Shot chart champions
by Ken Pomeroy on Monday, August 27, 2012
The good folks at cbssports.com provide shot location data for selected games during the season. Typically, I make use of this data as a sanity check on a player’s two-point percentage. For instance, it can be useful to distinguish poor two-point shooters that take too many mid-range shots from those that just can’t finish near the rim.
Data isn’t available for every player and it’s not complete for most players - cbssports.com only has its hamsters running on about 15% of games, those involving a ranked team or a tournament game. Furthermore, the location recorded for individual shots has some error associated with it. I’m guessing it’s in the 3-4’ range. Still, one can safely distinguish a 2’ shot from an 8’ shot and a 10’ shot from a 17’ shot and that can be valuable information we can’t get without doing a lot of work.
…Projections for returning players
by Drew Cannon on Thursday, August 9, 2012
I’ve spent a good chunk of the last couple weeks putting together a player projection system, my primary goal at this point simply having one exist so that, in the future, it can be improved upon. It’s built on a bunch of regressions that take into account the player’s stats from last season, his basic demographics, his team’s stats from last season, high school rankings and ratings, mock draft projections, and awards.
It cannot handle (yet) transfers, freshmen (although we have something else for some of them, as you’ll remember), redshirts, teammate activity, and coach activity. So quite a bit. But we have something to start with, and that’s something we didn’t have not too long ago.
I’ll get into some of the more interesting things I found in creating these projections as time goes on. For now, I’m giving you the projections for (1) every BCS All-Conference…
The modern history of realignment
by Ken Pomeroy on Monday, August 6, 2012
We are in unusual times. Twenty teams are changing conferences this season and another 23 moves are set for next season. There’s a lot going on and the world seems out of balance with Florida International in Conference USA, San Jose State in the Sun Belt, and the WAC on life support.
A look back on the history of the game reveals that the sands of college basketball’s conference structure are constantly shifting. OK, not constantly. For instance, in 2002, the only change to a conference’s membership was when the Big South accepted the previously independent Gardner-Webb into its realm.
Normally, however, there’s some realignment going on each off-season. In fact, in the 64-team era (coincidentally, also the “football-driven realignment era”) there’s been an average of ten changes in conference membership per season, ranging from the single change in 2002 and 2010 to 31 in 1991. Here’s the…