Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Measuring a team's average height, part III

I'm back.

So we've mentioned two ideas on quantifying "inside vs. outside" statistics for a team.

1. Inside shooting

2. Inside defense

Now we add a third:

3. Overall Inside Ratio (OIR) = 100*(FTA + OR + DR + BL)/(FTA + OR + DR + BL + 3FGA + S + A + TO)

The idea being, divide (post-like stats) by (post-like stats + guard-like stats).

To get an idea of what this stat looks like, here's the SEC's 10 most post-like statistical players, among those with at least 40% minutes played:

1. Morris, KY 94.0
2. Singleton, GA 92.1
3. Rolle, LSU 90.7
4. Barber, AU 89.7
5. Townes, AR 89.7
6. Crews, TN 88.4
7. Brown, VU 87.0
8. Parnell, UM 85.8
9. Archie, SC 84.5
10. Richard, FL 84.5

And taking overall outside ratio (OOR) to be 100-OIR, here are the top ten most guard-like statistical players in the SEC:

1. Humphrey,FL 78.4
2. Steele, AL 72.8
3. Reed, AU 70.3
4. Stukes, GA 68.3
5. Cage, VU 66.4
6. Minor, LSU 65.8
7. Sheldon, SC 65.1
8. Delk, MS 65.0
9. Temple, LSU 64.8
10. Hodge, FL 63.2

Finally, here are the team numbers for OIR:

1. AL 65.4
2. MS 63.5
3. KY 62.1
4. LSU 61.5
5. UM 61.5
6. SC 61.1
7. AR 61.1
8. FL 57.7
9. GA 57.5
10. TN 56.9
11. AU 55.8
12. VU 54.8

That's all very interesting, but it's still not what we wanted. Recall that what we wanted was a way to gauge a team's *height*, not their inside vs. outside stats.

So, here's the question: is there a way to "scale" an individual's height by his OIR? I.e., he is using his height more to advantage if he is actually mixing it up in the paint...does it make sense to take a team's average height, weighted by both minutes played and inside ratio?

It's worth thinking about.

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