[Drew is in the midst of a three-part series to critique his statistical projections of the ESPNU Top 100 incoming freshmen. Last Thursday, he handled prospects headed to the ACC or Big East. Monday, he tackled the Big Ten and Big 12. Today, he concludes with the Pac-12, SEC, and everybody else.] Pac-12 Arizona Kaleb […]

[Drew is in the midst of a three-part series to critique his statistical projections of the ESPNU Top 100 incoming freshmen. Last Thursday, he handled prospects headed to the ACC or Big East. Today, he tackles the Big Ten and Big 12. On Thursday, he’ll take care of the rest.] Big Ten Indiana Yogi Ferrell, […]

A couple weeks ago, I left you with some crude freshman projections for the ESPNU Top 100. Today, I’m here to fine-tune them some. Forty-eight of the hundred took part in the 2011 Nike Elite Youth Basketball League, for which I’ve compiled advanced statistics. Worth knowing about those stats: The typical possession’s worth about 1.1 […]

[Note: Drew Cannon has been working on projecting freshman performance using a combination of stats and some subjective measures. You know Drew from his work at Basketball Prospectus and ESPN Insider. He’ll be posting occasionally throughout the summer, and maybe longer. Please note the bylines going forward. – Ken] I’ve gone and made advanced stats […]

Even if you have no interest in boxing (like me) you’ve heard about the bizarre decision by the judges of the Manny Pacquiao/Tim Bradley fight on Saturday night. Despite nearly everybody believing Pacquiao won the 12-round fight convincingly, two of the three judges gave the fight to Bradley prompting disbelief among observers. This caused me […]

[Written 12/8/12] I try to measure skills based on the opportunities for those skills to be observed. On the team level, this often means ratings the offense (and defense) on points scored (and allowed) per possession. That is the basis for the ratings system. If you’re looking for info on what the columns mean on […]

This is not the kind of thing that will make you smarter about college hoops. It might make you dumber because your knowledge of this will take the place of something more useful. But as I work on larger projects, it’s often necessary to wander off course and make something visual of the data I’m […]

With Monday night’s championship game in the books, the season-long race for the nation’s most-coveted statistically-based player of the year award has officially concluded. And it is my honor to announce that the 2012 kenpom.com Player of the Year is Michigan State senior Draymond Green. Against the fifth-most difficult defensive schedule in the country, Green […]

In today’s fast-paced society, it can be difficult to carve out time to break down video on your favorite team’s next opponent. One way to cheat the system and get a rough feel for offensive tendencies is to look at ‘assisted-on’ data, which indicates how many of a player’s made shots were assisted. Does a […]

Mercer beat Utah State 70-67 in a 66-possession game Wednesday night. I was there. This is what I saw. (Really, this is heavier on the random thoughts than game recap.) Travel and Altitude Redux There’s nothing like travel and altitude to enhance one’s road struggles. So serious credit goes to Mercer for overcoming a 2000-mile […]