I was sitting down to take my first long look at the Final Four today when, as I often do, I started to think about whether there were overriding rules that should be followed when handicapping college basketball’s last three games of the year. I tend to do this kind of thing whenever I am faced with an annual event. It’s not because I am looking for a system or a shortcut – those don’t exist, or at least not without a ridiculous amount of research and study to uncover them. Instead, I do it because it helps me to focus better on the games at hand, and to prioritize the ridiculous amount of information that I will be faced with. If you don’t have some kind of a framework to build upon when you look at a wildly public game like these three will be then you are vulnerable to being led astray by the ‘experts’ and whatever topics they happen to be focused on these days. In the last two rounds, for example, it would have been pretty easy to discount Memphis because we heard endlessly how badly they shot fouls and how much that matters. As it turns out they shot very well from the line, and they would have won both games fairly handily even if they had been much, much worse.
As I looked at these games, these are the four basic rules that I came up with to shape my further analysis. I’m not suggesting that these are definitive by any means, but they will definitely define and containing both the starting points of my handicapping and the places where I spend the most time:
1. The better team wins – This may seem obvious, but it bears saying anyway. This is not the time to question which team is more motivated or anything else. Every team has been focusing on this all year, and they will be at their best. We see lots of upsets every year leading up to this point, but we don’t usually see them past here. The job, then, is not too get too fancy or too cute with th whole thing, but rather to figure out which teams are better and to back those.
2. Ignore the spread – Obviously this only holds up to a point – it would be stupid to make a bet without looking at the spread. What I mean, though, is that I will be ignoring the spread until I have evaluated both teams completely. I have glanced at the odds to check for irregularities or rapid shifts, but I haven’t really internalized them because I think it is more important here than usual to have a sense of how I see thing splaying out before I see what the oddsmakers have to say. With the public attention being so intense for these games, and with very public teams being involved, I don’t want to be in a position to be influenced by the spread as I make my decision because I have very little faith that the spread is particularly meaningful in this game.
3. It’s about stars, not depth – The bench players and the lesser starters figure into these games, but the best players tend to shine through on these stages. Florida didn’t beat Ohio State last year because they had a stronger bench. They won because their lottery picks outplayed Ohio State’s lottery picks, and because they had more draftable, star caliber players on the roster. It is no coincidence that all of the remaining teams are packed with future NBA players while teams like Tennessee and Xavier that don’t have the blue chip talent are watching the games at home. My focus, then, will be on deciding which of these ridiculously talented players have the best opportunity to shine in the brightest of spotlights.
4. Coaching matters, but it is not a relevant differentiator here – Perhaps nothing affects a college team as much as how well it is coached. It is no fluke that teams regularly experience rapid turnovers when they dramatically upgrade their coach. I don’t think that there is any merit, though, in trying to compare the remaining coaches. You don’t make this level by a fluke, and each of these coaches is among a fairly small handful of the best coaches in the country. Each has had a stellar career, and has shown again and again that they are worthy of their reputations and huge paychecks. I personally love John Calipari and think that he is a master of setting up a challenging system and recruiting to it. That doesn’t mean, though, that I can rationally say that he is better than Ben Howland – a guy in his third straight Final Four – or Roy Williams and his national title. Bill Self might have the least impressive record of the four, but he has led his third team to at least the Elite Eight and he is a proven winner. I think that it is a real mistake to do anything other than to consider the coaches a total wash and ignore them – any advantage you assign to one over another is much more due to personal bias than to a real advantage.
