#(BUT IF YOU HAD A DIFF MATCHUP I CAN CHANGE THAT PART

[universestreasures]

@crimsonkaiser​​ (Plotted Starter)

“With a boost from Bicorn, go Barking Cerberus! Finish him off!” 

The command from the assassin springs the holographic images from the units projected from the helmets of the motion figure system to life, the multiple-headed beast charging force and striking Dragonic Kaiser Vermillion straight into the chest. A smirk doesn’t leave her face as the sixth and final damage is dealt successfully, it growing larger as it is placed into the Damage Zone. Not even a heal trigger could have saved Toshiki Kai at this point. She still had her Nightmare Doll Alice and a Skull Juggler standing in her right Rear Guard column, both having been powered up by a double Stand Trigger, ready and waiting to attack.

She completely decimated him, decimated the guy who she constantly had to struggle with for Ren’s attention. It was a shame Ren wasn’t here to witness such a triumph. Surely she would have praised her for taking down the Narukami user, especially considering her win rate against Toshiki Kai was slightly lower than his victory rate against her. The struggle between the two for who was the third member of the team or the alternate continued on, but Asaka is happy she once again showed him that she is a force to be reckoned with and deserves her place on this team.

And yet...her victory felt...somewhat hollow. The teen had noticed it during the game, the lack of Kai’s usual striking intensity. He didn’t misplay or anything of the sort. To the other Asteroid members who spectated the match, or those who would watch the recording later to analyze their fight data, he seemed to be playing normally. But to Asaka, who has battled him on the surface of the Planet Cray plenty of times before, he definitely wasn’t putting his all into it. 

And she had to know why. Ren’s didn’t need any weak links that could bring the whole team down and thus potentially compromise their next National Championship victory or whatever plans Ren had for the team. That’s why she walks over to him after removing her helmet, grabbing him by his black jacket collar aggressively and bringing him towards her.

“What was that?” Her voice is low and cold, but true flames of anger could be seen seeping behind Asaka’s icy hues. The intensity in the air was so much that the other Asteroid members could be seen leaving the room, knowing well to get out of the way unless they stay to face the wrath of The Assassin. “You put no effort into that game. It was like you weren’t even trying. Such a piss poor performance, even in a practice game, is a disgrace to Team AL4. You’re lucky Ren wasn’t here.”

And Asaka fully planned on telling Ren the results of her little investigation. It was her duty to make sure her leader stay informed about things, especially regarding Toshiki Kai since she didn’t trust him since the second they. Was it because she was envious of the attention and favor Ren gave him? Perhaps, but there was always something about him that didn’t fit right with the culture of this place. It...It was almost like he wasn’t meant to be here and was meant to be somewhere else. 

“So, what’s your deal? You’ve been acting different since our last match of the first day of this years Nationals, since we battled those weaklings Team Q4. The others might not have noticed it, but I sure have.” Her grip tightens as she gets closer, Asaka fight into the face of the taller teen. She may not look it, but she had become pretty observant over the years. She sort of had to be when you had people like her teammates who were all hard to read, the situation forcing Asaka to learn to read subtle changes in body language or facial expression. And she can tell just from how he’s been that he’s been acting different, and she has a hunch as to why that may be. 

“Don’t tell me that decimating that Q4 twerp at the Nationals to the point where he cried like a baby in front of the entire world is throwing you off. Since when have you ever cared about your opponents? I thought you were rather incapable of it considering you lack a heart.” She takes the chance to strike more blows, the ever opportunistic Assassin making sure that what she is going to say will sink in. “If you don’t shape up real quick, you might see yourself getting kicked from this team. We have no need for weakness on Team AL4, and we both know Ren would agree.”

After all, losing a single official match was enough to evict someone from AL4. That was the high standard she, Kai, and Tetsu had been held to for years. Loses were unacceptable to those who were at the highest level of the organization, no matter if they had been childhood friends with the leader or not. Everyone had to fight for their place here, Toshiki Kai included.

