Ryan's Badgers 8th biggest overachievers to come into Bradley Center at 5 p.m. today (ESPN2) as 2 1/2 to 4 point favorites

At the beginning of the season www.valueaddbasketball.com projected Wisconsin as the 25th best team in the country, but I certainly anticipated a win at the Bradley Center today due to Marquette's home court advantage.  Once it was announced Todd Mayo would not play this year it dropped Marquette out of the Value Add projected Top 40, but when Wisconsin lost Josh Gasser, one of the projected top 100 players in the country, it appeared Marquette would be a solid favorite to win a tight game today.

But give Bo Ryan his due - once again his sum is better than the projected individual players of the team.  His system is working again, putting Wisconsin at No. 9 in www.kenpom.com (making them the 8th biggest overachiever over Value Add projections based on the ratio of preseason Value Add to current Pomeroy rankings).  Jared Berggren was projected as an elite 130th best player of 4000 this year, and he has been even better at 22nd.  Ben Brust was projected in the top 10% of the country (314th) and instead has been even better in just missing the top 1% at 53rd.  Freshman Sam Dekker has almost lived up to his freshman billing at a projected 233rd best in the country, coming in just a little lower as one of the best 8% of all players in the country (320th).

We can make fun of the slow pace - and I do for fun - but put it all together and Las Vegas has moved Wisconsin to a 2 1/2 point favorite today and Pomeroy has them as a 4-point favorite to come into our building at 5 p.m. and win.

Below are the 25 teams that have most overcome their projected Value this year, followed by the 10 biggest duds led by UCLA and Memphis.  Most teams have been pretty close to their projection, and almost one-third have been with 10% of their preseason ranking (e.g. ranked 44th after being projected 40th, or 20th after being projected 22nd).  A few of the duds were due to players not actually playing, such as non-qualifications at Providence or me still having Terrell Stoglin in the database for Maryland after he had left.

	Underestimated by Value Add	Conf	Actual	Projected	Better
1	Florida	SEC	2	15	7.50
2	Gonzaga	WCC	8	34	4.25
3	Michigan	B10	7	29	4.14
4	Syracuse	BE	5	19	3.80
5	Duke	ACC	4	13	3.25
6	Cincinnati	BE	15	43	2.87
7	Virginia Commonwealth	A10	18	50	2.78
8	Wisconsin	B10	9	25	2.78
9	Purdue	B10	36	97	2.69
10	Belmont	OVC	31	81	2.61
11	Wichita St.	MVC	28	73	2.61
12	Illinois	B10	42	108	2.57
13	Clemson	ACC	51	130	2.55
14	Middle Tennessee	SB	40	92	2.30
15	Wyoming	MWC	62	140	2.26
16	North Dakota St.	Sum	66	141	2.14
17	Illinois Chicago	Horz	141	301	2.13
18	Bucknell	Pat	39	80	2.05
19	Santa Clara	WCC	123	251	2.04
20	New Mexico St.	WAC	99	198	2.00
21	Minnesota	B10	10	20	2.00
22	Virginia	ACC	35	69	1.97
23	San Francisco	WCC	108	211	1.95
24	Boise St.	MWC	74	142	1.92
25	UC Irvine	BW	149	278	1.87
	Value Add projection duds	Conf	Actual	Projected	Better
1	UCLA	P12	33	2	0.06
2	Memphis	CUSA	25	3	0.12
3	North Carolina St.	ACC	29	6	0.21
4	Arkansas	SEC	98	21	0.21
5	Baylor	B12	27	7	0.26
6	Texas	B12	41	11	0.27
7	Texas Tech	B12	210	62	0.30
8	Maryland	ACC	70	22	0.31
9	Houston	CUSA	199	63	0.32
10	Providence	BE	75	24	0.32