behind the numbers – Rush The Court

Behind the Numbers: Who Is Killing Their Own Team?

KCarpenter — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 23:08:47 +0000

A lot of the effort in basketball analytics goes towards the good things that players do that do not appear in the box score. This is the driving idea behind Michael Lewis’s seminal New York Times feature, “The No-Stats All-Star,” an early look at analytics in the NBA primarily focused on Darryl Morey, Shane Battier, the Houston Rockets, and adjusted plus/minus. This makes sense: finding hidden strengths is the coach’s angle while finding hidden value is the economist’s angle. As a result of the fine work of smart guys with formulas and others with a willingness to watch a lot of [...]

Behind the Numbers: Our Robot Overlords Think We Give UNC Too Much Credit

KCarpenter — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 17:00:06 +0000

Kellen Carpenter is an ACC microsite staffer and an RTC columnist. Behind the Numbers will publish weekly throughout the season.

Preseason rankings are a funny thing and once real basketball begins, these guesses about the season grow increasingly meaningless. People forget who was ranked where in the preseason by January, if they haven’t already forgotten by December. This, for what it’s worth, is probably a good thing. Preseason polls can turn out to be pretty embarrassing, highlighting how little journalists and coaches actually know about how the basketball season is going to turn out. Remember Kansas State and Michigan State last season? [...]

Behind the Numbers: Considering Point Guard “Purity”

KCarpenter — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 21:20:13 +0000

Kellen Carpenter is an ACC microsite staffer and an RTC columnist. Each week, BTN will take an in-depth look at some interesting aspect of college basketball’s statistical arcana.

The phrase “pure point guard” is loaded. It implies that there is a Platonic notion of point guard which all mortal players can only aspire to. We are just fools in a cave looking at a shadow on the wall, but that is all we have when the purest conception of the point guard is beyond our field of vision. I can only assume that this unknowable figure looks something like Bob Cousy. [...]

Behind the Numbers: VCU & Butler Prove the Limits of Analytics

KCarpenter — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 19:46:40 +0000

Kellen Carpenter is an RTC contributor. I should make my stipulations clear from the start: We should be talking Connecticut, but instead we will be talking about Butler. Before we talk about Butler, we will talk about Virginia Commonwealth University. The University of Kentucky, outside of this sentence, will not be discussed at all.

In a Shocker of Shakas, Smart Directed His Team to the F4

Continuing on: there is not a single analytic, logical or evidence-based approach that would have predicted VCU in the Final Four. Let’s be perfectly clear about this. In basketball analytics, most systems aim to [...]

Behind the Numbers: Structures and Strategies

KCarpenter — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 18:01:33 +0000

Kellen Carpenter is an RTC contributor. Nate Silver isn’t always right, but I’m beginning to wonder why I would ever bet against him. Last week, Silver published a consideration of seeding where he argued that because of the structure of the bracket, the eighth and ninth seeds are at a considerable disadvantage compared to much lower-seeded teams. This makes intuitive sense because the way the bracket is constructed the eight and nine have to play a top-seeded team before everyone but the sixteen seed. Still, it sounds funny and it is odd that a twelve seed has a better statistical chance of [...]

Behind the Numbers: Against the Numbers

KCarpenter — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 17:00:56 +0000

This is the one time of the year where people take an incredible interest in college basketball statistics. Folks who don’t know their Ken Pomeroy from their Jeff Sagarin rankings are suddenly asking how valuable a low turnover percentage is and if there is any evidence it correlates with tempo despite being allegedly tempo-free. Fortunately, there are lots of smart stat people who are willing to lend an analytic hand. If that’s what you are looking for, then let me point you in the right direction.

Sullinger & His Buckeyes Perform Well in the Metrics

I obviously place [...]

Behind the Numbers: Focus and Balance

KCarpenter — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 22:24:57 +0000

Kellen Carpenter is an RTC contributor.

What’s the ideal team look like? Is it five equally skilled players who share the ball and can all defend and score? A super deep team with ten guys who could all start? Does the ideal team have an alpha dog and a clear hierarchy? A dynamic duo? Maybe, a Big Three? If it’s one superstar and role-players, where does the superstar play? Is he a guard or a forward? One of the things that I enjoy most about basketball is that there is no clear consensus on any of these ideas. There [...]

Behind the Numbers: Defense and the Individual

KCarpenter — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 19:19:01 +0000

Kellen Carpenter is an RTC contributor.