~

[jodyedgarus]

March Madness Has Weaponized The Zone

With 10:39 left in a second-round game Sunday, Mike Krzyzewski did something you don’t think of Mike Krzyzewski doing against a No. 9 seed in the NCAA Tournament. No. 1 Duke was more talented and more established than Central Florida. The Blue Devils started four top-15 freshmen, all future pros, led by the star of this college basketball season, Zion Williamson. And yet, locked in a 54-54 tie far earlier in this tournament than anticipated — FiveThirtyEight’s model gave Duke a 91 percent chance of winning before the game — Krzyzewski needed a spark. He called for the Blue Devils to play some zone defense.

It started on a baseline out-of-bounds play for UCF. “Duke is in a zone — no, a matchup, a matchup zone,” Grant Hill called out on the CBS telecast. “They did this one trip against Virginia Tech,” Bill Raftery recalled. Guards Tre Jones and Jordan Goldwire made up the front line of the 2-3 zone. Williamson stood in the paint. Out of that baseline play, UCF drilled a go-ahead 3-pointer. But the zone was enough for Duke to hold off Johnny Dawkins’ team for a while, even if it took a last-minute Duke put-back and a last-second missed UCF tip-in to seal the win.

In all, Duke deployed the zone for 11 possessions, more than in all but three of its games this season. The key second-half stretch lasted eight possessions, of which UCF scored on only three. Mostly, the zone stunted UCF’s rhythm, forcing five 3-point attempts and often pushing the Knights to the end of the shot clock.

The fact that Duke needed a late defensive adjustment at all was a surprise. But a team in its position going to zone was not — it has become a popular strategy in the NCAA men’s tournament, where even brief momentum swings can change games and seasons. Coaches tend to be more apt to use their full playbook to gain an edge. And opponents sometimes have less than 48 hours to prepare for new defensive looks. In other words, the zone can function like an off-speed pitch for opposing offenses who didn’t expect to see it coming.

This season, 12 tournament teams played zone on more than 15 percent of defensive possessions entering the Big Dance, according to Synergy Sports. But 19 teams have played zone on more than 15 percent of their defensive possessions in the tournament1.

Teams are going zone in the big dance

Among the final 32 teams in the men’s NCAA tournament, the rate of zone used in the regular season vs. the tournament in rounds 1 and 2.

Regular Season Tournament Team Zone Plays % Zone Zone Plays % Zone Diff. Iowa 671 32.2% 81 60.0% +27.8 Maryland 30 1.5 34 23.6 +22.1 Oregon 887 48.6 98 69.5 +20.9 UC Irvine 188 8.7 35 27.1 +18.4 Florida 169 8.5 24 18.0 +9.5 Duke 105 4.8 17 13.0 +8.2 Oklahoma 180 8.6 20 15.3 +6.7 Auburn 160 7.7 16 11.9 +4.2 UCF 315 15.8 24 17.9 +2.1 Murray State 87 4.4 9 6.2 +1.8 Virginia Tech 25 1.3 3 2.3 +1.0 Kansas 58 2.7 4 3.2 +0.5 Ohio State 81 4.0 5 4.1 +0.1 Liberty 15 0.8 1 0.8 +0.0 Houston 3 0.1 0 0.0 -0.1 Buffalo 5 0.2 0 0.0 -0.2 Michigan State 5 0.2 0 0.0 -0.2 Purdue 3 0.2 0 0.0 -0.2 Michigan 9 0.4 0 0.0 -0.4 Virginia 11 0.6 0 0.0 -0.6 Villanova 170 8.9 10 8.1 -0.8 Kentucky 22 1.1 0 0.0 -1.1 Minnesota 48 2.3 1 0.8 -1.5 Wofford 65 3.3 1 0.8 -2.5 North Carolina 81 3.6 1 0.8 -2.8 Gonzaga 80 3.6 1 0.7 -2.9 LSU 67 3.1 0 0.0 -3.1 Texas Tech 175 8.6 7 5.4 -3.2 Washington 2018 95.4 133 91.7 -3.7 Florida State 119 6.0 1 0.8 -5.2 Tennessee 195 9.1 2 1.5 -7.6 Baylor 846 41.0 29 22.1 -18.9

