Recent Posts
Follow Hickory-High
Author Archives: Kyle Soppe
Weekly Stats Recap
Thanks to Utah Jazz fan, Taylor Berthelson (@utahmankiyi), this week’s study was devoted to determining the importance of the first quarter to the game result. I used years of data to determine that winning teams typically performed well in the first quarter earlier this week, but it doesn’t hurt to add some 2012-2013 statistics to prove the trend true for this season. Taylor estimated that 60% of teams that win the first quarter win the … Continue reading
Weekly Stats Recap
This week I thought I’d take a look at the shot taking/making of offenses “at the rim” and behind the arc. Theoretically, offenses work hard to get a good look from one of these spots on very possession, and I was curious which had a greater impact on the game. My hypothesis was that winning teams would have the consistent edge “at the rim” while the three point shooting would be something of a … Continue reading
Weekly Stats Recap
As mentioned in the previous edition of the Weekly Stats Recap, the suggested #StatStudy for this week was orchestrated to determine the impact of elite assist men. Perry Missner (@PerryMissner), a noted doubter of the importance of great point guards, estimated that 65% of the teams with a double digit dime man would win. As it turns out (for this week at least), Perry wasn’t pessimistic enough when it comes to the correlation between … Continue reading
LeBron James: NBA’s Big Bang Theory
Big Bang Theory: the theory that the universe [new era of basketball] originated from the cataclysmic explosion [the draft of LeBron James in 2003] of a small volume of matter at extremely high [level of production] density and temperature. In layman’s terms, the style of play and level of efficiency that we are seeing from LeBron James has the potential to change the NBA forever. There are a lot of ways to describe greatness, but … Continue reading
Weekly Stats Recap
This week’s #StatStudy was suggested by our very own Ian Levy (@HickoryHigh), a great basketball mind who will stop at nothing to make sense of this game we all know and love. Mr. Levy was curious as to the ideal number of possessions, a stat that I measured by recording the OffEff (points per 100 possessions) of every winning team this week (52 games). Oddly enough, the result from this study closely resembled a … Continue reading
Weekly Stats Recap
For this week’s study my brother (@KurtSoppe) pondered if FG% or FT% was more directly correlated to the game’s final outcome. He hypothesized that both FG% and FT% would be consistently higher for victorious teams, with the stronger correlation being found in the field goal percentage. In support of Kurt’s guess, winning teams shot an average of 47.9% from the field while losing teams shot only 42.3%. Winning teams shot better than 50% from … Continue reading
Weekly Stats Recap
This week I had a stat request from Jesse Silverman (@JesseBeau), a Cortland intramural champion and defending March Madness king. He wondered if the number of double digit scorers was directly correlated to victories, guessing that winning teams would have more double digit scorers in each game. As it turns out, there was not a considerable difference in the number of players in double figures for winning and losing teams. Over this holiday week … Continue reading
Weekly Stats Recap
This week’s study was suggested by college basketball guru and FSWA (Fantasy Sports Writers Association) gate keeper Perry Missner (@PerryMissner). He is a passionate basketball fan and his suggestion led to some very interesting results. Perry wondered which was more directly correlated to success: quantity or quality when it comes to field goal attempts. I ventured a guess that FG% would be a better predictor, but figured it would be a close study. After … Continue reading
Playing ‘What If’ With The NBA’s Age Limit
What if … … The NBA’s age limit was implemented prior to the 2003 Draft instead of in 2006? LeBron James signs a letter to play at an elite college program (rumors had him at Tobacco Road or Syracuse) instead of turning pro and setting the NBA on fire. His national profile would not have swelled the way it did, as the national media would have waited to see him perform on the college … Continue reading
Weekly Stats Recap
For this week’s study I took a look at how often (and by how much) winning teams lost individual quarters. For the 52 games played this week, the victorious team lost an average of 1.2 quarters per game. This indicates that more winning teams lost at least two quarters than winning teams that won/tied every quarter. In quarters in which the eventual winner was outscored, they were outscored by an average of 4.97 points. … Continue reading
