Rating Coaches

Fox Sports columnist Jeff Goodman recently posted his list of top college basketball assistants, polling head coaches, assistants, and those close to assistants. His names are broken into BCS conferences and mid-major conferences (would Xavier and Gonzaga have landed in the mid-major area? We don’t know, none of their assistant coaches were on the list). There are a few former head coaches (Larry Shyatt (Florida), Joe Dooley (Kansas), Donnie Daniels (UCLA)), some up and comers, some people with pedigree/ former player resumes (but no major ex-pros), and some guys who started out on the high school level.

This list, however, focuses on recruiting achievements. For an assistant coach, that is a somewhat quantifiable metric - how well a coach can lock down a recruit who is interested in their school. That focus, of course, doesn’t necessarily tell us how that coach is on a comparative level - in a good situation with a good product (some combination of a competitive team, tv exposure, playing time, an attractive campus, big booty hoes, a well-regarded head coach), many people can recruit the names we come to know in college ball. When he was hired, St. John’s coach Norm Roberts was advertised as the man who brought Russell Robinson to Kansas and got a verbal from Charlie Villanueva.*

Being associated with great college basketball names will get an assistant coach a job. But should it? Those recruiting achievements are not the coach’s alone; they belong to the head coach, to the quality and style of play, and perhaps to the institution. Believing that these recruiting wins are the coach’s alone is questionable; and the game isn’t won on the number of 4 and 5 star Rivals or Scout.com recruits a coach gets. It certainly helps, but that’s not the end-all.

Answering some of this is Yet Another Basketball Blog’s Coach Ratings by Dan Hanner. Admittedly, I don’t know all of ratings’ methodology. For example, the recruiting ratings might be from the aforementioned basketball player rating sites or some other source. And does this model account for players who have transferred (probably not, since he does not penalize for players going pro early)? How does one measure expected wins? What if talent is overrated? Otherwise, this is a sharp look at what ingredients constitute what we think of as a good coach. The ratings for recruiting and coaching come from regression analysis of the impact on talent on wins. The main point is that the numbers give a comparative look at a coach’s recruiting and regular season performance at each school.

Some light numbers, and of course chatter about St. John’s, after the jump.

St. John’s Agrees to Renew Rollover Contract with Coach Roberts

Coach Roberts has his contract renewal. What took so long? Who knows…

May 9, 2008

QUEENS, N.Y. - St. John’s University Director of Athletics Chris Monasch announced on Friday that head coach Norm Roberts has agreed to a renewal of his five-year rollover contract, and will continue to lead the rebuilding of the University’s basketball program.

“As stated in February, Coach Roberts has established the foundation for a successful program — integrity, hard work and discipline. Our student-athletes are performing well in the classroom and are getting better on the court,” stated Monasch. “We are pleased with what Norm and his staff have accomplished over the past four years, and believe the progress in many key areas is consistent with the expectations expressed by the University, our supporters and Coach Roberts when he was hired in 2004.”

“Coach Roberts and St. John’s are committed to extending that success onto the basketball court,” Monasch continued. “The primary focus of this contact [sic] renewal emphasizes the importance of being successful on the court. We are confident that at this point, we have a young, talented nucleus that will return our program to its winning tradition in the very near future.”

“This agreement shows the commitment that St. John’s is making to me and my staff, to continue to build our program and make it as strong as it possibly can be, not just for now but for the long term,” said Roberts. “We believe that we are building a solid foundation with our young players. They are working hard every single day to improve individually and as a team. We are increasing our talent level all the time, and we know as a program we are getting better every day.”

The 2008-09 schedule for the Red Storm provides a formidable test for a team led by two returning seniors and seven sophomores. In addition to the arduous BIG EAST conference slate, which will include games against Louisville, Georgetown and Syracuse, St. John’s will participate in the Preseason NIT and play host to Duke and Miami as part of its non-conference schedule.

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Transfer Update: Georgetown

With Vernon Macklin transferring to Florida (I can’t believe he’s leaving because of competition with Greg Monroe, as some seem to intimate), and Jeremiah Rivers also transferring, Georgetown is beginning to look like a young team. From the Hoya:

With the graduation of four seniors, the Hoyas are left with just four players who played significant minutes last season — junior guard Jessie Sapp, sophomore forward DaJuan Summers and freshmen guards Austin Freeman and Chris Wright….

Rivers scored a career-high nine points in a December game against Fairfield, and he added four rebounds and five assists. He dished out a career-high seven assists in the first round of the NCAA tournament his freshman year against Belmont.

