Plus/Minus For Comeback Wins

Tracking "plus/minus" statistics is something I've always wanted to do but never got around to before. Traditionally known as a hockey stat, it's only more recently been used for basketball since the influx of advanced statistics into the sport.

The numbers are easy to follow. A player's plus/minus score is calculated by taking the number of points his team scores while he is on the court and subtracting the number of points the opponents score while he is off the court. This stat seeks to account for those "intangibles" that cannot be measured by other stats to connect a player's true value to what you see on the scoreboard.

But plus/minus alone is not always very helpful. Take blowouts for example. A team can build a 10-point lead with a player in the lineup and even when the player sits, his team could extend that lead to 20 or 25 points. Is the player really that instrumental in building the lead or is the opponent just vastly inferior? Also, you need to be able to compare players who play a different number of minutes.

Blogs like The Hoya Prospectus, which has used plus/minus for years (thanks Dylan), account for both problems. This is accomplished by also measuring the point differential when the player is off the floor ("Off") and subtracting it from the traditional "On" score for a Net +/- number. These numbers can also be adjusted per 40 minutes to compare players. I unabashedly copied this model when calculating the plus/minus scores for Wisconsin's past two games, which both happened to be comebacks of epic proportions.

The disclaimer is that plus/minus numbers are only another layer to add to existing stats to try to get the full picture. They are far from perfect. I sorted the players by Net +/- score, though I strongly considered sorting by minutes played to easily weed out data that is unreliable. As you might notice below, statistical outliers are more likely to warp the "net +/- per 40 min" numbers for the most-used and least-used players in individual games.

1/20: @Wisconsin 54, Michigan 48:
Now you can see the problem with calculating Net +/- per minute for individual games. We know that Rob Wilson and Trevon Hughes sparked the comeback against Michigan, but Hughes gets penalized immensely in the Net/40 column because while he took a quick two-minute breather, Wisconsin hit a 3-pointer and the Wolverines did not score.

Concluding that Pop was the least valuable Badger per-minute that day would not be accurate. The calculations will be more valuable when we can average out a whole season of data, which I intend to do. Just keep this in mind as you view the charts.

1/24: @Wisconsin 79, Penn State 71:
Jordan Taylor and Keaton Nankivil were incredibly valuable on average against Penn State. Mike Bruesewitz was once again terribly ineffective. With only four minutes played, Bruiser didn't get a chance to make his +/- more respectable, but that was a wise choice by Bo Ryan. "You gotta knooow when to hold'em ... know when to fold 'em ..."

Stay tuned for +/- for previous games and a season-to-date +/- board.

Give the Big Ten a Gold Star

I was impressed with Penn State's perseverance tonight in digging out the NIT championship against Baylor. Just another example of the Big Ten's strength this year. Can you believe the Nittany Lions finished with 27 wins?!

More specifically, I was impressed with Jamelle Cornley. The undersized, injury-plagued senior forward was a great representative for the Big Ten Conference. He must have gotten the memo. Cornley turned in some gritty performances in the NIT after hurting his shoulder. Penn State will miss his game enormously next year.

Penn State also loses two other seniors who logged a lot of time in Happy Valley in Stanley Pringle and Danny Morrissey. The team loses almost half of its scoring and a third of its rebounding with those three, so I am not sure where the Nitts will fall in the conference pecking order next season. Battle returns of course, and Penn State also has a pair of big, long bodies in Andrew Jones and Jeff Brooks that flashed potential.

As for the real tournament, the Big Ten would have been expected to post a 6-7 record based on seeding alone, but has already secured a winning record thanks to the run by Michigan State. Add an 8-7 record (or maybe even 10-6 if MSU gets crazy) in the NCAA Tournament to Penn State's postseason success, and you almost forget about Indiana's epically embarrassing season and Iowa's impending disaster.

The future looks bright for the conference despite not having any incoming McDonald's All-Americans. The all-conference team was littered with sophomore stars, so keep an eye on April 26 -- the deadline for early entrants to declare for the NBA Draft. Purdue's JuJuan Johnson has already announced he will be back (as expected), while Ohio State's Evan Turner seems the most likely to bolt.

