5 Defensive Charting Insights From Missouri Tigers 74, Kansas Jayhawks 71
- 0 comments - NCAA Basketball, News, Project Defensive Score Sheet - posted by David Hess on 02.05.12
For once the most-hyped game of the weekend lived up to its billing, as the Missouri Tigers and Kansas Jayhawks traded blows all evening. The game finished with Missouri scoring 11 consecutive points to snatch a 3-point victory away from Kansas.
The contrasting styles of the two squads meant that severe matchup problems seemed imminent. Missouri’s four-guard lineup was expected to draw KU’s shot-blocking big man, Jeff Withey, out of the paint and render him useless. And Kansas was projected to use their huge size advantage to score at will inside.
Because I was curious about quantifying how the matchup issues affected the game, I decided this would be an excellent candidate for a defensive charting session.
Indiana Freshman Cody Zeller No Match For Wisconsin Forwards [Defensive Charting]
- 0 comments - NCAA Basketball, Project Defensive Score Sheet - posted by David Hess on 01.27.12
After starting Big Ten play 1-3, the Wisconsin Badgers have rolled off five straight victories, including edging the nationally-ranked Indiana Hoosiers last night.
The home win was largely the result of great interior defense by the Badgers, as they limited Indiana’s leading scorer and rebounder, Cody Zeller, to only 7 points and 3 boards on 2-of-7 shooting.
Because this game was the only matchup this Wednesday or Thursday between two ranked teams, and because the score made it look like a defensive battle, I put it under the defensive charting microscope. Read the rest of this entry »
College Basketball Defensive Score Sheet: Cincinnati-UConn
- 2 comments - NCAA Basketball, Project Defensive Score Sheet - posted by David Hess on 01.20.12
After a long hiatus, Project Defensive Score Sheet is back. This is our effort to take a more data-driven approach to evaluating player defense in college basketball.
Today’s defensive chart focuses on a key Big East battle from Wednesday: Cincinnati’s road win over Connecticut which propelled them into second place in the conference standings (though they remain only the third most likely Big East regular season champion, according to our college basketball standings projections).
What did the Bearcats do defensively to help them pull off the upset? And, how does this year’s Huskies defense compare to last year’s championship squad?
Defensive Score Sheet: Kentucky 75 – 65 Kansas
- 3 comments - NCAA Basketball, Project Defensive Score Sheet - posted by David Hess on 11.17.11
My Defensive Charting Background
One of my personal pet projects over the past year has been to take Dean Oliver’s Project Defensive Score Sheet idea from Basketball On Paper, apply it to college basketball, and run with it. That led to my series of defensive charting posts on Kansas last season, which eventually blossomed into a collaboration with Luke Winn for this year’s Sports Illustrated college basketball preview issue (much better in print or on iPad than online, I swear).
The Twitter response to that article has been very positive, and it’s led me to consider organizing a more widespread defensive charting project. The idea would be to crowd-source the effort required to do this time-intensive defensive charting. We ought to be able to get pretty complete coverage for the most popular squads, and could even try to tackle a full conference season for one of the major leagues.
Read the rest of this entry »
