Mar 18 2010

My 2010 NCAA Tournament Odds

Last year I posted my odds for the 2009 NCAA tournament, and this year I’ve made some improvements to help me fill out my bracket.
This year I’ve modeled the difference in each team’s mean points per possession per game. This model can then be used to estimate the probability of one team beating another team. [...]

Nov 6 2009

My Poster at Cha-Cha Days 2009

This weekend is Cha-Cha Days 2009 at the University of Central Florida, and I will be presenting a poster on some research I’ve done for my senior research and writing project at the College of Charleston.
The title for my poster is Modeling Basketball’s Points per Possession, and the motivation for this work comes from wanting [...]

Oct 5 2009

Is One Lineup Better Than Another?

One part of Wayne Winston’s new book Mathletics that I didn’t really like was the way he compared raw lineup data to determine if one lineup is better than another. After thinking about it more, I think the real reason I don’t like his method is because he compares the lineups’ net points per minute [...]

Mar 19 2009

My 2009 NCAA Tournament Odds

Brackets are now closed, and the first NCAA tournament game of the 2009 tournament is about to begin. Therefore, it’s time I post my odds of winning the tournament.
The Method
I used Kenneth Massey’s least squares method to rate and rank each DI team’s net points per possession per game. In other words, I used this [...]