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Username Post: Harvard        (Topic#23908)
iogyhufi 
Masters Student
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Age: 27
Reg: 10-10-17
Re: Harvard
02-05-20 09:01 PM - Post#298667    
    In response to PennFan10

The fact that AJ Brodeur has been a massively high-usage player his whole career whereas Atkinson has not does not necessarily make Brodeur a better player at this juncture. I wouldn't say that Atkinson is better necessarily as a player, however we want to define that, but he's probably had a better season thus far than has Brodeur.

EDIT: Let me revise "probably" to "plausibly;" upon looking at the stats again, I think I overstated Atkinson's case initially.

Edited by iogyhufi on 02-05-20 09:05 PM. Reason for edit: No reason given.

 
james 
Masters Student
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Age: 48
Reg: 03-18-19
02-05-20 09:49 PM - Post#298669    
    In response to iogyhufi

Brodeur has been the go to player on his team for 4 years. He is the center of the offense a point center if you will

And he has had a great career.

Atkinson is the best finisher on Yale. He is not the mvp. even this year. He leads Yale in scoring and isn’t close in rebounding assists blocks and isn’t the defender of bruner who leads Yale and the ivy in 2 of those other categories

Kenpom is wrong

Brodeur is a better player and he is one year older

#%$@ penn

 
iogyhufi 
Masters Student
Posts: 679

Age: 27
Reg: 10-10-17
02-05-20 10:15 PM - Post#298671    
    In response to james

Bleh, this is what makes "better" conversations hard. Brodeur isn't a particularly efficient scorer, but then Penn asks him for volume, not efficiency. He's also absolutely more integral to his team than Atkinson is. Yet Atkinson is an extraordinarily efficient finisher around the rim. Who's better may really depend on what a team needs. If we want to define better as "who's more capable of being 'the man' on a team," then yes, it's Brodeur and it's not that close. If Atkinson had to be the primary creator like Brodeur is, Yale would be substantially worse than they are. Fortunately, Yale has the luxury of Bruner and Monroe to handle those duties.

I will confess myself to being biased, since I've never been a huge fan of Brodeur's post game (I'm sure he's taken shots with his left hand, but Lord knows I can't remember any specific instances off the top of my head), but I suppose I should take my homer glasses off for a second and acknowledge that you can't argue with results *grumble grumble*.

 
Mike Porter 
Postdoc
Posts: 3614
Mike Porter
Loc: Los Angeles, CA
Reg: 11-21-04
Harvard
02-06-20 04:26 AM - Post#298673    
    In response to iogyhufi

Huge AJ fan as a Penn fan, so I’d argue him best overall player, BUT I think all these guys are fantastic college bigs. As an Ivy fan in general you have to marvel at how many really #%$@ good bigs this senior class has... Brodeur, Lewis, Bruner, Aririguzoh, and I’d even throw in Baker and Tape if he has stayed at Columbia in the mix. That’s 6 players all 6’8 or taller across 5 teams in an 8 team league and every one of them has the skills, size and athleticism to play at a power school. I’d guess it will be a while until we have a class of bigs this good again.

P.S. this will be good news for Yale with Atkinson next year because it will be a much clearer path in the post in league games.

 
iogyhufi 
Masters Student
Posts: 679

Age: 27
Reg: 10-10-17
Re: Harvard
02-07-20 02:16 PM - Post#298812    
    In response to Mike Porter

I'm told that there's a substantial security presence at PWG today (apparently athletics is worried about a repeat of what happened at The Game), so if you're planning on attending, I'd allow a little extra time.

 
HARVARDDADGRAD 
Postdoc
Posts: 2685

Loc: New Jersey
Reg: 01-21-14
02-07-20 02:35 PM - Post#298822    
    In response to iogyhufi

League POY will be tough, and I can see why it often goes to the 'best' player on the 'best' team.

Brodeur is more important to Penn than likely any player is to his team in this league. Next likely is possibly Boeheim and Cornell.

Atkinson is part of a balanced attack on a good but not deep team.

Harvard's MVP is Towns ... I mean Aiken ... I mean Lewis or, maybe, Bassey or Kirkwood.

Princeton fans may argue for Aririzugoh or even Llewellyn, but Princeton was 1-7 with those two but not Schweiger. On the other hand, without Aririzugoh Princeton could be 1-3 in this league.

0-4 Columbia would have to redistribute 20+ shots without Smith, but the results would be the same.

Boeheim is important, but 0-4 Cornell isn't, same for Dartmouth.

