Jim Whitesell and UB Part Ways

[DocCas86]

1 hour ago, Tee4three said:

Is this game score the cumulative score they give both teams?

I have never dug too much into barttovik

But if it is you have to consider that overall quality of mac games has improved since Hurley came to buffalo. Which when he first start the league was more big man/physical/basic fundamentals I'd say similar in style to the big ten (not trying to lump both debates into one lol) but as UB started to dominate the league teams have shifted to a similar style as UB. Its a much more free flowing quick pace league which generates a much better game to watch and has upped the level of play league wide in my opinion

Basically saying if overall the league improved, is it whitesell playing and gaining better game scores from barttovik or is it the league as a whole?

As best I can tell - the game score calculation does not consider the quality of the opponent or how they performed.  Here is what I found for a formula:

Game Score = Points Scored + (0.4 x Field Goals) – (0.7 x Field Goal Attempts) – (0.4 x (Free Throw Attempts – Free Throws)) + (0.7 x Offensive Rebounds) + (0.3 x Defensive Rebounds) + Steals + (0.7 x Assists) + (0.7 x Blocks) – (0.4 x Personal Fouls) – Turnovers

I did not check if this is how barttorvik.com calculates.  I would generally expect game score would trend up for a given team as you face lesser opponents.  That is why I grouped based on quad of game.  Last year's team seemed to play at the level of their opponent, So far, this year there is limited evidence that they are playing better when they are up against a weaker opponent.  However, the issue in the 3 MAC losses against a couple of the tougher teams in MAC, the team has come up short. This is also a very small sample size.

Note that this appears to be primarily an offensive metric (but does considers steals, blocks and defensive rebounds). 

 

[961819]

7 hours ago, SGBull said:

I think there is a middle ground. Rankings do matter, wins and losses matter as well.

Weren't half the posters here making fun of Danny White for calling UCF national champions when they went undefeated?

If the only thing that mattered was wins and losses then the March Madness bracket would look a lot different every year because there are a lot of lower ranked teams that don't get in despite having very good W/L numbers.

I included Cleveland too, I agree with what you mean but at the end of the day if a team that’s ranked #6583737 on Kenpom wins the whole tournament then who the hell cares about their Kenpom ranking? Defending this underperforming coach by pointing out rankings isn’t acceptable. Where Oats left the program, we should’ve made an aggressive hire to keep the momentum rolling. Being fine with going from one of the top mid majors in the country to returning to where we were at the beginning of Oat’s tenure is laughable in my opinion. We should be taking steps forward and progressing and capitalizing, not repeating a cycle because then that would be we are capped and can’t get any better than the best we’ve ever been. I don’t do participation trophies or merit points because a coach is doing similar to how another did at the same point as the previous coach. You either lose your coach due to them doing really well and choose to capitalize on that success and launch yourself forward or you lose a coach due to underperforming and have to rebuild 

[961819]

6 hours ago, BrooklynBull said:

All of these statistics going into all the computers are meaningless.  Computers do not play games.  People do.  The only real statistics is the won-loss record.   Keep this in mind over the next two plus weeks as you see stat after stat about the Super Bowl.

 

Here is the only stat that matters.  The team with the most points in the game is 54-0.  I will predict that when everyone goes to sleep after the game on February 7th that the team with the most points will be 55-0.

I wish I could like this multiple times 

[961819]

6 hours ago, dutchcountry7 said:

Your behavior is not acceptable.  It is sophomoric.  And it is indicative of someone who hasn't been in a position to make such decisions.  It is the worst of the Monday Morning Quarterbacking. 

Okay Wolfy lmao whatever you say 

 

6 hours ago, dutchcountry7 said:

If the only number that mattered was in the win column then Creighton wouldn't have accepted an invitation to the Big East and we wouldn't be wanting an invitation to the American.  Of course, wins aren't all that matter.  You can get wins by playing teams no one cares about.  But I am sure you'd be changing your tune if JW started scheduling more non-D1 games or low level D1 games.  You'd talk about how those wins don't matter and how he needs to go.  Broken record.

As I stated previously, your reading comprehension skills aren’t very good. Go ahead and look back at my comments. I said the wins in Cleveland count as well as the wins in the tournament, however I understand your reasoning for selectively picking and choosing certain lines to back up your flawed rhetoric. 

[DocCas86]

18 hours ago, dutchcountry7 said:

Or do people believe that UB was going to hire another coach that will be poached for $4MM a year in a few years at Buffalo?

This is an interesting point/question?  Would we be better off with a rent a coach with 3/4 year lease?  Also no guarantee an alternative would have been / will be better.

[121Merrimac]

3 hours ago, DocCas86 said:

This is an interesting point/question?  Would we be better off with a rent a coach with 3/4 year lease?  Also no guarantee an alternative would have been / will be better.

