Read their tea leaves correctly, or at least their tempo-free statistics, and you can divine not only which top-notch teams deserve NCAA tournament berths but also which squads are likely to advance or trip in March. That’s the promise of our Giant Killers project. For 10 years, we have refined a statistical model to identify traits common to deep underdogs that pull off big tournament upsets and to heavy favorites that topple. And we can already glean which Giants are shaping up as vulnerable.
For details about how our annual metrics-based forecast works, you can check this out. But here are the definitions you need to get started: A Giant is a team that plays an NCAA tournament opponent seeded at least five spots lower in any round; a Giant Killer is a team that beats a Giant; and a team’s Giant Rating is our estimate of its percentage chance of defeating an average Killer, based on data from 2007 to 2014. Over the years, we have found that successful Killers tend to play high-risk, high-reward styles, increasing the variability of their scoring. Giants need to snuff out opponents’ chance-taking to ward them off.
So who could make it to the Big Dance only to be upstaged by Cinderella? Without further ado, five Giants whose slips are showing. (For projected seeds, we have used the latest from Joe Lunardi’s Bracketology.)
Projected Seed: 2
Giant Rating: 83.4
Arizona is certainly a lion, not a gazelle. But if it wanders into the path of the wrong herd of feisty buffalo, it just might get hurt. The Wildcats’ Giant Rating is solid at 83.4, but that’s not quite up to the standards of a typical top-two seed. This year, for instance, Virginia checks in at 93.6, Duke stands at 94.0, and Kentucky sports an absurd 99.3 rating.
So why is Arizona somewhat more vulnerable? It comes back to an old GK standby: offensive rebounding. As big and athletic as the Cats are with Kaleb Tarczewski, Brandon Ashley, Stanley Johnson and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, they are only slightly above average on the offensive boards. Per Kenpom.com (all data through Tuesday), they grab 32.4 percent of their missed shots, which ranks 127th in the nation. That matters because these Wildcats are not an offensive juggernaut. Although they rank 13th in the nation in adjusted offensive efficiency (115 points per 100 possessions), they have shown that they can go cold at inopportune times. In their loss to UNLV in December, the Cats shot just 42.6 percent yet grabbed only seven of 39 available offensive rebounds (17.9 percent). It was the same story in a two-point loss at Oregon State: poor shooting (37.8 percent) compounded by a weak effort on the glass (19.4 percent).
It’s virtually impossible to shoot well for six straight tourney games. So a team has to find other ways to win, and the safest route for a Giant typically involves creating additional chances by taking advantage of its superior size and athleticism. Arizona has the skills to do that, but the Wildcats’ emphasis on transition defense means they don’t have the scheme to match. Over the season’s final month, it might make sense for Sean Miller to turn his guys loose to track down their own missed shots. Chances are they’ll end up mauling their prey.
Projected Seed: 3
Giant Rating: 76.8
Notre Dame is a team of extremes, which is what you might expect from a team that starts four guards. The Fighting Irish are uberefficient on offense yet glaringly porous on defense. They take care of the ball and never take it away. They clear their defensive boards but rarely track down their own misses. And all these extremes add up to a résumé that is highly unusual -- and makes the Irish somewhat vulnerable to a tourney underdog.
Since the dawn of the modern spreadsheet era (2001-02), no team has finished the season ranked among the nation’s 20 best teams with a defensive efficiency as low as 150th. In fact, only eight teams have ranked outside of the top 100 in defensive efficiency and still landed in the top 20 overall (Marquette and Georgia in 2002-03, Wake Forest in 2003-04 and 2004-05, California in 2009-10, Missouri in 2011-12 and Michigan and Duke last season). But the Irish are sitting at 15th overall despite a defense ranked 150th in the nation, one that allows foes to shoot 45 percent from 2-point range.
Even more worrisome to us at GK Central is Notre Dame’s inability to force turnovers. Opponents give up the ball on just 17.3 percent of possessions, which leaves Notre Dame vulnerable to a hot-shooting underdog (since the best way to contest shots is to never allow them in the first place). The Irish caught a glimpse of what that could mean over the weekend, when Pittsburgh shot 58.5 percent in a four-point home win.
At the other end, the Irish face an even more severe version of Arizona’s greatest weakness. Notre Dame grabs just 29.4 percent of available offensive rebounds, which isn’t surprising, given the four-guard lineup. The trade-offs have certainly worked in Notre Dame’s favor, with an offense that scores an adjusted 122.6 points per 100 possessions while hitting 40.1 percent of its 3-pointers and 59.9 percent of its 2s. Mike Brey’s offense is a study in spacing and ball movement, and Jerian Grant has been a worthy conductor.
But jump shots can disappear in March, even those as smooth as Pat Connaughton’s. A safe Giant has a backup plan to create points, either through defensive pressure or offensive rebounding. Right now, Notre Dame doesn’t do either, and it’s hard to imagine much changing over the season’s final month.
Projected Seed: 3
Giant Rating: 64.2
The Cyclones are spun from the same cloth as Notre Dame. They are not quite as small, not quite as efficient on offense and not quite as porous on defense, but they have similar strengths and weaknesses. From a GK perspective, we’re most concerned about that double scoop of trouble known as poor offensive rebounding and a defense that doesn’t force turnovers.
