A lot of folks send in great tips on some cool box scores that appear during the season. I wish I was dutiful enough to print them all. I did get a lot of mail about Butler’s offensive assault on Cleveland State last week. A historic game indeed – Butler’s 92 points on 53 possessions was the most efficient game (1.73 PPP) in the modern era*, knocking off DePaul’s annihilation of Syracuse last season (1.65). 

It seems like a good time to reveal my latest project – the HD box score. Much like HDTV, it’s not necessary to view a box score in HD to understand what went on during a game, but it does add some resolution to your experience. I’ve got some more work to do on this, but the player data is pretty much set. The essence of the HD box score is that opportunities are tabulated along with the traditional counting stats. The only exceptions are the points and FGA categories where the “opportunities” are the team totals while the player in question in on the court. But for assists, you have the teammates’ field goals made associated with it, for offensive rebounds, you have total possible offensive rebounds, and so on. You can also see the defensive and offensive possessions a player was on the floor by looking at the steals and turnovers categories, respectively. (My possession counter still needs some work, but it’s getting there.) The best part might be that playing time is listed in minutes and seconds, just like the NBA.

So anyway, here it is for the Butler/CSU game. Pete Campbell (28 points in “about” 31 possessions) almost averaged a point per possession on his own! I’ll try to post one of these every now and then for games of note, and where the data is available, because it’s not available for a lot of games. Much like TV, most contests are not yet available in HD.

*Modern era began in 2003-04.