March 2009
8 posts
Why Cindarellas are Bad
From a literary perspective, I’m sure they’re wonderful. But every time a legitimately underseeded team wins a few games, one of two things has happened:
1) The team has become, for the tournament, a much much much better team than they ever were in the rest of the season
2) The team has merely benefited from the variations in performance that allow upsets to happen
If...
Lineup Analysis
So. There two games I play more than all others; World of Warcraft and Out of the Park Baseball. OOTP is an absolutely amazing baseball sim, with more features and wondrous things than I could care to mention (though I’d love to if people were interested). Anyhow, I was thinking about my lineup, and about how, abstractly, the perfect lineup would be organized.
So, first, my team...
Round 1 Mismatches, or why the RPI Blows
The brackets are announced, and there are the predictable surprises and controversies. I’d like to tour the round one mismatches, but first, I’d like to address a controversy that many pundits have been wringing their ties over.
That would be Arizona v. Creighton. Many pundits (Gary Parrish most notably) have been complaining that Creighton deserved a berth more than Arizona. ...
Michigan St. does not deserve a 1 seed.
Seriously. They’re a good team, no question, and they may well win the B10 tournament. But that wouldn’t make them more deserving of a 1 seed than UConn, Pitt or Memphis. This is a team with some pretty freaking brutal losses under its belt. Losing to Maryland by 18! Losing to UNC by 35! Losses to Northwestern and Penn St by 7 and 4 respectively, both at home. And losing to...
Upset-tastic
This Thursday, four different top teams got knocked off of their high horse. Oklahoma was edged out by Oklahoma St. 61-60, in the quarterfinal round of the Big 12 tournament, Kansas was dropped by Baylor 71-64, Pittsburgh was dominated by West Virginia 74-60, and UConn lost to Syracuse 127-117 in 6 (count ‘em 6) overtimes. Pitt and UConn were both projected #1 seeds, Oklahoma was projected...
2009 Player of the Year
After my bold declaration about DeJuan Blair’s superiority, I had a moment of hesitation. Blake Griffin is an excellent player, and I hadn’t truly run the numbers on the two of them. And you know me, I hate making assertions without numbers to legitimize my iconoclasm. So I sat down with the two of them, to try and figure out their values. (It truly is a two man race, there...
NCAAB Player of the Year
I don’t want to get sidetracked from the above analysis, but I was subjected to a rude awakening by someone who posited that the PoY will not be DeJuan Blair. This, to me, seems beyond belief. We’re talking a player that grabs more than a third again the offensive rebounds of the next closest player - in the last 4 years. He’s in another world. Oh, and Oklahoma is seriously...
Celtics Defense - Who is Pulling their Weight?
The Boston Celtics last year had the third best defense the NBA has seen since the early 70s, and this year they are performing at the same level. Who is responsible for this? Garnett has a well deserved reputation for defensive excellence, Rondo and Perkins look pretty good given their youth, but both Ray Allen and Paul Pierce had worn the ‘talented scorer that doesn’t try on...
February 2009
11 posts
Starbury Stats
Well, I can’t make substantive comments on Marbury’s defense. (I mean, I could, but I’m not going to mess with it today.) The 82 games +- numbers on Marbury’s defense are not favorable though - over his most recent 3 full seasons (05-07) the Knicks allowed from 4, 1.4, and 5.4 more points per 100 possessions when Marbury was on the court. Exactly what that means is...
(Say it ain't so) Starbury to the Celtics?
Josh:
John, I’d almost convinced myself that this story was dead, but yesterday ESPN reported that the Knicks had negotiated a buyout with Marbury and that he was already in talks with Boston. This makes me slightly ill to my stomach, as the Celtics are without question my second favorite team in sports. I’ll try not to go into all the my-god-what-an-asshole reasons that Starbury...
Apologies for Hiatus
Sorry everyone for the brief hiatus. Our resident Stat Fish is getting ready to pass the bar and so is not going to be active until later this week at the earliest. In the meantime, I thought some people might be interested by some snippets of an e-mail chain we had over the weekend. Here goes: (ed. note - especially fun because it’s about Teddy Ballgame)
John:
So I thought it would be...
Nelson done for the season
Evidently it’s an all Magic day. Jameer Nelson will undergo season ending surgery to repair the torn labrum in his right shoulder, ESPN reports. I am officially less worried about the Celtics running into the Magic in the semifinals.
Ben writes:
Gentlemen, Rob Neyer ran this blog today:
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/blog/index?entryID=3919659&name=Neyer_Rob
All about the end of the Andy Marte era. I remember when he was a major trade chip, and there were some complaints that the Coco-Andy Marte trade was horrible skewed in Cleveland’s favor. These days the Red Sox look pretty smart for selling high. Any thoughts on...
Comments!
Okay, comments are up and running. They will, for the time being, e-mail to Josh (me), not John (him), but I will be making John sign up for our hosting service so he gets them too. We’ll be doing our best to pull good ones out and post them (possibly as discussion topics).
- Jew Fish
And just like that....
….the Magic fill the hole. Reports are in that Rafer Alston is heading to the Magic from the Rockets (with some weird stuff happening Memphis) at the deadline. That’s a terrific pickup for the Magic, though it will be interesting to see what happens if Nelson is able to make it back for the playoffs. Alston is a little slower and a little worse of a shooter than Nelson has been this...
Anatomy of a Loss: 2/18/09, Orlando @ New Orleans
Wow, I feel like a complete idiot for not realizing that Jameer Nelson was out. What a yutz. That’s what I get for focusing too much on the numbers. Even still, Nelson can hardly explain a 40 point shift in performance. Heck, even LeBron isn’t worth that much. I can certainly see the difference in the numbers - Paul averages about 52% on 2 pointers, with 12.5 per game. Without...
Anatomy of a Loss: response
Josh:
John, you ignorant slut. Just kidding. I think your analysis of the offensive and defensive inefficiency of the Magic is excellent. I’d just like to point out some issues that I think the statistical analysis misses. These are based on watching the first 3 quarters of the game last night before just giving up. I’d like to focus mainly on two issues: matchups and...
Inaugural Debate: Anatomy of a loss
Stat Fish:
The Orlando Magic got shellacked last night by the New Orleans Hornets, an ostensibly inferior team. A loosely predicted score would be something like Orlando 98, New Orleans 91. Instead New Orleans managed to win by a resounding 32 points. Where did the upset come from? Into the numbers…
The Magic averaged 92.4 points per hundred possessions, which is substantially...
Test Post
John: Boy Josh, you’re exactly right about that.