The most interesting aspect of that low defensive turnover percentage (18.5 percent) is that the Cyclones play fast. Really fast. They are 11th in the country in tempo at 70.8 possessions per game and second in average possession length (14.3 seconds). Typically, you associate pressure defense with an up-tempo offense, but not in Ames. The good news for the Cyclones is that Giant Killers typically play a slower game; if Iowa State is able to force its preferred tempo against a weaker foe, it helps to create a larger sample size of small-scale skirmishes, which ultimately favors the more talented squad.
Despite a host of midsized athletes surrounding Georges Niang, the Cyclones don’t hit the offensive glass hard (29.1 percent). That’s mostly the result of a system that emphasizes spacing and encourages Niang to drag his man away from the hoop. That said, Jameel McKay is strong and active at 6-foot-9, and with a 10.5 percent offensive rebound rate, he projects as the type of player who could come in handy in a game where Iowa State’s shots aren’t falling. As the transfer grows more comfortable -- he became eligible in late December -- he might give Iowa State just what it needs to ward off a pesky Killer.
Projected Seed: 4
Giant Rating: 53.8
If you’re sensing a theme, it’s because there is one. Vulnerable Giants tend to struggle on the offensive glass and don’t force many turnovers. You can add Maryland to that club, but the Terps have bigger problems than Notre Dame and Iowa State. They’re just not that good.
Our model pegs Maryland as just the 33rd-best team in the nation, which doesn’t connect with its 19-4 record or projected No. 4 seed. Why? Well, the Terps are good -- but not great -- at both ends. They rank 56th in adjusted offensive efficiency (108.5 points per 100 possessions) and 44th on D (94.0). They don’t convert well close to the hoop (47.7 percent shooting on 2-pointers) and allow foes to take a lot of treys (38.2 percent of opponents’ shots). In other words, there are lots of ways to beat Maryland, despite Melo Trimble’s emergence as an impact point guard and the veteran influence of Dez Wells and Jake Layman. We might be seeing evidence of just how meaningful these stats are. Before outlasting Penn State at home Wednesday night, Maryland had lost two of its previous three games by a combined 43 points.
Then you come back to the offensive rebounding woes (29.9 percent) and inability to force turnovers (17.7 percent) and you start to see how a well-trained Giant Killer could take aim at the Terps.
So how can Maryland prevent a March collapse? Keep developing Damonte Dodd. At 6-11, he provides a different dimension. Yes, he has been frustratingly inconsistent and foul-prone, with just two points and three rebounds in 28 minutes over his past three games. But he also grabs 12 percent of available offensive rebounds and can punish weaker teams; witness his nine-point, 10-board, three-block performance in December against Winthrop. No, he’s not suddenly going to lift the Terps to the Final Four, but he just might save their shells in the round of 64.
Projected Seed: 5
Giant Rating: 53.4
Northern Iowa is a great story, and the Panthers are playing great basketball. So they will rightly enter the tourney next month as a Giant. But that doesn’t mean they’ll be safe.
Our model is extremely skeptical of how they will handle a talented underdog, because they don’t play like a typical Giant. Once again, that starts with offensive rebounding. UNI’s 26.7 percent offensive board rate is 298th in the country, despite the efforts of powerful 6-6 senior Marvin Singleton (12.3 percent offensive rebound rate). Fellow senior Seth Tuttle (15.8 PPG, 6.7 RPG, 3.0 APG) has been fantastic and has the size (6-8, 240) to hunt down second shots, but that’s not his game. So the Panthers have to be efficient offensively, because they won’t get many second chances.
On defense, the Panthers have two hidden problems on a unit that is strong overall (90.4 points allowed per 100 possessions, 13th in the nation). First, they -- wait for it -- don’t force a lot of turnovers, as their 19.6 percent mark is right around the national average. Second, they let opponents shoot way too many 3-pointers (38.5 percent of opponents’ shots, 297th in the country). Our model doesn’t specifically deduct points from Giants for that issue; overall, it doesn’t show up as a significant trait of teams that fall in early upsets. But Giant Killers do tend to be high-volume 3-point shooters, meaning UNI’s defensive scheme could play right into the hands of the wrong opponent. It’s hard to tell a coach of a 21-2 team to do anything different, but it might behoove Ben Jacobson to focus more of his team’s defensive attention to the arc as the regular season winds down.
Finally, we at GK Central were crushed by the news that VCU point guard Briante Weber had suffered a torn ACL, MCL and meniscus in Saturday’s loss to Richmond, ending a brilliant career that might as well have been conjured by our model. Weber personified Giant Killing with his historic ability to take the basketball away from the other team. Kenpom.com’s data goes back to 2003-04, and since then, Weber’s four college seasons resulted in the top four marks in that category. This season was especially ridiculous. At the time of the injury, his steal percentage was 8.73 -- more than 3 percentage points better than second-place Gary Payton II (5.32). We had been appreciating Weber since he was a freshman, and two years ago, we wrote about how Weber was the perfect fit for VCU’s Havoc system. He will be missed this March.
Thanks to Liz Bouzarth, John Harris and Kevin Hutson of Furman University for research assistance.