Barring future developments of an unforeseen nature, this is the final post of the Spartans Weblog. Commenting will be shut down in a few days; the site will remain up for archival purposes as long as Mrs. SW lets me continue to pay the server costs (or I figure out how to upload the contents [...]
Archive for April, 2009
The end of the beginning
Posted in site news on April 20, 2009 | 7 Comments »
Friday Morning Links
Posted in links, tagged baseball, mike kebler on April 17, 2009 | 3 Comments »
Anatomy of a Basketball Possession Super sweet flowchart. (Hat tip: UMHoops.) A Tough Decision Why Mike Kebler didn’t get to play in the national championship game. Big Ten in 2010 Beware Purdue. It’s never too early to predict the 2009-2010 Big Ten basketball standings The Daily Gopher agrees re: Purdue. KANSAS DUO RETURNING TO SCHOOL; [...]
Breaking down the defense
Posted in stats analysis, tagged man-to-man defense, tom izzo, zone defense on April 14, 2009 | 8 Comments »
A couple months ago, KenPom added something called “defensive fingerprint” on each team page. Mr. Pomeroy’s explanation: Defensive Fingerprint attempts to objectively identify the style of a team’s defense. Inputs into the system are the departure from the D-1 norm of the following defensive characteristics… – assist percentage (triple weight, higher means a more likely [...]
Just how good was MSU's rebounding this season?
Posted in stats analysis, tagged rebounding on April 12, 2009 | 9 Comments »
From a four factors perspective, rebounding was clearly the dominant strength of this year’s MSU basketball team. The team ranked 6th nationally in offensive rebounding percentage and 11th nationally in defensive rebounding percentage. In none of the other six offensive/defensive four factor components did MSU rank higher than 50th nationally. It seems clear that, given [...]
The Top Ten Performances of the 2008-09 Season
Posted in coffee talk, commentary, tagged delvon roe, durrell summers, goran suton, kalin lucas, raymar morgan, travis walton on April 9, 2009 | 11 Comments »
I’ve decided not to post any commentary of a forward-looking nature until we get over to the new site. For now, let’s revel in the season that has been. One of the things that made this season so special was the number of guys who stepped up at various times during the season to get [...]
Post-Tournament Links
Posted in links, tagged chris allen, injuries, korie lucious on April 9, 2009 | 10 Comments »
Lucious, Allen break bones Talk about a game going as badly as it possibly could have. On a positive note, my sense is that a broken bone doesn’t involve major rehab. (Hat tip: MooTheKow.) Spartans can find motivation in loss to Tar Heels Draymond Green: Leader. (Hat tip: Jason.) 2009-10 Insanely Too Early Rankings Consensus: [...]
The last DVD goes out the door
Posted in contest on April 9, 2009 | Comments Off
Amidst all the excitement of MSU’s tournament run, I haven’t been posting updates on our NCAA Tournament contest. Here are the final standings, courtesy of the incomparable SpartanDan: 1. Seer 151 2. DP99 137 3. Alex 122 4. Mark in Chicago 113 5. Chris 112 (tiebreaker: 74 possessions) 6. rook34 112 (68) 7. SpartanDan 110 [...]
National Championship Game Recap (4/6/09)
Posted in game recap, site news, tagged final four, goran suton, ncaa tournament, north carolina on April 7, 2009 | 16 Comments »
North Carolina obliterates Michigan State 89-72 in a 76-possession game. StatSheet box score. This four-factor graph does not tell the story: NCAA Basketball Stats The turnover differential obviously shows up loud and clear, but the other bars understate the degree to which the Tar Heels outplayed us. Statistically speaking, this game was played in two [...]
The Turnovers Strike Back
Posted in commentary on April 7, 2009 | 18 Comments »
76 possessions 21 turnovers Turnover percentage: 27.6% I don’t think this North Carolina team was going to be beaten under any circumstances tonight, but I sure would have liked to see the MSU team that played with such poise and precision in the two previous game give the Tar Heels a run for their money. [...]
Tom Izzo: A Numerical Summary
Posted in commentary, tagged tom izzo on April 19, 2009 | 3 Comments »
14 seasons as head coach 14 .500-or-better Big Ten regular season finishes 12 NCAA Tournament appearances 12 first-team all-Big Ten player selections 10 20-win seasons 8 Sweet Sixteens 6 Elite Eights 5 Final Fours 5 Big Ten regular season championships 5 former assistants currently coaching Division 1 teams 4 Big Ten player-of-the-year selections 3 30-win [...]
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