March Madness - Garbage Time Stat Preview

While I was messing around in my March Madness data model that is sure to lose to all of my nieces and nephews, I got distracted and decided to look up the most absurd stat lines of the season for players participating in this year's NCAA tournament. Because I want to get this article published ahead of the games tipping off this afternoon, there won't be a lot of fluff here. Just a list of stat categories that I think are funny and who leads in them.

The following players recorded ONLY minutes in these games. No points, field goal attempts, rebounds, assists, turnovers, or fouls. Just enjoying their time out on the court....going for a leisurely stroll.

Also known as a "trillion" (h/t Mark Titus)

Here are the highest scoring games where the player didn't record a single assist. I will let you draw your own conclusions as to what that means about these guys.

These are the highest scoring games in which the player didn't make a single field goal. IQ is through the roof for these guys...why would you ever shoot anything besides a free throw?

These games are what I'm calling "vice-heavy". These guys had the most combined turnovers and fouls in a single game:

The most unselfish games are below, those where the guy scored zero points but racked up a bunch of assists. Shout out to Dallin Hall from UVA who, according to this limited data, is probably the nicest guy in all of college basketball.

Shooters shoot. These guys jacked up the most shots without making one for the entire game. The worst thing that can happen to a shooter is losing their confidence. That didn't happen for these guys which I'm taking as a positive indicator for them this tournament (especially since I drafted two of them)

The players below were just Doing A Lot Of Stuff. These are the most non-point stats accumulated in a game in which the player didn't score at all:

I found just two non-standard double-doubles (in which neither of the stat categories were points). And YES, I am counting turnovers as double doubles here. I root for chaos in basketball...we should do all we can to encourage high-risk, turnover-heavy play.

Let's take a look at some season-long statistics...

There have been 11 triple-doubles (not counting turnovers) from 9 players. Here are eight of them:

And perhaps the most beautiful stat line of the season came from Silas Demary Jr (UConn) when they played Bryant.

Here are the players who have amassed the highest number of minutes without ever scoring:

Here are the players with the highest points-per-minute ratios in the country. Some might say "who cares about these guys at the top? It's such a small sample size" to which I would say...YOU GOTTA UP THE SAMPLE SIZE. PUT THESE KIDS IN THE GAME!

In fact, Brady Ganley from Miami (OH) hasn't missed a shot the entire season! He's 4-4. Miami was ridiculously fun to watch last night...the only way for them to improve is to get Brady into the game.

In 2005, Temple head coach John Chaney got pissed off during a game and sent in, in his words, a "goon" to take care of the opposing team. The kid he sent in was did not regularly get minutes and fouled out in just four minutes of playing time. Here are the candidates for the John Chaney Goon of the Year.

The runaway winner is Scottie Ebube from NC State, but they've been bounced from the tournament. It's up to all of the remaining guys here to prove that they Know How To Goon.

Let me know if you have any ideas for dumb statistics I can pull, I will probably run some stats during the tournament as well!

If anyone wants to join the Garbage Time Sports survivor pool, you can do so here.

Thanks for reading!