Tickets Punched: #1 - #3

Due to an unfortunate incident involving my external hard drive, a parquet floor, and gravity, the files for my similarity scores system were lost this weekend.  I rebuilt most of it last night (though I haven’t had time to add the NCAA performance data for historical teams).  Given a chance to start from scratch, I made a couple changes – one is that I can now easily find comparables for only the offensive or defensive unit of a team.  I’m thinking I should be able to find better fits when looking at only one side of the ball, versus trying to find teams that play similar on both ends of the floor.  For example, I previously saw 2004 Wake Forest come up as a fairly good comparable for some very good all-round teams, despite Wake’s mediocre defense – simply because their offense was a perfect match.  Now the Deacons can move up to the top of the offensive comps list, and I won’t fret about the defense being a bad fit.  If the left shoe fits, wear it, and find another right shoe.

The other change is that I added an auto-chart-creation section that allows me to spotlight the categories which led to the matches, so the comparables are less of a black box.  You’ll see what I mean below, as I’m going to take these charts on a test drive through the teams that have clinched automatic bids so far.  Each of these charts will show the 5 categories that were weighted the highest when calculating the similarity score (SIM in the chart).  These will be areas where the team is particularly good or bad (e.g. 3P% below), along with categories that have a high weight just because they’re always important (e.g. Offensive Efficiency).  The values in these categories for the spotlighted team will be shown, as well as how many standard deviations above or below average they are.  This part will be color coded based on the standard deviations, so you can see at glance whether a team was good (green) or bad (red).  Last, the top 5 comps will be listed, along with their similarity score, and their values for the 5 key categories.  It might sound more complicated than it is; you’ll figure it out right away. (Oh, I should also note that I am only comparing teams today to major conference teams, plus a few exceptions like Gonzaga, Xavier, 2006 George Mason, etc.)

CORNELL

Vegas Watch was spot on when he compared Cornell’s offense to 2009 California – they both hit plenty of 3’s and take care of the ball well, but do little else.  Though Cal somehow managed to make it to the line much more than Cornell.