Garnet And Black Attack: FanPosts

FAIL

Charlestowne — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 11:57:33 -0000

No great prose from me this moring. Just bastardized commentation.

Hey, I have an idea.... Maybe we should make Vandy our new SEC rival. Then maybe our team would start giving a crap about the game every year.

I am still planning on going to the Georgia game next weekend. But I am not planning on being happy about it.

We just lost 2 years in a row to a school that doesn't have an athletic department. That's got to be a good talking point.

I don't know why the team lost focus. But I hope the coaching staff runs them into the ground this week. If they don't want to play football, they don't have to practice football. They can just run wind sprints for 2 straight hours everyday.

At least we're not Clemson. Although we played like them.

Can Clemson say "One and Done"?

Charlestowne — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 19:39:12 -0000

Besides Michigans #5 preseason ranking last year, the team from the upstate must have one of the biggest week 1 poll drops in history. From 9th to NR in the AP Poll and 22nd in the coaches poll.

That makes me smile.

However, I have no doubt that Clemson will claw their way back up there. They always do. However. The ACC seems a little more dynamic now than it did a week ago. How bad is Clemson, Va Tech, UVA, and NC State? How good is Duke and Ga Tech? Only time will tell. But Clemson is sure to feast on the half dead carcus of some of these teams while allowing some of the other to do the same on them.

However enjoyabe it is for me to see Clemson fall, my main concern is on the Gamecocks this week. We REALLY need to take care of Vandy like we mean it. This is the game that really showed us the disaster that was unfolding last year. Most eyes will be watching this game with that in mind. How we play this game, and how close we play UGA next week will determine how far we climb before we get to the tough part of our schedule. I don't expect to make the Top 10 this year. We really only got there by default last year. (To many top 5 teams were shooting themselves in the head.)

I still think we can be good, as long as we're healthy. But its still early. I still hold my concerned optomism.

Go Gamecocks. Can't wait till Thursday night. As long as I am not in the middle of an evacuation.

McDanniel

Charlestowne — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 13:28:52 -0000

Even though I have been following this story, I haven't made much public comment on it to date. Partly because I wanted to wait to see how it played out. (Although I already knew) Also, because I hate getting into the topics on message boards because there are plenty of people that don't know how to hold a civilized conversation. Mostly, because while I feel like there is a palatable double standard in this state, I really don't care how Clemson Athletics handles discipline issues. But I feel compelled to speak on this situation.

First, yes, McDanniel was not convicted in a court of law, so we don't know for certain he did it. But the circumstantial evidence is pretty damning. First, his girlfriend shows up in the hospital bloodied and bruised. His excuse: she made it all up. Second, for me, taking PTI is pretty much an admission of guilt. I have known several people that went through Pre-Trial Intervention (admittedly mostly for drugs) and all of them were guilty as hell and caught red-handed. PTI is generally reserved for first time offenders. It gives them the benefit of the doubt that they won't always be delinquents and a clean slate.

But considering the nature of what he did, I was still a little surprised that absolutely no punishment was dealt out what-so-ever. He didn't miss a practice and isn't going to miss a game. Not even against the Citadel in week 2. This sends a horrible message. If you are even suspected of yelling at your significant other at South Carolina, you're off the team. No questions asked. It's happened.

If McDanniel had been busted for a small amount of weed and the case was dismissed, I wouldn't care. But to send his girlfriend to the hospital and still be allowed to represent your University without any sanctions is unfathomable.

I think that this speaks more about Tommy Bowden than McDanniel. There are always going to be bad apples on every team. Its how they are handled that defines how a program is viewed.

Clemson: We'll do whatever it takes to just barely underachieve.

Can the Gamecocks Cover the 14 now?

Dirty — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 02:27:01 -0000

Hey everyone. I just wanted to say Hi and I am a Huge SEC fan and have always been a huge Fan of Steve Spurrier. He tells it like it is and his teams play with a lot of heart. I respect him as much as any coach ever in the college game.....

