A Big East overview comes in as the 40th article in Basketball Prospectus’ short history. It’s the site’s inaugural season, but there are the seeds of something new and exciting here.

The overview raises the same questions borne from Beast expansion — what are the implications of a 16-team conference? Why doesn’t everybody play each other each year? Well at least the answers to the second question are changing in 2009 (18 games, one full round robin plus three “rivalry” games) … There’s the usual predictions with nothing too surprising to say, and the projected standings present the usual sense of probable outcomes more than prognostic ones. … Gasaway correctly notes that offense separated the wheat from the chaff last year, with Georgetown being one of the more impressive offenses to come along in some time. It’s still early for analysis, but I’m strongly anticipate Ken Pomeroy’s Beast preview, which should look like this one on the Big 12 last year.

The authors at Basketball Prospectus should not be new to anyone–John Gasaway (Big Ten Wonk) and Ken Pomeroy (kenpom.com) continue what they started as “part-time” hobbies (good idea!) at this Baseball Prospectus spinoff. I’m a long-time junkie of the original BP. The baseball formula worked very well, and there’s little reason not to expect the same for other sports. Donald might not agree, but I see a lot of potential for basketball research. There’s a huge gulf between what announcers say and what really matters. If baseball provides any indication, this gulf will persist for quite a long time, if not forever. Analysis will inevitably invade the mainstream — I’ll put the over/under on Jim Nance dropping “tempo-based ratings” in context at 5 years.

Categories: BlogWatch, Dan'l B