In addition to the four returning regulars, Georgetown will bring in four highly-touted recruits. Three big men, highlighted by 6-foot-10 Greg Monroe, will be joined by 6-foot-2 guard Jason Clark, who rivals.com lists as the 12th best shooting guard in his class.

And the Washington Post:

Rivers is the fifth player to leave Georgetown since October 2006. All five players — Josh Thornton, Marc Egerson, Tay Spann, Macklin and Rivers — were part of Thompson’s first two recruiting classes at Georgetown. Only Sapp and Summers remain with the team.

I can’t come up with a reason why the men’s college basketball scene has been so volatile in the past few years; I don’t remember this many transfers in the 90’s, and coaches still got fired, players still were dissatisfied with their playing time.

Does the volatility have anything to do with the one and done players in school? Guys like Greg Monroe - and yes, he’d be a little less of a straight-to-NBA lock as Derrick Rose and OJ Mayo would have been - will demand playing time from the coaches because of their talent. And future one (or two) years-and-done players will see where they will get the best exposure/ playing time mix for scouts to project them to the next level.

That doesn’t at all speak to the transfers among the middle and lower level schools; are there problems with athletes staying eligible? Are they committing to schools to early? Or are the players acting like amateur free agents, looking for better or more secure places to maximize their ballin’ years?

Whatever it is, there seems to be something going on.

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Recruiting Update: Bobby Maze to Tennessee

Bobby Maze is off the board. He never made his visit to St. John’s anyway:

“Stevie Wonder could see this is where I needed to be,’’ said Maze, who transferred from Oklahoma to Hutchinson (Kan.) Community College last year. “They’ve called me `The Solution’ here, so you do the equation: what better place could I be?’’

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Your Team Needs Zach Feinstein

I think Washington University’s Zachary Feinstein should be a late second round pick. Prediction: he will dominate in China before returning as a defensive specialist and some team’s resident 5′8″ engineer. Teams out there - you want his rights. Kudos to you, man, for continuing to put my alma mater, the WU, on the map.

But Zach, you should show them your athleticism. Dunk more. And why weren’t you on the D-III national championship squad this year?

(photo from http://www.draftfeinstein.com/)

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Understanding the NCAA Academic Progress Reports

The NCAA’s Academic Progress Rate report is the organization’s attempt to hold sports teams - especially in the revenue generating sports of football and basketball - accountable for the graduation rate/ good academic standing of their teams. Myles Brand has been a crusader for academic reform in schools, and as president of the NCAA, has been working to penalize teams for their problems in providing 4 years of schooling for their scholarship players. The numbers put out by the NCAA are an average of a 4 year period. The press release:

The most recent multi-year Academic Progress Rates indicate nearly all 6,272 Division I teams are achieving or exceeding the standards for academic performance based on four years of data, said NCAA President Myles Brand.

Every Division I sports team calculates its APR each academic year, based on the eligibility, retention and graduation of each scholarship student-athlete. An APR of 925 projects to an NCAA Graduation Success Rate of approximately 60 percent.

Teams that score below 925 and have a student leave school academically ineligible can lose up to 10 percent of their scholarships. Known as immediate penalties, these scholarships can be lost each year and not awarded until the following year. Teams can also be subject to historical penalties for poor academic performance over time.

Those harsher penalties can go up to being booted from Division I (in that sport or in all sports, I did not find out). From Sports Illustrated:

The scores were based on academic performance from 2003-07. Athletes earn one point for remaining academically eligible each semester and another point each semester they remain at the school, accumulating a maximum of four points each year. The scoring is altered slightly for schools on a quarters-based calendar.

Teams are not penalized if a player transfers but leaves in good standing. And scores are generally up. From the USA Today:

There were 507 teams that posted APRs beneath 925 but didn’t draw sanctions because they had no athletes who left school while academically ineligible or their schools sought and received waivers — granted by the NCAA when there are mitigating circumstances and the institution has an acceptable academic improvement plan.

Among the sub-925 programs not hit: six in men’s basketball that have made the Final Four since 2002 (Indiana, Maryland, Ohio State, LSU, Oklahoma and Florida); 16 in major college football, including Arizona, Purdue, Oregon and South Carolina; and 54 in baseball, including No. 8-ranked Oklahoma State, No. 18 Coastal Carolina and five-time College World Series champion Arizona State.

“That raises the question: How can so many schools avoid sanctions?” said Nathan Tublitz, a neuroscience professor at Oregon who co-chairs the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics, an alliance of faculty senates at Division I universities. “One can understand a few exceptions. One can understand that some schools have good reasons. But for so many schools to have so many good reasons raises the question of whether there’s really any bite to this academic performance package and the sanctions that are supposed to be issued.”

