This is a basketball blog.
But this is also a statistics blog. And the statistics say that 8 out of my last 11 eleven posts have been out about football. There are three reasons I can identify for this:
- I generally blog about what interests me (within the general realm of college athletics) and, at the moment, the MSU football team interests me.
- I still haven’t found a great internet forum for serious discussion of Spartan football that doesn’t involve wading through piles of non-useful information (although G0EL is on its way toward that goal).
- There just isn’t a lot to talk about regarding Michigan State basketball at the moment.
While taking more time to analyze the football team’s performance has been a fun diversion, it’s just not my bag. I don’t see the game with the same passion or clarity that I do for basketball.
I’m looking forward, therefore, to getting back into the rhythm of the basketball season, when the content here can be driven primarily by what happens on the basketball court. The plan for the month and a half remaining before the regular season begins is:
- Continue to talk some football, but scale those efforts back as the start of the basketball season approaches.
- Once practice starts on the 17th, talk about whatever developments arise.
- Do some sort of stats-based preview of the rest of the Big Ten. The Big Ten Geeks have already done pretty thorough TFS-based previews of each team, so my goal is to something a little out of the box–maybe a smaller-scale historical look at each team’s statistical tendencies over the last 5-10 years. (On a related note, I’m expecting that the emergence of the Geeks will mean (1) less need to do conference-wide analysis here and (2) more statistical context in which to analyze MSU’s performance. Speaking of which, they have a good post up on pace in the Big Ten relative to other conferences.)
I’m, as always, happy to take under advisement any suggestions you, the readers, might have about topics of discussion you think would be worthwhile. Having started this blog after the regular season had already begun last season, this is still my first time blogging through a basketball preseason.
Finally, I want to again thank all of you who have made this endeavor more worthwhile by taking the time to contribute your own thoughts and opinions. In particular, here is the list of Spartans that have left at least 10 comments during the 10 months this blog has existed:
- Spartalytical (113)
- DP99/DMP (69)
- witless chum (59)
- Hubert (50)
- Dan (49)
- TMadison25 (46)
- spartanproducer (34)
- Ben (30)
- GBBound (20)
- wifeofaspartan (18)
- Dave (17)
- Kurt (17)
- Dr Huxtable (17)
- MooTheKow (15)
- SpartanDan (12)
- matt (11)
- Nick (10)
These 17 individuals are hereby designated The Friends of the Spartans Weblog. (That’s all the reward our budget allows for, I’m afraid.)