I have kept up with South Carolina football a lot more since he has been there...

What are you guys opinions on the Game Thursday Night... Line has jumped from -11 to -14 and the Total is down to 45.... Can the Cocks cover the 14 now?

NC State at South Carolina
Thu 8/28	131	NC State	+14 -110	+500	Over 45 -110
8:00PM (EST)	132	South Carolina	-14 -110	-700	Under 45 -110

NC State Vs South Carolina

Mark Dantonio

TomReagan — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 01:33:10 -0000

Bumped from the FanPosts. What do y'all think?

Found out today that Dantonio played DB for y'all back in the 70s.

This guy's one of the brightest young coaches in the country. Is there any sentiment in Columbia to bring him back to his alma mater when Spurrier finally steps down?

He's currently making $1.1 at Michigan State, and I'm not sure you'd be able to pull him away, but I'd definitely have him in the back of my mind if I were a Gamecock fan.

New Format/Tourney

kevinramsfan — Wed, 28 May 2008 04:01:47 -0000

First off, I really like the new platform, I really like the fact that we can use one login name for the entire network now. As such, while I used to be AssKicknChickn here, now I'm kevinramsfan. I'm currently studying journalism at USC, and live in Atlanta for the summer. I'm origninally from St. Lou, so go Cocks, Cards, and Rams!

Tough opening draw for the tourney huh? A forty win team to start with, then the possibility of playing of facing No. 1 seeds back-to-back in the following rounds. I'd love the chance to avenge the 2006 super regional loss to Jawja.

By the way, keep up the good work C&F.

Welcome to the new Garnet And Black Attack and SB Nation

clockwerks — Tue, 27 May 2008 04:43:09 -0000

Hey Garnet And Black Attack,

Today is the big day. We've switched your community over to the new SB Nation sports blog platform. My name is Trei, and I'm here to help you get adjusted to the new home we've built for you. If you have questions or trouble with the new system, post a comment in this thread and myself or one of the team (lovitt, sixfoot6 or odacrem) will try to point you in the right direction.

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Please take a few minutes to read about what's new below. But if you just can't wait to jump in, here are some quick things to check out:

Sign up for your SB Nation network account and claim your old blog accounts
Once you're logged in, press your Z key in any thread with new comments
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What Has Changed

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FanPosts (the Section Formerly Known as Diaries)

We changed their name. Why? Because we took this major upgrade as an opportunity to leave behind some vocabulary that never made much sense for a sports blog. SB Nation is the network of, by and for fans, and these are the blog posts we make. So we call them FanPosts. When you're at a bar telling someone to check out your online sports opinions, you don't have to suggest they read your diary.

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This one is probably the most obvious change of all. Like other major websites working to improve readability for their audience, we've adopted a fixed-width layout optimized for the 1024 x 768 resolution used by the majority of Garnet And Black Attack and SB Nation network users. Use the switcher below the user menu if you prefer the wider layout designed for 1280 monitors. We've introduced a top navigation bar with quick links into old and new sections of the site. We also polished a few edges, made some things larger, others smaller and moved a few boxes here and there. More changes and adjustments to come.

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What's New

Schedule, Scores, Stats and Roster

Garnet And Black Attack now has all the basic information about the South Carolina Gamecocks and hundreds of other teams. During games you'll see a regularly updated line score, and as the season progresses we'll track team stat totals and leaders. This is just our first step, so look for us to publish more detailed and archival stats in the future. The best part about all this sports data is that we've integrated it directly into the blog so. We now have special pages that aggregate all blog posts written about games, players and teams.

