SB Nation User Blog: Nuss

Why we take our kids to sporting events

Nuss — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 20:33:09 -0000

Why we take our kids to sporting events

Awesome piece by Dan Shanoff on the cultural value of sports. Reminded me of taking my son to the Seahawks and Mariners both as a newborn and now as a toddler. Somewhere, Nick Lacata is scoffing.

Condotta on the recently reported UW violations

Nuss — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:05:31 -0000

Condotta on the recently reported UW violations

At this point, most of you have heard about the secondary violations allegedly involving UW player hosts buying alcohol for underage recruits.

In the interest of fairness, the link above takes you to yesterday's report from Bob Condotta via his Husky blog. The UW athletic department has told him there was nothing about alcohol on the report to the NCAA, and that the term "nightclub" shouldn't necessarily suggest a 21-and-over club.

However, you can read that as you wish -- the UW does not explicitly deny that there was alcohol involved, only that it wasn't in the violation report. Additionally, they also refused to comment on the alcohol portion of the report when asked directly by KING 5 reporter Lisa Gangel. So make of that what you will.

EDIT, 4:06 p.m.: Condotta has posted the actual report of the incident here. Read it for yourself and make of it what you will. However, I've been told by someone who deals with these sorts of things that it's common practice for the university to only be this specific in their reports and only comment on what's specifically in the report, especially if the punishment has already been accepted by the conference. So it might not be wise to read too much into a "no comment."

Don't forget: Help a brother out and take the survey

Nuss — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 00:47:00 -0000

Don't forget: Help a brother out and take the survey

The link above takes you to yesterday's post. If you haven't done so already, please take the academic survey at that post. In the name of education!

Around SBN: Links to read

Nuss — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 18:20:03 -0000

Some of the editors at SB Nation collect some of the better links from around the network and then send them out to us via e-mail. There were some good ones today that I wanted to pass along to you guys, since I won't really have the chance to write for another day or two:

California Golden Blogs (endorsed by CougCenter as one of the best blogs around) had a nice writeup on the state of Pac-10 basketball, both in terms of its disastrous nonconference performance and in terms of what can be done the rest of the year. (I don't want to spoil the surprise, but ain't pretty.)
Roll Bama Roll looks at Mark Ingram, three-star recruit. Yup, that's right -- the guy who just won the Heisman was the No. 58 rated RB by Scout.com just two years ago.
Tomahawk Nation examines whether it's a good idea for a head coach to be the playcaller. Answer? Yes -- if he's already a good playcaller. (Go ahead and make jokes about Paul Wulff calling plays ... now!)

By the way, I had no idea Football Outsiders had advanced team statistics for college football. How did I not know this? I have no idea. But I'm going to take a look at them and see what they say about the Cougs. My guess is that they'll still say we suck. But it'll be a new way of evaluating our suckiness, so that might be interesting.

Hey look! I'm on Basketball Prospectus!

Nuss — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 18:18:07 -0000

Hey look! I'm on Basketball Prospectus!

No, they did not ask me to do a tempo-free writeup of Klay Thompson's awesomeness, or Reggie Moore's freakish free throw rate. (Yet.) Instead, John Gasaway just referred to one of my tweets at the bottom of this post.

Hey, it's a start. I know a staff writing position can't be far behind.

Good news! WSU/PSU to be on FSN

Nuss — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 01:59:33 -0000

Good news! WSU/PSU to be on FSN

Bad news! The broadcasters are noted Zags Greg Heister and Craig Ehlo!

Calling on the CougCenter community

Nuss — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 22:48:57 -0000

Faithful CougCenter readers, I'm asking for your help. Actually, someone else is asking for your help, but I'm asking on behalf of him.

Toby Hopp, a grad student at San Diego State -- incidentally, he must be floating on cloud nine after that smackdown of Arizona! -- is working on an ambitious research project looking at user-generated content on websites. He's asked for our help (as well as the help of a number of other SB Nation sites) in gathering data for his project.

Go ahead and read his introduction below, and if you feel compelled to help someone in their academic pursuits (and I hope you do), visit the survey site and take the survey. It doesn't take that long, but if you don't have time now, don't worry -- we'll be reminding you each day that the survey is open, from now until Friday.

We'd love to see a good turnout from CougCenter. One of the reasons he came to us is because the mainstream media showed no interest in his project. Being at the cutting edge of new media, we're most definitely interested. And since we have what I think is one of the most vibrant user communities at SBN, I think he'll be especially interested in your thoughts.

Oh, and we get to see the results, too. That should be cool.

---

College Football Research Project

My name is Toby Hopp and I'm a longtime college sports blogger/blog reader. I'm also a graduate communications student at San Diego State University who is interested in studying how and why Internet users generate content online. What precisely, you may be asking, is "user-generated content?" Well, "user-generated content" includes comment sections at the end of news/blog articles, messageboards, diaries, polls, and the like.

To me, one of the great parts of the blogosphere is the interaction it enables between readers. As a community, we're able to provide feedback and discuss issues in real time. However, the concept of "user-generated content" and its subsequent social applications has not, at this point, been thoroughly studied by communications researchers and is, in my estimation, completely misunderstood by the mass media.

