Where's the Rest of Me?

I've avoided mentioning this, because it's my brother's thing and all, and he appears to have reached a plateau, and i didn't want to horn in on his thunder (how's that for a mixed metaphor?), but i've been losing weight.  Down 20-25 pounds to the mid-170s.  Can't remember the last time i've been this slim (if you can rightly call it that).

Started with a few bouts of abdominal pain, most likely related to the gall bladder.  I think i must have reached my lifetime limit of cheeseburgers and french fries (now known as "the most evil food in the world").  You must only get so many, so make them good.  No cheap cheeseburgers - that's my sage advice.

Even though i had checked out pretty well in last year's physical, i decided it was time to act.  Not any special diet, and so far, absolutely no exercise.  Just a few simple things...

§            Eat breakfast.  Usually either a cup of oatmeal, or a grown-up cereal topped with banana

§            Don't eat anything past 7pm... 8pm at the very latest

§            Portion control!  It's not so much WHAT you eat, but that you don't eat too much of it.

§            Lots of water.  No more sweet tea.

§           Absolutely no french fries!

The Happiest (and sometimes most stressful) Place on Earth

For the kids' Spring Break, we went to Orlando for the whole Disneyworld experience.  Caroline has been to the Magic Kingdom a time or two, and Julie & i went as kids, but this was our first time as a family, and the first time for the little ones.  6 & 8 are good ages for it, i think.

Lodging: i found a great place, and a great value, called Regal Palms Resort, located about 15 minutes west of Disney, away from the bustle of Orlando, but you can never get away from the traffic.  We rented one of their 5-bedroom houses, complete with a backyard pool.  It was so nice to spread out, and give everyone (well, everyone except David) their own rooms, rather than being cramped into hotel rooms.  I would recommend this place for anyone, though it's probably better to get one of the houses, and avoid the high-traffic, likely worn-out townhomes.  The kids had a blast at the huge clubhouse pool, complete with lazy river and a very cool waterslide.  We couldn't have been more pleased with how this choice turned out.

Parks: we did all 4 Disney parks - Magic Kingdom, Disney/MGM Studios, Animal Kingdom, and EPCOT.  My least favorite was Magic Kingdom; my favorite was probably MGM Studios.  Our favorite ride - and this was a unanimous vote - was the Tower of Terror at the Studios.  Plus, we got to see a theme-park-version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, and the day-end Fantasmic show was wonderful.  The best live show we saw was the Lion King show at Animal Kingdom.  The best of the 3-D shows was Philharmagic at MK.

Other: we checked out the Holy Land Experience, which i found pretty interesting, though a little expensive.  And we saw the La Nouba show by Cirque du Soleil.  It was also very expensive, but worth it.  If you've never seen a CdS show, you owe it to yourself to catch one.

But the part that made it quite special was that my parents got to join us.  It was nice to have them there to enjoy the week with their far-away grandkids.  They treated us to a wonderful character breakfast, the Supercalifragilistic Breakfast at the Grand Floridian hotel.  We got to meet Winnie the Pooh, Tigger, Alice in Wonderland and the Mad Hatter, and Mary Poppins.

All in all, it was quite a full, and quite a special, week.

A Too Late (and wrong) Final Four

I was on vacation all last week, so i didn't get to enter any bracket contest, but my Final Four choices would have been Duke, UConn, UCLA, and Boston College. 

David at 7 months

Here's our little guy. He's just started crawling, and you can see in these photos how he wouldn't sit up or still for the photographer. Too many places to go, too many things to do.

Methodology of ACC Statistical Analysis

This is how i approach my statistical evaluation of basketball players.  For the ACC analysis, i enter in the player stats, for all games through the end of the regular season, for everyone playing at least 15 minutes a game.  The stats considered are: FG%, Free Throws Made, 3 pointers Made, Rebounds, Assists, Steals, Blocks, and Points Scored (i also sometimes throw in Points/FGA).  The list is then culled down to the top 72 players (an average of 6/team) based on those stats. 

I calculate the average and standard deviation of this group in each category, and then compare each players stats to these metrics.  This gives you a "z-score" (remember stats class?) for each player for each category.  Those z-scores are summed (i use small tweaks to the category weightings, so it's not a straight sum), and then translated into my 100 point scale.  That scale is designed to accumulate enough points for the entire group, such that they total an average of 100 points per team.  Since the ACC is now up to 12 teams, that is 1200 points.

