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.

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:

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.

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’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!

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!

We intend to separate this site from what’s come before in a few key ways. First, this site will be devoted to college basketball and college basketball alone. We won’t mix the college and pro versions, with the possible exception of the NBA Draft, which tends to be the one time the college and pro guys come together. We want to make this a home for college hoops fans looking for cutting-edge analysis mixed with as much information as you could ever want.

Second, we intend to integrate the statistical side of things with the analysis side in a functional way that we haven’t seen yet. The integration of database statistics with a user-friendly site is not easy to do, but we’re working to build a site that integrates information and analysis in a way college basketball fans haven’t seen before.

Third, we have a lot of new ideas that we are excited to bring to the discussion. Whether it’s ways to improve the concepts that are already out there or new ideas to augment the way fans follow college roundball, we’re energized about some of the new features that we’ll be rolling out. It’ll take time to implement them, though. Working out the technical side and making sure the logic behind the metrics is sound will take time. So, over the months and years to come, we’ll be unveiling new stuff that excites us as basketball fans and that we hope will excite you as well. We’ll attempt to under-promise and over-deliver, so we’ll refrain from getting into specifics, but we’re really looking forward to rolling out some of our new ideas.

It will never be possible –- nor is it desirable –- to reduce every aspect of what happens across 94-feet into a set of regressions and equations, so there will still be room in this space for discussion of the parts of basketball that can only be measured by a fan’s blood pressure and heartrate. We have a lot of big plans for this site, and it’s a long road between here and there, but it’s an adventure we hope you’ll join us for. Please excuse our appearance in the meantime. As you will see when you click around, this site isn’t close to being completed yet, but we were anxious to start to do some writing as we work on integrating the stats components.

Finally, if there is ever anything that you would like to see on this site, something you think would improve the site or something you haven’t seen anywhere else that you like to see us try out or discuss, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Thanks,

Brendon Desrochers and Lukas Johnson