Tublitz is a “very strong supporter” of the overall package, he said. “It’s just that if you’re going to set up a program that has a cutoff score, you have to stick to that cutoff score and not continue to give schools a free ride. If they don’t make it after four years, what’s going to happen after five? What’s going to happen after six? How many times does a school get an exception?”

Your list of NCAA penalized schools.

And an earlier published report from the University of Central Florida on Graduation Rates for NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Sweet Sixteen teams (pdf)

Nearly a quarter of the penalized teams were in men’s basketball, and most of those schools were the non-Bowl Championship Conference schools. HMM. Pat Forde delves a little deeper into the rich mouse- poor mouse issue:

On the football list, the schools are either members of the Mid-American Conference (Western Michigan, Toledo, Buffalo, Northern Illinois and, starting next year, Temple), the Western Athletic Conference (New Mexico State, Hawaii), or the Sun Belt (Middle Tennessee State). Those happen to be the bottom three leagues in the Sagarin Ratings for 2005.

On the basketball side we have schools from the Big West, Mid-Continent, Conference USA, Mid-Eastern Atlantic, Big East, Atlantic Sun, MAC, WAC, Southland, SWAC and Sun Belt. Most of those leagues rank among the bottom half of America according to the current conference RPI, and many rank among the bottom third. The Big East is the only league among the top eight.

Toledo: $8 million in the hole.

Kent State: $7.9 million.

Western Michigan: $7.2 million

Northern Illinois: $6.2 million.

Texas State: $4.1 million.

New Mexico State: $4 million.

And so forth. There are some among the these two-dozen schools who say they’re breaking even or turning a small profit, but you wonder how they balance their books. Is it really possible that Temple took in $17.9 million in revenues in 2003-04, while spending that exact same amount?

Now compare those figures with, say, Tennessee. The Volunteers’ operating budget for ‘03-04 shows $62 million in revenue (more than 20 times what Western Michigan pulled in) and $31 million in expenses.

Do you think it’s any coincidence that Tennessee put out a release Wednesday afternoon trumpeting its success in the APR?

Above is a picture of Tennessee’s Thornton Athletics Student Life Center.

The money of the bigger conference schools allows for the hiring of counselors to hand-hold athletes and make sure they go to class, for funding of housing, classes, and tutoring through summer school, to perhaps establish a few more easy-A classes, and hire tutors who “help” with the completion of work and the writing of papers (even if that help includes doing the typing and the research). These progress reports, of course, do not go into the school and measure available resources or the quality of that schooling, though Brand made a statement that schools should make sure their priorities are on education and less on new facilities.

The Big East’s penalized school was Seton Hall. Note that St. John’s APR was 918, slightly below the cutoff (pdf) …; schools can apply for waivers if there are extenuating circumstances. I bet those transfers over the past 4 years extenuate as well as any other circumstance… I can’t imagine that every one of those guys was all that motivated to bust their tails in the classrooms after they were asked to not return or chose to move on.

In basketball, below St. John’s and Seton Hall are South Florida and Cincinnati. Those high first semester grades that Norm Roberts alluded to before conference season better stay high, or else the team is going be docked a scholarship.

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Extension… Extension… Bueller… Bueller…?

LFBall makes a great point in his most recent post: where is Coach Norm Roberts’ extension? Is St. John’s actually just waiting for someone else to take the job after next season, allowing the coach to finish out his supposedly “rollover” contract?

If so, they should just let the man go now and get a new coach if they don’t think he can turn it around. If not, they need to hammer out some kind of deal; at the very least, one with mny out clauses just to help recruiting and build a sense of stability.

If the administration wants Norm to finish out the contract and plan to let him go, what if he’s moderately successful? Then they have crippled recruiting for a full (and fairly well stocked) 2009, and 2010 as well.

Lame duck coaches do no one much good. Attendance and season tickets will be low, interest in the program will be apathetic without some resolution. And if Coach Roberts does not achieve, say, at least an NIT berth (which I hope is criteria for keeping him, unless the administration has made up their minds), the next coach will have an Anthony Mason Jr. sized scoring hole in the team.

Links - A Slow St John’s News Day

We must be close to summer. Not so much to blog about.

* Did Paul Pierce throw up an LA gang sign or a Boston hood sign?

“Those of us from L.A. know that Paul Pierce went to Inglewood High, and we also know that means that B probably didn’t stand for Boston,” writes the Fourth Quarter blog.

Bostonians have another answer, whether it be accurate information or convenient homerism defending the Celtics star. “Paul was simply throwin his ‘3’s up’ - i.e. reppin Boston,” writes Sons of Sam Horn poster “Brookliner.” “Not reppin the bloods, not Ingelwood, not calling Horford names. I know most of us are ‘from Boston’, but nobody living in the ‘burbs will be familiar with the practice. The whole ‘3’s up’ thing is used by kids from the hood to rep Boston - simple as that.”

