Villanova in Hi-Def!

CO_Hoya from the Hoya Prospectus Blog has not posted since his brief note about contributor Ray Floriani back in early August and I wondered what he could be up to these days. His latest effort does not disappoint. The good news is that Georgetown fans can expect another season of statistical analysis and insight. The (even) better news is that Big East fans might also benefit from a steady stream of even more information-packed box score of their favorite team's conference games.

Ken Pomeroy introduced a newer version of the box score back in the spring of 2007. In an effort to (more accurately) describe what he wanted to do (and maybe generate some interest among the D1 stats community?) he called the new box score a HD Box Score. CO_Hoya debugged his "play-by-play" parser on the Villanova-Georgetown game of 2/17/07 (the 'Cats dropped that 3 point decision in the Wach, 55-58). It looks like his numbers match Ken Pomeroy's original HD box of that game, so he turned to two other games, the Hoya's 18 point win over Marquette back on 2/10/07 and the Villanova-Marquette Bradley Center game back on 2/19/07 (I wish he had found a Villanova victory to convert at some point...that Nova-Quette tilt was a 13 point Wildcat loss). The new box score provides the reader with each player's PT (down to the second...more or less), each player's TORate (you have to compute, but the numbers are there), ARate (see TORate) and plus/minus for the game. This may be a very ambitious project, but I think all fans of Big East basketball will benefit if CO_Hoya is able to generate boxes for all of the Big East games. Villanova an Marquette fans especially should take a look at CO_Hoya's posting.

Notes & Observations...I have looked over the 3 boxes as I write this post, and a few (Villanova-related) items jump out...
1. Dante Cunningham did pretty well for his freshman season, but these were not two of his better efforts. Te was -14 against the Warriors and -7 against the Hoyas.
2. Will Sheridan's effort was questioned more than once his last two seasons on the Mainline, but the Georgetown game was a pretty good defensive effort. For the 28+ minutes Bump manned the middle the Hoyas were +0.
3. Curt Sumpter had a good game against the Hoyas too. Curt logged 34+ minutes and the 'Cats were +2 during his run. Curt's effort against Marquette was not bad either. The 'Cats were -1 over the course of Curt's 28½ minute run.
4. Scottie's ARate for the two games was pretty impressive (note the 'Cats did not take many shots...), 6/18 or about 33.3, very high.

Possession-Based Olympics

Kevin Pelton over at Basketball Prospectus provides a brief game-by-game recap of the first round of pool play. He will apparently do a recap of each game in pool play, and maintain possession-based stats for the 12 teams assigned to the two different (A and B) pools. Stats include game pace, Offensive and Defensive Ratings, with finer detail provided by Dean Oliver's four factors -- eFG%, OR%, DR%, FTM/FGA and TO%. Pelton promises to update his ratings and rankings for each round. Well, this should get me through the next few weeks, while I try to track down box scores from Notre Dame's trip to Ireland.

Guest Post: Ray Floriani on Synergy

Ray Floriani, a fellow stats lover who writes for Basketball Times and Hoopsville sent this over yesterday. With the Big East Tournament just hours away, I thought the timing was very appropriate...

By Ray Floriani
Basketball Times/Hoopville

A few times this season I ran a rating of "synergy". Can't take the credit, it was derived from the APBRmertics site. Basically the stat measures how a team shares the basketball. The formula takes into account field goal percentage, assists and field goals made. The formula:

SYN = FG PCT + (Assists/FGM)

Since my experience in using the formula is limited I can only say a team getting a synergy of 1.000 plus is above average. This doesn't mean teams ranking low are selfish or play an unintelligent brand of ball. Still, there is something to be said for sharing the ball. The extra pass might result in an open look or better shot on offense.
Final note. Assists can be subjective. Clemson, years ago, was so notorious the joke was a Tiger got an assist for handing a teammate a towel. Today stat crews are better experienced and more proficient than not so long ago. So the assist mark carries more validity these days. Only regular season conference games are factored.

School	Synergy
Notre Dame	1.110
Georgetown	1.060
Louisville	1.052
Pitt	1.047
Syracuse	1.032
South Florida	1.019
Marquette	1.018
Providence	1.015
West Virginia	1.008
UCONN	.999
Villanova	.946
Cincinnati	.938
St.John's	.937
Seton Hall	.927
DePaul	.910
Rutgers	.860

A few notes:
1. Having the conference's top assist man in Tory Jackson didn't hurt. Neither did having a target as Luke Harangody inside.
2. Not surprised with Georgetown. Their offense and patience results in great back door and weakside cut opportunities.
3. South Florida didn't get to MSG but had good backcourt play (Dominique Jones and Chris Howard). Having a solid post presence in Kentrel Gransberry helped also.
4. Seton Hall played catch up a number of times. When you do that you shoot a lot of threes and neglect that extra pass. Hall didn't have a good inside presence until about February.
5. Villanova was a little surprise. On closer inspection the Wildcats had a 21% turnover rate (over 20 is unacceptable) in conference play and had a team .9 assist:turnover ratio. In other words some of those midseason losses didn't just happen.