Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Bally Started It
This date, 12-14-2005, is a day that marks a new dawn in this site’s development.
OK, actually I was going to try and rip off some of Kyle’s work in his latest essay. My conscience would be clear, too, since he stole the whole animated basketball idea from me. But truth be told, I’m not the essay type. And since about 60% of what he wrote applies to me, there’s no point in me trying to put it any differently because I can’t put it better. I’m off to do some stuff for espn.com. It’s all crazy and weird and I could say a bunch of stuff, but let’s not make too big a deal out of this.
So you may be wondering what will be happening here. Even if you’re not, I’ll tell you. Line o’ the Night will still be here and this will remain a place to reveal some of the mysteries and goings on around college hoops. But my more developed stuff will be reserved for the Disney folks. And sadly, that will probably mean less quality content here. The stats/power ratings/RPI will continue to be updated, and my behind the scenes work on an individual stats page with things like offensive rating and rebound percentages continues.
The plan is for this place to still provide something of value. Like, for instance, you may have already read over at Big Ten Wonk about the West Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Conference calculating various tempo-free stats for the teams in its conference. Wonk indicates that the WVIAC is the first conference to take such a step. I’ll go one further and offer that the WVIAC is the first basketball organization at any level to produce these stats as official and distribute them to the world.
It may be an insignificant development to you, since you don’t really care that West Liberty’s defense is deceptively good. But at some point, somebody in a D1 conference’s office will be thinking about doing this. And their boss won’t laugh as hard at this idea because hey, somebody else is already doing it and the coaches and media in that conference actually find it useful. I don’t know when that will happen, but when it does, 12-14-2005 will be a date to remember.
Line o’ the Night
FG 3pt FT Reb
Min M-A M-A M-A O-T A F S TO BLK Pts
Rashad Jones-Jennings 33 8-15 0-0 7-11 10-30 1 1 3 3 0 23
Result: Win. Arkansas-Little Rock 72, Arkansas-Pine Bluff 54.
It’s a good day when you out-rebound your opponents by 14 on your own. So much for the idea of boring lines this week. Louisiana Tech’s Paul Millsap goes for 24 and 19 and he didn’t even get consideration.