Back in 2015, I went down a bit of a math rabbit hole based on a curiosity of mine. I wondered if it was possible to quantify the performance of coaches and teams in the NCAA tournament in ways other than simply wins and losses, Final Fours, and National Titles. In particular, I wanted to quantify under and overachieving in March. Along the way, I developed a few metrics that compared each coaches' and team's performance to the average performance of all other coaches / teams in similar tournament situations.
Somewhere along the way, I discovered that others had also formulated a similar metric called "PASE" (Performance Against Seed Expectation). My metrics were mathematically a bit different, and I settled onto two, one that I call PARIS (Performance Against Round Independent Seed) and PAD (Performance Against exact seed Differential). Last year, I gave a pretty detailed mathematical description of each metric and summarized notable coaches performance based on these metrics. That analysis can be found here. For my purposes today, I simply want to provide an update to the numbers following the 2018 Tournament.
For those that are not so interested in mathematical underpinnings of the PASE, PARIS, and PAD metric, the basic idea is as follows. PASE considers the averages games won by a specific coach per tournament relative to the average number of games won per tournament by all teams of that seed in tournament history. My PARIS metric essentially does the same thing, only it considers each game independently on all other games. The PAD metric uses a similar formula, but it instead considers each team's performance relative to the specific seed of the opponent in each game, as opposed to just the performance per round. The PAD metric essentially corrects for the fact that some teams benefit from easy draws, such as getting to play a 14-seed, 6-seed, 7-seed, 9-seed, and an 11-seed on the way to the Title Game, as opposed to a 14-seed, 6-seed, 2-seed, 1-seed, and another 1-seed, just to throw out a completely random scenario.
So, without further delay, here is a set of histograms that summarize notable coaches' cumulative PASE, PARIS, and PAD metrics, following the 2018 Tournament:
As you can see, the New Master of March, despite failing to make the Sweet 16 for the past 3 years, is still none other than Tom Izzo (AKA, the Old Master of March). He currently sits atop of the leader-board of all 623 coaches to have coached a game in the NCAA Tournament since 1979 with a PASE of 13.54, a PARIS of 8.09, and a PAD of 7.57. The histograms also give you a fairly good feel for the "good" tournament coaches (Tom Izzo, Roy Williams, Coach K, John Calipari, John Beilein, Billy Donovan, and Jim Calhoun), the average ones (Sean Miller, Bo Ryan, Mark Few, Thad Matta, and Lute Olson), and the ones that struggle (Tony Bennett, Gene Keady, and Rick Barnes).
Just to put Izzo's current stats in some perspective, only 3 other coaches at the peak of their PASE rating have ever surpassed this number. Coach K had a PASE of 16.00 after the 2001 National Title, but has dropped to 10.18 since (despite racking up 2 additional titles). Louisville legend Denny Crum achieved a PASE of 14.53 in 1997 before retiring with a value of 12.68. Rick Pitino maxed his PASE out at 13.78 in 2015 before getting upset by Michigan last year to drop to 12.43.
That said, Izzo's peak (so far) occurred after the 2015 Final Four run at a value of 16.31, a value which is the highest ever achieved by any coach. If MSU would have merely met expectations in 2016 and 2018, Izzo's PASE would be an astounding 17.54, a full game and a half ahead of all other coaches in history. So, while MSU's performance over the past few years has been a bit disappointing, it may just be evidence that Tom Izzo is merely mortal. A little bit a bad luck (such as MTSU shooting the lights out and MSU not shooting the lights out against Syracuse) might just have been due.
One thing that is also clear from the histograms that I am sure all MSU fans noticed is that John Beilein has been rapidly ascending over the past few years. Following 2012, Beilein's PASE was only at 2.67. Just 6 years later, Beilein's PASE has sky-rocketed to 10.38, which is good enough for 3rd among active coaches (ahead of Coach K and behind Calipari). Based on my PARIS metric, Beilein is actually in 2nd place behind only Izzo. This is truly impressive. But, that all being said, I will comment that if Kansas (in 2013) and Houston (in 2018) players simply make free throws OR if Michigan players don't make 30-ft jump shots in both games, Beilein's PASE would be only 3.38. So, it is fair to question if he can maintain such a rapid "pase" of improvement.
For those that are interested in the raw numbers, I will leave you with a table of the three metrics (sorted by PAD) of all active coaches with at least 10 tournament games and all coaches in history with at least 20 games played in the "modern era" (since 1979 when seeded began). Enjoy!
