{"id":119,"date":"2017-01-18T00:50:16","date_gmt":"2017-01-18T00:50:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.section2basketball.com\/fromthestands\/?p=119"},"modified":"2019-01-05T23:59:51","modified_gmt":"2019-01-05T23:59:51","slug":"how-competitive-are-section-2-basketball-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.section2basketball.com\/fromthestands\/2017\/01\/18\/how-competitive-are-section-2-basketball-games\/","title":{"rendered":"How competitive are Section 2 basketball games?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I wanted to take a look, from a numbers standpoint, how competitive Section 2 Basketball (Boys&#8217;\/Girls&#8217;) games are when comparing them to other College\/Pro Basketball leagues. I&#8217;ve tracked almost 1000 game scores combined for Section 2 Boys&#8217; and Girls&#8217; hoop this season to get the averages below.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a chart that lists each level I&#8217;ve researched with the average winning margin of each game and the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Standard_deviation\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">standard deviation <\/a>of scores. (Margin and standard deviation numbers for all leagues other than Section 2 Basketball are from masseyratings.com)<\/p>\n<p>Standard deviation is defined by a quantity calculated to indicate the extent of deviation for a group as a whole. Which means the smaller the number the more consistent\/less volatile the scores are for that league. Smaller number = more competitive league.<\/p>\n<table width=\"564\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"207\">Men\/Boys&#8217; Teams<\/td>\n<td width=\"183\"><\/td>\n<td width=\"175\"><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"207\"><\/td>\n<td width=\"183\"><\/td>\n<td width=\"175\"><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"207\">Level<\/td>\n<td width=\"183\">Avg. Margin<\/td>\n<td width=\"175\">Standard Deviation<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"207\"><\/td>\n<td width=\"183\"><\/td>\n<td width=\"175\"><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"207\">NBA<\/td>\n<td width=\"183\">11.35<\/td>\n<td width=\"175\">8.41<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"207\">NCAA D1<\/td>\n<td width=\"183\">13.07<\/td>\n<td width=\"175\">10.18<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"207\">NCAA D2<\/td>\n<td width=\"183\">11.9<\/td>\n<td width=\"175\">9.24<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"207\">NCAA 3<\/td>\n<td width=\"183\">12.48<\/td>\n<td width=\"175\">9.74<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"207\">NCAA Junior College<\/td>\n<td width=\"183\">14.29<\/td>\n<td width=\"175\">11.6<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"207\">Section 2 Boys&#8217;<\/td>\n<td width=\"183\">16.83<\/td>\n<td width=\"175\">12.19<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"207\"><\/td>\n<td width=\"183\"><\/td>\n<td width=\"175\"><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"207\">Women\/Girls&#8217; Teams<\/td>\n<td width=\"183\"><\/td>\n<td width=\"175\"><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"207\"><\/td>\n<td width=\"183\"><\/td>\n<td width=\"175\"><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"207\">Level<\/td>\n<td width=\"183\">Avg. Margin<\/td>\n<td width=\"175\">Standard Deviation<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"207\"><\/td>\n<td width=\"183\"><\/td>\n<td width=\"175\"><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"207\">WNBA<\/td>\n<td width=\"183\">10.75<\/td>\n<td width=\"175\">7.69<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"207\">NCAA D1<\/td>\n<td width=\"183\">15.86<\/td>\n<td width=\"175\">12.26<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"207\">NCAA D2<\/td>\n<td width=\"183\">14.51<\/td>\n<td width=\"175\">10.96<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"207\">NCAA 3<\/td>\n<td width=\"183\">17.09<\/td>\n<td width=\"175\">12.57<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"207\">NCAA Junior College<\/td>\n<td width=\"183\">22.18<\/td>\n<td width=\"175\">18.08<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"207\">Section 2 Girls&#8217;<\/td>\n<td width=\"183\">20.78<\/td>\n<td width=\"175\">15.56<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Section 2 Boys&#8217; games are slightly more competitive on average than the Girls&#8217; games. From a competitive standpoint they compare to a Men&#8217;s Junior College game or a Division 3 Women&#8217;s game.<\/p>\n<p>The Section 2 Girls&#8217; margin of victory and standard deviation falls between a Women&#8217;s NCAA D3 game or a Women&#8217;s Junior College game.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s also interesting that both Men\/Women Division 2 games are more competitive then Division 1 games. For years I&#8217;ve heard the College of St. Rose Men&#8217;s Coach, Brian Beaury, talk about how competitive the Division 2 level is as well as their conference the Northeast 10. (I agree by the way, it&#8217;s just funny seeing the numbers agree with it). The Northeast 10 Men&#8217;s conference is even more competitive then the total D2 averages with an average margin of 10.3 and standard deviation of 7.66.<\/p>\n<p>I also broke the Section 2 Boys&#8217;\/Girls&#8217; games down into 2 other categories to give you an idea of what percentage of games have a 10 point margin or less and a 5 point margin or less.<\/p>\n<table width=\"564\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"207\">Winning Margin<\/td>\n<td width=\"183\">Section 2 Boys&#8217;<\/td>\n<td width=\"175\">Section 2 Girls&#8217;<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"207\"><\/td>\n<td width=\"183\"><\/td>\n<td width=\"175\"><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"207\">Less than 10 pts<\/td>\n<td width=\"183\">38.5%<\/td>\n<td width=\"175\">31.9%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"207\">Less than 5 points<\/td>\n<td width=\"183\">17.2%<\/td>\n<td width=\"175\">15.5%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>So if we combine the 2 sets of scores we should expect a game to be within 10 points 1 out of every 3 games we go to. If you are looking for a down to the wire finish ( final game margin 5 points or less) you should expect that 1 out of every 6 games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I wanted to take a look, from a numbers standpoint, how competitive Section 2 Basketball (Boys&#8217;\/Girls&#8217;) games are when comparing them to other College\/Pro Basketball leagues. I&#8217;ve tracked almost 1000 game scores combined for Section 2 Boys&#8217; and Girls&#8217; hoop this season to get the averages below. Here&#8217;s a chart that lists each level I&#8217;ve [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":132,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.section2basketball.com\/fromthestands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.section2basketball.com\/fromthestands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.section2basketball.com\/fromthestands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.section2basketball.com\/fromthestands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.section2basketball.com\/fromthestands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.section2basketball.com\/fromthestands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1523,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.section2basketball.com\/fromthestands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119\/revisions\/1523"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.section2basketball.com\/fromthestands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.section2basketball.com\/fromthestands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.section2basketball.com\/fromthestands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.section2basketball.com\/fromthestands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}