First of all, any title game that ends up with a 37-point margin is by definition an aberration as far as I'm concerned. No way should the game have been that non-competitive. I certainly wasn't expecting anything like that. So a lot of it probably can't be explained away logically.

I can only make a couple of points that probably impacted only around the margins.

First, on the season, your average night from 3-point land was 5-for-15. So in that regard, I'd say your 3-for-17 showing in the title game was far less an aberration than the 12-for-22 performance you had in the semi-final. I'd say that previous game was the outlier in that one area.

And second, despite the fact that your team was a bit more talented in terms of ratings, especially amongst your starting five, I still felt fairly confident heading into the title game because I felt I had a significant IQ advantage over your team.

Looking at minutes played in the title game, the time-weighted average IQ (offense and defense) for your Stanford team was 9.19 (that's assigning 12 for A+, 11 for A, 10 for A- and so on), whereas Michigan State's was 10.77. So I had more than a full letter grade-and-a-half IQ advantage over your squad. I think that's why I won, but nothing will ever adequately explain the margin.

Looks to me like MSU just exploited the 3-2 zone.  17 offensive rebounds means a lot of second chances.  He also had great defensive matchups against your starters (Broadbent, Puckett, who look like they had a lot of distro). He got 80% of his points from inside and FTs. 

I'm just impressed that someone took a 3-2 zone that far. 

I was definitely surprised by the 3-2 zone. He had only used it once in the tournament prior to the title game. I wasn't a 3-point shooting team, my two most reliable scorers were post guys, and it minimized one area where he definitely had an advantage (rebounding).

to recap this thread: Tanner fails to gameplan for the NT Championship and can't understand his loss...

Posted by dacj501 on 7/22/2010 12:04:00 PM (view original):
to recap this thread: Tanner fails to gameplan for the NT Championship and can't understand his loss...

Do you really think that teams should lose championship games by 37 pts?The 3-2 zone appears to be an odd choice given MSU's numbers on the season, but I don't think that tanner failed to gameplan. He practices all 3 defenses with most(all?) of his teams and has a nice track record in both the new and the old engine.

UNC v. MSU two seasons ago was considered a lopsided affair and it was decided by 17 pts. Way too many NT games have lopsided margins in this game.

Hey, don't forget, Rails (yes, THE Rails) lost a title game by somewhere around 60 points one season.  Had to be the biggest "outlier" in the history of HD.

UNLV103-DUKE 73...

3-2 was totally wrong defense for that situation, especially if he has all three at his disposal.  Or maybe its not,(what do I know) but it sure as hell was this time...

Forget to gameplan or put in a bad one, either way...

ETA: by his own admission he went 3-2 first game, had a close result. That close result game included a much better than average 12-22 from 3 pt land. He should have had no logical reason to expect is team to shoot that well again...