This is a basketball blog. But this is also a statistics blog. And the statistics say that 8 out of my last 11 eleven posts have been out about football. There are three reasons I can identify for this: I generally blog about what interests me (within the general realm of college athletics) and, at [...]
Archive for September, 2008
State of the Blog Address: Preseason Edition
Posted in site news on September 30, 2008 | 15 Comments »
FO on Ringer
Posted in links, tagged football, javon ringer on September 29, 2008 | 7 Comments »
Football Outsiders, the leading purveyors of advanced football statistics, are concerned about Javon Ringer’s workload to date, comparing him to current Lion Kevin Smith, who carried the ball 450 times for Central Florida last season: One of the factors at least partially mitigating Smith’s huge workload last year was that he was playing in Conference [...]
Brian Hoyer's passing stats on first down
Posted in stats analysis, tagged brian hoyer, football on September 28, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Bad News: This is another football post. Good News: At least the post is based on statistical analysis. (Bad/good from the standpoint that this blog’s tagline used to be “A statistical look at Michigan State basketball.”) Brian Hoyer remains an enigma to Spartan fans. His season stats are pretty mediocre to date: 59-127 (46.5%) for [...]
MSU-Indiana Recap, Bulletpoint-Style
Posted in game recap, tagged brian hoyer, football, indiana, javon ringer on September 27, 2008 | 3 Comments »
Note: It was a busy Saturday at the Spartans Weblog residence, so I only saw about three-quarters of the game. These musings are, therefore, even more random than my normal football musings. Nevertheless: Another monumental performance by Javon Ringer: 198 yards on 44 carries. The offensive/special teams touch counts are now up to 203 for [...]
MSU-IU Links and Discussion Thread
Posted in football discussion, links, tagged football, indiana on September 25, 2008 | 3 Comments »
First, a few basketball links: Eric Lacy reports that Athlon has MSU ranked #14 in their preseason magazine. Tom Herzog talks about the student part of being a student-athlete. He’s an applied engineering sciences major. (Hat tip: Spartan Sports Page.) 24 hours straight (roughly) of basketball on the ESPN family of networks to tip-off the [...]
Around the Big Ten (quickly)
Posted in links, tagged big ten, recruiting on September 23, 2008 | Comments Off
Nifty graph from the Big Ten Geeks: efficiency margin vs. percentage of returning minutes. The data indicate Purdue, MIchigan State, and Wisconsin are in good shape. Indiana, not so much. In two years, the talent level in the conference looks like it may jump a notch. UMHoops notes that 12 of the 38 top-150 recruits [...]
Coffee Talk: Back to Basketball
Posted in coffee talk, roster analysis, tagged draymond green, idong ibok, isaiah dahlman, korie lucious, marquise gray, tom herzog on September 22, 2008 | 10 Comments »
Must . . . not . . . get . . . emotionally . . . invested . . . in . . . MSU . . . football . . . team. We’re now just 25 days from Midnight Madness (Friday, October 17; haven’t seen any details yet). Let’s chat about how this basketball [...]
The Notre Dame passing attack: A play in three acts
Posted in game recap, tagged football, notre dame on September 20, 2008 | 19 Comments »
A lot of the headlines about this game will focus on Javon Ringer. And that’s cool. He was an absolute workhorse again today and racked up a second straight 200-yard game, this time against a BCS conference-quality foe (insert joke here about Notre Dame and the BCS, but they’re clearly a notch up from EMU). [...]
Letting the opposition do the heavy statistical lifting for us
Posted in links, tagged football, notre dame on September 20, 2008 | 4 Comments »
Rakes of Mallow has a phenomenal post up breaking down Michigan State’s tendencies and performance on first down through three games. Excerpt: Most impressive about these stats is the number of times Sparty rushed on first down for four yards or more. Almost 65% of the time MSU gained 4+ yards by carrying the rock [...]
Pregame reading
Posted in links, tagged football, notre dame on September 19, 2008 | 4 Comments »
A couple game previews from an Irish perspective: Blue Gray Sky fears Javon Ringer, Greg Jones, and Otis Wiley–but not the passing game or our cornerbacks. A reasonable take–although Hoyer’s really only had one shot to show what he can do with Dell and Cunningham (the Cal game). Rakes of Mallow says the key for [...]
