Book Review: When March Went Mad
kj on Mar 4th 2009
A few weeks ago, I received an advanced copy of When March Went Mad: The Game That Transformed Basketball (affiliate link) by SI’s Seth Davis. I had read about the book a while back and, frankly, I was prepared to be underwhelmed. I’ve read a fair amount about the topic of 1979 national championship game [...]
Coffee Talk: MSU’s Mount Rushmore
kj on Feb 19th 2009
ESPN.com’s Adam Rittenberg has been doing a cool feature: naming the four historical figures who would fill a Mount Rushmore for each of the 11 Big Ten football programs. (Apparently, this is part of a wider ESPN “Sports Nation” thing.)
He hasn’t gotten to MSU yet, so I thought we’d beat him to the punch by [...]
Can assists be bad?
kj on Oct 1st 2008
Because it’s somewhat tangential to the “four factors” of basketball statistical analysis, there’s one tempo-free stat I overlooked in the series on MSU’s historical tempo-free tendencies on offense: assist percentage. Assist percentage is the number of assists a team records divided by its made field goals. That is, what percentage of the time a team [...]
Putting it all together: Offensive efficiency during the Izzo era
kj on Sep 9th 2008
Here’s a brief overview of what we’ve learned from our survey of MSU’s statistical trends on offense over the last 12 years, broken down by the “four factors” of tempo-free statistical analysis:
Turnovers: Minimizing turnovers has never been a strength for MSU under Izzo. Three seasons were particularly bad (1997-97, 2001-02, and 2006-07), with the percentage [...]
So exactly how tough is MSU’s nonconference schedule?
kj on Sep 4th 2008
Joe Rexrode on Michigan State’s nonconference schedule:
. . . I’d rate this the third-toughest of the Izzo era, behind that 2003 slate [Kansas, Duke, Kentucky, Oklahoma, UCLA, Syracuse], and the 1999-2000 schedule that included North Carolina, Arizona and Kentucky on the road, Kansas in Chicago, Texas in Puerto Rico, Connecticut at home. In retrospect, that’s [...]
Scoring from the charity stripe during the Izzo era
kj on Aug 20th 2008
Back in March, when Witless Chum and Hubert suggested I spend some of the offseason looking at MSU’s historical tempo-free statistical trends, it seemed like a great idea. Since then, though, I’ve realized:
(1) It’s a lot of work compared to other kids of blog posts.
and
(2) It doesn’t seem to generate a lot of discussion.
I will [...]
MSU historical trends: Field goal shooting
kj on Aug 12th 2008
I’m finally picking back up on our series on Michigan State’s statistical trends over the last 12 years. I’m going to try to make these a little simpler going forward, so that the prospects of doing each post aren’t so daunting (and hence procrastination-inducing).
Today we’ll look at MSU’s field goal shooting percentages. (The last entry [...]