A Deal With the Devil
01.05.05
Texas A&M at College Station is getting ready to tip it off against Kansas in Lawrence. TAMUCS has made a name for itself on this site and elsewhere with a schedule that has been hideously pathetic. Because of this, I have been derisively adding the campus location any time I referenced the Aggies. But what you should also know about these guys is that they are not the pushover they were last year. Six conference wins is not a stretch for them this year, which is six more than they had last year. Especially when you consider Billy Gillispie's miracle revival of UTEP last season.
So why do I bring this up on an evening when the Aggies figure to get smoked? Because if they are going places - namely the NIT - they won't get smoked. I'm not one for "emotional factors" being all that significant in a game, but tonight is an exception. There's no way KU or its fans can have the same energy for this game that they had for Georgia Tech. They passed a huge test over the weekend, beating the Yellow Jackets without Mr. Double-Double, Wayne Simien.
The next uncertainty regarding the Jayhawks is how they will play on the road. They get to answer that on Sunday at Kentucky. It's only human nature to relax for the A&M game sandwiched in the middle. On the flip side, TAMUCS has had this game circled for a couple of weeks. It's a chance to show if they have any legitimacy at all. Throw in that Antoine Wright has as much ability to score in the paint as anyone wearing a KU uniform tonight, and this appears to be a great opportunity for the Aggies.
Strictly from a numbers perspective, you have to love the Aggies chances. Only once in their last 28 games has the result of one their games been different from the previous game's result. They lost the first 17 in a row in that sequence and have won the last 11 in a row. Based on that, TAMUCS has like a 97% chance of winning tonight because their most recent game was a win. (OK, that's a really dumb use of statistics, but I couldn't resist.)
So here's my deal for you, Texas A&M at College Station. I know you can't win against the Jayhawks. KU can sleepwalk through 40 minutes, even without Simien, and manage an ugly victory. But if you can lose by less than the Pomeroy predicted margin of 13, I will never distinguish your campus location again in this here space.
I'm on your side on this one, Aggies. Really, I am.
Combined Efficiency
12.30.04
received some good e-mails in response to the stats page. Most of the votes for an additional statistic were in favor of something I'll call "combined efficiency." It's simple:
Combined Efficiency = Offensive Efficiency - Defensive Efficiency
It's just the amount of points a team would gain or lose in 100 possessions with an average opponent. Honestly, I am not all that comfortable with this stat. The idea of calculating OE and DE was to assess the effectiveness of parts of the team. With CE, you have one number that applies to an entire team. It's really just a glorified average margin of victory. A couple of printable e-mails from the past week...
Ken,
Great work. I'm still reading through your explanation, but that's my slow comprehension, not necessarily your explanation.
I have a couple of suggestions that could be considered for "bonus stat". One could be Offensive Efficiency Minus Defensive Efficiency. I think this sort of Efficiency differential could be useful in comparing teams that play each other. Also, weighting games differently that are home/away. I would argue that a team with a true home-court advantage have a better shot at controlling the tempo of the game than a visiting team, ergo producing a more efficient offense/defense. I'm new to this stuff, so ignore me if this isn't statistically significant.
Thanks for the work,
Tim
There were some items I left unmentioned in my original post. The main thing being, I do apply home court advantage to the efficiency numbers. It's applied on a per possession basis, so it ends up being a few hundredths of a point for each possession.
As far as applying that concept to the tempo, it's hard for me to see a connection. I can understand how it would be advantageous for a road team, typically being the underdog, to attempt to slow down the game. But even if coaches were that conscious of tempo, once the team fell behind they would instinctively play faster. Overall, the effect would be small.
Ken,
I can't get enough of your site. Thanks for everything you do. So, I'm unemployed and can't see any games on TV because I'm in Thailand. So I'm getting my whole hoops fix on the web.
That's my excuse for having done the following table by hand. It shows the differential between teams' adjusted offensive and defensive efficiencies from your site. I like this because it takes the efficiency data and synthesizes it.
Pretty good list, too. I hope it's legible on your end.
Best wishes,
Joshua
The moral of the story is, if you claim to be from some far-flung country, you get your e-mail printed. Other tips are: 1) include an appropriate greeting and closing, and 2) put something meaningful in the subject because I have a vicious spam filter in place.
And with that I am out of here. Time for some mind-clearing rounds of golf where the temperature can occasionally reach 70 this time of year. Until Wednesday, updates on the ratings pages may be sporadic, and posting here will be non-existent.
Making a Beilein to Morgantown
West Virginia knocked off George Washington last night in an Atlantic-10 throwback game to remain in the unbeaten club, whose numbers dropped to ten with Hawaii's heartbreaking loss at Fresno State. The 9-0 start is the best for the Mountaineers since the Jerry West era. While the game at WVU Coliseum was sold out, one can conclude basketball has not quite arrived in Morgantown because no couches were burned in celebration.
WVU graduated to the Big East in the 1995 but they've never had much success there, with their only tourney bid coming in 1998 as a 10 seed. Things are changing under third-year head coach John Beilein though, and the Big East is more wide open than people expected this season. UConn has struggled with, or in one case been beaten by, some questionable competition. Syracuse and Pitt figure to finish 1-2 in some order, but then you have WVU fighting it out with UConn, Boston College (the nation's luckiest team so far), and possibly Villanova and Providence in the second tier of the Big East.
The Mountaineers were on my preseason list of six darkhorse teams that didn't receive any votes in the preseason polls. So far they're the only ones to do anything to deserve top 25 consideration. So I think I have found a team to get obsessed over. D'Or Fischer, you da man!
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I would be delinquent this morning if I didn't call out the Furman Paladins. If you're beating someone 69-8 at the half, chances are that's a game that shouldn't be on the schedule. Or at least be like Virginia and make it an exhibition.
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