Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Tracking Ray Floriani...

Frequent guest contributor Ray Floriani is spreading the word about possession-based statistics throughout the world of D1 basketball. Over at the Rush the Court Blog Ray employed a technique developed by Basketball Prospectus blogger John Gasaway to rank the conference's eleven teams by the differential of each team's offensive & defensive efficiency. The posting (titled "Checking in on the...NEC") demonstrates that Mount St. Mary's 11-5 record is no fluke. Sacred Heart may have the better offensive efficiency, but the Mount has the larger differential (and better record). Defense does matter. Rush the Court has, by the way, extensive coverage and analysis on the Providence's upset of Pittsburgh last night.

Ray applied the same technique for an update/analysis posted an update of the Atlantic 10 Conference over at the College Chalktalk Blog. Ray observed that success in the A10 tournament last season was linked to a positive efficiency margin (EM). Which may translate into good news for Villanova's Big 5 brethren Temple and St. Joseph's.

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