Source: Synergy Sports

There was a time when the thought of a Krzyzewski team using a zone was unthinkable. From the 2009-2010 season until 2013-14, Duke played zone on 1.62 percent of defensive possessions. Known as an unusual defense used to compensate for a gap in talent, the zone was often unnecessary for the most athletic teams in the country (read: Duke)

But Krzyzewski has changed over time, employing zone on 14.3 percent of possessions in 2014-15, then 23.5 percent the next year. Last season, Duke played zone on about half of its possessions, including 92.2 percent from Feb. 11 on, throwing off basketball fans everywhere.

This year, with a new batch of freshmen in tow, the Blue Devils have shifted way back to 4.91 percent. But they still break out the zone in a pinch — a 2-3 half-court set or a full-court zone press — which is more than they could say five years ago. A Washington Post story earlier this month described how Krzyzewski learned parts of the 2-3 zone from the master of it, Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim, when Krzyzewski became the head coach of the U.S. men’s national team. Boeheim told The Post he sees hints of Syracuse’s zone in Duke’s defenses today. “I don’t think Coach K should be allowed to play zone,” Boeheim joked to reporters last season.

Zone defense appealed to teams big and small in the tournament’s first weekend. Some were double-digit seeds like Iona, Colgate and Gardner-Webb who needed the zone to try to level the playing field against more athletic teams. But there was also Maryland, which played as many possessions of zone Sunday against LSU (34) as it had all season until that point.

Maryland head coach Mark Turgeon has not used much zone during his eight seasons in College Park — only on 2.7 percent of possessions. But after his technical foul put the Terrapins behind 46-31 with 16 minutes left, he called for a 3-2 zone that baffled LSU the rest of the way. Maryland averaged .95 points allowed on 38 man-to-man possessions and .59 points allowed on 34 zone possessions, erasing the 15-point deficit before losing on a go-ahead layup with less than two seconds left.

Turgeon’s strategy tweak was stat-driven. He knew LSU was one of the worst 3-point shooting teams in the tournament at around 32 percent. “That’s low,” Turgeon told reporters after the loss. “So everything told us to guard that way. We weren’t going to guard Belmont that way, obviously. And so we told the guys yesterday morning when they woke up, we’re going to zone, don’t know when, but we’re going to zone.”

Added LSU interim coach Tony Benford: “We knew they were going to run the 3-2, and we had worked on it. But when you don’t have but one day to prepare, it’s tough.”

In the first round on Friday, UC Irvine turned to its zone defense to fluster Kansas State and earn the tournament’s biggest upset by seed. “We knew they’d play zone, and I was just hoping, I told them to attack with confidence, not to act like we’ve never been there, because we’ve played against a bunch of people, bunch of zones,” Kansas State coach Bruce Weber said after the game. “But obviously we just didn’t get enough.”

The worst 3-point shooting team left in the tournament is Duke at 30.7 percent, a troublesome mark because a good zone defense could force the team to take threes. UCF stayed in Sunday’s game by mixing in a zone at times. That might hint at a blueprint for a team to take down the tournament’s No. 1 overall seed — that is, if that team can figure out Duke’s zone first.

from News About Sports https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/march-madness-has-weaponized-the-zone/

[jodyedgarus]

Tacko Fall Is 7-Foot-6. And He’s Breaking Basketball.

If Dr. James Naismith had known that the sport he created would one day be dominated by Tacko Fall, he probably would have nailed his peach basket a bit higher than 10 feet.

The University of Central Florida center is listed at 7-foot-6, although Tacko and those around him will tell you that the senior has grown an inch taller. That makes him the tallest basketball player in college or the NBA. And it means Fall can dunk without his feet leaving the floor and play keep-away with the ball by merely raising his arms above his head. On defense, he’s at most a half-step away from the action, capable of plucking rebounds off the glass or stopping layup attempts by sending the ball crashing into spectators.

“He is one of the most talented kids I’ve ever seen,” said Justin Zormelo, a personal trainer who specializes in analytics and has trained Fall in recent years. “He can do things on the basketball court that have never been done before.”

