Wisconsin Basketball vs. Northwestern: Analytics Game Prediction

If you missed my latest Wisconsin Basketball Predictions, find them here:

Northwestern | Penn State | Indiana | Minnesota | Michigan St. | Nebraska | Purdue | Michigan | Rutgers | Ohio State | Iowa | Maryland | Indiana (A) | Illinois | Rutgers (H) | Purdue (A) | Maryland (BTT)

Let’s GOOOOOOO! Man, that was a huge win, and it allowed us to rest our big-minute guys, which will be huge for our Matchup with Northwestern!

Let’s take a peek at how our Adjusted Efficiencies are trending:

Adjusted Offensive Efficiency:

There was a significant dip in February, but we’re trending to our highest levels of Offensive Efficiency in our 5-Game Moving Average!!!

Adjusted Defensive Efficiency:

Getting Kamari McGee back has done WONDERS for our defense. It gives Gard the flexibility to demand more from Storr/Klesmit when he can go comfortably to a Hepburn/McGee/Blackwell lineup and not lose much offensively but get a whole hell of a lot more on the defensive end. That’ll make you play harder if you’re Klesmit or Storr, and we’ve seen that post-Rutgers 2H.

It looks like they’ve turned a massive corner. Credit McGee’s healthiness. Yes, individually, he’s not going to alter games. But his overall value to this team, as I described above, continues to show.

We are now 16-5 in games he’s played, 13-1 in games where he clocks >5 Minutes, and 7-1 where he clocks >10 Minutes!!!

Adjusted NET Efficiency:

Starting to creep back up off our slide…

With that, let’s dive into the Prediction Model for Friday’s matchup vs. Northwestern!!!

Wisconsin Basketball Prediction Model

First, let’s start off with what comprises my Prediction Model (See Below):

Pace:

Gard Your Fickell’s Model | 62 Projected Possesions

KenPom Model | 62 Projected Possesions

Torvik T-Rank | ???

Haslam Metrics | ??? (NOT UPDATED)

Height:

Wisconsin Basketball has the Height advantage vs. Northwestern, with an Average Height of 78.39 vs. 77.33 (inches).

This Height “Factor” influences my DREB% Model but is only a part of the equation. Combining the overall Height advantage and the other Metrics listed in the Model (3PAR, FTAR, 2P%, 3P%, and OPP OREB%), I can then project out each team’s DREB%.

DREB%:

Based on all the combined metrics in the DREB% Model, Wisconsin Basketball is projected to win the DREB% battle vs. Northwestern, with an expectation of UW grabbing 86.67% of their Defensive Rebound opportunities in Friday’s Matchup vs. an expectation that Northwestern only grabs 72.16% of their Defensive Rebound opportunities.

DREB% is arguably the 2nd most important individual metric in basketball and a huge component in “Stop Factor”, essentially my own Defensive Efficiency Metric.

Stop_Factor:

Wisconsin basketball is also projected to win the Stop Factor advantage by a decent margin, coming in at a projected 1.68 Stop Factor to Northwestern’s 1.51.

For those unfamiliar with Stop Factor, it’s looking at a Team’s ability to be efficient on Defense.

That can come in various ways:

• Low eFG% given up to your opponent
• Forcing a lot of turnovers
• Collecting a high % of Defensive Rebounds available.

A Stop Factor over 2 is really good, or in Rutgers’ case, indicative of a truly brutal offense and NoT eFG%!

Score Prediction | Model Table | EFF Ranks:

Final Thoughts on Wisconsin Basketball vs. Northwestern

We’re not going to shoot as well as we did vs. Maryland again.

But what was so promising is how we did it; because that will continue to translate to other opponents at an albeit lower percentage than we displayed today. That’s fine, because that brand of basketball will be considerably good even if we cut our 3P Shooting by 20-25%! Attacking the paint, feeding the post as a way to establish ourselves early, and then finding open shooters off that action was a staple for us in Nov-Jan! We lost a bit of that, settling and sometimes being to passive passing up good looks for even tougher ones later in the shot clock.

But we’re trending back to having confidence in ourselves and taking good looks even if there are 16-20 seconds on the shot clock. Again, that also leads to more assisted shots vs. unassisted ones that usually come very late in the shot clock. We must avoid those at all costs!! If we can, we’re going to continue to give ourselves a ton of easy nights on the offensive end.

The “OTHER” Analysts:

KenPom: 72 – 69 | -3 Margin

Torvik: 72 – 71 | -1 Margin

Gard Your Fickell: 70.98 – 68.08 | -2.90 Margin

KenPom & I are pretty closely aligned; Torvik has us much tighter with NW.

I’ve also been on a bit of a heater in beating Vegas when looking at how the Prediction Model is performing Against-The-Spread (A-T-S). Since I deployed the model, it is 11-6 A-T-S (65%) in Wisconsin Basketball Games.

Over the Last 10 Games? The model is 8-2 A-T-S (80%).

And over the Last 5? 100%…The Model is a perfect 5-0 A-T-S.

Responsible Gambling

It’s a quick turnaround, and back-backs are tough even for NBA guys. I’m hoping for another strong performance. Our big-minute guys got much-needed rest down the stretch and should be hungry to do it again tomorrow!!!

On Wisconsin!

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