Basketball State

[JEA]

Since it’s getting close to the most wonderful time of the year (tournament time), I thought I’d share a link for a site that some of you might enjoy but not be familiar with – Basketball State. It’s run by Kyle Whelliston, of midmajority.com fame, but it covers all DI schools. Of all the sites that I’ve seen that present statistics related to basketball (kenpom, etc.), I find it’s the easiest to use and it functions as a good starting point (after DBR, of course) for my basketball-related browsing, in that it provides scores, stats, a news feed that is customizable to include only news from your preferred conference(s), etc. There’s also an “NCAA Tournament Wiz” that allows you to ask questions like (off the top of my head) “Show me all the times that Mike Krzyzewski-coached teams played No.1 seeds in the Elite 8.” (Four times, and Duke won them all, in case you wondered.) Anyway, with the tournament coming up, I thought some of you might want to check it out while you’re puzzling over that pesky 7/10 matchup. There is, of course, a catch – it’s a paid site. According to a post over on midmajority, this is the deal: get access until April 2009 (from now until the end of next year's NCAA tourney) for $29.95, or pay $10 just for this month.

I know this probably sounds like an ad, so if the mods think this is inappropriate I fully understand. (And I'm sure others have their preferred sites, which I'd love to know about.) I have no relationship to the site or anything, though I’ve followed Kyle’s work on midmajority for a while now and have found him to be a very thoughtful observer of the game. I think many of you will concur in this judgment, especially if you check out the ratings system he created over on Basketball State – the number one-ranked team will look awfully familiar…

Happy bracketing!

[pfrduke]

I'll echo the above recommendation - in terms of statistics, Basketball State has the dual (and rarely combined) advantages of being most comprehensive and easiest to use.