By David Roher Pitchers and catchers! I don’t need much of an excuse to start talking about baseball, but I probably need one to assume that people might listen. So I’m taking the opportunity presented on Wednesday by...
Author - harvardsports
By John Ezekowitz Last week, I took a look at the Efficiency Margins for Ivy League conference play so far this season. Since then, a momentous upset by the previously-lowly Penn Quakers over Cornell upset the Ivy order. After...
By Ben Blatt See the updated math below the original post. There’s no shortage of ways to describe Michael Jordan’s greatness. But here’s a particularly astonishing one: MJ was never part of a three-game losing streak from...
By John Ezekowitz and Andrew Cohen Last week, we analyzed the effect of tempo on NCAA Tournament upsets and found that contrary to Dean Oliver’s theory, a faster tempo (more possessions) was predictive of underdog success...
By Neil Curran Spud Webb over Dominique Wilkins. Jordan from the free throw line. Dwight Howard as Superman. The NBA Slam Dunk Contest is a place where legends are both made and made greater. It’s the appeal of the act itself:...
Is there evidence that losing the Super Bowl can be devastating for a franchise?
By John Ezekowitz and Andrew Cohen The allure of March Madness is due in no small part to the complementary joys of filling out a bracket and first and second round upsets. America loves an underdog, and the first four days of...
By John Ezekowitz One very effective statistical measure to analyze college basketball is Efficiency Margin. The concept behind EM, like a lot of the best stats, is sublimely simple: track how many points per possession teams...
By Jonathan Adler Earlier this season, I examined whether the NFL wedge blocking ban had meaningfully affected kickoff returns through the first eight games. (View November’s post) Back then, at the season’s midway point...
By John Ezekowitz While other sports such as baseball and basketball have had statistical revolutions over the past decade or so, golf has been stuck in the stats dark ages. Watch a PGA Tour broadcast and you will see the same...