Saturday, December 26, 2009

Big East HD Box Scores - This time I mean it . . . maybe

West Virginia and Seton Hall tipped of the Big East regular season tonight with a 90-84 OT win for the Mountaineers in their game at the Prudential Center.

Last year I attempted to post HD box scores for as many Big East teams as possible, during conference play.  I made it almost until the end of January, when real life circumstances reduced my free time to virtually nil.

Foolishly, I'm going to try it again this year, starting with tonight's game.

Here's the deal - if the school posts usable play-by-play data on their team page, I will maintain a page for them with all available conference games posted (home and road).  If a school doesn't have the requisite info available, I'm not going to bother keeping a page.  I've played around a bit with an alternative source for play-by-play data [StatSheet.com], but it's not playing nice with my compiler so I'm going to limit things to just the official athletic department sites (links are in the table).

If you are interested in a box score for a team without "good" play-by-play, you should be able to find it whenever they play a "Yes" team from the table below.  St. John's is a unique case, where I believe those games played at Carnesecca Arena will have the info I need, but MSG games will not.  I'll keep a page going for the Johnnies, even though that's only four home games this season.  Obviously, any available road games will also be posted.

If you are a fan of one of the "No" schools and would like to see these HD box scores, please e-mail or call your Sports Information Director (SID) or equivalent and ask them to start posting the play-by-play.  I believe most (all?) teams are using StatCrew software, so they should be able to provide the play-by-play if they wanted [MSG games excepted].

Here's what I've got planned for this year:
School           PBP Good?      Comments
Cincinnati         No           No substitution data at team site
Connecticut        No           Seem to provide opponents' stat package
DePaul             No           Box score only at team site
Georgetown         Yes          Preferred style
Louisville         Yes          Same format as G'town
Marquette          Yes          Same format as G'town
Notre Dame         Yes          No 2nd half box score; can handle this
Pittsburgh         Yes          No 2nd half box score; can handle this
Providence         No           Box score only at team site
Rutgers            No           Box score only at team site
St. John's        Maybe         On-campus games only; MSG games have box score only
Seton Hall         Yes          Only pbp and final box score; can handle this
South Florida      No           No substitution data
Syracuse           No           Box score only at team site
Villanova          Yes          Same format as G'town
West Virginia      No           Box score only at team site

To view available box scores, just click on the Big East HD Box Scores link at the top right of the page (just below "Tempo-Free Stats 101"). That will bring you to the Georgetown page, then just click on the link for any available team.  For tonight, here's the direct link to the West Virginia-Seton Hall HD Box score.

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While I'm here, I thought I'd mention that I've added another line to the HD box score.  Going back to an early attempt at tracking fast breaks, I'm now tracking points scored after steals and Off. Efficiency on possessions generated by steals (rather than "points off turnovers", which you can find in most detailed box scores).  If you stop and think about it, this efficiency is simply points after steals divided by steals [then multiplied by 100], but I'll save you the trouble of doing the math.

I'd say that this feature is still in the beta phase, meaning that I've only just added it and am still testing as I go.  Turns out that tonight's game was a lousy test since Seton Hall just doesn't give up the ball very often (WVU had only 1 steal!!).

3 comments:

  1. I'll be on the lookout for play by play info for St. John's games.

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  2. Hey Pico,

    I talked by e-mail with Mark Fratto in the St. John's athletic department last year about play-by-play info. He actually offered to fax over some in-house stuff for Garden games, but that wouldn't be useful to me (I need electronic versions . . . or an intern).

    Don't know if there's more that can be done for MSG games - I thought Mark was as helpful as possible. It kinda sucks because BET games are also affected (although occasionally a team will provide their own version of the box score with p-b-p).

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  3. Ok, cool. Fratto's a very helpful guy! I suppose you can't scan the fax then convert it to an electronic version? That's... difficult, I know.

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