Yearly Archives: 2013

With conference play heating up this week, it’s time for Monte Carlo simulations. For the noobs, this is where I run each conference’s schedule 10,000 times on my computer using the current ratings. (To the nerds: I dumb down the exponent used to account for the inherent uncertainty in the current ratings.) What’s recorded below […]

Welcome to Play-by-Play Theater, the semi-regular very irregular feature where I mine play-by-play data from the past four-plus seasons to discover the wacky things that happen in darkest corners of the college basketball schedule. Christmas week is not a time for major breaking news, but last Saturday there was an unusual occurrence worth documenting for […]

If you ever want to feel invincible, I recommend checking out the life actuarial tables provided by the Social Security Administration. You can look up your age and figure out how many more years the average person at that age figures to live. According to the tables, at age 40 I can be expected to […]

This is a weekly digest documenting the biggest upsets, craziest comebacks, and Alan Williams news of the past seven days. Biggest upsets 1. New Orleans 71, UTEP 69, Monday. (2%) Whenever I see an upset of this magnitude, I am forced to wonder if there’s something wrong with the ratings that feed the predictions. New […]

Last night, Barry Hinson gained worldwide fame with his postgame comments after a 73-65 loss at Murray State. In doing so, Hinson joined the ranks of Pat Knight and Mike Montgomery as recent users of an over-the-top negative motivational technique. Knight and Montgomery came off looking like heroes in many corners of the media for […]

Sometime during the North Carolina-Kentucky game, Dick Vitale mentioned that he would be in favor of allowing a player to accumulate six fouls before being disqualified. It was probably around the time that five Kentucky players had at least two fouls in the first half. I’ve heard a few folks suggest this remedy as the […]

This is a weekly digest documenting the biggest upsets, craziest comebacks, and Alan Williams news of the past seven days. Programming note: The past week was finals week for most schools. Thus, action of the noteworthy variety was limited. So work with me on what follows. Biggest upsets There was not a single upset of […]

Sometimes I’ll be watching a game and it’s noted that a team is playing small. Often this means a team is going with three or maybe four guards. But sometimes that terminology is thrown around when the 6-6 wing is moved to the four and he’s playing alongside a 6-11 center. I understand the terminology […]

One of the issues that came up with the previous analysis of early season trends in this space was just how much the lack of charging calls is affecting the historically low turnover rate we’ve seen so far. This is not something that can be answered definitively using publicly available data. We can isolate fouls […]

This is a weekly digest documenting the biggest upsets, craziest comebacks, and Alan Williams news of the past seven 14 days. Biggest upsets These teams have been reading some Malcolm Gladwell lately. Yes, David can beat Goliath on occasion. 3. Illinois-Chicago 74, San Diego 70 (9%), Nov. 26. UIC had previously lost by 20 at […]