" title="Spartans Weblog">Spartans Weblog

New polls: MSU holds steady at #10 in the AP poll, drops two spots to #13 in the coaches poll.  Apparently, no one’s holding MSU’s collapse vs. UCLA against them.  (But, man, holding on to that win sure would have been a boost.)
Steve Grinczel notes we non-satelliters may be able to catch a few Big [...]

(The asterisks make a fence. Clever, eh?)
As promised, here’s a (hopefully more concise) statistical look at the MSU defense. Let’s start with what things looked like last year. Whereas the MSU offense was pretty average in conference play–finishing 7th in the Big Ten by scoring 1.01 points per possession–the defense was a [...]

MSU squeezed by Oakland 75-71 yesterday. Box score here.
I didn’t see the game (family get-together; BTN game), but here’s the story the numbers tell:

Offensive trend #1 we might have expected: MSU turned the ball over 16 times in 65.5 possessions: 24.4%. Still not so good. Blame for giving the ball way can [...]

. . . just one more thing. (Note to self: better planning needed for future posts.)
Going into this season, Coach Izzo indicated he planned to pick up the tempo on offense to take advantage of MSU’s improved depth and athleticism. Let take a quick look at whether that’s really happened.
The stat to look [...]

So let’s take a few minutes to talk about the rest of the MSU offense. Shooting the ball (as measured by PPWS) is certainly important, but there are two other key statistical components to offensive performance:

Turnovers: How often a team forfeits the chance to shoot the ball by giving it away to the other team.
Offensive [...]

Well, let’s start with the basics: putting that orange, bouncing ball in the hoop thing with the net attached to it. Let’s see how MSU has scored baskets through four games. (Note: Exhibition games are not included in official college basketball statistics and will, therefore, not be acknowledged by this blog. Football games against Division [...]

A long, long time ago (this past March) in a land far, far away (Indiana), there lived a college basketball analyst called the Big Ten Wonk. And Big Ten basketball fans everywhere could look forward each and every day of the basketball season to reading witty and statistically-sound commentary on the greatest college conference [...]