Saturday, December 17, 2005

EOSmith Basketball

The EO Smith teams (all three) lost their games to Maloney High. Oh, well.

One of my habits is to keep statistics of details and I want to introduce two categories that I will call the Ron-Ron team and another called the Bron-Bron team. These are strictly my own invention and they exist to celebrate the best defensive and offensive players to date on the three teams.

Now, I have two sons who play who may or may not show up on these teams from time to time. If they do it will be because they earned it (I'm a diehard basketball guy who plays with numbers no matter how they fall). Invent your own statistical categories if these don't work for you. And, finally, my stats are not perfect but I try hard.

Here we go.

The Ron-Ron team represents the lock-down defensive squad up to the latest game I have stats for. The calculation is this;

((Rebounds + Steals + Blocked Shots + Disruptive Plays) minus (Bad Passes + Turnovers)) divided by the number of games. This is my Ron-Ron number.

The team after one meet is:

#34 Freshmen (7 + 2 + 2 + 4) - 0 = 15
#15 Freshmen (4 + 1 + 1 + 3) - 0 = 09
#23 JV (7 + 0 + 2 + 0) - 1 = 08
#44 JV (4 + 2 + 0 + 1) - 2 = 05
#22 Freshmen (2 + 2 + 1 + 1) - 1 = 05
#42 Freshmen (3 + 2 + 0 + 0) - 0 = 05

The Bron-Bron team represents the most efficient offensive squad up to the latest game I have stats for. These are the guys who put the ball in the hands of a shooter who makes the shot. The calculation is this;

((Shots Made + Assists) divided by (Shots Made + Shots Missed )) for that player. (Minimum 5 shots attempted) This is my Bron-Bron number.

The team after one meet is:

#44 JV .600 3/5
#22 Varsity .571 4/7
#31 JV .571 4/7
#20 Varsity .500 4/8
#23 JV .500 2/4
#20 Freshmen .500 3/6
#12 Freshmen .500 3/6


Otherwise, here's the shooting percentage leaders;

JVs .400 16/40
Varsity .342 15/43
Freshmen .327 17/52

Free Throw Shooting percentage;

Varsity .666 12/18
Freshmen .333 05/15
JVs .000 00/04

Ron-Ron Number by team;

Freshmen 61 - 15 = 46
JVs 47 - 21 = 26
Varsity 27 - 15 = 12

Bron-Bron offensive efficiency by team;

JVs .475 19/40
Freshmen .423 22/52
Varsity .418 18/43

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Frank
I love your number crunching. I am concerned about a perception that our students are at a disadvantage when going to Smith. Do you think that a similar effort comparing Ashford's students with the entire region's students might be instructive?
Class ranking compared to town is the obvious starting point. Are Ashford students getting benefits that aren't often measured? What are the participation rates in sports, band, theater, social justice, other? Are there any correlations with grades? Graduation rates? Are Ashford students being shortchanged in their high school experience? Shortchanging themselves? Or, conversely are they doing quite well?
The goal of course is to find ways to give our students the best and the broadest education we can afford.
Love your blog
Dave

Frank Krasicki said...

Dave,

I'm super busy so I'll respond briefly now and more extensively later.

Thanks on the number crunching compliment. I really don't know too many of the players yet and basically just keep stats by jersey number. And rather than repeat the usual statistical categories, I wanted to measure the players doing a lot of things right (I did this for years with baseball). There's some arbitrary stuff for sure but I think the numbers are very representative of what's going on.

Today I had a chance to try and figure out who the numbers belonged to and it's very, very interesting.

First, Adam, Paul, Hayden, Eric, and Henry (of the kids I know) are all Nutmeg State Games graduates and they are on one or both teams. Now, directly and indirectly that means Cheri Briggs, CJ Harper (NSG Coach of the Year 2004), Mike Mellady, and others are doing a great job of building better basketball players.

Secondly, some of the players scoring highest in these teamwork categories are brothers (there are three pairs of brothers playing on different teams yet) scoring high on the Ron-Ron and Bron-Brons. I'm not sure what to make of that and it is too early to know if it sticks.

Now, generally speaking, everyone I talk to in the administration and teaching ranks treats each student as a unique adolescent and that's how I treat my job as well although I keep a sensitive ear to any legitimate complaints. In my adventures I have met nothing but contented Ashford students.

The only hiccup to this rosy picture is that, as we all know from experience, there are some students who because of some unspecified origin need to make themselves look superior by diminishing someone else. My recommendation is that parents who are in earshot of that kind of thing remind the bully who's in charge until a memo is distributed saying otherwise.

Of what I've observed with soccer and basketball so far - Ashford is very well represented boys and girls team.

Not surprisingly, this year's freshman basketball team is a rock show. They lost the first game but it was a great game - fun to watch, lots of parents in the stands at an away game, and very, very competitive. They blew by Maloney's full-court press better than the JVs or Varsity. My guess is that basketball tickets will be harder to get as these kids pass through EO.

I'll get back to your specific questions after the holidays.

Frank Krasicki said...
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