Anecdotal evidence aside, Fall is in the final stretch of one of the most dominant and efficient careers in the history of college basketball.

For a guy who has been playing basketball half as long as many of his peers, Fall picked up the sport pretty quickly. Seven years ago, Fall, then 16, left his family in Senegal to move to the U.S. “Basketball and school, that was the plan,” said Fall, who had effectively never played the sport before his arrival. “I honestly can’t imagine doing that,” UCF head coach Johnny Dawkins said.

By Fall’s senior year of high school, colleges from around the country had come calling. Even though he had received scholarship offers from established programs like Georgetown and Tennessee, Fall chose UCF, a relatively green program. (It has had four all-time appearances in the NCAA tournament, none of which went past the opening round.)

Four years later, Fall has arguably led the Knights to three of the five best seasons in the program’s history.1 This year will likely culminate in the program’s first NCAA tournament appearance in 14 years. “I think he wanted to come here and leave this legacy,” Dawkins said. “He chose a place where he could really impact what was going on. He made that commitment. And look where he’s taken the program.”

Few if any have scored with more efficiency at the college level. “You’ve got to feature him as much as you possibly can,” Dawkins said, laughing. “And we do that.”

Although he has never been UCF’s leading scorer over a full season, Fall has made just under three-quarters of his career field-goal attempts. Oregon State’s Steve Johnson set the all-time career mark (67.8 percent) in the early 1980s, which means that Fall could shatter that record by more than 6 percentage points.

Fall is on pace to shatter the field-goal percentage record

NCAA men’s basketball players with the best career field-goal percentages, for players who attempted a minimum of 400 field goals and made a minimum of four per game

College career Player Team Height Final Season total Games career FG% Tacko Fall UCF 7’6″ 2018-19 110 74.0% Steve Johnson Oregon State 6’10” 1980-81 116 67.8 Michael Bradley Kentucky/Villanova 6’10” 2000-01 100 67.7 Murray Brown Florida State 6’8″ 1979-80 106 66.8 Evan Bradds Belmont 6’7″ 2016-17 129 66.7 Lee Campbell Middle Tenn./Missouri St. 6’7″ 1989-90 88 66.5 Warren Kidd Middle Tenn. 6’9″ 1992-93 83 66.4 Todd MacCulloch Washington 7’0″ 1998-99 115 66.4 Joe Senser West Chester 6’5″ 1978-79 96 66.2 Kevin Magee UC Irvine 6’8″ 1981-82 56 65.6 Orlando Phillips Pepperdine 6’7″ 1982-83 58 65.4

Through March 6, 2019

Sources: NCAA, Sports-Reference.com

This season, Fall’s effective field-goal percentage is 75.1 percent, the best mark by nearly 5 percentage points.2 If that number doesn’t change, Fall will finish in the top three for the second time in three seasons.

Synergy Sports Technology started tracking points per possession in the 2005-06 season. As of Tuesday, there were about 23,000 Division I player-seasons that accounted for at least 150 offensive possessions from 2005-06 through 2018-19. Of those, Fall’s four seasons at UCF ranked third, ninth, 23rd and 27th in adjusted field-goal percentages.

Although Zormelo said Fall’s jump shot is much improved, Fall hasn’t been asked to use it much in college. In fact, Fall has taken a whopping 11 total jump shots over his career, according to data from Synergy. “You always have to know where your bread is buttered,” Dawkins said. “And for him, his bread is buttered in the paint.”

UCF has the tallest front court in the nation, pairing Fall with 6-foot-11 Collin Smith. “On defense, he’s a monster,” said Smith, who admitted that he is rarely concerned if an opponent sprints past him toward the rim. “Just knowing that I have that 7-foot monster behind me is just amazing. I know he’s going to clean it up.”

Counting stats, especially on the defensive end, often fail to showcase Fall’s value. For example, despite having a huge impact on what happens in the paint, Fall has never ranked in the top five in blocks per game. But he has won an American Athletic Conference defensive player of the year award. As Houston head coach Kelvin Sampson told The Associated Press, Fall “takes away half of your playbook.”

