Wednesday, December 23, 2009
An APB for a memorable season
One team that deserves a little more press than it’s been getting - which is zero - is the University of Arkansas Pine Bluff. Like many HBCU’s, the Golden Lions are wrapping up their annual pre-New Year’s barnstorming tour, having zig-zagged the nation collecting paychecks in exchange for beat-downs.
But a couple of things have been different about their travels. First, UAPB hasn’t mixed a tournament into their schedule, thus they have played an entire slate of true road games. With their first three SWAC contests on the road, the first game they will play outside of a hostile environment will be on January 16, some 16 games into the season.
The other part of the story is that while the team is 0-10, it hasn’t taken any beat-downs in the traditional sense. They’ve been quietly competitive in every single game, not losing a single contest by more than 20. When you’re playing the likes of Kansas State, Georgia Tech, Missouri, Arizona State, Oklahoma State, and UTEP - all in their place - and your conference stinks, that’s a start that your conference foes should be concerned about.
In fact, Pine Bluff is in the unique position of heading into the SWAC schedule winless - pending a game at Oregon next Monday (memo to Ernie Kent: this isn’t a gimme) - while having a legitimate shot of running the table in conference play. Probably not the 18% chance I’m showing right now, but even 5-10% is a staggering figure for a winless team.
I, for one, hope they can do it. Maybe it will provide some evidence that just because you lose doesn’t mean your confidence has to be shot. You can actually make strides in losing to quality opponents and there are such things as moral victories. Expect the Lions to get one more of those in Eugene. (Which would make them morally unbeaten?) After that, only real victories will matter, but there should be plenty of those on the way.
Friday, December 11, 2009
Excerpts from 1953: team stats
This is part of a continuing series examining pages from the 1953 Official NCAA Basketball Guide.
Naturally, the stats section in the book was one of the first things I turned to. If it was possible to get 51 rebounds in a game, then you can probably make the inference that a lot of shots did not go in back then. Indeed, as page 29 of the Guide shows, only three teams in all the land made over 40% of their field goal attempts. The “dunk shot” had not yet been popularized, obviously. In addition, no team could crack the 70% mark in free throw accuracy.
By the way, in today’s NCAA each basketball program is classified into one of three divisions for basketball. In ‘53, it was every school for itself. The intro to the major-college statistics section describes exactly how classification was determined.
Approximately 150 college basketball teams, which play most of their games against each other, are classified as “major-college” teams. They represent the field of so-called “big time” college basketball, as judged by the class of competition rather than seasonal strength. Teams of all other four-year colleges comprise the “small-college” field. An official list is issued annually.
Click on the thumbnail for a life-size image of page 29 and make note of that wacky defense Ole Miss is playing, guarding zones on the floor instead of individual opponents!
Friday, December 04, 2009
The Tempo-Free State
There are some interesting things that Google Analytics provides to web site owners. The thing I’m constantly fascinated with is the geographic breakdown of visitors. They give you a map that colors each state in various shades of green to indicate the relative frequency of visits from each state. That map isn’t terribly insightful, though. The top five states by visitors to this site since the start of the season breaks down like so…
1. New York
2. Illinois
3. California
4. Texas
5. North Carolina
From that list, we have four of the top five states by overall population. What I really want to know is which state’s citizens have the most interest in the site when scaled by population. Here’s how the top ten looks when dividing visits by total population of each state…
1. Kansas
2. Kentucky
3. Washington
4. North Carolina
5. Nevada
6. Virginia
7. Missouri
8. Illinois
9. Nebraska
10. Wisconsin
For the record, the District of Columbia produces over twice the per capita visitors that Kansas does. The list isn’t too surprising as there are a lot of hoop-heavy states in here. I’m not sure how Nebraska made the list, though. I’m pretty sure how Nevada did. Washington is an interesting find at #3. If we scaled by total basketball fans, we’d probably find the Emerald State would rank first. What’s the bottom five?
1. Louisiana
2. Arkansas
3. Hawaii
4. North Dakota
5. South Dakota
SEC country in general ranks low as they continue to be distracted by football. Every state in the southeast is in the bottom half of the nation in terms of per-capita interest. That’s part of the reason I’m running these stats now - to see where the serious hoops fans come from.
One other interesting bit of info is what pages are being hit the most. When I limit that list to the 2010 team pages, this is the kenpom top 25 in terms of popularity so far this year…
1. UNC
2. Duke
3. Kentucky
4. Kansas
5. Texas A&M
6. Washington
7. Texas
8. Syracuse
9. Wisconsin
10. Gonzaga
11. Missouri
12. Michigan State
13. Illinois
14. Minnesota
15. Purdue
16. Washington State
17. Marquette
18. Portland
19. Clemson
20. UNLV
21. Florida State
22. Memphis
23. Arizona
24. UCLA
25. Iowa
With Indiana, Michigan, and Northwestern falling just short of this list, the Big Ten actually has 9 teams in the top 30 and easily provides the biggest source of interest in the site.