Statistics

Some Stats to think on

By jhs9412 on February 8, 2013, 12:32 PM | 8 comments

Ok, I'm sitting in class right now, wondering about our basketball team. I'll admit to not knowing a ton about basketball, but there are some statistics out there that are pretty telling about our basketball team. We all have certain notions about how our team plays, and I was surprised by some stats, and not so surprised by others. The stats come from sites that I cite, so they are correct, but my own math is coming from what I know of statistics....a course I didn't understand much in, so bear with me there.

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Three-Point Analysis

By joe

staff

on January 28, 2013, 3:34 PM | 14 comments

Here's something I don't do too often around here: basketball statistics. After the Clemson game I followed up on a hunch that I've had since the middle of the season, teams shot much better than their season average against us from downtown.

3FGVT% - 3FGS% is the money column. It's the difference between a team's three-point percentage against Virginia Tech and its season average. A positive number indicates a team shot better from behind the arc against Tech than they did over the course of the season (through 1/27).

2012 Game Splits

By joelestra on January 8, 2013, 1:44 PM | 10 comments

Brian Fremeau, publisher of the FEI Ratings in college football and writer for Football Outsiders, has posted "game splits" for every game this season athttp://www.bcftoys.com/results/. What are game splits you ask? In short it's a statistical way to break up the total score difference in a game into contributions from the offense, defense, and special teams (in short...let's not get into the statistical details).

Records/Milestones up for grabs in Bowls and significance of them

By HokieJoe3 on December 27, 2012, 12:42 PM | 3 comments

Just thought it was interesting thinking of a few records up for grabs.

Marcus Davis is 72 yards away from Andre Davis's single season record and is 109 yards away from being VT's first thousand yard WR in a year.

Despite LT's very disappointing year he's 217 yards away from the 3rd 3,000 passing yard year in VT history and 230 yards away from matching his total last year. LT will easily move to 3rd in all time career passing list with a 107 passing effort. If LT gets a total of at least 172 yards he breaks his own record for total offense in a season. LT has already account for the most total plays in a season.

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Consistency of Performance

By joelestra on November 16, 2012, 12:29 PM | 3 comments

Football Outsiders just had a post on covariance, which I'll describe in a moment. You can read the full article at http://www.footballoutsiders.com/varsity-numbers/2012/vn-your-best-against-best but I want to highlight what it says about VT thus far this season here rather than rehash their entire article.

Here Comes the Screen (Analysis)

By kburkeVT

staff

on October 29, 2012, 9:37 PM | 9 comments

It's the most feared word in the Virginia Tech offensive playbook: SCREEN! As tensions mount from O'Cainspring's tactics and the team's struggles, I took it upon myself to do research screen plays and their success rates.

So with Hurricane Sandy hammering the East Coast, I decided to increase the bleakness and watch the game film provided on the site and account for every screen run this year and analyze the stats by player, quarter, down, distance, formation, and yards gained. Then everything was analyzed again for only ACC games.

The entire chart is available below to peruse, but I came up with 39 deliberate screen plays. These are defined as a play where either a running back or wide receiver have blockers set up and is the primary target of the pass. Dump-offs and outlet passes that are thrown behind the line of scrimmage do not count.

Statistics on Predictability, Part 2

By joelestra on October 29, 2012, 2:00 PM | 14 comments

As a follow-up to last week's post on predictability of our offense, a couple of commenters mentioned that a better comparison might be to the best teams in the country rather than all teams (since we aspire to be one of the best and most years are). In this post we'll compare the behavior seen by VT with that of the top twenty offenses in the country as ranked at http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/ncaaoff.

Statistics on Offensive Predictability

By joelestra on October 25, 2012, 4:08 PM | 20 comments

Editor's Note: Bumped to the front because this is really, really well done. --Joe

Based on data available from cfbstats.com, I took a statistical look at how predictable VT’s offensive play calling has been thus far this season (note that I believe the last game is missing). The site provides basic information on every play in every game, but does not give information on specifics like formation, whether a pass was completed or not, etc. So this analysis (based on logistic regression if you’re a geek) simply looks at the most basic aspect of predictability – whether or not we rush or pass.

Hokies to Narrow Down Carries, Who's Out?

By joe

staff

on October 22, 2012, 2:45 PM | 28 comments

Virginia Tech ranks 72nd nationally with 157 yards per game. The Hokies have lacked a reliable and consistent rush attack all season. Beamer Co.'s newest solution, distribute the carries among less players.

"I think four backs is too many," Beamer said Monday during his weekly teleconference.

Virginia Tech (4-4, 2-2 Atlantic Coast Conference) ranks fifth in the 12-team conference in rushing yards per game at 157. It's per carry average of 4.3 yards is also fifth in the league.

"I still think consistency in running the football, I think that's our No. 1 priority right now," Beamer said. "If we could get that squared away, I think that would affect other things. We have our moments at times but I think to consistently be able to do that is a key objective for us."

And to get better execution, Beamer said the coaching staff is discussing cutting down the number of tailbacks they're preparing each week. Redshirt freshman Michael Holmes, true freshman J.C. Coleman, junior Tony Gregory and senior Martin Scales had been splitting reps in practice and carries in games. Beamer didn't offer any specifics yet on how the rotation would change.

Ill Prepared: 1st Quarter Woes

By ltrepeter2000 on October 1, 2012, 2:03 PM | 3 comments

I have had a hard time in trying to pinpoint "that one thing" that is wrong so far in the season. It was eating at me enough that I did a little stathead-ing trying to figure out where the issues are for the offense. Here is a look at what I found. The Hokies are only scoring on 15% of their first quarter drives. They are only scoring on 30% of the total drives overall. We have 10 punts vs 3 touchdowns in the first quarter. I think this speaks to the coaching staff being unable to get the team ready to play. Its part conservative play calling, part players seeming to be in a daze. Its a lackadaisical malaise that doesnt seem to wear off until mid second quarter.�
Statistics up to Game 5

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