Thursday, March 29, 2007

Analysis: OSU Performance

Just a quick and dirty analysis of OSU's total, offensive and defensive performance. I'll post G'town's charts right above OSU's, for comparison.

For review, I define performance as the difference (in points) between KenPom's predicted point spread and the actual point difference in the game. Since I use current efficiency data, all of the predictions are made retroactively based upon how the teams are playing now, or in most cases, how they finished. This can be a bit misleading, as it doesn't account for injuries, transfers, etc.

Offensive and defensive performance are based on the difference between the expected efficiency (based on team's and opponent's season average) and the actual efficiency in that game. These are also converted to points, based upon the actual game pace, to allow comparison to overall performance.

All of this data is thanks to KenPom's Game Plan pages for each team.

It is important to keep in mind that these stats are normalized to the average performance for a given team. Since OSU and Georgetown are very similar in offensive and defensive efficiency and KenPom's pythagorean ratings, this is a rare time when you won't get in much trouble just comparing the two sets of graphs.

Also note that I've stolen from PhogBlog (or was it Big Ten Wonk?) and added polynomial fit lines through the data. While these give a rough idea of trend, don't get too hung up on them, as typically the data has so much scatter that their significance is weak.

Overall performance (as always, click any figure to enlarge)

Georgetown


OSU


Just visually, OSU is the more consistant team, and KenPom agrees - his consistency stat ranks OSU 99th, G'town 220th. Georgetown has shown greater improvement as the season has progressed, but both teams seem to have peaked or plateaued at this point (good timing). I'll argue that this is a marker of good coaching.


Offensive Efficiency Performance

Georgetown


OSU


Again, OSU is the more consistent team (that first data point was a win against VMI and their 321st ranked defense, so the Buckeyes were going to look bad unless they absolutely destroyed them). More interestingly, OSU seems to have found another gear offensively in the Sweet 16. Georgetown, as we've seen all year, has become a very good offensive team, with an occasional stinker (e.g. @ Syracuse) and an occasional jaw-dropper (UNC).


Defensive Efficiency Performance

Georgetown


OSU


Here, both teams seem to have moved a bit past their peak, although the scatter in the data is too large to say that with any confidence.

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