DANCE TIME
The most common knowledge about that the tournament is a game of matchups, so I wanted to start off looking at AUBURN's weaknesses/seeding, whats important to look at when looking at opponents, and whos gonna give the most problems on our side of the bracket.
Also to keep it more simple, gonna look at each weekend individually with maybe a glimpse of the other side every now and then. each weekends a tournament of 4 that we gotta win.
IMPORTANT STATS FOR 2 SEEDS
2 v 15
ADJ O and ADJ D above 50 (aub = 22 adj0, 8 adjD)
since 2008 therve been 8 #2seeds that fit that criteria (closest this year are duke, then kentucky). they are 5-3 in the "2 v 15 matchup". everyone else is 39-1.
2nd round
HIGH MAJORS:
adj D outside of top 20 (auburn is 8 so we good. kentucky, duke and villanova are not) is 15-9. inside top 20 = 47-8
HIGH MAJOR opponents with top 10 adjO or adjD OR total efficiency inside top 20 are 7-7 against #1 or #2 seeds since 2008. MID MAJOR opponents are 1-7. outside those parameters = 12-62..
AU's Weaknesses:
OFFENSE
@Jay G. Tate said it yesterday on the brain drain and I agree with him that auburn's biggest problems right now are teams that are 1.) Physicality and 2.) Have a good Front Court defense or just good post play in general. Maybe want to throw a good 3pt shootinng team in there but thats been kind of a coinflip against us this year.
another way to look at this is 2PT% and defensive player ratings for the bigs
here I've highlighted auburns worst offensive performances efficiency wise and shown the 2pt% correlation alongside it (marking all games under 105 points per possession). youll see even some of our best offensive games we were not great from 3, but our 2pointn efficiency was so high it didnt matter. it all comes down to attacking the paint with this team.
DEFENSE
pretty simple here.
#1. dont foul. FTR > 35% correlates the most to poor defensive outings. we've done a good job recently of paring that down. our guards might get overly aggressive against weaker opponents, gotta make sure they arent fouling so much that it affects our rotations/gives opposing teams easy buckets
#2. have to force turnovers. another stat that we've improved the past stretch of games. >21% turnover rate is where we want to be at. easy buckets/getting in transition will help our offense during this tourny as well
#3. clean up the glass (DEFENSIVE REBOUNDING). it doesnt correlate as much to our defensive efficiency, but its still an important point. the tennessee game and miss st game in particular of late is where its been an issue. we actually did a decent job vs south carolina and decent enough vs tamu (of course there werent as many opportunities because they were making just about everything)
IN GENERAL: from @Mr_Bandoliers
AU struggled this year against teams that prided themselves on the defensive end of the floor and had a capable offense. 3 of AU’s 5 losses came to teams ranked in the top 40 in BOTH AdjO and AdjD according to KenPom. Only 1 such team is in the Midwest Region, and we wouldn’t see them until the Elite 8 (Kansas)
Worth noting that there are a couple teams that are solid on both ends and fall just outside that criteria
USC - 47th AdjO/49th AdjD
Wisc- 49th AdjO/38th AdjD (wont face them til later down the road)
Look for AU to have trouble with these potential matchups as well
dangerous matchups within our TOURNY OF 4:
based on the historical stats of seed matchups I listed, we actually got very favorable draws. jax st is a balanced, mediocre team in offense and defense. USC is pretty balanced but also mediocre (although @Mr_Bandoliers points out we have more trouble vs balanced teams, USC is balanced and their closest comp in the SEC is around a MISS ST type team). miami would be the most dangerous based on the history of the 2seed matchups because they are very strong on offense (#19 in efficiency) BUT VERY weak on defense (jax st levels of bad)
how the opponents rank vs other similar seeds in the tourny
jax st was the 2nd worst 15 seed plus theyre balanced. id say we got a good draw here. someone like St Peters (who @Jay G. Tate wanted) is an unbalanced team whos very good on defense. proabably best we avoided them
Miami is the worst 10 seed in the tourny, all of who are unbalanced in some way. probably prefer them over davidson but its pretty close. san fran and loyola are more defensive teams who slow the game down, probably our best matchup here as well
USC is by far the worst 7 seed efficiency wise and very balanced. murray st is probably the other matchup we couldve gotten although they seem pretty dangerous down the stretch. michigan st had some pretty good bigs when i watched them in bahamas and ohio st is a team that can get extremely hot. think we got our best matchup here
1st weekend draw is about as good as we couldve asked for. now gonna dive into jax st and take a look at them compared to auburns weaknesses as a whole.
@goombaby @WarEagle2727 @ricedp105 @DufnerFanBoy @ReelandAU @AUsome Lady @AUzad @fntiger @gabe112189 @Barnballer @gatorz1209 @wmo767 @cassidp
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