Figuring out what to do with 2023's batch of Extreme Teams

Most Extreme Single-Elimination Challenge

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The closer we get to Selection Sunday, the more excited I get to drill into the details of the NCAA Tournament. I suppose it’s only natural. It is our beloved sport’s biggest moment on the national stage, the grand finale of them all. Getting a perfect bracket is impossible, but at least setting reasonable ranges of outcomes for each team involved is worth a try. (Though I’m not sure anything I could come up with for you would explain the Saint Peter’s run last March.)

Molly Geary at Sports Illustrated coined this phrase a few years ago that I’ve grown to really love: Extreme Teams. You know the types without me having to explain much, really. Teams that have an amazing offense, an awful defense, and genuinely hope to win every game 87-81; on the other hand, teams that have an amazing defense, awful offense, and have to win games 66-58.

Objectively, the first group is far more exciting and interesting to watch than the second. Missouri is this year’s flagpole team for this experiment: a top-10 offense paired with a defense that’s almost in the 200s and cannot stop anything anyone puts out on the court. They are a delight to watch. Meanwhile, I actively look for reasons to avoid watching Mississippi State, who is on track to be the worst three-point shooting team since 2005 to make the NCAA Tournament.

However, State outranks Missouri in most predictive metrics. Would they be more likely to win games in the NCAA Tournament? Are offense-only teams better than defense-only teams when it comes down to it? What about the reverse? Is there anything to a more balanced approach giving more balanced results?

Setting a baseline

Geary’s standards for these teams are ones I really like. Teams with a top-10 unit and a 50-100 ranked unit are called Extreme Teams; if your offense or defense is 101st or worse, you’re a Super Extreme Team. I think that tracks really well with the in-game viewing experience. However, what’s the track record of Extreme Teams and Super Extreme Teams, both overall and with their side-specific breakdowns?

Some quick observations:

• It’s better to be Extreme than Super Extreme. This is because, obviously, the average Extreme Team is just all-around better than the Super Extremes. Their average seed is almost three full seed lines higher, they expect to win more games, and they do win more games. However…

• Super Extreme Teams underperform by a much smaller margin than Extreme Teams. The Extreme Teams still win a lot overall, but considering that they’re expected to win 58% more games, they actually only win 29% more - around half! - than their wilder counterparts. This could be a thing where you can survive one game with it, but not two.

• It seems to be more advantageous to be an extreme offense-first team than a defense-first one. Don’t tell any coaches, please. Offense-first teams get higher seeds, win more games, and generally seem to underperform a little less.

• Also, they outperform balanced squads. Indeed! Hey, wait a minute: what?

Uh, yeah: it’s actually better to have an awful offense or defense than it is to be good, not great at both. I couldn’t believe it when I first saw it, either. What about the better version of this: balanced, but with both units between #11 and #40?

So, there you go: the best thing to do is to not suck. Or something. Let’s explore how this may work on a more case-by-case basis with this year’s Extreme Teams.

Extreme Offenses

Gonzaga (#1 Off., #90 Def., expected 3-4 seed)
Baylor (#2 Off., #89 Def., expected 2 seed)
Marquette (#4 Off., #68 Def., expected 3-4 seed)
Arizona (#6 Off., #52 Def., expected 2-3 seed)
Xavier (#7 Off., #83 Def., expected 4 seed)

Given that we normally have 2-3 of these in a given season, the fact we have five as it stands for the 2023 Tournament shows you how weird the top end of this sport has been this year. All of these teams are capable of some stunning offensive showings; they’re also capable of giving up 89 points to a 14 seed. What ends up being more likely for each team is unknown, but at minimum, I thought it could be useful to explore each group, find how similar teams have done in the past, and figure out what might work for them.

Gonzaga and Baylor

Of all Gonzaga teams, this one most resembles the Adam Morrison years: amazing offensive showings centered around one key player with strange facial hair to go with some atrocious defense. Gonzaga and counterpart Baylor will duke it out for worst defense on the top-4 seed lines this year, but that’s not the point we’re chasing here. Teams like these three - 2-4 seeds with top-5 offenses and defenses ranked 76th-125th, to remove a pair of extreme outliers - have had a fascinating range of results.

Gonzaga and Baylor’s 15 comparables expected to win 1.88 games on average; they won 1.67 for a delta of -0.21. This is not to say, however, that they collectively flopped. While only 2003 Marquette made the Elite Eight, nine of the 15 teams made the Sweet Sixteen. It’s historically been better to not be a 2-seed in this case, which could be a problem for Baylor; only one of the four 2-seeds, 2014 Michigan, made it out of the first weekend.

