Post by blackandgold on Jan 13, 2014 19:56:15 GMT -5
I'm going to periodically post efficiency margins standings here with some thoughts. Efficiency margin is a team's in-conference offensive points per possession minus its in-conference defensive points per possession. Similar to scoring margin, but adjusted for pace. A lot of words have been written about the predictive power of margin of victory particularly when adjusted for the number of possessions, so it's another evaluative tool I like to look at when taking stock of the league.
When we were in the Summit League I calculated these myself and kept historical tables to be able to contextualize a given team's performance level, but due to time I am just using KenPom's in-conference stats. I hope to go back in time to see if the Horizon's tempo-free historical stats reveal anything about tournament performance like I used to do for the Summit League.
Also note that the Horizon schedule features games on most days of the week, so there really isn't a great time to do this where teams have played the same amount of games (the Summit was more predictable with Thurs/Sat games). With that said, here's a look at the standings through Sunday, January 12.
I think it's too early to draw too much from the standings thus far. But I think the polar ends of this tell us two things that shouldn't shock anyone: Green Bay is very good, and UIC is not very good. The win-loss records confirm this, and the efficiency margin shows that these two teams haven't achieved their win-loss records due to a few lucky/unlucky bounces.
All of this can look a lot different when everyone has played 8 games, but Cleveland State also has a great profile thus far. Oakland has likely its two toughest league games coming up in back-to-back road trips to CSU and Green Bay.
When we were in the Summit League I calculated these myself and kept historical tables to be able to contextualize a given team's performance level, but due to time I am just using KenPom's in-conference stats. I hope to go back in time to see if the Horizon's tempo-free historical stats reveal anything about tournament performance like I used to do for the Summit League.
Also note that the Horizon schedule features games on most days of the week, so there really isn't a great time to do this where teams have played the same amount of games (the Summit was more predictable with Thurs/Sat games). With that said, here's a look at the standings through Sunday, January 12.
I think it's too early to draw too much from the standings thus far. But I think the polar ends of this tell us two things that shouldn't shock anyone: Green Bay is very good, and UIC is not very good. The win-loss records confirm this, and the efficiency margin shows that these two teams haven't achieved their win-loss records due to a few lucky/unlucky bounces.
All of this can look a lot different when everyone has played 8 games, but Cleveland State also has a great profile thus far. Oakland has likely its two toughest league games coming up in back-to-back road trips to CSU and Green Bay.