 |
We offer our profuse apologies for the delay, but we do have the full RPI with Nitty Gritty details now available here.
Also, we believe that it only makes sense to wait until each conference has played at least a handful of league games before projecting the NCAA Tournament field. We know that others do it earlier, but that’s their prerogative. As a result, you can expect the first Bracket Junkie of the season on Jan. 22.
I often discuss free-throw rates when I’m breaking down the four factors in an analysis, but I should clarify what I mean. There is a free-throws made rate as well as a free-throws attempted rate. The former is free-throws made divided by field-goal attempts. The latter is free-throws attempted divided by field-goal attempts.
Free-throws made rate (FTMR) is more useful when describing a team’s offense, and free-throws attempted rate (FTAR) is more useful when describing a team’s defense. Ken Pomeroy’s site seems to have shifted entirely to FTAR, but the problem with that approach is that the Four Factors — effective field-goal percentage, rebounding rate, turnover rate and free-throw rate — are supposed to give a full view of what happened in the game. By using FTAR rather than FTMR, a team could, in theory, win all of the Four Factors and still lose the game, if it missed a lot of free throws.
Example of Four Factors box:
| Poss | PPP | eFG | Turn | Reb | FTR | |
| Arkansas | 76 | 0.87 | 0.422 | 0.211 | 0.262 | 0.293 |
| Louisville | 75 | 1.26 | 0.568 | 0.132 | 0.390 | 0.178 |
This is why I will always use FTMR in my Four Factors box score, and that’s why my free-throw rate numbers are always lower than what you may see on other sites. From now on, you should assume I am referring to FTMR unless I specifically indicate that I am using FTAR.
When it comes to conference previews for the upcoming college basketball season, we’re still figuring out the best way we can serve you in a way that other publications can’t. So, we’ve decided to stick to our strengths in analysis and statistics crunching to give the reader a different look at each conference.
If you want a complete preview of your favorite team, Blue Ribbon is probably the place to go, but we will give you a glimpse at what the numbers are telling us about each conference in ways that most previews won’t.
We plan to preview each of the six major conference plus a composite preview on the top mid-major conferences — Atlantic 10, Conference USA, Mountain West and Missouri Valley.
We’ll also wrap up our 2009-10 season preview with projected standings for each league and notes on all the major-conference teams, including where we see them headed in March.
We’ve now added a page where you can view the NCAA Tournament Conference Scores for every year of the 2000s. It is currently linked from the right sidebar image and has a permanent home under the BaselineStats.com heading on the left sidebar.
We’ll soon add previous years as well as aggregate rankings. It’s interesting to note the decline of the ACC since the league expanded to 12 teams. In fact, the ACC as the second worst aggregate score since the 2006 Tournament, which was the first after the Big East’s and ACC’s expansions were complete. The SEC is last despite Florida’s two championships. The last two years have been pretty brutal for that league.
Again, if there’s anything you’d like to see on the site that you aren’t seeing, please E-mail brendon@baselinestats.com. Thanks!
Our first version of the 2008-2009 College Basketball Rating Percentage Index (RPI) is now up and ready for action. You can view the page here. Included in the RPI ratings are these fun facts:
Division 1 Record – Record against only D1 opponents.
Strength of Schedule (SoS) – The SoS number is taken from the actual RPI formula, and is 2/3 * Opponents’ Winning Percentage + 1/3 Opponents’ Opponents’ Winnings Percentage.
Road W-L – Record in road games
Neut W-L – Record in games held at neutral locations, including semi-home/away games.
1-50 W-L – Record against RPI Top 50 teams.
51-100 W-L – Record against teams ranking between 51 and 100 in the RPI.
100+ W-L – Record against all teams with an RPI greater than 100.
Stay tuned, we’ll be constantly adding in content including conference rankings and standings, team schedules and results, scoring margins and much more, so keep checking back!
BaselineStats.com is not here to reinvent the wheel. The wheel that guys like Dean Oliver and Ken Pomeroy have been developing over the last two decades still functions pretty well. Those men have spent a lot of time thinking about how to use numbers to evaluate what happens on a basketball court, and they’ve done a good job. Things like per-possession ratings and the use of the four factors are indispensible parts of how the smart fan, scout and coach now view the game. We do, however, think there is room for another stand in the marketplace of basketball ideas. Read More