Teams most like Gonzaga, using the Shot Volume Tool: 2004 Wake Forest (4 seed, S16); 2005 Wake Forest (2 seed, R32); 2007 Texas (4 seed, R32)

Teams most like Baylor: 2004 Wake Forest (4 seed, S16); 2007 Texas (4 seed, R32); 2016 Duke (4 seed, S16)

Xavier

The Musketeers’ case is a little harder to find comparables for. You have to dip a little into 5-seed territory to even get to a group of eight teams for comparison, but once you do, the results are admittedly pretty fascinating. These teams, like Xavier, were 4-5 seeds that had a top-10 offense, a defense ranked 76-125, and a KenPom ranking between 11-25. Weirdly enough, they may have found a sweet spot.

While Xavier’s comparisons won 0.17 games fewer than expected, five of eight made the Sweet Sixteen. That’s actually a pretty big deal for a team that last made the Tournament in 2018 and is in Year One of a new coach. Now, none of these teams went further than said Sweet Sixteen, but hey, gotta take what you can get.

Teams most like Xavier: 2006 Boston College (4 seed, S16); 2016 Iowa State (4 seed, S16); 2018 Wichita State (4 seed, R64)

Marquette and Arizona

I find these two really interesting, and not just because my kings at Paint Touches indirectly sped up the release of an article I’d been cooking up in my head for a few weeks.

Paint Touches @PaintTouches

@statsbywill This is outstanding, Will, the breadth and depth is phenomenal. I have a Q about your Baylor pick seeing as you said Marquette's defense is too awful to be trusted. Not worried about their worse D?

Let me be clear: I do think Marquette’s defense is stinky. They’re 270th in eFG% allowed, get demolished on the boards, and were probably really lucky to get to 25-6. Also, I do not care, because Marquette was the single most fun team to watch in college basketball this season from start to finish and their fans deserve fun. Arizona is in a similar boat: a team I adore watching that cannot force turnovers, doesn’t hold up well at all against higher-end competition, and is capable of getting shredded on the wrong night.

However, both of these teams meet a different quota: top-10 offenses, sure, but defenses that aren’t that bad. Instead, I ran these searches for each: 1-4 seeds (to be safe in both directions) with top-10 offenses and defenses ranked 51st-75th. And, like every other group, their comparables won fewer games than anticipated on the whole.

Of the 13 teams here, six bowed out before the Sweet Sixteen, and only 2013 Michigan (who had the National Player of the Year on their roster) made the Final Four. (2010 Baylor maybe does if they don’t run into the eventual national champion in the Elite Eight.) Either way, 11 of the 13 here failed to crack the Elite Eight, and on average, they won 1.61 games apiece.

Teams most like Marquette: 2012 Duke (2 seed, R64), 2013 Michigan (4 seed, runner-up), 2015 Iowa State (3 seed, R64)

Teams most like Arizona: 2002 Arizona (3 seed, S16), 2010 Baylor (3 seed, E8), 2018 Xavier (1 seed, R32)

Extreme Defenses

(void)

Uh…so there’s no normal Extreme Teams on defense this year. Tennessee is dangerously close to qualifying with a #49 offense/#1 defense split, but aside from them, it’s a hope that Iowa State (who lost its best player) jumps into the top 100 on offense. I guess if nothing else:

Tennessee (#49 Off., #1 Def., expected 3-4 seed)
Iowa State (#102 Off., #6 Def., expected 5-7 seed)

I ran these separately because frankly, it would feel a little…wrong to not do that? 49 vs. 102 is a giant gap. Anyway, Tennessee’s query is 3-4 seeds with an offense ranked between 40th and 70th. They won 1.5 games on average versus an expectation of 1.66, and 5 of 12 made the Sweet Sixteen.

Iowa State’s is 5-7 seeds with an offense ranked 75th-125th. Theirs was…well, disastrous, minus one extremely lucky Tennessee team that went 11/14 seeds to the Sweet 16. Their comparisons went a horrific 3-8 in the Round of 64, which spells serious trouble for a likely 5-6 seed already down their best offensive player.

Tennessee’s comparisons are tough, though, because there really hasn’t been anything quite like a Tennessee before. At +25.41, they’d have the highest AdjEM of anyone in either of these comparable lists. You have to go back to 2008-09 Memphis to find the only top-4 seed with a sub-50 offense and an AdjEM of +25 or better. Even this +24 or better list doesn’t really add much to the table because it’s a five-team sample:

This is why you hear so many Tennessee fans say they have no idea what Tennessee’s going to do in the Tournament, because, well, they don’t. I write a newsletter about them and I have no idea, either.

