Amber called her uncle, said "We're up here for the holiday
Jane and I were having Solstice, now we need a place to stay"
-- the opening lines of Dar Williams' "The Christians and the Pagans," sung annually at my high school's holiday assembly and still stuck in my head all these years later. Seriously.
Good morning, everyone, and merry Christmas to all of you out there observing the holiday. It's a working day for me, though, as I've been behind the controls of Philly.com since 6 a.m.
But I've had some great entertainment to keep me company, in the form of known Soft Pretzel Loglc reader (and commenter!) Jon Solomon's holiday music show on WPRB-FM in Princeton. The Inquirer's Dan DeLuca reviewed it a few days ago; if you see this post before 6 p.m., click here to listen to the broadcast.
So with a few minutes to spare (but don't tell the boss), I figured I'd put together a special holiday edition of Crunchy Numbers. This version adds a strength of schedule column. I'm going with overall SOS instead of just non-conference, because I think it includes more data. Convince me to go with non-conference and I'll change it.
And as a special holiday bonus, I've added the teams' Big 5 records in parentheses next to their overall records, including Drexel's record against city teams. But the other schools just have their Big 5 records.
The other numbers in parentheses are last week's stats.
Having said all that, here's the table.
Team |
Record |
Pomeroy |
RPI |
Sagarin |
BB State |
SOS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Drexel |
6-5 (1-1) |
223 (253) |
132 (127) |
159 (134) |
247 (284) |
127 |
La Salle |
4-6 (0-0) |
239 (239) |
260 (260) |
222 (228) |
265 (290) |
238 |
Penn |
4-7 (0-1) |
276 (298) |
225 (248) |
266 (230) |
336 (337) |
158 |
St. Joseph's |
5-4 (0-0) |
73 (75) |
108 (121) |
101 (87) |
28 (25) |
86 |
Temple |
6-5 (0-1) |
90 (94) |
58 (77) |
92 (98) |
78 (68) |
22 |
Villanova |
9-1 (2-0) |
70 (60) |
22 (31) |
41 (25) |
79 (66) |
108 |
After the jump, the team and invididual stats...
He told his niece, "It's Christmas eve, I know our life is not your style"
She said, "Christmas is like Solstice, and we miss you and it's been awhile"
Drexel
-- Offensive efficiency: 86.2 (319)
-- Defensive efficiency: 92.0 (57)
-- Tempo: 67.0 poss / 40 min (224)
Offense
-- Turnover %: 27.0 (324)
-- Offensive rebounding %: 26.2 (319)
-- Free throw %: 59.7 (320)
-- Steal %: 13.4 (325)
-- Assists to FGM ratio: 59.0 (86)
Defense
-- Effective FG%: 43.8 (29)
-- 3-point FG%: 28.1 (13)
-- 2-point FG%: 44.7 (85)
-- Free throw %: 64.7 (56)
Frank Elegar
-- Free throw rate: 73rd (70.2)
La Salle
-- Offensive efficiency: 99.8 (189)
-- Defensive efficiency: 102.2 (187)
-- Tempo: 71.3 poss / 40 min (81)
Offense
-- Offensive rebounding %: 37.9 (49)
-- 3-point FG%: 38.2 (76)
-- Block %: 12.6 (306)
Defense
-- Turnover %: 18.1 (325)
-- 3-point FG%: 32.7 (97)
-- Ratio of all 3pt attempts to all FGA: 28.7% (39)
-- Assist to FGM ratio: 47.7% (40)
Jerrell Williams
-- Percent of team's possessions where he makes the decisive play: 57th (30.1)
-- Offensive rebounding %: 29th (16.1)
Darnell Harris
-- Turnover rate: 72nd (10.4)
Penn
-- Offensive efficiency: 96.7 (227)
-- Defensive efficiency: 108.0 (284)
-- Tempo: 73.0 poss / 40 min (46)
Offense
-- Free Throw Rate: 31.3% (23)
-- 3-point FG%: 29.2 (309)
-- 2-point FG%: 51.6 (80)
-- Assist to FGM ratio: 62.2% (45)
Defense
-- Free throw %: 65.1 (69)
-- Assist to FGM ratio: 48.3% (46)
Harrison Gaines
-- Assist rate: 28th (37.6)
Saint Joseph's
-- Offensive efficiency: 112.8 (31)
-- Defensive efficiency: 104.6 (229)
-- Tempo: 63.6 poss / 40 min (297)
Offense
-- Effective FG%: 53.6 (59)
-- Turnover %: 19.5 (60)
-- Free throw rate: 28.2 (76)
-- 2-point FG%: 51.9 (71)
-- Ratio of threes attempted to all FGA: 41.4% (41)
Defense
-- Offensive rebounding %: 38.1 (303)
-- Free throw rate: 30.8 (88)
-- 3-point FG%: 42.7 (325) (Combine that with the OR%. Not good.)