Let's take a look at Shelden's year, for an example.  He averaged 10.4 rebounds/game, compared to an average of 4.4 reb/game for the top 72 players.  The standard deviation for this group in rebounds was 2.1 reb/game.  Take Shelden's 10.4, subtract the mean of 4.4, for a difference of 6.  Then divide that 6 by the 2.1, for a z-score of 2.9 for rebounds for Shelden.  Do the same of the other 7 stats to get a total z-score.  The translation formula will remain proprietary.

ACC 2006: a statistical review of players

Every season, i do a statistical analysis of the top ACC players in men's hoops.  The method is described below (or in a later post), for those so interested.  But here are some results and observations...

§         The #1 player in 2006 was not JJ Redick, but his teammate Shelden Williams.  Now, right off the bat, this may cause you to pooh-pooh everything about this approach.  I can understand that; it actually troubles me, too.  Redick has done some things this season that are just phenomenal, and perhaps the model can't capture that adequately.  I know the model is agnostic about things like career record-setting and reaching milestones and "first-time-since-David-Thompson" scenarios.  Those things are rightly considered when voting for All-ACC and POY.  But this approach tries to measure impact to the team winning games in this one season, and it was pretty clear from my results that Shelden is tops.  He was the #3 scorer, the #1 rebounder and shot-blocker (quite easily), #2 in FG%, #3 in FT attempts (an extremely important metric), and #4 in steals.  Just a dominant, dominant season on both ends of the floor.

 

§         The final outcome of this analysis is a single-score metric for each player, using a scale of 0-100.  The best season i've logged, going back to the late 1980s, is Tim Duncan's senior year in 1997, where he scored a 96 on my scale.  In 2006, Shelden scored a 81, good for the 8th best season over the past two decades, and the best posted by a Duke player since Laettner's final year in 1992.

 

§         Redick finished with a 68, a clear second place in the ACC (Tyler Hansbrough of UNC was 3rd with a 49, to give you some sense of the scale).  His scoring output was more than 4 standard deviations above the average of the top 72 players in the league.  That is simply amazing.  The league leader is usually 2.5-3.2 stddevs above the mean.  I've never seen anything close to Redick's 4.3 mark this year, and while the model accounts for that, maybe it doesn't do it well enough.

 

§         I agreed with the media's first team All-ACC of the big 3, plus Craig Smith and Sean Singletary.  For 2nd team, I would have had Cedric Simmons (NC State) and Jamon Gordon (Va Tech) in place of Justin Gray and Guillermo Diaz.  For 3rd team, i like Alex Johnson (FSU) and Zabian Dowdell (Va Tech) over Bennerman, Canar-Medley and the inexplicable JR Reynolds.  The writers lazily focus too much on scoring output, to the detriment of other things that lead to winning basketball.

NCAA Tournament

About to go on a run of basketball related posts, starting with a pre-look at the NCAA Tournament.  I am a big proponent of the Sagarin ratings, and use them here to plot projected brackets.  The #1 seeds are: UConn, Duke, Villanova, and Texas.

Top 4 seeds by region:
1. UConn
2. Carolina
3. Florida
4. Gonzaga

1. Duke
2. Ohio St.
3. LSU
4. Pittsburgh

1. Villanova
2. Illinois
3. Tennessee
4. George Washington

1. Texas
2. Memphis
3. Kansas
4. Washington

Duke's "draw" is of most interest to me.  Remembering that this is purely fictional, Duke would have Delaware St. in the first round again, just like 2005.  In the 2nd round, we'd get the winner of Oklahoma and Wichita St (what a match-up that 8/9 game would be, given the geography).  In the Regionals, you're looking at Pitt or Iowa.  Then, facing the survivor of Ohio St, LSU, West Virginia and FSU to go to the Final Four.

Last 4 at-large teams in: Texas A&M, Syracuse, Arizona, and Colorado
Last 4 teams out: Notre Dame, Louisville, Creighton, and Alabama.
Teams Out that are probably in: UAB, Seton Hall