Teams most like Tennessee: 2009 Memphis (2 seed, S16), 2018 Cincinnati (2 seed, R32), 2022 Texas Tech (3 seed, S16)

Teams most like Iowa State: 2014 VCU (5 seed, R64), 2014 Cincinnati (5 seed, R64), 2022 LSU (6 seed, R64)

Super Extreme Offenses

Iowa (#3 Off., #169 Def., expected 7-9 seed)
Missouri (#9 Off., #196 Def., expected 7-8 seed)
Toledo (#8 Off., #276 Def., expected 12-13 seed that must win MAC tournament)

Iowa and Missouri

Because these two are much more closely linked than a mid-major who may or may not actually make the NCAA Tournament, it’s best to tie them together. I find these two teams very fascinating because they’ve got deeply different narratives driven largely by close game results. Mizzou went 9-2 in games decided by 6 or less thanks to a decade’s worth of timely baskets; Iowa went 5-4 but they likely deserved at least one additional win, which would’ve gotten them to 20.

Iowa outranks Missouri pretty easily, because both their offense and defense are a hair more efficient. Either way, both are relatively unique NCAA Tournament personalities: teams with top-10 offenses, defenses ranked 150th or worse, whom will end up no worse than a 10 seed and no better than a 6. The number of cases throughout 20 years of history is just seven, and boy are they interesting.

The only one of these seven that managed serious March success at all was 2016 Notre Dame, who went 11/14/7 seed to an Elite Eight date with North Carolina where they got hammered. Otherwise, it’s a group that’s 1-for-6 and the one was a one-point Creighton win in the Round of 64. You need some luck, sure, but if you’re 2-5 in the Round of 64, that seems like a problem. Both Iowa and Missouri are capable of great things and could easily change this, but it looks pretty ugly on paper. (By the way, check out how Missouri will have the second-worst defense ever for a top-10 seed.)

Teams similar to Iowa: 2008 Oregon (9 seed, R64), 2015 Indiana (10 seed, R64), 2016 Notre Dame (6 seed, E8)

Teams similar to Missouri: 2004 Michigan State (7 seed, R64), 2008 Oregon (9 seed, R64), 2017 Marquette (10 seed, R64)

Toledo

If you thought that was like pulling teeth, this is worse. No team has ever made the NCAA Tournament that’s anything like these guys at all. The worst defense on record for a top-10 offense in the NCAAT is 2011 Oakland, who was 9th-best offensively and 225th on D. Toledo is fifty spots lower than that. The odds of them winning the MAC Tournament are better than any other MAC team, but I have no idea what to expect for them because no teams are ever like this.

So: I bent the rules. These are all top-25 offenses with defenses outside of the top 200. There’s only five of them all time, but at least we have something that’s not nothing to go on. However, it’s not pretty if you’re a Toledo fan: five teams, zero wins, and an average scoring margin of -11.8.

However, if these guys do get in the field, they should not pay attention to history whatsoever. In fact, it would be huge for them to get there, period, as Toledo has not made the NCAA Tournament since 1980. Go get there, fellas, and see what you can do.

Teams similar to Toledo, other than no one: 2011 Oakland (13 seed, R64), 2013 Iona (15 seed, R64)

Super Extreme Defenses

Rutgers (#174 Off., #4 Def., expected 11 seed if in field)
Mississippi State (#157 Off., #8 Def., expected 11 seed if in field)
HONORABLE MENTION: Sam Houston State (#156 Off., #15 Def., expected 12 seed if in field)

Rutgers and Mississippi State

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the two defense-first Super Extremes are barely in the field if they’re in it at all. Rutgers has lost six of eight, while Mississippi State is the literal worst 3PT% shooting team in the nation and would be the worst to make the field since 2005. But: they have to get to 68 somehow. For the purposes of our experiment, we’ll say both get in. Why not. Maybe they will even play each other in Dayton and make it that much worse!

Anyway, the problem with letting these teams in is that they win when they get there. Teams with a sub-140 offense and a top 10 defense seeded 7 or lower are…uh, 5-4 in the Round of 64 with three of the nine teams making the Sweet Sixteen.

This is deeply disturbing.

Teams similar to Rutger: 2006 Southern Illinois (11 seed, R64), 2015 San Diego State (8 seed, R32)

Teams similar to Mississippi State: 2017 South Carolina (7 seed, F4), 2019 VCU (8 seed, R64)

Let’s move on to something happier, which is

Sam Houston State

The best team in the WAC has to win the conference tournament to get in, which is a shame because they’re genuinely a delight to watch play. SHSU forces a billion turnovers, ranks #5 in 3PT%, and loves chaos. Also, if they get in, I love their odds. 11-12 seeds with a sub-100 offense and a top-20 defense, like SHSU, are insanely successful: 6-5 in the Round of 64, FOUR Sweet Sixteen bids.

I hope these guys win the WAC tournament.

Teams similar to Sam Houston State: 2006 Southern Illinois (11 seed, R64), 2006 Texas A&M (12 seed, R32), 2013 Oregon (12 seed, S16)

This is the final free post of Conference Championship Week; everything through Selection Sunday will now be behind a paywall, and only one post (my personal bracket selections) will be free next week. All other analysis costs just $12/year, which frankly feels like a deal. Sign up today.