Win probability for every college game
by Ken Pomeroy on Monday, May 31, 2010
(For a more detailed explanation on how these were derived: see also this.)
Well, nearly every game. You’ll have to look hard to find the missing games involving two D-I teams. Just head over to your favorite team’s page and click on the score of the game.
Since these are adjusted win probabilities, games involving non D-I teams are not included. While you might be looking for raw win probability, adjusted is the only way to go. Nobody was watching the opening moments of the Kansas/Alcorn State game with any notion that the game would be competitive, even when Alcorn State somehow scored the first four points. From a strategy standpoint, this is how the participants are (or should be) looking at the game.
If you’re a regular visitor, then you’ll be able to pick up on what’s going on with a little effort. The only…
All points are not created equal
by Ken Pomeroy on Monday, May 24, 2010
Somewhere in the past week, this innocent blog post went viral. At least viral in the sphere of basketball blogs that still publish regularly in the offseason. The upshot is that coaches who bench players with foul trouble are only hurting themselves. It’s more geared towards the NBA, but the same principles discussed in the piece apply to any level of the game. My initial reaction was a desire to share a beer with Joe Morgan and decry the use of stats in sports analysis.
But as the post picked up link after link after link, there was little dissent from the conclusion that a coach should be maximizing a foul-prone player’s minutes. The result of that thinking would be that a coach simply uses his player independently of his foul count.
Consider me unconvinced. If a coach is trying to win, he should not…