Wednesday, December 03, 2003
Bad Stats
The college basketball box score is a very misleading thing sometimes. Take rebounds for example. Just because one team has more rebounds than its opponent does not mean it is doing a better job rebounding. When Team A misses a shot, Team B is more likely to rebound it, and vice versa. So total rebounds are influenced somewhat by shooting percentage. The team that misses more will have a difficult time coming up with more total rebounds. Yet this fact is totally lost on the mainstream basketball analysts. A more accurate way to evaluate rebounding is using rebounding precentage defined as...
Defensive rebounds / (Defensive rebounds + Opponents offensive rebounds)
This can be calculated for both teams in a game, and the team with the higher percentage has done the better job rebounding. In lopsided games, frequently the winning team out-rebounds the opponent, but that doesn't always tell the true story. Take the Connecticut-Sacred Heart game on November 22nd. UConn won 111-64 and won the rebounding stat 46-39. However Sacred Heart had a better rebounding percentage, .727 to .712.