ESPN.com's Eamonn Brennan today discovered a great procrastination device for you—and just in time for finals week!
It's called SCACCHoops' college basketball simulator, and as Brennan says, "It's exactly what it sounds like. You plug in two teams from two different drop-down lists and see how they would fare in a simulated game on a neutral court." SCACCHoops says the game simulator works by taking the game tempo stats from both teams, then a computer plays out a game based on the tendencies the stats have shown the teams to have.
Naturally, I had to compare the 2010 Duke team with other national champions in Blue Devil history. Surely, I thought, this team couldn't compete with the 2001 team, for instance.
I was a little off. (Brennan was too—Duke 2010 went 5-3 in his sim.) The first time I ran the sim, the 2010 version of the Blue Devils spanked the 2001 version, 81-67. Zoubek had a field day down low, finishing with 10 points and 11 rebounds, while 2001 couldn't get a shot off, finishing with a much higher shooting percentage but only 40 shot attempts. I ran the sim nine more times, splitting the home games, and Scheyer, Smith, et al ended up taking six of ten.
I'm curious what happens when you sim the 2010 Blue Devils against other Duke teams of the past, like the 1992 and 1999 juggernauts. Leave your findings, you brilliant statisticians, below.
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