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Old 03-01-2020, 09:18 PM   #1
UCats329
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Was Mick Cronin REALLY an Underachiever in March?

As it becomes more and more likely that UC is not going to make the NCAA tournament for the first time in a decade, a lot of people have second-guessed the administration's unwillingness to give Mick Cronin a raise and a contract extension before the end of the last season, and his accordingly deciding to head off for greener pastures at UCLA.

The common refrain from the opposite camp is that Mick Cronin was an underachiever in March, specifically that he didn't make enough Sweet 16 appearances--just 1 in 13 years--and that it was time to let him go so that another coach can take a crack at more consistent tournament success.

My intuition (based on watching a lot of college ball) told me that making the Sweet 16 is a tougher exercise than most seem to understand, that very few teams actually do it more than occasionally, and that by and large the same handful of teams are in the Sweet 16 most years, with the rest of the slots going to a few party crashers that got hot at the right time (Lasalle, FGCU, VCU, Loyola Chicago, etc.) and a few teams that occasionally-but-not-regularly make an appearance.

I was curious, so I decided to crunch the numbers a bit, as it were. I compiled a spreadsheet of all of the teams to make multiple Sweet 16s during the 9 years that UC was actually good enough to make the tournament under Mick Cronin (because anybody who actually holds UC not making the tournament during the massive rebuild in the Big East against Cronin is full of shit.)

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...kLUTz3/pubhtml

A few things stood out to me:

-- As I suspected, a large number of the available Sweet 16 slots were occupied by just a few schools; 13 teams occupied just over 47% of all Sweet 16 bids during that period (68/144), each making the Sweet 16 at least 4 times. Those schools were more or less exactly who you would expect them to be.

-- Another 10 schools made at least 3 appearances during that span. Among them were three of the lesser "Blue Bloods"--Indiana, UCLA, and Ohio State--that I was surprised to see only made 3 appearances each. Ohio State not making it since 2013 was incredibly surprising to me. Another 13 teams made exactly 2 appearances. I was shocked to see that Villanova only made 2 Sweet 16 appearances during this 9-year span (though, obviously, they certainly made the most of them.) All told, 36 schools made 86% (124/144) of all Sweet 16 appearances. Another 20 schools made a single Sweet 16 appearance, UC obviously being among them.

-- Of the schools to make multiple Sweet 16 appearances, their average seed in years that they made the Sweet 16 was 4.24. Of the 10 schools to make 5 or more appearances, the average seed in years that they made the Sweet 16 was 2.91. Of the 13 schools who made at least 4, the average seed was 3.54. Those that made at least 3 Sweet 16s had an average seed of exactly 4. UC was seeded lower than any of these figures exactly once (2 Seed - 2018) under Cronin.

-- Of the 36 schools to make multiple Sweet 16 appearances, 26 had an average seed lower than 5 in the years that they made the Sweet 16. Another 8 had an average seed between 5 and 8. Only 2--NC State and Norwood Tech--had an average seed greater than 8 in those years that they made a deep tourney run. UC was seeded 5 or lower twice (2014, 2018).

-- This isn't reflected in the table, but of the 144 total teams to make the Sweet 16 over this 9-year period, only 16.7% (28) did so with a seed 8 or higher. Those teams were as follows: Butler (8 Seed - 2011) Florida State (TWICE: 10 Seed - 2011, 9 Seed - 2018), VCU (11 Seed - 2011), Richmond (12 Seed - 2011), Marquette (11 Seed - 2011), Xavier (TWICE: 10 Seed - 2012, 11 Seed - 2017), Ohio (13 Seed - 2012), NC State (TWICE: 12 Seed - 2012, 8 Seed - 2015), Oregon (TWICE: 12 Seed - 2013, 12 Seed - 2019), LaSalle (13 Seed - 2013), Wichita State (9 Seed - 2013), Florida Gulf Coast (15 Seed - 2013), Dayton (11 Seed - 2014), Stanford (10 Seed - 2014), Kentucky (8 Seed - 2014), Tennessee (11 Seed - 2014), UCLA (11 Seed - 2015), Gonzaga (11 Seed - 2016), Syracuse (TWICE: 10 Seed - 2016, 11 Seed - 2018), Wisconsin (8 Seed - 2017), Kansas State (9 Seed - 2018), Loyola Chicago (11 Seed - 2019). UC was seeded as an 8 or higher 3 times during Cronin's tenure (2013, 2015, 2016).

Anyway, all of this remains somewhat subjective depending on how you look at the actual numbers. If you look at Sweet 16s versus total tournament appearances, you're probably inclined to think that Cronin was a total flop (1 for 9). If you look at things like seeding, you're probably more inclined to think that Cronin did about as well as one might expect in a crapshoot single elimination tournament.

If Cronin simply beats Nevada in 2018, this is probably an entirely different conversation.

Discuss.

Last edited by UCats329; 03-01-2020 at 09:26 PM.
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