Introduction

To complete this assignment I went and created a function that scrapes Kenpom.com. This website was created by Ken Pomeroy in 2002 and ranks every team in Division 1 Collegiate basketball. The metric that he uses to rank the teams is called Adjusted Efficiency Margin. This metric takes the difference between Adjusted Offensive Efficiency and Adjusted Defensive Efficiency. Those 2 metrics show how many points a team scores and gives up per 100 possessions respectively.

I wanted to scrape this website and use its data because I love college basketball. College basketball is one of the main reasons for why I went to Xavier University and I believe that using this data will help answer some questions that I have about college basketball. I would also like to evaluate the Big East Conference. My school, Xavier, plays in this conference and I want to see how well the other schools have been doing compared to my team this year and in previous years.

Who Are The Best And Worst Teams In College Basketball in 2023?

The first question that I wanted to look into is who are the best overall teams. I believe this is important to look at because conference play is about to start and I want to see which teams have been the best and worst during their non conference schedule.

To do this I created a scatterplot of the relationship between Adjusted Offensive Efficiency and Adjusted Defensive Efficiency and filtered for only the current season. This will allow me to see which teams have great defense and great offense as well as the teams that have poor defense and poor offense.

This scatterplot shows Adjusted Offensive Efficiency on the x axis and Adjusted Defensive Efficiency on the y axis. The teams at the bottom right of the graph score the most points and give up the least points. The teams in the top left are the opposite. We can see that teams like Gonzaga, Baylor, and Houston are some of the best overall teams this year. They have great offenses and great defenses. Teams like Chicago State and Mississippi Valley State are the worst. The have both horrendous defenses and offenses.

Who In The Big East Has Had the Best and Worst Defense This Year?

The reason for why I was curious about this question is because the school that I go to plays in the Big East Conference. Defense is a very important part of basketball and from what I have watched this year Xavier has not been very good defensively. I wanted to see if what I have watched is actually true based on the Kenpom metrics.

To answer this question I filtered for this year and the Big East Conference. I then created a bar graph for Adjusted Defensive Efficiency by team.

Looking at this bar graph it appears that I was right in my assumption. Xavier has not been very good defensively. Xavier is in the bottom half of Adjusted Defensive Efficiency with a score close to 100. That means that Xavier gives up a little under 100 points per 100 possessions. Georgetown has been the worst defensive team in the conference this year giving up well over 100 points per possession. Connecticut has been the best team in the conference this year on defense giving less than 90 points per 100 possessions.

Who In The Big East Has Had the Best and Worst Offense This Year?

Now let’s take a look at offense in the Big East Conference. After looking at defense I now want to know how the conference looks on the other side of the ball. I presume that Xavier has a very good Ajdusted Offensive Efficiency because of what I have seen this year and would like to see how they matchup against the other teams in the conference.

To do this I will make the same bar graph as before but I will use the Adjusted Defensive Efficiency metric.

As we can see from this bar graph my assumption about Xavier was correct. They are one of the top teams offensively and have an Adjusted Offensive Efficiency just a bit below 120. Connecticut, who had the best defense in the conference also has the best offense in the conference. Georgetown, who had the worst defense in the conference also has the worst offense. This means that Connecticut is very good and one of the top teams in the country and that Georgetown is very bad.

Comparing The Power 6 Conferences 2023 Kenpom Rankings

Now let’s take a look at how the Big East Conference compares to the other power 6 conferences. The Power 6 conferences include the ACC, Big 12, Big 10, Big East, PAC 12, and SEC. I want to compare the conferences to the Big East because I want to see how the quality of play differs between the conference my favorite team is in vs the other conferences.

To compare the conferences I will make a boxplot that looks at the median Kenpom ranking. This will allow me to see which conferences have the highest and lowest ranked teams and will give a good idea as to how good a conference is. To do this I will group by conference, filter for only the power 6 conferences, and filter for the 2023 season.

In this boxplot we are looking for the lowest median value because rankings closest to 1 are better.This boxplot shows that the Big East is not the best conferences compared to the other power 6 conferences but it is not the worst. It is in the middle of the pack. The best conference when comparing Kenpom rankings is the Big 10. The worst conference is the ACC.

Question 5

Comparing AdjEM For The Big East In The 2021 and 2022 Seasons

The final thing we will look at is the Adjusted Efficiency Margin for the Big East in the 2021 and 2022 season. I want to see if the Big East improved or declined since 2021. I am excluding 2023 for this analysis because the season has not finished and it would not be accurate to compare 2 full seasons against a half of a season.

To do this analysis I will create a boxplot that filters for the Big East Conference and the 2021 and 2022 seasons. I will also group by year.

Looking at this boxplot we can see that the Big East did improve from 2021 to 2022. The conference had a higher median Adjusted Efficiency Margin in the 2022 season compared to 2021. This does not suprise me because the Big East as a whole in 2022 was very good. The conference had some of the top teams in the nation and the bottom half of the conference was not bad besides a couple teams.