the kenpom.com blog

Individual Stats: An Introduction

01.16.06

A couple of odds and ends to start off the week.

If you haven’t seen the new blog from Ryan, of Hawkeye Hoops fame, you should check it out. For those of you that have lamented the lack of material over here this season, maybe Ryan can fill the void for you. He already has two excellent posts up. The latest one deals with the legacy of Dick Bennett.

Each season, I end up gravitating towards two or three teams this time of year - usually the ones that seem to be on the verge of getting showered with attention. Washington State is one of those teams this season. Sure, they could have made life easier on themselves by winning one game on their LA road trip last week. But with Arizona getting swept by the third and fourth best teams in Oregon, and UCLA with some serious injury issues, the Pac-10 is in total chaos. Nine of the ten teams have two or three losses in conference. If you keep an eye on WSU, you may be putting yourself three or four weeks ahead of the national media curve.

A statistical oddity involves the Saint Louis Billikens. They are 8-7 after a Saturday win against UMass. The order of their results this season looks like this:

W L W L W L W L W L W L W L W

That’s good news for Richmond fans, since SLU travels to play the Spiders on Wednesday.

This week, I’ll review what some of the individual stats mean on the scouting report pages since I’ve received a few questions about how to interpret the numbers and what these stats can do for you. First up will be offensive rating.

Friday

                           FG    3pt  FT    Reb
                      Min  M-A   M-A  M-A   O-T  A F S TO BLK Pts
Jeff Xavier            38  6-10  3-7 10-10  2-4  8 1 6  1  0   25
Result: Win. Manhattan 87, Rider 81.

Saturday

                           FG   3pt   FT    Reb
                      Min  M-A  M-A   M-A   O-T  A F S TO BLK Pts
Al Thornton            39 15-18 1-1   6-8   3-6  1 3 1  3  0   37
Result: Loss. Boston College 90, Florida State 87.

Sunday

                           FG   3pt   FT    Reb
                      Min  M-A  M-A   M-A   O-T  A F S TO BLK Pts
Jared Jordan           36  3-7  1-4   2-2   2-4 16 2 3  2  0    9
Result: Win. Marist 89, Rider 66.

Take My Power Ratings, Please

01.05.06

When I developed the efficiency page, the idea was that it would replace the power ratings. Last season, I didn’t really notice much difference in the accuracy of the efficiency versus the power ratings, but I wasn’t using the adjusted pythagorean scheme on the efficiency data, either.

If you’ve been checking both pages over the past few weeks, you’ve probably noticed that the rankings on the efficiency page have made a lot more sense. With that in mind, I’d thought I’d jot down some unusual conference favorites that adjusted pythagorean had on Wednesday. Maybe it will provide a good laugh in March, or maybe it will give me the impetus to finally ditch the power ratings.

A-10: Xavier (even before last night’s win at St. Joe’s).
Big Ten: Illinois, with Indiana a close second.
Big XII: Texas by a lot, but Colorado is a comfortable second.
Big East: Villanova, with Pitt second.
Big South: Winthrop is so far ahead of its competition, they should go undefeated.
CAA: George Mason.
Horizon: Butler.
MAC: Miami (East), Toledo (West).
MVC: Missouri State.
Mo. West: Air Force, with BYU a suprising second.
Pac-10: Arizona, with Washington State 3rd?
SEC: Florida (East), LSU (West).
WAC: Utah State.

Line o’ the Night

                           FG    3pt  FT   Reb
                      Min  M-A   M-A  M-A  O-T   A F S TO BLK Pts
Eric Hicks             34  9-17  0-0  2-3 12-15  0 3 1  0  1   20
Result: Win. Cincinnati 82, DePaul 60.

More Scoreless Material

12.16.05

Thanks to some reader e-mail, I can begin work on the history of great scoreless streaks in college hoops. Illinois fans were quick to point out that their team blanked Northwestern for the first 15:13 of a February 19, 2000 game at Welsh Ryan. And Duke fans insisted I point out that the NCAA Record Book is about as accurate as Wikipedia, as Dean Smith four-cornered his UNC team into a scoreless first half of a 1979 game at Cameron Indoor.

The information regarding the longest scoreless streak is the second inaccuracy we’ve found in the Record Book. You’ll recall the bogus “final regular season poll” data much referenced by media outlets last April.