Skip to main content

An Explanation of The Numbers-Only Previews

Over the past few days, I've been posting "Numbers-Only Previews" of Purdue's men's and women's NCAA Basketball tournament games. Why a number's only previews? Partially, my own laziness on not wanting to spend all the free time I have writing full articles for each game in both tournaments. Primarily, I know while watching games I'd prefer to have a concise reference of important stats to better inform myself about the teams than a large block of text I have to slog through to get the same information. I also like to just have the numbers, and be able to reach my own conclusions of what they mean, rather than be given someone else's opinion.

The previews contain tables of information. The first is a team table, stating:

  1.  Overall rankings (KenPom for the men, Sagarin for the women) 
  2. The possession adjusted scoring offense and defense (for men, these are the KenPom strength-of-schedule adjusted numbers; for  women, they are the points scored/allowed divided by estimate possessions; these are not strength of schedule adjusted)
  3. Pythagorean expectation derived from the scoring offense and defense
  4. Purdue's win probability (log5 from Pythagorean expectation for the men; for the women, both the log5 AND a win probability from FiveThirtyEight's composite power rankings are used. This is to give a strength of schedule adjusted probability to compare to)
  5. Each team's combined shooting statistics: 2 field goal point shooting percentage, 3 field goal point shooting percentage, effective field goal percentage, and free throw percentage.
  6. Each team's allowed shooting statistics (the same set of stats as above)
The second table is the matchups table. This was missing for the first women's game; due to the lack of accessible advanced stats for women's basketball, measures like box plus-minus or win-shares are not available. Upcoming, I will add in Dean Oliver's offensive and defensive ratings for the upcoming came Sunday v. Notre Dame. The matchups table includes:
  1. The players name, number, height and position, with players ordered by position and minutes per game.
  2. Player's minutes per game (calculated by dividing total minutes by a team's total games).
  3. Offensive, defensive, and total box plus-minus for men (from sports-reference). For women, offensive and defensive ratings will be used starting with Purdue v. Notre Dame on Sunday March 19th. 
The third table is the shooting table, comparing the shooting stats for each player. Included are:

  1. The players name, number, height and position, with players ordered by position and minutes per game.
  2. Player's minutes per game (calculated by dividing total minutes by a team's total games).
  3. Each player's combined shooting statistics: 2 field goal point shooting percentage, 3 field goal point shooting percentage, effective field goal percentage, and free throw percentage.
Boiler Up!



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

2018 Weekly Boiler Stat Summaries: Week 8, v. an Ohio State University

I could say something emotional about the win, OR I could hope we all have our own memories that may or may not include a realization of how low our TV room ceilings are. a Bad Defense and The Great Offense Going into Saturday's game , I was pretty confident the Boilers - a pretty darn solid offense - would have success scoring against a struggling Buckeye defense. That is exactly what happened. These are numbers that should be left to stand on their own because HOLY MACKEREL PURDUE DID THAT TO OHIO STATE. Figure 1: Purdue Individual Rushing Statistics [1,2] Figure 2: Purdue Individual Passing Statistics [1,2] Only thing to note is that Purdue's rushing came mainly from some explosive runs from Knox rather than a consistent set of runs from all the backs. This isn't exactly what you want to see for success through a season (and a sign run blocking may need a bit of work), but you have to give D.J. some credit here. an Inability to Score The Buckeyes, at le...
Post a Comment
Read more

2017 Weekly Boiler Stat Summaries: Week 3, v. Missouri

Since my brother-and-law is currently a student at Mizzou, last weekend my wife, some of my wife's family, and I (later joined by some of our friends from band and ΚΚΨ) headed down to Columbia for a football game. We expected Purdue to be tested by a team that has dominated the SEC East in recent history, but struggled last season. Then something else happened. Figure 1: A Different Kind of Purdue Game My Purdue fandom has been dominated by falling short in big moments under Hope, then falling short on any moment under Hazell. (I'm in the Mechanical Engineering Class of 2015 - that should give a reference of what how little I know of successful Purdue teams.) I'm not sure how to react to something like this. Other than by being in awe of some of the numbers. Declawing the Tigers Purdue's defense was fantastic in Columbia on Saturday. The Tigers' offense, coming into the game , was not a bad group, and expectations were for a shootout. Instead, Mizzou mana...
1 comment
Read more

Brohm and Calhoun: Purdue's New Top Two Choices Analyzed

Earlier in the silly season  coaching search, the top two coaching candidates floated by Purdue's fan base were Western Michigan's P.J. Fleck and former LSU head coach Les Miles. In recent days, it has appeared neither may end up in West Lafayette. Yesterday, news-ish broke-ish that a deal was done-ish with Purdue and current Western Kentucky head coach Jeff Brohm.  Western Kentucky was revealed to be beginning its own coach search, while coach without an agent Jeff Brohm stated no deal existed and he would not think about future plans until after the C-USA championship game today. Another name floated was current Air Force Academy head coach Troy Calhoun. Which are two odd choices when considered together; at Air Force Calhoun ran a run-heavy option offense (although he has experience coaching quarterbacks in the NFL under Gary Kubiak) and Brohm's offense at WKU was a pass-oriented spread offense. Using the same methods I used to look at Purdue's last few coaches , I...
2 comments
Read more