Somewhere along the way, I discovered that others had also formulated a similar metric called "PASE" (Performance Against Seed Expectation). My metrics were mathematically a bit different, and I settled onto two, one that I call PARIS (Performance Against Round Independent Seed) and PAD (Performance Against exact seed Differential). Last year, I gave a pretty detailed mathematical description of each metric and summarized notable coaches performance based on these metrics. That analysis can be found here. For my purposes today, I simply want to provide an update to the numbers following the 2018 Tournament.
For those that are not so interested in mathematical underpinnings of the PASE, PARIS, and PAD metric, the basic idea is as follows. PASE considers the averages games won by a specific coach per tournament relative to the average number of games won per tournament by all teams of that seed in tournament history. My PARIS metric essentially does the same thing, only it considers each game independently on all other games. The PAD metric uses a similar formula, but it instead considers each team's performance relative to the specific seed of the opponent in each game, as opposed to just the performance per round. The PAD metric essentially corrects for the fact that some teams benefit from easy draws, such as getting to play a 14-seed, 6-seed, 7-seed, 9-seed, and an 11-seed on the way to the Title Game, as opposed to a 14-seed, 6-seed, 2-seed, 1-seed, and another 1-seed, just to throw out a completely random scenario.
So, without further delay, here is a set of histograms that summarize notable coaches' cumulative PASE, PARIS, and PAD metrics, following the 2018 Tournament:
As you can see, the New Master of March, despite failing to make the Sweet 16 for the past 3 years, is still none other than Tom Izzo (AKA, the Old Master of March). He currently sits atop of the leader-board of all 623 coaches to have coached a game in the NCAA Tournament since 1979 with a PASE of 13.54, a PARIS of 8.09, and a PAD of 7.57. The histograms also give you a fairly good feel for the "good" tournament coaches (Tom Izzo, Roy Williams, Coach K, John Calipari, John Beilein, Billy Donovan, and Jim Calhoun), the average ones (Sean Miller, Bo Ryan, Mark Few, Thad Matta, and Lute Olson), and the ones that struggle (Tony Bennett, Gene Keady, and Rick Barnes).
Just to put Izzo's current stats in some perspective, only 3 other coaches at the peak of their PASE rating have ever surpassed this number. Coach K had a PASE of 16.00 after the 2001 National Title, but has dropped to 10.18 since (despite racking up 2 additional titles). Louisville legend Denny Crum achieved a PASE of 14.53 in 1997 before retiring with a value of 12.68. Rick Pitino maxed his PASE out at 13.78 in 2015 before getting upset by Michigan last year to drop to 12.43.
That said, Izzo's peak (so far) occurred after the 2015 Final Four run at a value of 16.31, a value which is the highest ever achieved by any coach. If MSU would have merely met expectations in 2016 and 2018, Izzo's PASE would be an astounding 17.54, a full game and a half ahead of all other coaches in history. So, while MSU's performance over the past few years has been a bit disappointing, it may just be evidence that Tom Izzo is merely mortal. A little bit a bad luck (such as MTSU shooting the lights out and MSU not shooting the lights out against Syracuse) might just have been due.
One thing that is also clear from the histograms that I am sure all MSU fans noticed is that John Beilein has been rapidly ascending over the past few years. Following 2012, Beilein's PASE was only at 2.67. Just 6 years later, Beilein's PASE has sky-rocketed to 10.38, which is good enough for 3rd among active coaches (ahead of Coach K and behind Calipari). Based on my PARIS metric, Beilein is actually in 2nd place behind only Izzo. This is truly impressive. But, that all being said, I will comment that if Kansas (in 2013) and Houston (in 2018) players simply make free throws OR if Michigan players don't make 30-ft jump shots in both games, Beilein's PASE would be only 3.38. So, it is fair to question if he can maintain such a rapid "pase" of improvement.
For those that are interested in the raw numbers, I will leave you with a table of the three metrics (sorted by PAD) of all active coaches with at least 10 tournament games and all coaches in history with at least 20 games played in the "modern era" (since 1979 when seeded began). Enjoy!
All active coaches with 10+ games
All Coaches with 20+ games:
As an added bonus, here is a comparison of the cumulative "PAD" of a few notable coaches as a function of year. I made the vertical axis max out at 10.0 in all three graphs. I think that these help to visual the ebb and flow of each coach’s career. Enjoy!
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