Plus/Minus Stats from Cal State Northridge Game

December 7, 2009 in Uncategorized by Themod | 5 comments

Plus minus copyThanks again to Rich for providing these plus/minus from Sunday night’s 88-76 victory over Cal State Northridge.

And, thanks to reader A-Dub who pointed out an error in my explanation of the stat originally in this post.

Isaiah Thomas: +25

Abdul Gaddy: +20

Matthew Bryan-Amaning: +10

Justin Holiday: +9

Scott Suggs: +9

Quincy Pondexter: +5

Darnell Gant: +3

Tyreese Breshers: +1

Elston Turner: -1

Clarence Trent: -6

Venoy Overton: -15

Thanks for coming!

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  1. A-Dub’s avatar

    A-Dub on December 7, 2009 at 10:51 pm

    Josh,

    First off, I want to say that I love your blog, and I really like that you’re attempting some more in-depth statistical analysis. It looks like the plus/minus is becoming a recurring feature. In the spirit of helping you improve your product, I have a piece of constructive criticism. The claim that a +12 rating for the last game is average is misleading. The true average is “+12 pts per 40 min played.” The “expected” plus/minus for any given player should be the score differential (+12 in this case) times the fraction of the game played by that player.

  2. Magglio’s avatar

    Magglio on December 8, 2009 at 12:58 am

    im confused. can you explain what these stats tell us again?

  3. quack’s avatar

    quack on December 8, 2009 at 3:46 am

    i agree with magglio… is this the amount the huskies were up or down by for the time each player was on the court?

  4. Themod’s avatar

    Themod on December 8, 2009 at 10:26 am

    The numbers do reflect the Huskies’ performance with a player on the court (+25 means the team was 25 points better than CSUN with that player on the court). There’s a reason, though, that pro teams use “adjusted plus/minus,” which tells a more complete story. I’m working on my own understanding of the adjusted stat, and seeing if we can work it into Montlake Madness.

    Sorry I don’t have a better explanation for now… I love the stats — always have — but am far from an expert at this point.

    Thanks,
    Josh

  5. uwhoop’s avatar

    uwhoop on December 8, 2009 at 4:21 pm

    Using the adjusted +/- stat would be a lot more useful. Simply having the raw data is, I think, a bit misleading. For example, if there were one player who played the entire game without being substituted, yet his team lost by 2 points at the end, he would have a -2 rating. However if his teammate played only the last 5 minutes of a game and was present when the team went on a big run to make the game close, he might end up with a +12 or something, even if he finished with 2 points while the player who played the whole game finished with 35.

    However, because college basketball players play so few games compared to NBA players it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to try to calculate adjusted +/- for the sport. Even accurately calculating scores for the NBA takes data from multiple seasons into account.

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