Indeed, an entry in Urban Dictionary defines “Throw them threes up,” as “a hand symbol representing Boston,” likely derived from the song, “3’s Up,” by local rap artist Stein. Ironically enough, another local artist, Benzino, lays claim to the song, “Throw Them 3’s.” It was Benzino bodyguard Trevor Watson who was convicted of stabbing Pierce in 2000.

* Karl Malone… you knocked up a 13 year old back in the day? Whoo-eee, Louisiana rolls dirty. The resulting child is Demetrius Bell, a draft pick of the Buffalo Bills. Even at age 20 and in college… that’s some ill sh*t.

* Speaking of drafts, here is an early peek at what the New York Jets will look like next year as the offensive line spending spree is designed to afford the skill position players more opportunities.

* As a fantasy owner, Yovani Gallardo-NOOOOOO! Not the ACL!

“Gallardo is probably out for the season, meaning you can drop him in all seasonal leagues. No chance he comes back and is effective this year after that type of injury, especially when you consider that he will likely have two surgeries — one on each knee — within the course of two months.”

* Dwyane Wade gets roasted for hanging out with Star Jones.

“Are y’all close friends?” [TNT's Kenny] Smith asked.

“We’re good friends,” Wade responded.

“Are you the kind of friends that drink out of one cup with two straws?” Smith persisted.

Even if Wade is doing some dirt behind his wife’s back… I think he can get someone less cougar-esque.

* Eli Holman - way to counteract talk that you’re a headcase (or “volatile” or “emotional” or any of those other euphemisms for “we don’t know wtf he might do”) with a temper tantrum as you announce your transfer from the Indiana basketball program. I smell junior college for you.

Quick non-East Recruiting Note

How did Matt Doherty get Paul McCoy to commit to Southern Methodist over Kentucky and Virginia?!

Tyshwan Edmondson Commits to Saint John’s Red Storm

Western Kentucky was hot for him, Eastern Kentucky was hot for him, but point guard/ shooting guard Tyshawn Tyshwan Edmondson chooses to take his game to the Big East.

Here’s a highlight reel where he hypes up the crowd… but where’s the passing, dog? More on Edmondson later.

UPDATE: The official release from red Storm Sports:

TyShwan Edmondson To Bolster St. John’s Basketball Backcourt In 2008-09

Norm Roberts inks second guard this week for the Red Storm men’s team.

April 30, 2008

Quincy Roberts To Join St. John’s On The Hardwood In 2008-09

QUEENS, N.Y. - St. John’s head men’s basketball coach Norm Roberts announced the signing of the second high school guard this week, TyShwan Edmondson (Hopkinsville, Ky.), to a national letter of intent to join the Red Storm for the 2008-09 season.

“TyShwan will give us great minutes at the point and solid minutes off the ball as well, because he is a quality scorer,” said Roberts. “He will help us on the defensive end with his length and quickness, and we are very excited to add him to our backcourt.”

Edmondson, a 6-4, 175-pound dynamic playmaking guard from University Heights Academy in Hopkinsville, Ky., is a lightning-quick floor leader with the ability to score in transition, create his own shot, score off his defense and set up his teammates. He comes from the same high school program as former St. John’s player Sergio Luyk (1991-95), who passed away recently in Spain.

“I am very excited to come to St. John’s,” said Edmondson. “This is a big step in my life, and I am ready to come in and work hard, to be the best that I can be.”

A first team all-state selection by the Louisville Courier-Journal and the Kentucky Herald Leader, and a second team honoree according to the Associated Press, Edmondson averaged 18.4 points per game, 6.7 rebounds, 4.3 assists and 2.7 steals as a senior at UHA. He keyed the Blazers to a 30-5 record in 2007-08, leading UHA to the Kentucky High School Athletic Association (KHSAA) District 8 and Region 2 championship, before reaching the KHSAA Sweet Sixteen in the large school state tournament and taking the title among the smaller schools in the Kentucky All “A” Tournament.

After being named the Kentucky All “A” Tournament’s most valuable player, Edmondson was selected to participate in the Kentucky-Ohio All-Star game, where he won the dunk contest and scored 14 points for his home state’s squad on April 13.

“St. John’s is getting a quality person that will represent the program well in the classroom, on campus and on the basketball court,” said UHA high school coach Randy McKoy. “His upside is tremendous. He was a great high school player in the state of Kentucky, and at the next level with a structured weight program, he will really excel.”

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