Okay, here’s my take on sharing my experience with a “fairleigh dickinson vs stonehill prediction,” blog-style.
Alright folks, let me walk you through this little experiment I cooked up. I’m no professional gambler or anything, just a guy who likes sports and tinkering with data. So, the other day, I was thinking about the Fairleigh Dickinson vs. Stonehill game, and I thought, “Hey, why not try to predict the outcome using some basic stats?”
First things first, I grabbed some data. I’m talking about points per game, rebounds, assists, shooting percentages – the usual suspects. I found this info on ESPN and a couple of other sports stats sites. It was a bit of a pain to scrape it all together, let me tell you. A lot of copy-pasting involved. Ugh.
Then, I threw everything into a spreadsheet. Old school, I know, but it works. I calculated averages and some simple ratios. Like, how good is each team at scoring compared to how good the other team is at defending? Nothing fancy, just trying to get a feel for the strengths and weaknesses.
Next, I started messing around with a super basic “model.” Basically, I assigned weights to different stats. For instance, I figured points per game was pretty important, so I gave that a higher weight. Then, I added up all the weighted stats for each team to get a final “score.”
- Fairleigh Dickinson: Higher points per game, but weaker defense according to the stats I had.
- Stonehill: Better defensive numbers, but struggled a bit more on the offensive end.
The initial run of my “model” spit out that Fairleigh Dickinson would win by a small margin. But, and this is a big but, I knew this wasn’t the whole story. Stats don’t tell you everything. They don’t account for things like team morale, injuries, or a player just having a really good or bad day.
So, I added a “fudge factor.” Yeah, I know, not very scientific. But I watched some highlights from previous games, read some game previews, and basically just tried to get a gut feeling for the momentum each team had. I adjusted my weights a little bit based on that. It was totally subjective, I admit.
After all that, my “prediction” shifted slightly. It still leaned towards Fairleigh Dickinson, but it was much closer. Something like a 3-point win. I even went so far as to predict a final score. Don’t laugh – I had Fairleigh Dickinson at 72 and Stonehill at 69.
The game happened, and… well, I wasn’t exactly right. Fairleigh Dickinson won, but the score was way off from what I thought. The final score was much higher. But hey, at least I got the winner right!
Learned a few things here. First, even a simple statistical analysis can give you a decent starting point. Second, there’s no substitute for actually watching the games and getting a feel for the teams. And third, prediction is hard! This whole thing reminded me that there’s a lot of randomness in sports, which is part of what makes it fun to watch.
I might try this again with another game sometime. Maybe I’ll even try to incorporate more advanced stats or find a better way to account for those “unquantifiable” factors. But for now, I’m just happy I gave it a shot. It was a fun little project.