Marcus Landry is in Detroit as I type this, awaiting his chance to display his skills in the NABC College All-Star Game on Friday night. After that, Landry's next stop will be the Portsmouth Invitational event out in Virginia next week to see if he can get any indications that an NBA team might want to take a chance on him. Best of luck to him. Joe Krabbenhoft must settle for getting bashed (along with his father) in the comments section on a hometown newspaper site. Unbelievable ...

So the question is, can I root for Michigan State this weekend? In a word, yes. With conference pride. And also because it helps my ridiculous bracket.

Big Ten Power Poll: 2/2/09

The weather is still cold in Madison, Wisconsin's win column is still frozen shut and now even more colleagues in the Big Ten are accumulating important wins for their tournament résumés.

While the Badgers are still hostages of the amazing "Deep Freeze of 2009", Penn State's upset over Michigan State means that Wisconsin can now at least claim one win against the Big Ten's top five teams. I never thought I would see UW in the bottom three of the conference with Bo Ryan at the helm, so I guess it's good that there is still half of the conference schedule left to improve.

Ohio State, Michigan, Iowa and Indiana are the remaining teams who have not yet knocked off one of the conference leaders (MSU, Purdue, Minn., Ill., PSU). This has been a rollercoaster year for most teams in the league. As long as Michigan State and Purdue stay the course, I think this bodes well for the league overall ... though you would like to see a third heavyweight emerge, I don't think there is one this year.

The Big Ten has the second-highest conference RPI thanks to the top strength of schedule rating. Conversely, the Big Ten seems pretty locked in at fifth among the big boys (ahead of the SEC) when it comes to Ken Pomeroy's method of ranking conferences by the average rating of their members.

	Rk	Team	Record (Conf)	Poll Avg (Feb. 2)	Pomeroy Rank	Key Wins
	1	Michigan State	17-4 (7-2)	13.5	21	Texas, Ill, @Minn, Kan
^	2	Purdue	17-4 (6-2)	12.5	11	BC, David, @Wis, @Minn
v	3	Illinois	18-4 (6-3)	22	24	Mizzou, OSU, @Purd, Wis
	4	Minnesota	18-3 (6-3)	19	34	L'ville, @Wis, Ill, OSU
	5	Penn State	17-5 (6-3)	30.5	57	@MSU, Mich, Purd
^	6	Ohio State	15-5 (5-4)	42.5	52	@Miami, ND, @Mich
	7	Northwestern	12-7 (4-5)	-	62	Minn, @MSU, Fla. St., Wis
v	8	Wisconsin	12-9 (3-6)	-	42	@VT, @Mich
	9	Michigan	14-8 (4-6)	-	82	UCLA, Duke, Ill
	10	Iowa	12-10 (2-7)	-	84	Iowa St., Wis
	11	Indiana	5-15 (0-8)	-	204	TCU

Another Brick In The Wall

My dream will have to wait another year. Not only did the ACC display its superiority again, but Duke emerged unscathed. The Big Ten improved overall to five wins this year, but eight of the 12 ACC teams still have a .500 or better record in the Big Ten/ACC Challenge.

Now, sure most of the games were close and there were positive moments. Unfortunately, the marquee teams from the ACC lambasted the "best" teams from the Big Ten. Purdue laid an absolute egg. That performance will have people drooling over Duke for weeks, fair or not. Kyle Singler is very good though and he shut down Robbie Hummel.

Top-ranked North Carolina sealed the deal by running away from Michigan State. Will a home team win at Ford Field at all this year?! The game was entertaining at the start, however, the Spartans simply do not stack up inside -- especially without Goran Suton. I am still waiting to be impressed by Raymar Morgan with my own two eyes.

Other thoughts, with the help of the Big Ten blogosphere:
Minnesota looked very aggressive Tuesday and could definitely be a player in the Big Ten. The Gophers have been trained to hound the perimeter and try to swat every shot attempt. This enabled them to control the tempo. Two players stood out. Damian Johnson is long and athletic. Freshman Colton Iverson is not a looker but looks real good in the post. Iverson is a player I imagine most Badger fans can respect. If you were looking for the next big man in the conference to worry about, see this kid in two years. Minnesota should be scary at that point with Royce White and Rodney Williams also on the roster.

