FanPost

Plus/Minus Retrospective 2007-2008

Earlier this week, I introduced "Warden's Plus/Minus" to the RockChalkTalk community and THE WORLD.  Going through the numbers for this year's team brought out some interesting thoughts and comments, especially from sherronsthebestevaimhisnumberonefanboi.  Anyway, one of the main problems with the plus/minus was Sherron's number for the Cornell game.  Without Sherron, the Jayhawks have a loss, plain and simple.  So how could he only score slightly higher than Cole Aldrich when he carried the team to victory?  The answer is, I don't know.  There is an admitted "gunner" tax in the plus/minus and this led to a few comments mentioning the system favoring bigs.


Something Joe Posnanski (if you don't know who he is, just quit reading please) always like to say whenever he shares a number/stat he made up is that it has to pass the smell test.  For example, if he comes up with an offensive stat in baseball and Albert Pujols isn't in the top 3 or 4, something's obviously wrong.  Does the Plus/Minus pass that smell test?  At first, I'd have said no because of the Sherron issue.  However, in an effort to evaluate further, I took the season stats from the 2007-2008 National Champion Kansas Jayhawks and applied the Plus/Minus formula to see who it said were the biggest contributors.  Lets see if those numbers back up what we know about that squad.

 

080407-mario_20chalmers-hmed-937p

via nbcsportsmedia.msnbc.com

 

NAME GM FGA FTA PTS TOT AST TO STL BLK PF Plus/Minus Per Game
Team Totals 40 2314 852 3221 1547 721 529 356 235 706 1679 41.98
Mario Chalmers 39 318 130 498 120 169 75 97 23 99 285 7.31
Darnell Jackson 40 273 149 447 267 43 51 31 19 90 244 6.10
Brandon Rush 38 414 86 507 195 81 69 32 32 60 218 5.74
Russell Robinson 40 198 113 291 113 162 83 79 16 75 192 4.80
Darrell Arthur 40 394 114 510 250 33 75 20 53 118 165 4.13
Sherron Collins 34 251 58 315 74 105 68 39 3 54 105 3.09
Cole Aldrich 40 83 38 112 119 5 21 11 34 48 91 2.28
Sasha Kaun 40 176 122 284 154 12 32 17 49 97 89 2.23
Rodrick Stewart 33 71 28 92 74 47 27 13 2 29 73 2.21
Tyrel Reed 23 35 1 47 10 21 4 7 1 8 38 1.65
Conner Teahan 21 27 2 46 9 6 7 2 1 6 22 1.05
Jeremy Case 30 45 2 47 10 28 6 7 0 12 27 0.90
Brennan Bechard 12 9 4 14 3 2 0 0 0 1 5 0.42
Matt Kleinmann 20 7 3 7 13 2 1 0 1 5 7 0.35
Brad Witherspoon 12 4 2 2 3 4 5 0 0 0 -2 -0.17
Chase Buford 13 9 0 2 5 1 2 1 1 4 -5 -0.38

 

*TOT= Rebounds

I love these results.  Super Mario leading the way at 7.31, such a complete player.  Darnell Jackson coming in second at 6.10.  Then, Brandon Rush and Russell Robinson.  Pass the smell test?  Is Cole just really that damn good and we don't realize it because he does so much on the glass and defensive side?