So, if you have 10-15 minutes to spare and support empirical media research (and the social sciences in general), please click the survey link below. Even if you NEVER create/read content on blog or newspaper websites, PLEASE consider taking the survey as your answers are as important to me as the answers supplied by individuals who DO regularly create content. Rest assured that all answers and provided information will be strictly anonymous and kept totally confidential.

Survey Link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/WSQGPZ2

For those of you interested in statistics, all collected information will be scientifically analyzed and utilized to create an inherently unique structural equation model. To that end, I'll send a report out to each participating blog which details general trends and reader utilization issues of note.

Again, please consider taking this survey (Survey Link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/WSQGPZ2) whether or not you ever create or read "user -generated content" on blogs or newspaper sites. The survey itself will take 10 - 15 minutes and, I promise, will be quite painless. As stated above, research on the topic of "user-generated content" is incredibly sparse and your participation will go a long way in understanding the environmental factors that encourage meaningful intra-community participation. And, of course, you'll be doing me a great and immeasurable favor.

The survey will be active from Monday, December 14 through Friday, December 18. Please feel free to e-mail me at thopp@mail.sdsu.edu if you have any questions relating to the survey or my over-arching methodology/conceptual framework (obviously, there's a lot more to the study that can be reasonably described here).

Thank you for your time and please know that your participation really does mean a great deal to me on both a professional and personal level.

Survey Link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/WSQGPZ2

The final Postgame Tailgate, for your viewing pleasure. And, again, if you like this, you should...

Nuss — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 18:43:42 -0000

The final Postgame Tailgate, for your viewing pleasure. And, again, if you like this, you should check out Rubenstein along with Ty Hildenbrandt on their podcast, The Solid Verbal.

The importance of taking care of the basketball

Nuss — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 22:48:35 -0000

More photos » by Dean Hare - AP

When Klay Thompson is doing this instead of giving the ball to the other team, he gives his teammates their best chance to help him out.

Browse more photos »

I know I said I wasn't going to be around much, but I really wanted to carve out a few minutes to highlight something for you.

Up until this point, the Cougs' offensive efficiency (what's that?) has been tied almost exclusively to how well they've shot the ball, which is really just an extension of whether Klay Thompson's is scoring efficiently. And, the reality is, if you shoot the ball well, you can survive turnovers -- something the Cougs proved against Mississippi Valley State, Nicholls State and (especially) San Diego.

Note: Average offensive efficiency is around 100; average eFG% (right now) is 48.7; average TO% (right now) is 21.1.

Opponent	Off. Eff.	eFG%	TO%
Mississippi Valley State	128.6	51.6	24.6
Nicholls State	121.0	65.9	24.8
San Diego	137.6	73.2	25.1

But when you combine a lot of turnovers with a poor shooting night -- again, on this team, mostly due to whether Klay is up or down because he's by far the team's most prolific shooter -- you get what we got against Gonzaga and Kansas State:

Opponenent	Off. Eff.	eFG%	TO%
Gonzaga	95.7	45.2	23.6
Kansas State	91.5	48.8	33.1(!)

This really makes a lot of common sense -- if you turn the ball over, there really is only one outcome to the possession: You don't even get to shoot and the team heads back the other way. It's a negative outcome every single time.

However, by simply taking a shot, you have a number of potential positive outcomes: make, miss with an offensive rebound (something this team has proven it's prolific at) or a foul (another thing this team has proven prolific at). Taking care of the basketball isn't just one of those antiquated, trite coachisms; it really does help your offense out. (See Maryland, 2008-09.) Even if your team isn't particularly good at offensive rebounding or foul shooting, you can sometimes pick up points thanks to simple dumb luck where a rebound falls into your hands.

Which brings me to last night. Despite posting only a pedestrian 48.3 eFG% (due largely to 33 percent 3-point shooting), the Cougs were able to achieve a 112.7 offensive efficiency rating. That's not spectacular, but it's certainly good, and it all started with WSU only turning the ball over on 13.3 percent of its possessions. In fact, after turning the ball over six times in the first 13 minutes, the Cougs turned it over just four more times the rest of the game.

Here was the effect last night. The Cougs' offensive rebounding percentage -- the number of available offensive rebounds the Cougs came up with -- was 38.7. That's in the same ballpark as the Gonzaga and Kansas State games (39.5 and 35.3, respectively). The difference, of course, is that there were many more offensive rebound opportunities last night. Against KSU, they only came up with eight offensive rebounds. Last night, it was 16 -- the Cougs were able to extend eight more possessions by simply taking care of the ball. They converted all of those opportunities into eight second chance points, and while that might not seem like much, this was a 12-point game in the end. Those eight points mattered.

Klay didn't have his greatest night of the season against Idaho. And for once, it didn't destroy our offense. That is huge, and is going to be a key for this team going forward. They don't possess a lot of good shooters to drive the offense (something that probably drives Ken Bone batty, but that's a conversation for another day), so they've got to play to their strengths on offense -- getting offensive rebounds and getting to the free throw line -- which can only be done if they take care of the ball and get the ball on the rim as they did last night.

An open letter to Aaron Curry

Nuss — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 14:42:35 -0000

An open letter to Aaron Curry

This made me laugh, so I'm sending it along.