Quote: Originally Posted By zhawks on 10/26/2009Oldave, I almost always start 1 Freshman or have one play very significant minutes at Illinois. I don't know if getting rid of all the Freshmen really helps that much
i know, thats true, heck, i am starting one now (but that is odd for me), but im looking at it this way...we know there are data points among these 864 players that we would like to get rid of because they actually represent players who play very little if at all. i know that not all of these players are freshmen (and i concede that many frosh play significant minutes or start).
so, lets start with an assumption. lets say that 3.5 players per team do not play a significant role or are inferior players pressed into duty due to a lack of other options. i might choose to say there are 3 such players per team, or 4, but we'll say 3.5 for now. remember, this includes the slow, unathletic, mediocre ballhandling soph who you plug in at backup SG for 10-12 minutes per game and hope does not kill you. maybe there are not so many of these type on top5 teams, but when we are talking about the bottom half of the big6 conf, i suggest there are more than a few of these.
im going to so that, on average, 2.5 out of those 3.5 players (maybe more?) are freshmen. so, i am saying that only one or so of these fringe players is a nonfreshman.
If you can buy those assumptions (and probly a few of you cannot) then what I am asking is to eliminate 180 of these bad data points (72 teams * 2.5 players per team).
I would be conceding that we are leaving 72 "bad data points" in the study. While i would like to eliminate all the bad data points, this is the best way i can think of to eliminate the vast majority of them.
Why do I think these data points are "bad"? because the question i would like to answer is "what are the ratings averages for all the significant players (starters and key bench players) on all big six teams?" and i feel like eliminating the freshmen gives us a better chance at a meaningful answer.
does that make any sense?