I’ve made a change to the player stats to remove games against non-D1 opponents. So beginning today, the site is completely free from the influence of stats compiled against the likes of Crowley’s Ridge, Virginia Intermont, Champion Baptist, Evergreen State, and St. Katherine. (There will still be one exception: Won/loss records still reflect the results of these games. Also, this change only applies to the 2014 season and beyond.)
This decision makes sense on many levels, but let’s discuss the main drawback first. An individual’s shooting stats will no longer match up with the official numbers put out by his team and the NCAA if his team has played a game against a non-D1. That’s about the only negative, really. Given that the team stats on the site already exclude these games, it’s not a big concern to me.
It’s kind of silly that NCAA convention dictates that these games are included in official stats, anyway. While these contests aren’t technically exhibitions, they might as well be. Often the games are classified as exhibitions by the opposing team and the NCAA basketball committee has a history of ignoring them for purposes of tournament selection and seeding. Many of these games are useless for evaluation purposes so it makes sense to remove them.
While there’s definitely a range of schedule difficulty just within Division-I, nothing compares to the outrageous numbers put up in some of the games against the worst college teams in the nation. St. Katherine and San Diego Christian scored an average of 38 points per game against San Diego State. Charleston Southern averaged 1.63 points per possession in four games against hapless non-D1 teams. Utah averaged 126 points per game in their two contests against non-D1’s. These insane numbers and their byproducts get averaged into various official NCAA stats for these teams and their players alike, then used by respected broadcasters on national TV to make important points.
I mean we all hate the NCAA, right? So why do we follow them in this one instance where we can take control of our lives? Other entities can do what they want, but I’m washing my hands of the numbers produced in these farcical games.