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College Baseball Defensive Evaluation Network

Sat, 29 Mar 2008 20:31:39 -0000

Do you go to college games? Are you a savvy college baseball fan who feels like you have a good handle on a handful of player's defensive skills? If so, we would like you to share with us your expertise. I'm helping informally WITH an undisclosed MLB club and we are putting together a "Scouting Report by the Fans" evaluating D1 players. The idea is to get the wisdom of the crowds when it comes to rating a player's fielding SKILLS. If you are interested in hearing more about the project, let me know at eriknmanning@gmail.com, along with a little info on your baseball background. You don't have to be an ex-player or a scout, just a knowledgeable fan.

TDs: The Runs Batted In of College Football Statistics (Part Two)

The Boy — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 02:45:33 -0000

Okay, so last time around, I talked about Points Per Play (PPP) as the football version of Slugging %. In baseball, OPS (On-Base + Slugging) is one of the most telling, easy, reliable stats around. It’s great because it’s flexible. There are two different ways to put together a strong OPS—either by getting on base a lot or by hitting for power—and the best hitters do both. You find consistency and explosiveness in one measure.

So if PPP is equivalent to Slugging % (explosiveness), what’s equivalent to On-Base % (consistency)? Success Rate, that’s what.

In its most basic form, Success Rate is simply the percentage of time in which a play is deemed ‘successful’. It is a measure I culled from Football Outsiders and tweaked to fit my own purposes. How is ‘success’ determined?

Here are the rules according to down:

1st Down: 50% of necessary yardage. If it's 1st-and-10, you need 5 yards for 'success'.

2nd Down: 70% of necessary yardage (rounded up to the nearest yard, of course). If it's 2nd-and-10, you need 7 yards for 'success'. 2nd-and-15? 10 yards.

3rd and 4th Downs: 100% of necessary yardage. I figure this requires no explanation.

In all, any given play has about a 43% chance of ‘success.’

Success Rate measures consistency the same way that On-Base % does for baseball. It’s a lot harder to score in baseball if you’re not getting on-base. Sure, you can still hit a homerun, but in general, less people on-base leads to less scoring opportunities, which leads to less runs.

In football, a low success rate limits your chances in the same way. Sure, you can score on a 99-yard TD run, and sure, you can consistently gain 10 yards on 3rd-and-9 to sustain a drive (leading to something like a 33.3% success rate)...but you’re playing with fire. The odds of consistently moving the ball like that are minimal.

To illustrate the usefulness of Success Rates, let’s look at the success rates for each of the Big 12 Offenses.

Texas Tech 53.6%

Missouri 51.0%

Oklahoma State 50.2%

Kansas 50.1%

Nebraska 48.8%

Oklahoma 48.9%

Texas 47.4%

Texas A&M 45.7%

Kansas State 45.5%

Colorado 39.6%

Baylor 38.5%

Iowa State 36.5%

Aside from a couple exceptions (Nebraska above Texas?), that’s pretty much a rundown of the conference’s top offenses, is it not?

Success Rate is a fantastic tool, and I used it more than just about anything else when I was previewing Mizzou games this year (example here). It can be used to judge teams in every possible way—how they do in close games, how well they run (or defend the run), how well they play in the redzone, et cetera.

And it becomes an even better tool when teamed with the Points Per Play (PPP) measure we discussed in Part One. Quick recap: based on the average number of points scored from any yardline on the field, I came up with a way to create a ‘point value’ for each play of a game by comparing the beginning value of a play compared to where it ended up. It is the "slugging %" to Success Rate’s "on-base %" in the OPS equation. So if On-Base Plus Slugging = OPS, then what is Success Rate plus Points Per Play? S&P!

S&P, like Success Rate, is an extremely versatile tool. You can compare offenses, defenses, running backs, just about anything. To illustrate the usefulness of S&P, let’s look at the four Heisman finalists.

