The Bad Luck of the Irish and Some Unlucky Ducks
by Ken Pomeroy on Monday, August 21, 2006
It’s time for the annual look at luck. In order to keep things fresh, I’m throwing my old buddy Pythagoras to the curb and leaning on a new pal, Karl Friedrich Gauss, to show us the way to the luckiest and unluckiest teams in the game last season.
You see, past versions of this post used the Pythagorean method to estimate what a team’s winning percentage should have been. But now, I’ll be using the correlated Gaussian method, invented by Dean Oliver. The difference between the two is that Pythagorean averages each of a team’s offensive and defensive efficiency to come up with a winning percentage, while the Gaussian uses the distribution of a team’s game efficiencies. Since most teams have a tendency to play to the level of the competition, the latter method is little more accurate.
See last year’s episodes (1, 2), and previous versions…
Fun With Database Queries
by Ken Pomeroy on Monday, August 14, 2006
I think it’s safe to say that normally, when a team loses just one starter and returns its entire bench corps, we can expect that team to improve the following season. Especially when the departing player wasn’t drafted and wasn’t picked on the top two all-conference teams in his conference. (OK, technically, he was second team Big East. But the Big East mysteriously fills its teams with 10 players each. Well, actually 11 were on the first team. Anyway, media covering the Big East basically named this guy no better than the third-best point guard in the league.)
By now, you may have guessed the team in question is the Pitt Panthers. They may well be ranked in or close to the top 5 in the preseason polls. But their new team has to go through a serious adjustment period, despite being nearly identical to the old one.
Let’s look…