One of the more famous comebacks last season was Western Kentucky’s triumph over Mississippi Valley State in the NCAA tournament. Sadly, it just missed the list published here last week. But since it was probably viewed in real-time by a few of you, I thought it would be a way to show why the win […]

The new win-probability algorithm has been activated and it’s time to look at the most improbable wins of last season. Going forward, I plan to have better tools around here so you can identify these games without having to wait five months after the season ends for me to write something on them. What follows […]

There’s been quite a bit of recent discussion on this blog on the topic of three-point shooting. (Here, here, here, here, and here.)  There are two key takeaways from these articles: First, that it’s really hard to predict a team’s three-point percentage for a game, even knowing how well they tend to shoot three-pointers, and […]

Forty years ago yesterday, the USSR beat the USA 51-50 in the 1972 Olympic gold medal game, handing the Americans their first loss in Olympic competition. From a global perspective, it’s the most famous basketball game ever played. The contest is notorious not only for the outcome, but for the series of game management errors […]

About three seasons ago I tried to develop some sort of algorithm to assess a team’s chance of winning at various points in the game. It was the middle of the NCAA tournament, and as favored teams were finding themselves in a deficit at some point during the game, it seemed like it would be […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

If you ask yourself one day, “Who’s the best defensive rebounder in the country?”, what do you do? Well, you click over to the Kenpom defensive rebounding percentage leaderboards. The guy who’s first isn’t necessarily the answer, but even with some serious teammate and opponent troubles, it’s tough for that top guy to escape the […]

Alright it’s over. Congrats to Adam Scott. And congrats to the long putter. It saved his career. — Ken Pomeroy (@kenpomeroy) July 22, 2012 That piece of wisdom, offered after Adam Scott birdied the 14th hole yesterday and led Ernie Els by four shots, didn’t turn out so well. In truth, at this point my […]