This is a story about Kenneth Faried and Morehead State. I know that it’s March now, and that Morehead State, who went 13-5 in the Ohio Valley Conference, has only the slightest chances of making a tournament splash. We have all March to talk about the contenders and the Big Dance. For now, let’s talk about Kenneth Faried and Morehead State. Actually, first let’s set the stage.

Faried is BTN's National Defensive POY

We are very good at measuring offense in basketball. We have a good sense of what is valuable [...]

Behind the Numbers: Cliches and Champions

KCarpenter — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 17:01:16 +0000

I like cliches, because they give me something to do. The proverbs of the sporting world and the received aphoristic wisdom of our hallowed forefathers are well-known and often taken for granted. They are also, fortunately, not too hard to test or analyze. I’m a fairly agreeable guy, but I must say, few things give me as much joy as being contrary in the face of stupid cliches. It’s an easy thing to do in the blogosphere, equivalent to shooting fish in a barrel, and there are many out there who are better gunslingers than I. [...]

Behind the Numbers: The Other Guys of the Year

KCarpenter — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 15:53:19 +0000

Kellen Carpenter is an RTC contributor.

The Player of the Year race in college basketball is an interesting and bizarre thing. The most talented player is rarely selected, and the winner is seldom a National Champion. I don’t want to go so far as to say the race is a popularity contest, but it’s something akin to one. Instead of picking the best player, the voters like to pick the most emblematic player, or failing that, the most interesting. Oh, and that player has to almost inevitably be a bit of a ball hog. Evan [...]

Alpha Dogs, Traffic Jams, and Derrick Williams

KCarpenter — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 16:38:22 +0000

While we love to celebrate teamwork in college basketball, the truth is that the individual is much more fun. Balanced scoring is fine and tactically sound, but what we really love in college basketball is the virtuoso offensive performance, or as it is called in 2011, the Jimmer. And while the three-headed Devil from Durham may have won last season, perhaps this season, the one man show is back in style. It’s Michael Jordan’s fault, really. His competitive nature and unbelievable personal narcissism motivated him to incredible heights and made him largely unbearable to most of his contemporaries. [...]

Behind the Numbers: Slow and Steady and Sometimes Weird

KCarpenter — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 16:00:44 +0000

Kellen Carpenter is an RTC contributor.

This is my favorite part of the college basketball season. Everything is more certain, yet still mutable: we know where things stand, but for most, it’s not too late for a strong push to finish the season. We don’t have to rely on pre-season guesswork or early returns: we have an idea of the mettle of most teams. The hype around fall flavors like Kansas State has been forgotten, and instead, we now read up on San Diego State. Here is the part of the season where we have taken stock of the [...]

Behind the Numbers: The Unimportance of Assists?

KCarpenter — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 17:58:39 +0000

Pittsburgh, as Syracuse most recently learned, is a contender to win the national championship because they do one thing incredibly well and a lot of other things at a pretty high level. The one excellent thing they do is crash the offensive boards. They lead the nation in offensive rebounding rate, which is the driving force behind their current position as the most efficient offense in the country. The Panthers do a lot of other things well– shooting, defensive rebounding, controlling turnovers– but nothing they do, in terms of advanced stats, really jumped out at me [...]

Behind the Numbers: On the Issue of Home Cooking…

KCarpenter — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 15:44:18 +0000

Conference play has started and it is a glorious thing. While non-conference play has its charms (who doesn’t love to see heavyweights go at it?), conference play has a special allure. Games are exciting when there is history, and that’s what conferences offer: a history of rivalries and past meetings that add a little bit of spice to each new meeting. And while old wounds may ache, it’s the new ones that sting: The best part of conference play is the home-and-away series; to better understand the meaning of Duke and Ohio State’s close scrapes this past week, [...]

Behind the Numbers: The Buckeyes Are Ready

KCarpenter — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 21:31:40 +0000

Kellen Carpenter is an RTC contributor.

(ed. note: this article was prepared and written prior to Ohio State’s Tuesday night win over Iowa)

When is the appropriate time to start talking seriously about which team is going to win it all? I know that everyone wants to hear predictions before a single game is played and that can be a fun exercise, but how often does it yield any actual insight? Pre-season polls have their place and wiser minds than mine find at least one pre-season poll very useful and interesting. That said, polls and summer [...]