Wednesday, October 1, 2008

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Ken Pomeroy introduced a newer version of the box score back in the spring of 2007.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.

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