Obviously, Ohio State benefited from the ejection of Jack McClinton and thus, turned the tables on Miami in the second half. McClinton made his first four 3-pointers before he got the boot with about 10 minutes left int he first half. Ho hum, another road win, one of six in the challenge.

After seeing the pathetic finishes by Illinois and Iowa, all you could do was vomit. For the Illini to not get a shot off is unforgivable and the Hawkeye freshman missing (badly) on the front end of a bonus situation is pure heartbreak. If either of those finishes flipped, the Big Ten would have a big smile on its face right now. Penn State added another very weak finish on Wednesday but still managed to escape Atlanta with a nice win over Georgia Tech. The Nittany Lions made some minor mistakes in press break mode, like passing up an easy basket that would have put them up six points, and looked terrible form the charity stripe. Part of the problem was failing to get the ball to their best free throw shooters each time.

The fans back in State College probably chewed their nails off, but they have a reason to be optimistic about their backcourt. I really like is PSU's sophomore point guard Talor Battle, who teams with senior Stanley Pringle to form a quick, offensive-minded pair. Former Badger recruiting target Iman Shumpert posted a nice line as well.

In other Wednesday action, Indiana lost big to Wake Forest as expected, and Michigan proved me wrong by getting shell shocked to the tune of 46 points in the second half. Luckily, Northwestern picked up the slack with a convincing romp over Florida State. Could that be a spark towards something more for the Wildcats?

That put me at a paltry 5-5 on my predictions. There's always next year ... for me and for the Big Ten.

The Gatekeepers

Penn State had plenty to prove Tuesday night. The Nittany Lions needed to prove they could bounce back from a devastating meltdown against Minnesota, that they could hang with the Big Ten's elite and that they would be worthy of an NCAA bid come tournament time.

None of that happened. Wisconsin went into Happy Valley as gatekeepers and shut the door on Penn State early with stifling defense and uncharacteristicly hot 3-point shooting. The home team managed only one basket in the first eight minutes of play, by which time UW held an 18-2 lead. When PSU star Geary Claxton was lost to a knee injury near the midway point of the first half, this game was unofficially O-V-E-R. [box score]

Michael Flowers put forth maybe the finest all-around effort of his career, pacing Wisconsin with a career-high 23 points. He added 6 rebs, 5 assts, and one dynamic steal and lay-up. See what happens when you don't get into foul trouble, Mike? Flowers' 5-of-6 shooting on treys led the team to a 10-of-16 performance overall behind the arc. Not surprisingly then with the outside shot falling, neither team went to the free throw line much.

With a sizable lead, it was refreshing to see the Wisconsin players act like they smelled blood. Instead of letting another less talented league foe hang around, the Badgers shot with confidence and made the kill. And of course, they killed the Nittany Lions on the glass as well, led by Brian Butch's 12 boards.

We are witnessing a historic run by Butch, by the way. The former McDonald's All-American is on pace to have 256 rebounds by the end of the season, assuming he remains healthy and the Badgers play at least one game in the Big Ten tournament and one in the NCAA tournament. That is a conservative, but fair, estimate for number of games played and should he keep this pace, Butch could rise as high as 7th on Wisconsin's all-time career rebounding list. He is already halfway toward shattering the single-season UW record for offensive rebounds. The Polar Bear has 51 through the first 16 games; the current record of 86 was set by Alando Tucker in 2003 (as a freshman!).

With second-chance opportunities limited by Butch and Co., the Nittany Lions could not afford to shoot under 37% to Wisconsin's nearly 60%. Penn State's spirit clearly was broken with Claxton out. The Nittany Lions allowed the Badgers to throw a 19-0 run on them toward the end of the game that turned 12-point lead into an enormous 31-point lead. Now that it appears Claxton is out for the season, the Penn State postseason drive may have already been derailed ... yet again.

Meanwhile, Wisconsin's balance continues to be a major strength. A different player has led the team in scoring in each of the last four games. Flowers did nothing to nothing to kick me out of the driver's seat of his bandwagon -- I've always said when he is at his best, Wisconsin is nearly unbeatable.