Tuesday, October 16, 2007

First look at Basketball Prospectus

Last month, I mentioned that Ken Pomeroy (of kenpom.com) and John Gasaway (of Big Ten Wonk) were going to be collaborating on a new effort to bring basketbal statistics closer to the mainstream. Their method: a spin-off of Baseball Prospectus with the same look, feel, and (effectively) name: Basketball Prospectus. The site made its debut last week, and I want to give you a quick overview of what they're doing and how it relates to my site.

For a while now, Pomeroy has run the most comprehensive college basketball stat site, where he has his own power rankings and efficiency stats based on several core principles of (for lack of a better term) sabermetric basketball analysis. Some call it APBRmetrics after the Association for Professional Basketball Research, which you might consider basketball's SABR.

At any rate, he will be shifting all of that over to the new Basketball Prospectus site, and from the look of it, he'll be writing a whole lot more. I encourage you to check it out.

Right now, BaskP (they'll need a different acronym from BP, I guess) is previewing each conference, giving a fairly detailed look at each team. It's all worth reading, and I'll probably use the same format for my upcoming GSC previews. They also have a few introductory articles that are among the best I've read if you're still confused by the concept of possession-based stats, offensive efficiency, and the like.

Put them in your feed reader...it will be interesting to see what they have in store for the new season.

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