I usually think that ‘hiring from within’ is a good idea.  Perhaps ‘younger/motivated’ are important parts to this equation.  

[Tee4three]

4 hours ago, DocCas86 said:

This is an interesting point/question?  Would we be better off with a rent a coach with 3/4 year lease?  Also no guarantee an alternative would have been / will be better.

When they hired whitesell, my thoughts were that they hired him with the idea of grooming someone on staff and that whitesell was a 3 to 4 year head coach. 

He keeps or at least holds near the level of ub basketball and keeps the 'culture'/Association with Hurley/oats while also allowing ub to save a few dollars 

[Tee4three]

20 hours ago, DocCas86 said:

As best I can tell - the game score calculation does not consider the quality of the opponent or how they performed.  Here is what I found for a formula:

Game Score = Points Scored + (0.4 x Field Goals) – (0.7 x Field Goal Attempts) – (0.4 x (Free Throw Attempts – Free Throws)) + (0.7 x Offensive Rebounds) + (0.3 x Defensive Rebounds) + Steals + (0.7 x Assists) + (0.7 x Blocks) – (0.4 x Personal Fouls) – Turnovers

I did not check if this is how barttorvik.com calculates.  I would generally expect game score would trend up for a given team as you face lesser opponents.  That is why I grouped based on quad of game.  Last year's team seemed to play at the level of their opponent, So far, this year there is limited evidence that they are playing better when they are up against a weaker opponent.  However, the issue in the 3 MAC losses against a couple of the tougher teams in MAC, the team has come up short. This is also a very small sample size.

Note that this appears to be primarily an offensive metric (but does considers steals, blocks and defensive rebounds). 

 

I wasn't sure if game score and their ttq score for each game were the same. I need to mess around with the individual team and player pages a bit more. I only stick to the todays games predictions ha

[DocCas86]

1 hour ago, 121Merrimac said:

I usually think that ‘hiring from within’ is a good idea.  Perhaps ‘younger/motivated’ are important parts to this equation.  

I agree with the hiring from within.  Worked well from Hurley to Oats.  I think Whitesell may have kept team in tact and gives us a shot at MAC championship this year and potentially next.  I agree we have some holes to fill beyond that, that present a challenge.  Let's see how that goes.  I would hope that one of the current assistants is grooming to assume role when time comes.

[DocCas86]

6 minutes ago, Tee4three said:

When they hired whitesell, my thoughts were that they hired him with the idea of grooming someone on staff and that whitesell was a 3 to 4 year head coach. 

He keeps or at least holds near the level of ub basketball and keeps the 'culture'/Association with Hurley/oats while also allowing ub to save a few dollars 

You said what I was thinking betterthan I did.

[121Merrimac]

Both of your comments were understood. 

[121Merrimac]

On 1/22/2021 at 6:39 PM, 961819 said:

Okay Wolfy ...

lol

[DocCas86]

On 1/22/2021 at 3:31 PM, BrooklynBull said:

All of these statistics going into all the computers are meaningless.  Computers do not play games.  People do.  The only real statistics is the won-loss record.   Keep this in mind over the next two plus weeks as you see stat after stat about the Super Bowl.

 

Here is the only stat that matters.  The team with the most points in the game is 54-0.  I will predict that when everyone goes to sleep after the game on February 7th that the team with the most points will be 55-0.

While I agree 'people' play the games not the computers - the statistics measure how well or poorly the people have played games to date.  The statistics can then be predictive of how the 'people' will play future games and can be used as a way to objectively compare one team to another.  Of course, projection of future games using statistics is not an exact science and actual performance in a given game will vary from that expectation.   

As an illustration of the value of team rank, I pulled data for the 45 MAC conference games that have been played so far this year.  From that data, plotted the difference in rank against the actual point differential from perspective of the home team.  Here is result:

So based on this data - the home court has been worth about 2 points (1.9883) and for roughly a difference of 11 in relative ranks equals an expected additional point differential.  So for example, if you are the home team, and ranked 22 slots higher than your opponent, the expected spread would be about 4 points.  It is worth noting that what I have seen as the relationship between actual spreads is home court worth about 3 - 3.5 points, and rank spread of 14 is worth about an additional point.

I agree, the won loss record is important.  However, if the double digit wins the Bulls had were only by a smaller single digit margin our rank would be lower, but our record is still the same.  Conversely, if we had won say 2 out of the 3 games in MAC we lost - our ranking would be higher - probably close to Toledo.

Finally, what does all this mean.  Whitesell is doing enough with the talent he has that we can beat anyone in the MAC.  I would concede points made that there have been bad coaching decisions - and this team would be ranked closer to Toledo if we were 6-1 in the MAC instead of 4-3.  If keeping Oats was an option - we likely would be performing better - but I am not convinced that any other choices we had would be performing significantly better than Whitesell.

