It's way too early to start looking at stats

http://www.savagechickens.com/2009/03/love-stats.html

But I've started to wake up the stats pages anyway (if you're new here, the stats pages are linked at the tool bar at the top of the page).

Right now, I've got the team and player advanced stats, along with player plus/minus and shot selection up and running.  Let's wait until next weekend (after the 'Bama game) to wake up the plots for net points and the performance charts - I do have the table on the net points page live, though.

The stats pages will get updated weekly, depending upon what else is going on with my schedule.  Now that Ken Pomeroy has moved most of his site behind a pay wall, I suspect that the pages here will be in bit higher demand.  Feel free to prod me (e-mail is at the upper-right) if you just can't wait for something.  Also, do let us know if you see a mistake, don't understand what a stat means, or have just thought of the greatest new basketball statistic of all time.

A few thoughts from what is now available:

• The biggest surprise for me so far is the low turnover rate Georgetown has yielded on offense [TO rate = 15.6%, rank = 13/345 versus Div-I], including against their first two quality opponents [13.9%].  Now the Tigers haven't been forcing turnovers much this year [17.4%, 308/345], but the Jayhawks have [23.5%, 107/345].  The Hoyas have managed to keep their turnover rate below 20% for an entire season only once [2005-6: 18.8%, 35/334] since Coach Thompson arrived with his pass-heavy offense.  I have no expectation of this keeping up, but it sure would be nice if it did.

• Henry Sims and Jason Clark are using a huge number of possessions so far [34% and 27%, respectively vs. Kansas and Memphis], and their efficiency on offense is suffering a bit because of it [ORat = 104 and 107, respectively]. Hollis Thompson and Markel Starks managed much better offensive ratings by being more selective [125/16% and 141/14%].

• Otto Porter is playing really well, whether against all teams or just the top-100 (I don't think you needed the stats to know that).  He's been the best defender on the team while using his possessions efficiently [130/18%].  

• The reason some people hate plus/minus is that the stat can be very misleading, even over the course of an entire season.  There's a good example of that currently on the Hoyas:  plus/minus hates Hollis right now [-11 net / 40 minutes].  Net points says he's been playing fine [+11 net / 40 minutes].  Call me biased - since I'm about the only one who posts Dean Oliver's net points - but I think the stat-head version is a bit more accurate.