A few weeks ago, I received an advanced copy of When March Went Mad: The Game That Transformed Basketball (affiliate link) by SI’s Seth Davis. I had read about the book a while back and, frankly, I was prepared to be underwhelmed. I’ve read a fair amount about the topic of 1979 national championship game [...]
Posts Tagged ‘msu basketball history’
Book Review: When March Went Mad
Posted in book review, tagged magic johnson, msu basketball history on March 4, 2009 | 3 Comments »
Coffee Talk: MSU's Mount Rushmore
Posted in coffee talk, tagged brad vanpelt, duffy daugherty, magic johnson, msu basketball history, msu football history, tom izzo on February 19, 2009 | 36 Comments »
ESPN.com’s Adam Rittenberg has been doing a cool feature: naming the four historical figures who would fill a Mount Rushmore for each of the 11 Big Ten football programs. (Apparently, this is part of a wider ESPN “Sports Nation” thing.) He hasn’t gotten to MSU yet, so I thought we’d beat him to the punch [...]
Can assists be bad?
Posted in stats analysis, tagged assist percentage, msu basketball history on October 1, 2008 | 7 Comments »
Because it’s somewhat tangential to the “four factors” of basketball statistical analysis, there’s one tempo-free stat I overlooked in the series on MSU’s historical tempo-free tendencies on offense: assist percentage. Assist percentage is the number of assists a team records divided by its made field goals. That is, what percentage of the time a team [...]
Putting it all together: Offensive efficiency during the Izzo era
Posted in stats analysis, tagged msu basketball history, offensive efficiency, tom izzo, turnovers on September 9, 2008 | 8 Comments »
Here’s a brief overview of what we’ve learned from our survey of MSU’s statistical trends on offense over the last 12 years, broken down by the “four factors” of tempo-free statistical analysis: Turnovers: Minimizing turnovers has never been a strength for MSU under Izzo. Three seasons were particularly bad (1997-97, 2001-02, and 2006-07), with the [...]
So exactly how tough is MSU's nonconference schedule?
Posted in stats analysis, tagged msu basketball history, schedule on September 4, 2008 | 4 Comments »
Joe Rexrode on Michigan State’s nonconference schedule: . . . I’d rate this the third-toughest of the Izzo era, behind that 2003 slate [Kansas, Duke, Kentucky, Oklahoma, UCLA, Syracuse], and the 1999-2000 schedule that included North Carolina, Arizona and Kentucky on the road, Kansas in Chicago, Texas in Puerto Rico, Connecticut at home. In retrospect, [...]
Scoring from the charity stripe during the Izzo era
Posted in stats analysis, tagged free throws, msu basketball history on August 20, 2008 | 9 Comments »
Back in March, when Witless Chum and Hubert suggested I spend some of the offseason looking at MSU’s historical tempo-free statistical trends, it seemed like a great idea. Since then, though, I’ve realized: (1) It’s a lot of work compared to other kids of blog posts. and (2) It doesn’t seem to generate a lot [...]
MSU historical trends: Field goal shooting
Posted in stats analysis, tagged field goal shooting, msu basketball history on August 12, 2008 | 2 Comments »
I’m finally picking back up on our series on Michigan State’s statistical trends over the last 12 years. I’m going to try to make these a little simpler going forward, so that the prospects of doing each post aren’t so daunting (and hence procrastination-inducing). Today we’ll look at MSU’s field goal shooting percentages. (The last [...]
Sneak Preview: Historical field goal shooting tendencies
Posted in stats analysis, tagged 3-point shooting, msu basketball history on July 30, 2008 | 5 Comments »
The graph below shows the percentage of MSU’s field goal attempts taken from 3-point range for each of the last 12 seasons. This is a manually-constructed chart, as statsheet.com doesn’t track this particular number. Bullet point review: MSU ranked in the bottom ten nationally in 3-point attempts as a percentage of field goal attempts this [...]
Have we always turned the ball over this much?
Posted in links, stats analysis, tagged drew neitzel, msu basketball history, tom izzo, turnovers on July 17, 2008 | 4 Comments »
Thursday Links Good news for those of us that will be driving down to the MSU-UNC game at Ford Field after work on Wednesday, December 3: The start time is 9:15, so we’ll have extra time to get down there. The game will be broadcast on ESPN. The other top-notch match-up is Duke-Purdue. That game [...]
Beyond the Arc has impeccable timing
Posted in history, links, tagged msu basketball history on July 2, 2008 | Comments Off
On the heels of our conversation here about the great guards of Spartan seasons past, MSNBC.com’s Beyond the Arc has anointed MSU the 15th greatest college basketball program. He provides a nice overview of Spartan basketball achievements through the years (including a nod to our look at MSU’s rebounding during the Izzo era). Here are [...]