Brown is too balanced for this discussion.

Thus, I believe that POY is likely the center on the regular season champion. Only Brodeur has a shot even if Penn isn't the regular season champion.

 
james 
Masters Student
Posts: 776

Age: 48
Reg: 03-18-19
02-07-20 06:52 PM - Post#298877    
    In response to HARVARDDADGRAD

U know it’s a rivalry game when Robert baker turns into an all world player at 7’

brutal

 
Chip Bayers 
Professor
Posts: 6997
Chip Bayers
Loc: New York
Reg: 11-21-04
02-07-20 07:04 PM - Post#298880    
    In response to james

Bruner having a very bad game so far.


 
iogyhufi 
Masters Student
Posts: 679

Age: 27
Reg: 10-10-17
02-07-20 10:12 PM - Post#298931    
    In response to Chip Bayers

Some thoughts:

Well I, for one, love how Harvard can look abysmal for 4 consecutive games and then all of a sudden they get 30 points combined from Djuricic and Baker.

Yale was sloppy on defense early and let Harvard get hot. Can't ever do that against a good team and expect to get away with it.

Harvard hit a TON of tough, tough shots in the 8:00-4:00 window to keep Yale at bay; if Amaker hadn't very unwisely tried to put it in the cooler too early, that probably would've been enough.

Atkinson missed 6 FTs, Yale lost by 1. Sigh.

Bruner played by far his worst game this year. Getting blocked by Danilo Djuricic *twice* should never happen to a player of his talent level.

To respond to HDG from the other thread, I don't know if I'd say Yale got *exposed*, per se. This is how Yale usually looks - they'll get contributions from somewhere, but it's not always the same place. Unfortunately the supporting cast all had bad games on the same night.

Atkinson made Lewis look bad and Forbes look putrid. Aside from the FTs, his only really disappointing play came early on when Harvard played Baker at the 5 and he got lost, leading to a couple of threes.

I'm not convinced that, sans Aiken, Harvard is capable of playing much better on aggregate than that. Sure Ledlum and Lewis were bad, but you're not getting production like that from Baker and Djuricic most nights.

Yale learned the lesson that Harvard had learned last weekend: maybe don't spot your opponents 15 points if you wanna win.

Ah well, you weren't gonna win them all anyway. On to Dartmouth.

 
iogyhufi 
Masters Student
Posts: 679

Age: 27
Reg: 10-10-17
02-07-20 10:13 PM - Post#298932    
    In response to iogyhufi

Also, the 4 minute review at the end was so terribly frustrating. Really wish the NCAA would do something about those.

 
HARVARDDADGRAD 
Postdoc
Posts: 2685

Loc: New Jersey
Reg: 01-21-14
02-07-20 10:32 PM - Post#298934    
    In response to iogyhufi

Good observations. Very much on point. As I"ve been saying, this is going to be a crazy year. No team is that good. Each has it's own flaws and each has its own ceiling. Depends what shows up each night.

Yes, Atkinson dominated Lewis and Forbes, but Baker did a nice job on Bruner.

 
iogyhufi 
Masters Student
Posts: 679

Age: 27
Reg: 10-10-17
02-08-20 12:04 AM - Post#298942    
    In response to HARVARDDADGRAD

No doubt, Baker very much outplayed Bruner tonight. Harvard's depth is a huge asset in no small part because Harvard has 8-9 guys who can score on any given night, so even . Yale on the other hand has 3? 4? They really really need all their starters to play well on any given night, because help isn't coming from the bench most nights. If Cotton could find a little more consistency, that'd be huge for Yale. As it is, they really need to play highly superior defense in order to keep the totals down enough for their offense to be able to score what they need to.

Fortunately, they've been able to do so in most of their games thus far, but when they don't, they've got trouble.

 
james 
Masters Student
Posts: 776

Age: 48
Reg: 03-18-19
02-09-20 10:20 AM - Post#299166    
    In response to iogyhufi

Bruner is limping around in a knee brace and on the bench for Dartmouth. Something wasn’t right. Hope for his sake it isn’t #5.

he hasn’t been steady in the post in 2 weeks.Think it’s the knee.

Prayers to him.

Harvard has their number except when it matters. The ball stuck too much in Yale’s offense.

Oh and yea all the IL experts are now saying Yale isn’t dominant. After there was no chance they make tourney 2 mos ago. Then they should have an at large bid and run through the league.

The quant nerds either don’t watch the games or don’t get nuance. Yale was and is a flawed team as is every IL team at the top.

