MY FRUSTRATION...GRAPHICALLY

If I were writing this post two nights ago immediately after Penn State's 73-59 loss to Ohio State it would appear slightly different. Shoehorned in between the dense collection of curses and death threats would have been some coherent thoughts, maybe even a shimmer of wit...whatever I could have managed through my sobbing. Instead, I decided to let the frustration simmer the last couple of days and express my grief through Microsoft Excel.

Penn State is too close to a tournament bid to start whining about what they did wrong specifically against the Buckeyes (shot selection, transition game, rebounding), but it is useful to see if any trends are developing as it heads into the final home stretch with three games left on the docket. Most coaches will agree, the most important stretches of a game, especially one as volatile as college basketball, are the first and last minutes of each half. Momentum and confidence are most readily established during these stanzas, and punctuating each half with a strong beginning and end is the most assured way to get a victory.

After the monumental win over Illinois last week, few fans were expecting the kind of start that Penn State opened with when the Lions fell behind 19-2 to begin the game against Ohio State. A look at the stats disagrees with your optimism however, and shows that the slow start is exactly what we should have been expecting from Penn State.

This graph shows that Penn State has not led after five minutes of a game since its 72-68 win against Michigan State and that the Lions have only jumped out to an early lead in four Big Ten games so far this season. It's true that the start against Ohio State was by far the worst of the year for Penn State, but when you habitually fail to show up in the first five minutes of a game, it will cost you, as it has in four of the last six games.

Still, the Lions roared back on Tuesday night and seemed to firmly put that bad beginning behind them.

As this graph shows, the last five minutes of the first half has been pretty erratic for the Lions. In six of its 14 conference games, Penn State has taken momentum into the locker-room by outscoring its opponents. The Lions are 4-2 (67%) in those games, and 4-5 (44%) in games when they have been outscored in the last five minutes before halftime.

Shifting to the last twenty minutes of the game, this graph shows how Penn State fares in the opening minutes of the second half. The Lions, although they had an advantage in six of their 15 conference games, never outscored the opponent by more than five points in the first five minutes. Much like the first five minutes of the game, this is an area that the Lions need to put more effort into.

Finally, and perhaps the most misleading of all trends, the final five minutes of a game.


This chart is difficult to read because several of these games were already decided for much of the time being displayed, leading to inflated results. Like the end of the Michigan game at home, when the Lions were well in control but the Wolverines just continued to bomb threes.

I guess the main idea to grasp from these charts is that, with one exception, Penn State has been consistently inconsistent in its performance during the most crucial times of the basketball game - the first and last five minutes of each half. All season long, the Lions have been little more than a wild roller coaster ride during these telling time spans, equal parts aggressor and punching bag. The lone exception is the first five minutes of the game.

Disturbingly, Penn State has gotten the jump on its opponent after the opening tip only once in the last eight games, a dangerous way to play when absolutely every win counts. It was especially disappointing to see the Lions, despite coming off of a huge win at Illinois and a six-day rest, get blown out of the water by Ohio State in the first few minutes of Tuesday's game. The Lions have shown that on any given night, they can play with any team in the league, but there are only three nights left in the regular season, and they can't afford to sleepwalk through a single minute of any of them.

PERCEPTION VS REALITY: CONFERENCE STRENGTH IN RANKINGS

The first Bowl Championship Series standings of the season will be released on Monday, combining the Harris Poll, Coaches Poll and six other computer rankings in a magical algorithm that will eventually dictate which two teams can play for the national title.

Although it has tried to run from its subjective and sometimes biased past, college football, like an ill-fated hero in a Greek tragedy, seems destined to be destroyed by that which it works to avoid...the polls. Each year it seems a new controversy rises up, forcing the system to be re-evaluated and tweaked in the hopes that it will be the last such issue. It never is.

The polls, both loved and hated by fans, generate as much discussion as the games themselves and there is much talk swirling around the anticipated release of the first BCS standings. With a full slate of games still waiting to be played this weekend, any consideration of what those initial rankings might look like is certainly premature. Already tonight, BYU, the ninth-ranked team in the nation, was bitten by the upset bug, falling to TCU in Fort Worth, Tx, and likely saw its BCS bubble burst.

Still, Penn State fans can't help but be excited to see where the team will rank on Monday. Forecasters are predicting that the Lions will be in the #3 slot, right behind Texas and Alabama, should all three of those teams win on Saturday. If that holds true, it would be the highest ranking ever for Penn State in an initial BCS ranking - but keep in mind the difference between #2 and #3 is much greater than one. In the BCS, #2 is the absolute cutoff.

More than just battling its remaining schedule, Penn State also finds itself in the position of carrying the flag for the Big Ten this season and battling the perceived weakness of the conference. When the year started, the AP Poll featured four Big Ten teams, the Coaches Poll had five. Ohio State, Wisconsin and Illinois were all slotted ahead of the Lions in the preseason - all three (plus Michigan in the coaches poll) are now either unranked or listed behind Penn State, one of just three conference teams still ranked.

That number does not compare favorably to conferences like the Big XII, which occupies five of the top eleven spots in the AP Poll, or the SEC, which claims four of the top 13 teams; however, the Big Ten has more ranked teams than the Pac-10 or Big East and has the same number, although a higher average rank (11.16 vs. 15.3), than the ACC. Still, most fans, and even some pollsters, might argue that the Big Ten is the weakest of the BCS conferences. That argument has little relevance until it becomes a strong enough perception that it can influence the human voters in the AP, Coaches and Harris Polls. But has that happened?

Since the BCS does not put out a poll after the bowl games are played, any comparison of conference strength by rankings must be done by using the final AP Polls of recent years. Also, since the Big Ten and SEC have matched up in the last two national championship games, we'll limit our comparison to those two conferences.

Consider that the average overall records of the Big Ten's eleven teams and the SEC's twelve teams from 1997-2007 are almost identical. SEC teams have won 58.1% of their games while the Big Ten's teams have won 56.5%. From that number we can deduce that one conference has not been significantly more competitive than the other and that each should have been equally represented in the AP Polls (after all, what other factor, besides wins and losses can dictate your rank?). However, that is not the case.

Here's a representation that shows how each major conference has fared this decade in the final AP Top 10 poll.

The SEC had nearly half a team more than the Big Ten did in each year's final top ten. Even if you consider that these polls reflect the results of bowl games, the SEC has only won three more BCS games than the Big Ten has in the last ten years, which leads you to believe that this is certainly a sign that the SEC is more respected by the voters than the Big Ten is.

You could attribute this to a number of factors, some valid and some not. The fact remains that the perception is out there that the SEC is becoming the nation's best conference while the Big Ten is regressing. To quote Mike Gundy, "That's not true!" The SEC has the same amount of national championships this decade as both the Pac 10 and the Big XII and only one more than the Big Ten. It has been selected to fewer BCS games than the Big Ten since 1998 and, as you can see from the graph below, its representation in the top 10 at season's end is actually on the decline.


All this does little to settle the argument about which conference is the best, or most deserving of the voters' respect when they submit their ballots each Saturday, but it does serve to remind them to keep an open mind and not be influenced by perceptions that are driven mostly by vocal fan bases and a few talking heads on television.