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Message: [QUOTE="connie, post: 2050092, member: 7882"] My question of late: is UCONNWB the leading edge of increased excellence across NCAAWB? One very small step towards a statistical analysis of that question is to determine statistically how much better UConn is compared to other teams, and [I]whether the degree of difference is shrinking[/I]. By way of exploring, I decided to begin by checking whether the standard deviation between/among the best and worst team free-throw percentages. (I may catch hell for saying this way . . . but crudely put, the standard deviation measures variation within a group.) I choose free throws because they are objectively easy to measure. Same distance to the hoop for everyone. And there has been no revolution in technique as might otherwise skew the data. My hypothesis is that as the competition in NCAAWB sharpens--as the sport develops, players get better, training and coaching improves, the pool of candidates expands, etc.--all players will on average become better free throw shooters. Moreover, presumably the gulf between the worst and the best will narrow. If so, then the big question is: where does UConnWB fit in the big picture? And can we then demonstrate that UConn is perhaps [I]good [/I]for women's basketball? (Answer: no duh!) So . . . I went to the [URL='http://web1.ncaa.org/stats/StatsSrv/rankings?doWhat=archive&sportCode=WBB']NCAA Women's Basketball Archived Statistics[/URL] and looked up data for team free throw percentages for all Div. I teams from the 2001-02 season to 2015-16 season. (The archive only goes back to 2001-02.) I realize that this is a very small sample. Here's what I found. Free throw shooting may be getting slightly better overall. Okay. But more interesting, [I]the difference between the worst and the best appears to be shrinking[/I]. Below is a primitive graph of the results, with the X-axis representing the year (1 = 2001-02), and the Y-axis showing the standard deviation among all 335-350 teams (depending on the year and the data). [ATTACH=full]19901[/ATTACH] Hard to say. But it certainly could be argued that at least as far back as 2003-04, the standard deviation for team free throw percentage is dropping. The earlier years (2001-02, 02-03) [I]could [/I]be anomalies. Can't be sure since I don't have the data for the previous years. But what is arguably the case is that more teams are becoming better free throw shooters. This suggests improvement in play in at least on area. The inference is that play in other areas is also improving. More important, because the standard deviation is dropping this information arguably supports the thesis: NCAAWB shows increased parity along with increased performance. [/QUOTE]

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