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Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Massey Roots

This is a picture of Gun Inn as you get off the
bus in Hollingworth. 
One of the courses I have taught at Galesburg HS is Diversity Studies. We look at different groups in America and their history- Native Americans, Mexican Americans, and Asian Americans. One of the focuses of the course is to look at the immigration process and the lives of immigrants. Even as we studied immigration, I never looked at that process and how my family had been impacted by immigration.

When I went to grade school in a different era, one of our lessons had to do with our ancestors country of origin. The teacher would have you find the origin of your ancestors. Then we would do work with fractions, you were 1/4 Irish, 1/2 English, and 1/4 Welch. As we did the work, my ancestors might as well have come to America in 1612 for all I cared- it was a long time ago.

Saturday, July 13, 2013

Summer Report

Our summer league wrapped up on July 2. We had 60+ Galesburg girls play in our summer league on 8 different teams.

Our number one priority of the summer was to work on the basic fundamentals of defense. Our feeling was our presses and traps the last couple years had become less effective because our players were not familiar with basic movement skills that are learned in man to man defense. While we did not become a great half court mm team this summer, we feel like our players improved in the skills of playing defense. It is our hope we can then become a better pressing team this winter.

Wins Produced

The following is ranking of players with stat of wins produced...



Advanced statistics have made quite a bit of headway in the basketball world over the past couple of years.  However, the general public, NBA pundits, and NBA front offices still tend to fawn over players that score a lot of points, regardless of how efficient they are.  Which is why a player like Carmelo Anthony, who the advanced stat Wins Produced ranks as the seventh (!!) top producer on his own team, will get plenty of MVP votes this year.  So, as an alternative to the traditional NBA awards that will be presented over the coming weeks, we thought we'd reveal The Wins Produced NBA Award Winners, based on the Wins Producedstats housed on The NBA Geek website.  The envelopes, please.

Player Impact Estimate

Story on stat used to evaluate NBA and WNBA players....


PIE In the Sky

Tamika Catchings is the reigning WNBA MVP. She's a versatile forward that can score, rebound and distribute the basketball. LeBron James, the 2012 NBA MVP, can claim the very same.
And in the past, the comparisons between these two superstars would have stopped there.
For the 15-plus years that the WNBA has been in existence, drawing parallels between WNBA and NBA players ended up as an exercise in subjectivity. The styles were different. The rules were different. Maybe above all, thegame clocks were different (the NBA plays for 48 minutes and the W goes for 40). So, when you wanted to measure an NBA player against one in the WNBA (or vice-versa), you had to use some imagination. Until now.
NBA.com/stats has developed a new rating called the Player Impact Estimate, or PIE, that calculates a player’s impact on each individual game they play. Because the formula accounts for a player’s influence relative to each specific game, it eliminates statistical biases created by league, style of play or even era.
And now, thanks to PIE, we can make a definitive link between Catchings and James.