[UBinMD]

1 minute ago, DocCas86 said:

While I agree 'people' play the games not the computers - the statistics measure how well or poorly the people have played games to date.  The statistics can then be predictive of how the 'people' will play future games and can be used as a way to objectively compare one team to another.  Of course, projection of future games using statistics is not an exact science and actual performance in a given game will vary from that expectation.   

As an illustration of the value of team rank, I pulled data for the 45 MAC conference games that have been played so far this year.  From that data, plotted the difference in rank against the actual point differential from perspective of the home team.  Here is result:

So based on this data - the home court has been worth about 2 points (1.9883) and for roughly a difference of 11 in relative ranks equals an expected additional point differential.  So for example, if you are the home team, and ranked 22 slots higher than your opponent, the expected spread would be about 4 points.  It is worth noting that what I have seen as the relationship between actual spreads is home court worth about 3 - 3.5 points, and rank spread of 14 is worth about an additional point.

I agree, the won loss record is important.  However, if the double digit wins the Bulls had were only by a smaller single digit margin our rank would be lower, but our record is still the same.  Conversely, if we had won say 2 out of the 3 games in MAC we lost - our ranking would be higher - probably close to Toledo.

Finally, what does all this mean.  Whitesell is doing enough with the talent he has that we can beat anyone in the MAC.  I would concede points made that there have been bad coaching decisions - and this team would be ranked closer to Toledo if we were 6-1 in the MAC instead of 4-3.  If keeping Oats was an option - we likely would be performing better - but I am not convinced that any other choices we had would be performing significantly better than Whitesell.

For what it’s worth, when you look at the projections on ESPN for Buffalo on every game for the rest of the season, we are favored in every one except 2, which is Toledo on the road and Ohio on the road. Every other game we are 55% or higher and in several cases 75% or better. Obviously prognosticators think pretty highly of our Team. I still feel we can win every game ahead of us and we are starting to play team basketball. We need some more confidence at the end of games and make good decision, but I like our chances. Go Bulls!!

[DocCas86]

48 minutes ago, UBinMD said:

For what it’s worth, when you look at the projections on ESPN for Buffalo on every game for the rest of the season, we are favored in every one except 2, which is Toledo on the road and Ohio on the road. Every other game we are 55% or higher and in several cases 75% or better. Obviously prognosticators think pretty highly of our Team. I still feel we can win every game ahead of us and we are starting to play team basketball. We need some more confidence at the end of games and make good decision, but I like our chances. Go Bulls!!

This makes sense.  Winning all 13 is possible but not very likely.  Given these probabilities most likely we win 8-10 of remaining games if we play all 20..so 12-14 wins overall.   

[NYS Bulls]

Who needed this?

 

 

[DocCas86]

8 hours ago, NYS Bulls said:

Who needed this?

 

 

Definitely a shame he de-committed after coaching change.  He would have made the future prospects brighter for Bulls.  Currently averaging close to 13 ppg in his sophomore season.

[DocCas86]

13 hours ago, NYS Bulls said:

Who needed this?

 

 

I am not looking to start the Whitesell debate up again, but I suspect I will. Your post inspired me to pull current year statistics comparing the Oats' recruiting class with the Whitesell class.  I did put my judgment on which player gets the edge.  I would say given the lateness of when Whitesell compiled the class - I don't think Oats' recruits are far superior.

[SGBull]

1 hour ago, DocCas86 said:

I am not looking to start the Whitesell debate up again, but I suspect I will. Your post inspired me to pull current year statistics comparing the Oats' recruiting class with the Whitesell class.  I did put my judgment on which player gets the edge.  I would say given the lateness of when Whitesell compiled the class - I don't think Oats' recruits are far superior.

Whatever happened to Hawkins? I remember him entering the portal but didn't hear much after that.

Edited January 28, 2021 by SGBull
grammar

[DocCas86]

22 minutes ago, SGBull said:

Whatever happened to Hawkins. I remember him entering the portal but didn't hear much after that.

He is enrolled at Long Beach St. but not playing this year.

https://longbeachstate.com/sports/mens-basketball/roster/raymond-hawkins-iii/4872

I could not determine why he is not playing - perhaps he did not get waiver?  Therefore, it is not fair to say no advantage, as I simply do not know what Hawkins is capable of as he played very sparingly last year and has not played this year. 

Also, Cadwell on roster for Lousiana, and has not played this year, Only information is that he sat out last year with knee injury.  Possible he has not recovered enough to return?

https://ragincajuns.com/sports/mens-basketball/roster/durey-cadwell/7511

In fairness, the last two should be incomplete. 

Edit - found out that Hawkins did receive waiver:

So possibly another reason why he is not playing.