Yale will be severely impacted with an impaired bruner though Wyatt yess and even alausa are fine IL talents.

Bruner has looked uncertain inside since he sat out the last d3 game. Now watching him limp in the brace in the Dartmouth handshake line is no bueno.

I give my fellow Yale homer credit for calling Atkinson. what he did to Lewis was criminal. Pure abuse. Though not doubling was the right decision bc harvard held Yale down from 3 and won the game.

If he relearns to hit foul shouts swains free throw doesn’t matter.

On that note cheers to the refs on the 4 minute stoppage. Class.



 
HARVARDDADGRAD 
Postdoc
Posts: 2685

Loc: New Jersey
Reg: 01-21-14
02-09-20 12:12 PM - Post#299189    
    In response to james

Horrible news about Bruner. Not surprised. Bruner definitely wasn't at 100% on Friday, even before he went down late in the game. Scary that he returned to finish Friday night's game but ended up sidelined the next night. Hope he didn't do additional damage.

For what's its worth, when evaluating an injury I look at who gets to play that didn't before. It isn't about the backup, but the delta between the minutes injured player and the guy off the bench who otherwise wouldn't have those minutes. For me, it's not just that Juzang is playing more, but without Aiken last night Harvard had to use freshmen Sakota and Tretout for 9 minutes in a 1 point game.

Hoping for a speedy recovery to all.



 
bradley 
PhD Student
Posts: 1842

Age: 74
Reg: 01-15-16
02-09-20 06:18 PM - Post#299332    
    In response to james

[quote= Oh and yea all the IL experts are now saying Yale isn’t dominant. After there was no chance they make tourney 2 mos ago. Then they should have an at large bid and run through the league.

The quant nerds either don’t watch the games or don’t get nuance. Yale was and is a flawed team as is every IL team at the top.





I remember your comments to suggest that the coronation of Yale as IL champs was not in touch with reality and obviously premature. Any team that loses Oni, Copeland, Reynolds and Phils will not be the same team unless some brilliant freshmen walked thru the door. Yale has 3 very good players and a good scorer off the bench with an outstanding coach but there are holes as you suggest and clearly a lack of depth.

For Yale to be where they are says a lot about Coach Jones but the suggestion that Yale would be a dominant team in the IL seemed like a huge stretch. If they are, it might say more about the league vs. Yale.

Who wins the regular season is an unknown as there is no dominant team. Perhaps, a team with a few good seniors may have the edge plus avoiding injuries. It would be ironic if Brown pulls off a miracle and somehow wins the regular season and then gets knocked out in IvyMadness - the irony.

Even with Bruner's injury, Coach Jones will keep them in the hunt.


 
mrjames 
Professor
Posts: 6062

Loc: Montclair, NJ
Reg: 11-21-04
02-10-20 02:35 PM - Post#299413    
    In response to james

  • Quote:
Oh and yea all the IL experts are now saying Yale isn’t dominant. After there was no chance they make tourney 2 mos ago. Then they should have an at large bid and run through the league.

The quant nerds either don’t watch the games or don’t get nuance. Yale was and is a flawed team as is every IL team at the top.



I can’t tell if you are deliberately misconstruing what people are saying to make an argument or if you actually believe that’s what you’ve read.

When it comes to the at large bid arguments, I know I’ve made them, but based on where they were in the moment and what they’d have to do to get there. Yale has never been better than 50-50 to do what it would take (at least 13-1 reg season) ultimately to meet that mark, but it’s just a matter of fact to discuss where their resume was in the moment and what it would take to keep their resume there.

I think we (the quant nerds, I guess) have been clear on what the flaws of this team were - namely that their defense is good to great but only appears elite right now due to jumper luck. Ivy teams will hit threes at a high rate against them and make that defense look less stellar. Yale also isn’t deep, and if this Bruner thing is real, it’ll take some real James Jones magic (or carnage behind Yale) to stay on top.

Yale has dramatically outperformed expectation this year, but as its defense regresses, it won’t be such a crazy outperformance. Two months ago, Harvard had Bryce back playing well and still expected Towns back. Of course Yale’s odds were low in the face of playing that team on the road in the tourney. Not sure why that would be such a surprising change...?

 
iogyhufi 
Masters Student
Posts: 679

Age: 27
Reg: 10-10-17
02-10-20 03:10 PM - Post#299425    
    In response to mrjames

Can't speak for James but I definitely remember hearing before the season started from at least some people (don't believe you were one, but Torvik was wrt "quant nerd" representation) that Yale wouldn't even make / was unlikely to make the Ivy League Tournament. Despite the production Yale lost, they still brought back three legitimate starter caliber players, two of whom had produced at All-Ivy levels before the season started (i.e., Bruner and Swain), so I wouldn't think that that claim ought to be considered free from criticism.