Tim Tebow

PASSING: 52.5% success rate + 0.62 PPP = 1.15 S&P
RUSHING: 54.8% success rate + 0.54 PPP = 1.09 S&P
ALL PLAYS BEHIND CENTER: 54.6% success rate + 0.53 PPP = 1.08 S&P

Colt Brennan

PASSING: 53.7% success rate + 0.53 PPP = 1.07 S&P
RUSHING: 47.2% success rate + 0.38 PPP = 0.86 S&P
ALL PLAYS BEHIND CENTER: 52.9% success rate + 0.44 PPP = 0.97 S&P

Chase Daniel

PASSING: 51.4% success rate + 0.46 PPP = 0.97 S&P
RUSHING: 47.1% success rate + 0.38 PPP = 0.86 S&P
ALL PLAYS BEHIND CENTER: 50.4% success rate + 0.39 PPP = 0.90 S&P

For the three QB finalists, you can start to see how this single number—S&P—can take into account everything from Tebow’s rushing TDs to Brennan’s insane yardage totals to Daniel’s nation-leading third down percentage. They had similar numbers, though when schedule strength is taken into account (I've got ways to do this, but not until I have everybody's games entered), Tebow comes out far ahead. It’s why I’d have voted for him even though I wasn’t remarkably impressed with the 20 mostly-short-yardage rushing TDs.

Okay, so I just came up with a complete different way to determine that Tim Tebow should have won the Heisman. Woo. I could have used yards and TDs to figure that out. What use do these new-fangled stats have if they’re just going to lead to the same conclusions as the, uhh, old-fangled stats? That’s where Darren McFadden comes in.

Darren McFadden

RUSHING: 46.8% success rate + 0.34 PPP = 0.81 S&P

And he was the QB in the WildHog Formation, so...

ALL PLAYS BEHIND CENTER: 48.3% success rate + 0.71 PPP = 1.19 S&P

As a point of comparison, McFadden’s 0.81 S&P would have been #13 in the Big 12. Jorvorskie Lane (ATM) had a 1.09, DeMarco Murray (OU) a 0.97, and Chris Brown (OU) had a 0.85.

McFadden is obviously very good, but the consensus "best RB in college football" wasn’t as effective at running the ball in 2007 as he was at being a threat to run the ball...if that makes any sense. With McFadden sharing the backfield, Felix Jones pulled off an insane 1.17 rushing S&P, and the WildHog was quite effective in giving McFadden the option of running, throwing, or handing to Jones and Peyton Hillis. But for every highlight reel run McFadden ripped off this season, there were about 10 1-yard runs. This is why a theoretically explosive offense like Arkansas’ ground to a halt against good defenses like Auburn (lost 9-7) and Missouri (lost 38-7). The offense was perceived as better than it actually was, and its low success rate (44.6% for the season) and S&P (0.81...the same as stagnant Texas A&M’s) betrayed it throughout the season.

(And here’s another interesting stat: McFadden accounted for 111.04 ‘points’ running the ball in 2007. Tebow accounted for 107.05.)

In other words, there’s a reason why Darren McFadden didn’t deserve the Heisman, no matter how good he looks in the open field. It wasn't his fault that Arkansas' passing game sucked, and it wasn't his fault that defenses did whatever they could to force other players to beat them...but you have to be more than a threat to win the Heisman--you have to still produce as well.

Okay, time for another plea. I really want to be able to test the limits of S&P, PPP, Success Rates, and lots of other stats I have yet to reveal, but I’m in need of some volunteers to help me plow through the remaining 2007 games. As I mentioned last time, games take about 30 minutes to enter (once you figure out what you’re doing), and you can feel free to enter games for whichever team you like (other than the ones I’ve already done, anyway—Big 12, Hawaii, Florida, Arkansas).

If you want to help either shoot me a response on this thread with your e-mail address, or contact me at BillConnelly1@gmail.com. Thanks again.

TDs: The Runs Batted In of College Football Statistics (Part One)

The Boy — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 00:08:20 -0000

Hey, this is The Boy from Rock M Nation. I posted this over at Sunday Morning QB a couple days ago, but I figured I might as well post it on some other blogs too...let me know what you think.

