1) The document discusses how advanced statistics have become an integral part of evaluating sports performance and are used to gain new insights beyond traditional statistics like points and rebounds. 2) The author conducted a study analyzing the 2011-2012 season of the Creekview high school boys' basketball team using advanced statistics calculated from traditional stats. 3) Some challenges included collecting traditional stats from the coach and deciding which advanced stats to calculate from the many available online resources, but the author found the process fascinating overall.

1. Keith Woods
4/5/2012
Senior Project
Evaluating Creekview Basketball Through Advanced Statistics
Sports... At first glance sports are inconsequential, a seemingly unimportant way to pass the
time. Surely you have heard sometime in your life the phrase "Its just a game." However, this
statement could not be further from the truth. if sports were just a game why have sports such as
basketball continued to thrive during the recession? Why do people spend hard earned money to
support their favorite teams? Why is it that young children across the country stay up late at
night fantasizing about growing up and playing in one of the major sports leagues? Wake up
early to work out, push themselves until their bodies scream out in pain? Sports elicit the
greatest of passion because they are the greatest of equalizers. It does not matter where you are
from or who you know, if you can play the game, you are sure to find some level of acceptance.
In my opinion, the purest form of sports exists on the local playground courts or under the Friday
night-lights of the local high school football team where they play for the love of the game. But
even thoughtthatmight be the purest form of sports, there is no doubt that the highest level of
sports exists at the major league level. The popularity of these major leagues have cause them to
become some of the most lucrative businesses in the United States. Anything that has so much
money invested in it is eventually going to evolve. Sports have started to become evaluated in

2. ways that no one even considered as little as 15 years ago. Moneyball, a movie that you might be
familiar with, detailed the beginning of advanced statistics actually shaping the way a Major
League Baseball team was put together. But baseball is not the only sport to be affected by te
advanced statistical revolution.
Advanced statistics have become an integral part of sports, manifesting itself as n
underground subculture filled with sports nerds. A conference has arisen solely dedicated to the
discussion and exploration of new advanced statistics. It's called the Innovation in Sports
Conference and perfectly meshes the worlds of mathematics and sports. Being an individual who
enjoys the intellectual side of sports, this new type of analysis immediately my eye. These
advanced formulas no longer just reveal the general statistics someone was accruing, statistics
that have been around since the dawn of basketball, such as points per game. These statistics are
somewhat considered to be the "end all, be all" of basketball statistics. Many people only
consider these statistics when considering how good of a player someone seems to be. However,
one must consider many different factors when considering the true skill of a player. The point of
advanced statistics is to truly measure the value of a player, no matter how much he is on the
court during a basketball game. Due to my high level of interest in these innovative statistics, I
decided to use these advanced statistics in order to examine the season of our own
CreekviewBoy's Basketball team for the 2011-2012 season.
Upon the outset of this task, I knew that I would encounter a number of difficulties but I
had no ideas just how many. The first thing that I had to do was to actually collect traditional
statistics that were accrued by the players during the season. To begin, the advanced statistics
used in my presentation were calculated using certain formulas that use the more common
statistics mentioned earlier such as points per game. Advanced Statistics are the result of

3. formulas repackaging traditional statistics that have been measured for years in such a way that
they reveal something new about the game of basketball. After collecting the statistics for the
players, I placed them in these formulas after I collected the statistics from the Creekview
Basketball Coach Randy Clemons. This is the spread sheet of all the different statistics
accumulated by the players during the season. All of these different statistics give us a
somewhat limited view of a player’s effect on the game. Here are the three main stats, as I
mentioned earlier, points per game, assists per game, and rebounds per game. The amount of
emphasis placed on these statistics actually provided impetus for the so called “statistical
revolution.” many players do not play enough minutes during the game in order to affect these
statistics greatly, so innovators were looking for a way to properly measure the affect a player
has when they check into the game. They were trying to quantify how much any one player
could affect the game through a set numerical value. Players have now started to be evaluated
lesss on per game statistcs and more on a per minute basis.
These per minute statistics seek to even the playing field for those individuals that do not
receive as much playing time as others. After collecting all the statistics gather during the season,
I had to decide was statistics I was going to calculate for the Creekview Basketball team. This is
where I encountered the bulk of problems I experienced during my project. I decided to
basically follow the advanced statistics that are being used to evaluate NBA players. If these
statistics were good enough for the NBA, then they were good enough for me. Here is a screen
shot of the website that I used to consider which statistics I was going to calculate. They even
provide the formula that is used to calculate each advanced metric.
Throughout this process I barely felt that I was working at all. The discovery of new
ways to interpret basketball fascinated me and I enjoyed every second of it. The only proves that

4. I did not enjoy was the mind numbing number crunching that had to take plave in order to
calculate the same statistics over and over again. But evaluating each player on Creekview’s
team gave me new insight into how the season went. I encourage you to go out and observe this
statistical revolution for yourself. Statistics are being used to analyze subjects that no one would
ever believe could be quantified by numbers. Who knows, maybe your favorite hobby could
become a part of the revolution. Thank you for taking time to listen to my presentation, any
questions?