Team stats are up

2007-2008 GSC West Team Statistics

In related news, pigs were seen flying today over Ringgold, Georgia.

We’re almost a month into the season, and I’m just now getting the team stats up and running. That’s not such a bad thing, though, since there is some danger in reading too much into early-season stats. GSC West teams have played anywhere from 4 to 10 games, but even for the most active teams, it’s hard to read too much into the season so far.

Here’s what I’ll say definitively: Ouachita Baptist is better than I thought, and Henderson State looks positively awful. Christian Brothers has been good, but not outstanding, and everyone else is somewhere in between.

I’ll have some more insightful analysis as we go along, probably starting this week (since Harding doesn’t play again until Saturday). I’m also working on updating the glossary, or maybe even the stat pages themselves, with some explanations. I know the acronyms don’t do you much good if you don’t know what they mean.

Here’s a quick primer for some of the items you might not understand if you’re new to the site or to advanced basketball stats:

• Pace is a pretty simple (and vital) concept: it’s the number of possessions a team has in a particular game, as well as the basis for pretty much every other meaningful stat.
• OEff, DEff, and Net are the same concept: Offensive Efficiency is the number of points a team scores per 100 possessions, while Defensive Efficiency is the number allowed. Net is OEff – DEff.
• Schedule Strength is based on my rough estimate of a team’s talent level, as explained in this post from two years ago. “Sched” is the average opponent’s rating using that method, so the higher the number, the more difficult the schedule. The adjusted efficiency numbers are based on these estimates of schedule strength.
• PythW, PythL, and PW& are estimated wins, losses, and win percentage based on the adjusted efficiency numbers I came up with. These are based on Bill James’ interpretation of Pythagorean Record for baseball, but adapted based on basketball scoring.
• AOff, ADef, and ANet are adjusted offensive, defensive and net efficiency.
• The “keys” to the outcome of a basketball game, as I define them, are adapted from Dean Oliver’s “Four Keys.” I combined both of his shooting keys into one rating (measured by Hollinger’s True Shooting Percentage) while leaving the others (offensive rebounding and turnovers) alone. Offensive rebounding skill is represented by offensive rebound percentage, while turnover avoidance is measured by Turnover Ratio (roughly the number of turnovers per 100 possessions). The other number thrown into that section is Assist Ratio, which is the same as Turnover Ratio, but for assists (rocket science, I know).
• Shot Selection is ranked by True Shooting %, broken out by 2-point field goal percentage (2PT%) and 3-point percentage, then by the percentage of each that a team attempts (%2S and %3S).
• FTA/P is the number of free throw attempts per possession, a measure of how often a team gets to the free throw line, and FT% is simply the percentage of free throws made.

That should cover most everything on the stat pages for now. They’re fully sortable, so play around with them all you want. I’ll be working on individual stats from this point forward, and I’ll keep everything updated probably on a weekly basis.