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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!



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