First off.tsylana s, I gotta say, I'm no sports analyst. I just thought it'd be fun to try and predict the game using, like, data and stuff. So, I started by grabbing some stats. Headed over to ESPN, grabbed their team stats – points per game, field goal percentage, all that jazz. Copied that into a spreadsheet.
Then, I was like, "Okay, gotta get more granular." So, I dug around for individual player stats. That was a pain. ESPN had some, but I ended up piecing stuff together from a couple of different sports sites. Again, spreadsheet time.
Next up, the "analysis." And I use that term loosely. I figured I'd give each team a score based on their stats. Points per game? Higher score. Better field goal percentage? Higher score. I even tried to factor in things like turnovers and rebounds, gave them weighted scores. It was pretty arbitrary, honestly.
- Grabbed Team Stats
- Found Player Stats
- Made a "Scoring" system based on stats, weighting things I thought were important
Here's where it got messy. Trying to weight those stats correctly? Tough! I spent, like, an hour just fiddling with the numbers, trying to make it "feel" right. Which is, of course, totally unscientific. I even tried throwing in some "momentum" factor, based on their last few games. That was a disaster.
So, after a lot of number crunching, and I mean A LOT, my "system" spat out a prediction: Dayton by 5. I was like, "Alright, cool."
Then, I watched the game. Oof. Oakland was up by, like, 10 at halftime. My "prediction" was looking real dumb. Dayton ended up pulling it out in the last few minutes, winning by 3. So, technically, I got the winner right, but the score difference? Way off.
What did I learn? Well, a few things:
- Sports are unpredictable. Duh.
- My "analysis" was probably garbage.
- Getting accurate data is harder than it looks.
- I need to find a better way to weight stats.
In conclusion? It was a fun experiment. I wouldn't bet my life savings on my predictions anytime soon, but hey, maybe with a little more tweaking, I can get closer next time. Or, you know, I could just watch the game and enjoy it without trying to be a stats guru. Food for thought.
