Wednesday, December 03, 2003

Bad Stats

The college basketball box score is a very misleading thing sometimes. Take rebounds for example. Just because one team has more rebounds than its opponent does not mean it is doing a better job rebounding. When Team A misses a shot, Team B is more likely to rebound it, and vice versa. So total rebounds are influenced somewhat by shooting percentage. The team that misses more will have a difficult time coming up with more total rebounds. Yet this fact is totally lost on the mainstream basketball analysts. A more accurate way to evaluate rebounding is using rebounding precentage defined as...

Defensive rebounds / (Defensive rebounds + Opponents offensive rebounds)

This can be calculated for both teams in a game, and the team with the higher percentage has done the better job rebounding. In lopsided games, frequently the winning team out-rebounds the opponent, but that doesn't always tell the true story. Take the Connecticut-Sacred Heart game on November 22nd. UConn won 111-64 and won the rebounding stat 46-39. However Sacred Heart had a better rebounding percentage, .727 to .712.

Bucking the Trend

Bucknell, the same team that made 1 out of 17 free throws in their opener against Michigan St., made 9 out of 9 tonight against Northwestern. They've made 72% in their three games since the disaster. However, they haven't won yet.

Monday, December 01, 2003

On the Radar: Troy St.

This is my new feature "On the Radar" where I profile a good team that the cool people aren't talking about. I guess it should really be "Under the Radar" then, but I'm not going to change. Today's team is Troy St. who has a respectable loss to LSU and wins over San Diego St. and Oakwood College (who I think is NAIA). What's cool about the men of Troy is that not only have they shot more 3's than 2's this year, which is rare in itself, but they are almost shooting better from 3 (51% from 2, 47% from 3). So they are getting almost a point a half on every three point attempt, compared with about one point on 2's. Even if you consider the extra points that come with 2's in the form of trips to the line, there is no way their 2 point production is close to their 3 point production. This suggests that Troy isn't shooting enough 3's. Their schedule is pathetic the rest of the way, what with the Atlantic Sun making their members play 20 conference games, so don't be looking for them on the tube anytime soon.