BitStats

Player Efficiency Ratings in Season 72 of the UAAP

bitstats — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 06:41:31 +0000

PER (Player Efficiency Rating) is one of the most popular and most complicated one-number overall ratings in basketball today. Created and popularized by John Hollinger to be able to sum up all of a player’s contributions in one number, putting into account the number of minutes played by the player and the pace of the game played by the player’s team. What this means basically is that the statistical contributions of player on a team like the UST Tigers can be compared fairly to the output of a player from a team like the Ateneo Blue Eagles. This also makes comparisons of players across leagues and even across eras possible.

I can’t be absolutely sure that this hasn’t been done before, but to my knowledge it hasn’t been done and made public. So here, my friends, are the players with the ten highest PER (and with at least 210 MP) in Season 72 of the UAAP Men’s Basketball tourney.

Eric Salamat, Ateneo – 21.64
Aldretch Ramos, FEU – 20.7
Rabeh Al-Hussaini, Ateneo – 20.62
Nico Salva, Ateneo – 20.5
Pipo Noundou, FEU – 20.23
Elmer Espiritu, UE – 19.67
Dylan Ababou, UST – 18.92
Woody Co, UP – 18.68
Pari Llagas, UE – 18.05
Alvin Padilla, UP – 17.52

A few things on these ratings:

The MVP race this year (based on the UAAP’s overly-simplistic Statistical Points formula) was primarily a three-man race among Ababou, Al-Hussaini, and Ramos. Ironically, while they are all in the top ten, Ateneo’s backcourt sparkplug, Eric Salamat lead the league in PER, and by a considerable margin at that. Ababou, the eventual winner of the MVP award, on the other hand, disappointingly (for some) lands at #7.
This first bench player to enter the list is Ateneo’s Nico Salva. This just goes to show that his relatively silent contributions really added up, and also proves that Ateneo’s depth is even better than had thought.
The top two teams, Ateneo and FEU, took all five top spots in the list. While FEU is still a very good and very deep team, you can make a very solid point that Pipo’s loss towards the end of the season was a big one for the Tamaraws.
The UE Red Warriors’ frontcourt duo, Espiritu and Llagas, both make an appearance, further enhancing the idea that they are the heart and soul of the team this year after the Warriors had previously been mostly driven by their backcourt.
Another surprise is the appearance of two UP Maroons. Finishing at 7th in the league after the elimination round, finding that two of their players, Co and Padilla, are in the top ten of player efficiency is a pleasant surprise for State U.

A quick note on PER: As Hollinger himself admits, PER doesn’t necessarily conclusively indicate that one player is better than another. Defensive stats are somewhat undervalued by PER. Moreover, contributions on defense that don’t come up in the box scores are obviously excluded, and therefore underrating defenders such as Kirk Long.

Advanced stats really are

bitstats — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 05:37:56 +0000

Just a short note before we get to the content proper.

I’m still quite green when it comes to the art of APBRmetrics (aside: if only basketball’s version of sabermetrics had a more easily pronounced name). I don’t claim to be an expert, so I will appreciate any kind of input in the comments.

Also, official stats are bit hard to come by for most of the local leagues. For the meantime I’ll be limiting our statistical discussions to the league that I’m currently following, UAAP Men’s Basketball. I hope to someday get into the stats of the NCAA, the PBA, and perhaps even the UAAP Women’s and Juniors’ leagues. Unfortunately, I have to resort to online sources that don’t exactly provide an easily-processed form of data for the number crunching we’d like to be doing.

If anyone knows where I can get complete copies (for non-commercial use, take note!) of tournament statistics, I just might throw a party. (Probably not, but there’s no harm in trying me.)

So what’s this all about?

bitstats — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 13:44:43 +0000

Hello, all. Welcome to my little space on the Interwebs.

So what can you expect from this little space?

Here’s a little taste based on the elimination round of Season 72 of the UAAP Men’s Basketball tourney :

The UST Growling Tigers’ Tata Bautista has the highest three-point field goal rate in the league among players with at least 42 field goal attempts. An astounding 83.5% of his shots came from three-point range.
Among players with at least 28 assists, UE’s Lingganay has the best A/T ratio at 2.23 assists per turnover.
Ryan Buenafe of the Ateneo Blue Eagles takes the most free throws per field goal attempt, getting to the line 0.79 times for every shot he takes. Joshua Webb from DLSU is a distant second at 0.56 FTA/FGA.
And finally, UST’s Dylan Ababou may have bagged the season’s MVP award for the elimination round, but he only has the seventh highest PER among players who had at least 210 minutes of playing time.

Anyone interested for more?