to the H.U.M.A.N. poll. No longer do you have to wait years hoping the Associated Press will give you one of its 60-ish coveted spots to vote in a poll ranking the top 25. Now, with a kenpom.com subscription, you can participate in the world’s first human-based 1-362 preseason poll for college basketball. Instead of the elite voting in a poll honoring the elite, everyone can vote in a poll honoring every team.  Upon clicking this link you will be given 50 match-ups (subscribers only). In each match-up, your job is to pick the team that will be ranked higher in my ratings at the en ..read more

Rd2 Swt16 Elite8 Final4 Final Champ 1MW Houston 93.8 71.6 56.7 38.6 23.5 15.0 1S Alabama 97.6 69.8 52.2 35.8 23.4 13.5 2W UCLA 94.6 71.1 46.5 29.0 17.3 10.6 1E Purdue 98.3 63.4 36.7 23.5 12.7 6.3 2MW Texas 88.8 60.4 39.8 21.3 11.0 6.0 4E Tennessee 84.1 57.7 32.1 20.7 11.3 5.7 4W Connecticut 80.1 51.1 31.0 16.4 9.0 5.1 3W Gonzaga ..read more

Rd2 Swt16 Elite8 Final4 Final Champ 1W Gonzaga 97.9 84.4 70.8 53.7 38.5 27.5 1S Arizona 97.1 76.3 47.2 29.1 18.1 8.9 1MW Kansas 96.4 68.7 44.3 27.9 14.6 6.6 1E Baylor 94.5 71.9 43.3 25.2 11.6 6.4 2E Kentucky 91.1 64.9 41.3 23.6 11.0 6.2 2MW Auburn 91.5 68.8 47.9 26.3 13.2 5.6 3S Tennessee 91.5 65.4 39.2 20.0 11.4 5.1 5S Houston ..read more

Prior to last night, the last time Arkansas beat AP #1 was on February 12, 1984 against North Carolina. It was a very odd basketball game. You can find the whole thing on YouTube, although the sound and video are mismatched a bit. Here’s the box score. Anyway, let’s talk about the weird things about this game. 1. It was played in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. This makes it the most famous game ever to be played in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Before moving their token Little Rock-area game to corporately-named arena in North Little Rock, the Razorbacks played an annual game in Pine Bluff. Usually it was agai ..read more

Here are the probabilities for the NCAA tournament based on the current ratings (no injury information is taken into account)… Rd2 Swt16 Elite8 Final4 Final Champ 1W Gonzaga 99.6 91.2 77.3 60.5 46.3 34.4 1MW Illinois 96.1 67.8 52.7 34.5 22.2 10.7 1E Michigan 98.4 72.7 53.3 37.6 17.4 10.4 1S Baylor 97.5 67.2 46.6 31.5 18.0 8.2 2MW Houston 94.4 70.6 49.9 28.2 16.8 7.4 2W Iowa 91.0 70.6 49.7 19.3 11.3 6.4 ..read more

Not sure if I’ll keep up with this or how accurate this will be given seeding irregularities and cancellations, but this will be the home for conference tourney forecasts… (These are complete now.) SWAC… Semis Final Champ 1 Prairie View A&M 98.9 65.6 38.6 3 Texas Southern 75.4 45.9 24.0* 2 Jackson St. 79.9 41.0 19.5 5 Southern 56.7 20.9 9.4 4 Grambling St. 43.3 13.4 5.2 6 Alcorn St. 24.6 8.8 2.4 7 Arkansas Pine Bluff 20.1 4.3 0.8 8 Mississippi Valley St. 1.1 0.04 ..read more

Last Sunday, the Kansas Chiefs overcame a 24-point first half deficit to take a halftime lead over the Houston Texans. This was reportedly the largest deficit ever overcome by a team leading at the half in NFL history. It’s kind of a silly record when you think about it. You don’t win the game by leading at halftime so who really cares if a team erases the deficit by halftime or a few minutes into the second half. However, in a win-or-go-home situation, it does say something about how the game unfolded. Normally a team would be dead trailing by 24, and not only were the Chiefs not dead, they h ..read more

Through ten games, Wyoming’s leader for offensive rebounds is Hunter Thompson who has six. So far this season, an individual has had at least that many offensive boards in a single game 251 times1. A total of 41 players have done it at least twice already. As a team, Wyoming players have been credited with just 29 offensive rebounds so far. That’s five fewer than Kofi Cockburn in two more games. It’s not that Wyoming isn’t ever trying for offensive rebounds, but the Cowboys are coming as close to that practice as any team in modern history. With an offensive rebound percentage of 12.8, the rec ..read more

My computer says the expected point total of the Virginia/Purdue game is 98 points. That’s the first time the computer has forecasted a total below 100 in the 30-second shot clock era. But it’s almost certainly too low. As of this morning, sports books are posting the total at 103. As far as I can tell, this is the lowest total from the past seven seasons. This beats a week-old record from UVa’s November 27th game against Maine where the total was around 105. So if one’s model is forecasting a total below 100, one’s model has a blind spot. Of course, college basketball games can and do fail to ..read more