Previous posts have dealt with grading one’s players’ intangible qualities as an add-on to any advanced stats evaluations one does.  Certainly, putting a number on a character or personality trait is a fairly subjective exercise.  It is definitely not founded in science or math. However, it might be surprising to many that “team chemistry”, which…
Substitution patterns can and do vary immensely from coach to coach and not only can they vary from season to season, but they can also vary from game to game. Up until recently, almost all coaches subbed by “feel”. However, in the recent trend toward metrics, there is a growing contingency of coaches who are…
Sometimes events happen in such a way as to smack one in the face with a realization of an obvious premise that one has always known.  Witness the following three illustrations: In a recent high-school game, the head coach and his assistants must have yelled the instruction, “Move the ball” at least 100 times.  And…
In a past article BLOCKS and STEALS: TRACK the UNSUCCESSFUL ONES TOO, it was pointed out that blocks and steals as raw stats can be very misleading when you don’t take into account missed blocks and steals and the damage they create. Blocks and steals are only two of what I generally call “empty stats”….
My recent article Increase Your Competitive Edge: Reduce Fouls and Turnovers correlated the number of successful 2014-2015 NCAA teams who had both low turnover and fouls per game rates. Today, I want to discuss the correlation of low team fouls and both low team blocks and steals. The NCAA doesn’t track ATTEMPTED blocks or steals. All…
Coaches have been charting OER (Offensive Efficiency Rating) and DER (Defensive Efficiency Rating) since at least the early 1970’s. And really, it’s not a big deal, in and of itself because it’s only dividing the number of points scored-OER (or given up -for DER) by the number of possessions. So, in a 70 possession game,…
