Some Relevant PL Rebounding Stats (for a change): Flawed or irrelevant stats are used constantly, especially when it comes to rebounding. One egregious misuse was recently committed by Kyle Whelliston (or whatever imposter is now using his name), when he illogically used a rebounding stat that was not adjusted for pace of play, and which also was not adjusted for quality of the opponents, as somehow relevant to Bucknell's rebounding. The stat used - average rebounds per game - is completely irrelevant until put in the context of who a team has played and how many rebounds are available.

Along the same lines, Lehigh fans recently were singing the praises of the MountainHawks' rebounding because they were tops in the Patriot League in rebounding margin. While the rebounding margin stat, in the proper context, is not quite as bad as simply looking a a team's average rebounds per game, it is still a deeply flawed number. First, it does not look at the quality of the opposition. Other than Holy Cross and Bucknell, the rest of the league schedules have ranged from mediocre to unbelievably bad. Secondly, rebounding margin does not measure how many of a teams' opportunities for rebounds were at the defensive end and how many were offensive. Since the average team collects about 70% of available rebounds when on defense and only about 30% at the offensive end, its rebounding margin is clearly dependent on how many rebounds are available at each end. If you hold down an opponent's shooting percentage, for example, you will get more defensive rebound opportunities and help your rebounding margin. If you shoot well yourself, you will get less offensive rebound chances, which will in turn improve your rebounding margin some more. Similarly, a team that gets a lot of steals or creates a lot of turnovers will have fewer chances to garner defensive rebounds and will reduce its rebounding margin, all else being equal.

In Lehigh's case, the spurious stat cited to justify their rebounding prowess - that Lehigh led the PL in rebounding margin - was largely due to scheduling games with D3 lightweights Haverford and Swarthmore. In those two games, LU outrebounded the big men of those two schools by a collective total of 96-47. If you merely remove these two D3 games from the LU stats, you'd find that Lehigh's rebounding margin falls from 1st place in the league to 5th!

So what to do to get around all of these problems? The answer is twofold. First, use only league games once teams have played a few league games. This puts the stats on a more "apples to apples" basis, even before teams have played every league opponent. Secondly, and most importantly, look at the percentage of offensive rebounds garnered by teams and also at the percentage of defensive rebounds that they collect. These stats eliminate the various biases that exist otherwise, and can be used to judge which teams are the better ones on the offensive boards, which teams are better on the defensive boards, and which teams are best in total.

Here are the PL stats through six games for defensive rebounding percentage, offensive rebounding percentage, and then the total (simply derived from adding the first two percentages). {Note that there are several methods that could be used for the total category.}

Defensive Rebounds as a Percentage of Opportunities:

1. Holy Cross 81.6%
2. American 74.5%
3. Bucknell 73.3%
4. Lehigh 72.1%
5. Colgate 68.5%
6. Navy 63.8%
7. Army 62.1%
8. Lafayette 60.0%


Offensive Rebounds as a Percentage of Opportunities:

1. Holy Cross 38.0%
2. Bucknell 32.7%
3. Army 32.1%
4. Colgate 30.7%
5. American 30.0%
6. Lafayette 26.9%
7. Lehigh 26.7%
8. Navy 24.8%

TOTAL:

1. Holy Cross 119.6
2. Bucknell 106.0
3. American 104.5
4. Colgate 99.2
5. Lehigh 98.8
6. Army 94.2
7. Navy 88.6
8. Lafayette 86.9


So what can we conclude from the above? First, the Crusaders have done an exceptional job at both ends of the floor. It will be very hard for any team to beat them if they enjoy this sort of success on the boards. Secondly, other than Holy Cross there are two other good rebounding teams - Bucknell and American; two so-so ones - Colgate and Lehigh; one fairly poor team - Army; and two awful ones - Navy and Lafayette. The terrible performance of these last two is explainable in that neither has a true post presence and both offenses are geared around launching up outside shots.

Two things stand out when we look at the individual segments. First, it is surprising that Army has been as weak as it has on the defensive boards, beating out only Lafayette. The Black Knights are doing a good job on the offensive boards, and one would think that their good fundamentals and the emergence of two solid centers this year would have put them a few notches higher. Secondly, it is very surprising to me that Lehigh is 7th on the offensive glass. One would think a team with athletic forwards such as White, Neptune, Anderson, and Carrington, along with Jose Olivares, would have have fared better than they have. The loss of Jason Mgreboff probably explains a bit of it, since he surprisingly gets an above-average amount of his rebounds at the offensive end, but even without him the Mountain Hawks should be doing better. For them to have any chance to beat Holy Cross tonight, they will need to do a better job in this area.