OFFSEASON PROJECT! Over at RMN, I’ve been playing with the ‘Beyond the Box Score’ idea (calling it that as an ode to the wonderful SBN sabermetrics blog of the same name) as it applies to college football stats.

I’ve been cranking out play-by-plays for 2007 games as fast as possible—as I post for a Mizzou blog, I’ve focused on Big 12 teams, Mizzou opponents, and teams with fellow Heisman finalists—but this is a massive undertaking, and I need some volunteers to enter play-by-play for the games I have yet to enter from the 2007. They take about 30-45 minutes each, and I’m figuring I’ll need about 6-10 volunteers to finish this stuff in a timely enough fashion to do something about it before the 2008 season starts orbiting everybody’s attention span, so...actually, how about I just show you why I’m doing this?

It’s fair to say that the Bill James Revolution has reshaped the game of baseball over the last 25-30 years (for some franchises, anyway...my Pirates sure haven’t paid any attention). I’d go into detail about all the different statistics that have come about due to James and his disciples, but I’m going to be honest here—if you don’t know/care about Bill James, then you probably won’t care at all about this post.

The typical statline for a hitter hasn’t changed much over the years. Chances are, when a guy is at bat, the stats they’ll show on TV are Batting Average / HRs / RBIs. However, as thousands of words are spent in deciphering baseball stats each year, it’s becoming more and more obvious that those categories—the last one in particular—are pretty worthless in evaluating the quality of a hitter. Who cares about a .300 batting average if it’s all singles and it’s not complemented by any walks or anything? Who cares about 25 HRs if you strike out 200 times and don’t ever get on base otherwise? And who cares about 100 RBIs if it’s complemented by a .225 average and only comes about because the guys in front of you are fantastic hitters?

Having a high number of RBIs does say something about your propensity for timely hits, but it says even more about the ability of the folks ahead of you to get on base. If the dude in front of you in the batting order has a .220 on-base %, you’re probably not going to get too many RBIs no matter how good a hitter you are. It’s the same way with touchdowns, really. Jerome Bettis’s final season was great for my fantasy team, but his "2 carries, 3 yards, 2 TDs" lines really didn’t contribute much to the team overall. I loved The Bus as much as the next guy, but just about anybody could have come in and plunged in from the 1. Getting the ball to the 1 was the much bigger accomplishment.

(Since I’m a Mizzou fan, you can probably gather that I wasn’t all that impressed by Tim Tebow’s "20 passing TDs/20 rushing TDs" stat that everybody was in love with since half his TDs came from a couple yards out and Chase Daniel could have done the same if he never handed the ball off either. That’s true, but in the end I’d have probably voted for Tebow to win the Heisman anyway. You know...if I had a vote...)

I’ve been entering play-by-play for Big 12 games for the last two seasons, and I’ve been able to do a lot with the data...enough that I want to be able to do it with the entire country’s data. The biggest thing I’ve accomplished so far is coming up with measures called EqPts (Equivalent Points) and PPP (EqPts per Play), based on the chart below, which shows the average number of points that could be expected from any specific yard line.

As you see, gains in certain areas of the field are worth different amounts. I did the same thing for each down.

So a 5-yard gain on 3rd-and-5 from your opponent’s 39 would only be worth about 0.19 points on the first graph, but it’s worth a huge 2.24 points on the second one. Stuff like that is interesting to a nerd like me. And here’s the most interesting part—averaging these two EqPts figures together, and adding in a measure of turnover costliness (into which I go into more detail in my Beyond the Box Score glossary), ends up doing a pretty good job of coming up with how many points were scored in a given game.

For instance...on December 1, Missouri beat Kansas, 36-28. MU’s offense accounted for 29.47 EqPts (from the first graph) and 42.98 Down-Dependent EqPts (from the second). That averages out to 36.23. KU had 30.69 EqPts and 33.95 DD-EqPts, averaging 32.32. KU also had 6.83 points worth of turnovers (again, click the link above if you want information on that), and applying half of that to KU’s score and half to MU’s, you end up with an EqPts final score of MU 38.98, KU 28.91. Pretty damn close. On the same day, OU beat OSU, 49-17. The EqPts score was OU 47.88, OSU 15.65.