And Fall’s presence on the court clearly makes his team better on both ends of the floor. His on-off court splits are jarring. According to Hoop Lens, UCF’s defense improves in nearly every facet when he’s playing. On offense, his team’s effective field-goal percentage is nearly 8 percentage points higher when Fall is manning the paint.

Fall’s impact on UCF has been huge on both ends

The on-court and off-court split for Tacko Fall and UCF in a variety of key offensive and defensive metrics in the 2018-19 season, through March 6

Offense Defense Without With Tacko diff. Without With Tacko diff. Points per poss. 1.00 1.08 +0.08 0.97 0.89 -0.08 eFG% 48.9 56.7 +7.8 47.3 45.5 -1.8 Turnover % 16.6 16.5 -0.1 16.6 17.5 +0.9 Off. reb % 27.0 33.1 +6.1 28.1 28.4 +0.3 FTA/FGA 0.523 0.525 +0.002 0.434 0.241 -0.193 2FG% 49.8 55.1 +5.3 48.1 45.1 -3.0 3FG% 31.7 39.6 +7.9 30.5 30.8 +0.3 FT% 72.2 61.9 -10.3 65.8 63.0 -2.8 3FGA/FGA 0.378 0.363 -0.015 0.365 0.395 +0.030

Source: Hooplens.com

In the two seasons before Fall’s arrival, UCF ranked outside the top 220 teams in Division I in points allowed per possession, according to data provided by Synergy Sports.3 The team made up substantial ground in Fall’s freshman year, and over the past three seasons, UCF has ranked in the top 10. The Knights held opponents to 36.5 percent shooting from the field in 2016-17, tying the 10th best mark nationally in field-goal percentage defense since 1978. This year would be the third consecutive season that the Knights ranked in the top 15 in effective field-goal percentage defense.

Individually, Fall has allowed 44 total points on 79 possessions against post-ups over his career. In isolation, he has allowed 25 points on 34 career possessions. Fall’s lateral quickness has also improved considerably, his coaches say, as has his ability to diagnose and thwart offensive schemes. “He’s guarding different actions that teams are throwing at him,” Dawkins said. “I can see his response time has gotten faster. He’s recognizing what’s going on at that end of the floor a lot quicker as well.”

There’s no shortage of reservations hanging over Fall as he heads toward the upcoming NBA draft. The age of the slow-footed big man is over and, increasingly, the league seems to have less room for guys who can’t get it done at the free-throw line. Fall is 23, and there’s a short shelf life for players who stand at least 7-foot-3: Only 25 have logged action in league history, and fewer than half played more than five seasons. Can someone lacking above-average end-to-end quickness and stamina flourish — or even function — in today’s NBA? And how honed is Fall’s jump shot, which hasn’t really been tested outside the paint? Is his skill set more Yao Ming or Hasheem Thabeet?

“I mean, there’s not a lot of guys like me,” Fall correctly noted.

Zormelo believes in his player, though. “The guy can move a ball wherever he wants. Everything he does is crazy.”

For the short term, UCF is enjoying its first appearance in The Associated Press poll in eight years and is coming off a weekend win over then-No. 8 Houston, snapping the Cougars’ 33-game home win streak, which had been the longest run in the country. On senior night Thursday, the Knights host No. 20 Cincinnati in the first top-25 home matchup in program history, with a chance to beat their second ranked opponent for the first time in a single season.

The Knights are hoping for a sellout for Fall’s final game at CFE Arena. But he’s most concerned about one fan who will be there: his mother, who has never seen her son play in person.

Seven years after he said goodbye to his old life, Fall entered an airport a few days ago and paced around the baggage claim. “All of a sudden, I see her head and we started running,” he said.

Onlookers saw a woman sobbing. Fall saw his mother.

“I have thought (about that moment) every day since I’ve been here,” Fall said. “I felt like I was dreaming. It was incredible.”

from News About Sports https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/tacko-fall-is-7-foot-6-and-hes-breaking-basketball/