The unofficial online home for fans of the Kent State University Golden Flashes. Part of Collegiate Sports Nation (CSN).

I know this isn't an APBRmetrics board but I figured some of you might find this interesting. I'm a big believer in the value of in-depth statistical analysis and high level metrics in basketball and have done some work in this area.

One particular formula I've been working on is a ratio between how often a player ends a possession successfully compared to how often they end it with a failure. The basic idea is to take a basketball game which is an inherently continuous event and break it into discrete events (possessions) and analyze the outcomes of the possessions. Because we are limited in what stats are actually recorded it's more than just pulling numbers from a box score there is some upper level math and probability theory involved as well.

At this point in the season I thought it would be interesting to see how Kent's players/team score compared to last year and compared to our MAC East opponents. Think of these numbers as an assist to turnover ratio for a player’s entire offensive game.



The things that stand out to me are the consistency of Guyton and Porrini, the significant dip Greene and Manns have both shown from last year to now, and how impressively high Brewer scored for a freshman.

Here's how the other MAC East teams scored so far this year:

Some notable player’s numbers:

Obviously Oglesby is built for this kind of stat (if you haven't heard about his NCAA record Google it, it's impressive). Like any metric this stat has its limitations. The main one is this is an offensive only stat and defensive specialists (Eric Gaines) will be undervalued. Conclusions can be drawn about a team’s defense by looking at the opponents score. Also, this is not meant to be read as who is a better player but more who is an efficient player. For example, thus far Henniger has been more efficient than Greene but if Henn was relied on for the volume Greene is his score would likely be lower.

Anyways, thought this might interest some of you. Questions/comments are welcome.

So you probably loved the movie MONEYBALL?

Eh, the book was better lol.

I heard that. Sadly, I don't love to read books. I would rather watch the movie and be done with it in 2 hours.

danny somehow I guessed you were not very patient!!

Anti-Zip you did not show the Kent team score.

Burden, it's at the bottom of the first box with the Kent players scores. It's slightly worse than last year but the opponent score is slightly better. I'll edit it to but it in the same box as the other MAC east teams too so it's easier to compare.

Sorry. Missed the scroll bar.

No problem, I didn't really want the scroll bars there I don't know of a way to get rid of them though.

Also, I wanted to make it clear how to read the numbers. A score of 1.00 would mean for every 1 possession the player ends successfully they end 1 with a failure. So like 0.800 would mean for every 8 successful possessions there are 10 failed possessions, etc. It's like an expanded assist to turnover ratio.