Of course, it doesn’t always calculate closely—the ball’s oblong and simply doesn’t always bounce the way it’s supposed to—but looking at things this way gives you a lot better indication of who accounted for a team’s points than total yards or TDs or yards per carry.

For now, let’s pretend that PPP is the football equivalent of Slugging %. What’s the football equivalent of On-Base %? We’ll get back to that in Part Two...if anybody’s actually interested, anyway.

And if you want to help me enter play-by-plays, either shoot me a response on this thread with your e-mail address, or contact me at BillConnelly1@gmail.com. Thanks!

Succeeding next year

Gamecock Man — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 17:15:06 -0000

Gamecock Man offers our first installment of reader submissions on how to fix the Gamecocks for next year.

I think there are two things we need to do to improve for next year. (1), Spurrier should consider firing Nix and going after a proven defensive coordinator who has experience shutting down a variety of offenses. I don't think Nix is terrible--he's had some successes, and I think part of our problem owes to injuries. But I don't think it's surprising that our two worst performances have come against innovative offenses, although what Arkansas does might be better termed unorthodox than innovative. Nix didn't have good schemes for these games. Arkansas is the most infuriating; their offense is one-dimensional and even though it would be impossible to completely shut McFadden down, it's very possible to contain him (see Auburn, UT). Our d-line got mauled in that game; that's not so much Nix's fault, because we just don't have the studs to take on Arky's big d-line. But where were our linebackers and safeties, when they should've been stepping up to contain? That falls on Nix and his staff. And where was our great pass defense against the Gators? They had open receivers all night, and that again owes to coaching. In sum: Nix is a decent coach, and he's had bad luck with injuries this year, but we need a defensive coordinator who can make adjustments and handle the injuries in the best way possible.

Second of all, and I think this is more important, we need to continue to recruit well and in fact do better than we did last year. The lack of defensive depth owes to years of recruiting way below the SEC powers; we have SEC caliber talent on the first-string, but other teams have talented players waiting in the wings to come in and contribute if someone gets hurt. So far this year, we haven't kept up with last year's pace, and I think last year's class was overrated by the major guides, although that remains to be seen. The simple fact of the matter is that if we can't get talented players to come to USC, we'll never compete consistently, with or without Spurrier. We'll be able to continue to make meaningless bowl appearances and will post an occasional upset over UGA, UT, UF, and Clemson, but we'll never win an SEC Title unless we get really lucky one year.

Now, I don't know what the trick will be to get the players to come; I know we're not the draw a UGA or UF is. But other teams without much history have had success recruiting over the past few years. This is one area in which I kindof wonder about Spurrier; he's a great gameday coach, but he never had to work hard to get players to come to Florida, and I wonder how committed he is to putting in the extra time at this point in his career. I was impressed with him last year, but he needs to keep the ball rolling. If he can't do it, then I think we might have good reason to look elsewhere for a young coach with something to prove. I'm not saying I'm not behind Spurrier; at this point, he has my full support. But I think we need to expect a good recruiting class this year and an improved record next year. I personally won't be satisfied with less than 8 or 9 wins, a .500 or better SEC record, and a decent bowl.

Using diaries

cocknfire — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 02:56:53 -0000

The diary feature on SB Nation was one of the draws for me. In essence, this allows you to post a comment to Garnet and Black Attack regardless of what I'm writing about.

Want to ask a general question? Check. Want to hold forth on something I haven't posted on? Check. Want to tell the world why seven wins shouldn't get you an extension? Yes, Tommy Bowden, you too can create a diary.

Of course, the normal, unwritten rules of Internet conversation apply, which basically means don't libel anyone.

Beyond that, feel free to join the conversation.