The claim that d3P% is close to a crap shoot is, shall we say, not one that any basketball player or coach with whom I've ever spoken would agree. What most will say is that the degree to which three-pointers are contested will affect the percentage. Further, they'll say that stalwart shot-contesting early is likely to make shooters miss relatively easier shots later in the game because they haven't "found their range" yet. I'm sure there's plenty of data to support your hypothesis (and the plural of anecdote is not data of course), but I must confess that this particular idea isn't one that I can see terribly easily.

(the above is not to say that the concept of shot luck doesn't exist in the Luddite basketball world - if I had a dollar for every time I've heard "we gotta tip our hats to them, they made some tough shots today," I could afford the rent on a neutral venue for the Ivy League Tournament. But I've definitely seen in film sessions/heard from coaches that "he doesn't make the tough ones later if you don't give him [X wide-open shot] now." And defensive positioning/discipline is definitely in control of the defense!)

Please do let me know if I've misunderstood anything; this is mostly just my take on this whole idea and less of a response, but I'd prefer to keep my facts straight

 
HARVARDDADGRAD 
Postdoc
Posts: 2685

Loc: New Jersey
Reg: 01-21-14
Harvard
02-10-20 03:19 PM - Post#299428    
    In response to mrjames

How about what appears to be the fact that Bruner might have been injured going into this weekend.

If you look at predictions going into the season:
1. Harvard (134) - assumed Aiken and Towns playing;
2. Penn (115) - assumed Wang and Betley were healthy, and possibly Charles, Williams, Mujakowski
3. Yale (94) - Yale was healthy until this weekend (Bruner)
4. Princeton (88) - Schweiger is back, Barnes
Gladson, & Kyle aren't
5. Brown (62) - Gainey has returned, Mawanda-Kalema wasn't expectd to
6. Columbia (51) - no Tape and no Stefanini yet, Ellis missing, Turner returned
7. Cornell (33) - expected to be missing Gear and Harshany
8. Dartmouth (33) - expected to be without Barry, Krystowiak still not returned

Essentially, Harvard took a major hit, losing possibly the best two players in the league. Penn did not expect to be without Want or Betley. Bruner is a big problem for Yale, and possibly explains Friday night's loss. Princeton improved dramatically once Schwieger returned. Brown and Cornell are healthy, and Columbia is decimated while Dartmouth misses Barry greatly. Gainey means a lot to Brown's defense, thus their upward trajectory. So, Harvard, Penn & Yale have dropped closer to Princeton and Brown, while Brown has improved with Gainey. Columbia is no longer a contender and dropped to languishing with Dartmouth and Cornell.

I see consistency in analysis, but changes in personnel.

Edited by HARVARDDADGRAD on 02-10-20 03:21 PM. Reason for edit: No reason given.

 
iogyhufi 
Masters Student
Posts: 679

Age: 27
Reg: 10-10-17
Re: Harvard
02-10-20 03:40 PM - Post#299437    
    In response to HARVARDDADGRAD

Oh, also as regards the Bruner injury, it looks like Bruner and Coach Jones are optimistic about the timeline there: https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2020/02/09/mens- bas...

Semi-relatedly, hats off to Will McCormack, the YDN's beat writer for men's basketball. He's produced a lot of consistently stellar articles about the team in his time on the beat.

 
HARVARDDADGRAD 
Postdoc
Posts: 2685

Loc: New Jersey
Reg: 01-21-14
Harvard
02-10-20 04:04 PM - Post#299438    
    In response to iogyhufi

Good news about Bruner, although I maintain that he wasn't at full strength the entire night, not just after he fell.

Article is a little concerning though, knee pain is not like a bruise.

“His range of motion is better than it was last night,” Jones said. “I don’t know that you feel better if there’s something wrong. Normally if there’s something wrong, you just feel bad until you get it fixed. The fact that he feels better is great, and I spoke to him today, and he felt like he was going to have to tolerate some pain but he thought he’d be able to play this weekend, but we’ll see. It’s a day to day thing, but we’ll see and hopefully guys can step up and play when they’re needed.”

Scary how Seth Towns was in pain for almost two years before doctors figured out what it was.

Edited by HARVARDDADGRAD on 02-10-20 04:05 PM. Reason for edit: No reason given.

 
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