Edited January 28, 2021 by DocCas86

[961819]

Just now, Erie County said:

Fire the coach. 

He's now 0-4 against Kent, Ohio, and BG. 

He's .500. Put your hand up if you've heard that before.

But our Kenpom ranking is similar to previous coaches were in their 2nd year man that has to count for something right?

[961819]

8 minutes ago, Erie County said:

What's the luck score say?

SIXTH game they've lost at the under 4. 

I think the luck score is negative for this team 

[Kevin]

Amazing that this thread has really taken off since I've been out of here. 

I haven't been able to read much but I'm impressed by the passion (on both sides). 

I told @Jesephthat I wish I kept up the original contents up. I was called many things in this thread including a "hack a Shaq" and "coach B's best friend". 

I was trying to bring my best opinions and thoughts when i first posted it. I had many concerns with the hire. From the original hiring of a search firm, to not even trying to hire an up and coming stud. 

The team received a free million dollars to improve the situation of the team and instead chose to eat it, and pay someone less than the last two coaches were making. The momentum and success of this mid-major is almost gone. I am so gutted by this. 

I want this team to be so good and continue the run. Instead we were left with a muddling coaching hire from past failures. You know the definition of insanity right? The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. That's what they got here with hiring the assistant coach who just brought on to bring some coaching tips to Oats, Hodgson, and Quarles. 

I had my concerns with Whitesell when he was the "defensive coach" during his seasons under Oats. If UB had it's slight challenges, it would come on the defensive side of the floor. We are now seeing many of those issues without the defensive talents of Jordan and Caruthers. 

The team was riding the longest home winning streak in the nation prior to Whitesell taking over. He lost that in his first game coaching the team. 

The finishes of games are something that I'd expect to see in a video game when you are playing a better opponent online. There is no steady play, no steady call, no ice water moment. Vander Plas on the other side gets a rebound and puts it back over Nickelberry with the game on the line. Turner takes over down the stretch, just like new senior Nuga did for Kent State. 

The team has struggled down the stretch since this staff took the helm. They couldn't even draw up the right defensive play against Miami last year at home against the conference's worst team

The biggest disappointments of the first two years is the failures on the recruiting trail. I don't expect the team to look anything like it does today next November. Hitting on only 1 recruit has been a momentous event. An even that will not lead to good years in 3 years from now. There is nothing in the pipeline and no one here can even be the least bit confident that Whitesell is going to put a quality team together. 

The leadership needs to do anything it can to save the momentum of the program from the hands of the current 6-6 head man. 

[Kevin]

9 minutes ago, Kevin said:

Amazing that this thread has really taken off since I've been out of here. 

I haven't been able to read much but I'm impressed by the passion (on both sides). 

I told @Jesephthat I wish I kept up the original contents up. I was called many things in this thread including a "hack a Shaq" and "coach B's best friend". 

I was trying to bring my best opinions and thoughts when i first posted it. I had many concerns with the hire. From the original hiring of a search firm, to not even trying to hire an up and coming stud. 

The team received a free million dollars to improve the situation of the team and instead chose to eat it, and pay someone less than the last two coaches were making. The momentum and success of this mid-major is almost gone. I am so gutted by this. 

I want this team to be so good and continue the run. Instead we were left with a muddling coaching hire from past failures. You know the definition of insanity right? The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. That's what they got here with hiring the assistant coach who just brought on to bring some coaching tips to Oats, Hodgson, and Quarles. 

I had my concerns with Whitesell when he was the "defensive coach" during his seasons under Oats. If UB had it's slight challenges, it would come on the defensive side of the floor. We are now seeing many of those issues without the defensive talents of Jordan and Caruthers. 

The team was riding the longest home winning streak in the nation prior to Whitesell taking over. He lost that in his first game coaching the team. 

The finishes of games are something that I'd expect to see in a video game when you are playing a better opponent online. There is no steady play, no steady call, no ice water moment. Vander Plas on the other side gets a rebound and puts it back over Nickelberry with the game on the line. Turner takes over down the stretch, just like new senior Nuga did for Kent State. 

The team has struggled down the stretch since this staff took the helm. They couldn't even draw up the right defensive play against Miami last year at home against the conference's worst team

The biggest disappointments of the first two years is the failures on the recruiting trail. I don't expect the team to look anything like it does today next November. Hitting on only 1 recruit has been a momentous event. An even that will not lead to good years in 3 years from now. There is nothing in the pipeline and no one here can even be the least bit confident that Whitesell is going to put a quality team together. 

The leadership needs to do anything it can to save the momentum of the program from the hands of the current 6-6 head man. 

 

[Jeseph]

Was this another quality game in the metrics column?

another game that shows we’re in good shape as a program?

what is Whitesells home record?