APBRmetrics

[timmys24]

I've been a member here for a little while and the information and discussion is fantastic.

I'm a high school assistant coach and have used some metrics to help analyze our team over the past several years. I'm curious to find the board's thoughts as to whether this is a useful exercise and any ideas anyone has on applying metrics to high school.

The 2 methods I've focused on are plus/minus (both aggregate and per 30 min), and a version of PER. I have found that these measures help show both team and individual strengths and weaknesses that I've been able to convey to the rest of our coaching staff. Additionally, our head coach has used some numbers to illustrate points to our players, turnover rate probably being the most heavily used.

We are in Ohio, and high school as I mentioned, which present the following challenges when using statistics:

We are limited to a 20-game regular season. The playoffs can potentially add 6 or 7 more games. However, when you're getting towards the end of the playoffs, wholesale self-analysis gets less time. I have found that trends have generally manifested themselves about 7-8 games into the season, and they've usually stayed steady through the end of the year.

A high school game is 32 minutes with no shot clock. This certainly limits possessions. Our teams have averaged 60-68 possessions a game over the last 5 years or so.

At most, we have our players on the varsity level 4 years, and usually 2 years. This makes any year over year statistics difficult, other than for just pure comparison.

Other issues center around the quality of play at the high school level. Specifically, turnovers are higher, and shooting, especially free throws, is generally worse when compared to higher levels of play.

Also, total data that I have is still limited. I have 6 full seasons for our team, but for 3 of those I had to estimate minutes because we did not have someone keeping track. I also have 3 full seasons from opponents that we played in the state tournament who fortunately posted all of their numbers on-line. So, currently, I'm working with 9 seasons of data, which works out to roughly 130 unique player seasons.

To provide perspective on our level of play, where I am would be considered an upper echelon high school program. We generally have a team that has several college players, where usually 1-3 are Division 1 prospects. Also, we are generally flirting with the top 25 rankings nationally.

In summary, if anyone has any specific or general thoughts or ideas on the usefulness of metrics at the high school level, I'd love to hear them. Also, I know there may be some other high school coaches on here, maybe we can trade notes and methods.

Thanks for the feedback!

[Neil Paine]

I would keep the +/- and also use Dean Oliver's stats he describes in Basketball on Paper -- they don't need the league totals, and you can look at the usage patterns of your team, and maybe see which allocations work best for your offense.
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[timmys24]

[Dick Mays]

Do you know the average number of points per possession in your league? There is a posting on the Magic Metric, which is a player rating system based on a desired 1 point per possession. I ran a coaching system using this metric for a number of years and would be happy to share it with you.

[timmys24]

[tawtaw]

A very successful local coach(900+ wins in NAIA) uses a system that is a ratio of good plays to bad plays. I think that might be helpful in determining "glue guys" along with the +/- figures.

If I were coaching, I'd be looking at something that measures how efficiently a player uses his offensive possessions- something along the lines of Offensive Rating.