By William Ezekowitz March is complicated. What follows is an attempt to make sense of the madness, and to give you solid statistical grounding in order to justify your decisions; that way, when your bracket is ruined, it can be...
Author - harvardsports
By Henry Johnson March Madness is here, and with it are high hopes and lost revenue. Last night, the selection committee released the bracket for the 2017 tournament, and the ensuing uproar was enough to drown out even the...
By Craig Mascarenhas Debating the Greatest of All Time (GOAT) for a particular sport is one of sport’s most common and probably endless pastimes, and one that by definition is subjective. Opining on the issue is likely to lose...
This past weekend, the sports industry converged on Boston’s Hynes Convention Center for the 11th annual Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. A few of our members attended and decided to share their thoughts on the...
By Andrew Puopolo and Benedict Brady In sports bars around the country, people are constantly arguing the merits of their respective sports teams. Fans of the New York Yankees and Boston Celtics will often cite their superiority...
By Henry Johnson Earlier this week, we used data from Basketball-Reference to examine the NBA’s trend toward older coaches. Now, let’s look at whether coaches of different ages see different outcomes. To do this, we can...
By Henry Johnson What’s remarkable about Phoenix Suns coach Earl Watson isn’t simply how young he is. Yes, Watson was hired last February at the tender age of 36, and yes, he played in the league as recently as 2014. But...
By Andrew Puopolo You often hear television commentators compare teams to their bitter rivals to illustrate its current status. Over time, the nature of rivalries changes due to each team’s movement between divisions. Some...
By Anirudh Suresh There’s nearly nothing America loves more than its annual 5-month dosage of football, topped off by the most-watched television event of the year: the Super Bowl. The Super Bowl offers a unique flavor to...
By Kurt Bullard Transition buckets are a huge element of success in college hoops. About a quarter of shot opportunities from 2014-2016 in college basketball came on the break, with eFG% in those opportunities rising from 50.2...