PEZ

After reading a post on FanGraphs about NERD, I figured that I would try to make my own version for college basketball. The point of NERD is to use statistics about individual batters, pitchers, or whole teams in order to determine the excitement that they provide. That being said, let me introduce you to PEZ (Predicted Excitement based on Z-scores).

I started out by posting a survey online asking about various stats that make a game fun to watch (high scoring, fouls, teams involved, etc...). Out of the 21 options that I provided, along with a space for other ideas, I chose to incorporate the stats that make a game more interesting and also the ones that make a game quite boring. I have not found a way to use everything in exactly the way that I want so far, but I feel like I have made a pretty good first draft at this. I will discuss the elements involved first, present some of the results second, and then finish up with some commentary.

In Loving Memory of the Seattle Supersonics

Beginning with the 2008-2009 season, Washington has had to live without an NBA team. While the emotional battle of dealing with the loss of a beloved friend has had it's highs and lows, with exception of when the team first left, the current run to the Western Conference Finals has many Sonics fans up in arms.


The motivation for this post comes from some recent hate/cockiness that I have received via twitter, my love of current and former players with Seattle ties, and also some news that I heard last night. 


"Rep. Mike Hope, R-Lake Stevens and Rep. David Frockt, D-Seattle, said they plan to start a task force this summer [to bring a NBA team back to Seattle] after the current session ends."

#winning

When doing rankings, what is the most important thing that ESPN looks at? Well, besides not being a west coast team they look at winning record. Winning record is the focus of my new formula which is still in its infancy stages. In this post I will be explaining why I use the things that I do and then put up some results from the NCAA tournament "1st Round" and the real 1st Round.

Upcoming Posts

It's been pretty hectic during the time since my last post. Whenever I have had some free time from my studies I have been inputting data into Excel and running some formulas through them. The data that I have been using is the season stats for all 346 DI schools last season (excluding data from post-season tournaments). I'm nearing the end of input so I will be looking for the trends after that.

Keep your eyes posted for the first release of the series.

Game Rating Explanation

Congratulations to Florida, UConn, Arizona, and Butler for winning their games and advancing to the Elite 8. I have to say that I was quite saddened when Duke got beaten so badly. But I guess that's what happens when Derrick Williams goes 5-6 from behind the arc and leads the Wildcats on an amazing scoring run to start the second half. So, as sad as I am to see the Blue Devils eliminated (I had them losing in the finals in my bracket), it is good to see a fellow Pac-10 team performing so dominantly in a tough game. This should lead to a good conference season next year in the Pac-12 if all players decide to stay.


Anyways, onto the stats. In this post I will be describing my current method through quick examples and formula discussion. The first thing I started thinking about was the ability that teams can play to. Using the offensive and defensive ratings of the teams in each game, I was able to find a normal distribution curve that would approximately model the "average" playing strength of each team. 


Continue reading after the jump

"Schedule" of upcoming posts

First off, a big congratulations to the Cougs for beating Northwestern in OT 69-66. MSG, here we come!

In the next couple days I will try to start putting some hard data up. Here is some of the stuff that I have finished and am currently working on:

• Pac-10 offensive ratings
• Pac-10 defensive ratings
• Pac-10 overall game ratings
• Normal distributions of the previously listed stats

As soon as I get to a stopping point with that, I'll copy my data over to a google doc spreadsheet and share the file with you guys.

Also, please answer the poll on the right so that I can know who I am writing to.

-Dan