-- 2-point FG%: 44.1 (68) (and yes, the point still stands.)
-- Block %: 14.6 (30)
-- Steal %: 11.7 (72)
-- Ratio of threes attempted to all FGA: 31.0% (97)
Ahmad Nivins
-- Percent of possible minutes played: 31st (90.3)
-- Effective FG%: 86th (63.3%) (and he hasn't even attempted any threes all season)
-- Free throw rate: 3rd (122.4)
Tasheed Carr
-- Percent of possible minutes played: 78th (86.4)
-- Assist rate: 13th (41.5)
Rob Ferguson
-- Turnover rate: 41st (9.2)
Temple
-- Offensive efficiency: 105.7 (95)
-- Defensive efficiency: 100.7 (169)
-- Tempo: 67.1 poss / 40 min (223)
Offense
-- Effective FG%: 54.8 (41)
-- Free throw rate: 27.3 (95)
-- 3-Point FG%: 38.5 (72)
-- 2-Point FG%: 53.1 (49)
-- Free throw %.: 75.5 (19)
-- Block %: 5.7 (28)
Defense
-- Free throw %: 73.5 (312)
Dionte Christmas
-- Percentage of possible minutes played: 25th (90.9)
Mark Tyndale
-- Percentage of possible minutes played: 57th (88.4)
What's it tell you that this Temple team is in the top 100 in Division I in a whole slew of offensive categories, including efficiency, but doesn't have any players ranked exceptionally high in any offensive category?
Villanova
-- Offensive efficiency: 116.7 (12)
-- Defensive efficiency: 98.9 (140)
-- Tempo: 70.1 poss / 40 min (112)
Offense
-- Effective FG%: 53.6 (58)
-- Turnover Pct.: 18.0 (20)
-- Offensive rebounding %: 40.0 (23)
-- Free throw rate: 27.9% (85)
-- 3-point FG%: 39.5 (46)
-- Steal %: 7.0 (11)
Defense
-- Turnover %: 24.8 (58)
-- Offensive rebounding %: 28.0 (24)
-- Block %: 11.5 (70)
-- Steal %: 11.7 (73)
-- Ratio of threes attempted to all FGA: 46.9 % (339)
-- Assist to FGM ratio: 62.3 (304)
Scottie Reynolds
-- Percentage of possible minutes played: 88th (85.8)
Shane Clark
-- Offensive rating: 43rd (129.9)
Casiem Drummond
-- Offensive rebounding %: 3rd (20.7)
-- Defensive rebounding %: 11th (29.1)
Drummond is one of only two players in all of Division in the top 20 in both offensive and defensive rebounds. The other is Kenneth Faried of Morehead State, and what a trivia contest that would have been.
Malcolm Grant
-- Offensive rating: 16th (136.2)
And that's it, finally... almost three hours after I started writing this thing.
So the Christians and the Pagans sat together at the table
Finding faith and common ground the best that they were able
Lighting trees in darkness, learning new ways from the old, and
Making sense of history and drawing warmth out of the cold...
Best wishes to all of you for a safe, happy and above all peaceful holiday.
