Kansas currently has the longest home court winning streak in the nation, so someone asked me yesterday why they are listed as having a home record of 14-1 on StatSheet. Good question. The first time I asked my stats provider they said the loss at the Sprint Center to UMass counted as a home loss. Ok, but what about the loss to Syracuse at the Sprint Center? Why didn't that count as a home loss? And why is the Sprint Center considered Home for Kansas?

Here is the response I got:

The NCAA has an odd way of determining "home" vs."neutral" as far as designation goes.  The first game was considered a home loss because the NCAA determined it was a home game for Kansas; this determination often comes from who provides the refs, stat crew, etc ... for the game.
 
The Syracuse game was from a preseason tournament (CBE Classic) so it was considered neutral by the NCAA.
 
These are odd determinations, but we have checked on this issue specifically with the NCAA and they have confirmed what we have.

So Kansas does officially have the longest HOME COURT winning streak, but they do no have the longest streak as the HOME TEAM.

Posted by Robbie | Permalink | Comments

Are you as tired as I am of websites that are so out of touch with their users that you feel you have no say in the evolution of the site? Do you think you have good ideas for how to improve a website but really don't want to submit a form letter to god knows who or send an email to customerservice@company.com or info@company.com?

StatSheet is a one-man operation. There is no co-founder. There is no team. Most entrepreneurs and VCs will tell you this is a horrible idea. You have to have other people on the team. One person can't do it all, right? I'd agree with that except that it depends on how you define your "team". My team consists of anyone that has ever emailed me to give feedback or suggestions about the site. It also consists of anyone that has registered and contributed to the site. Most teams consist of a handful of dedicated people that get paid to work. My team consists of 1 dedicated person and thousands of part-time people that contribute for the fun of it.

When I talk to people about StatSheet, my biggest challenge is getting them to think about it different than you do 99% of the websites out there. Most people browse around the web kind of like browsing around a mall. You don't think you are empowered to influence your environment. Maybe you visit the Apple Store a lot and would really like a Starbucks cafe in the store. You never think to ask the store manager if they can see about adding Starbucks. It is the same on the web. Most of the time when you visit a website you feel confined to the features the company decided to create.

At StatSheet, I want, in fact I need, people to tell me what they'd like to see on the site. I don't have a big team of designers and product managers to sit around and think of new features to implement. Sure, I have a long list of stuff i've got in mind, but some of the best features I've implemented have come from ideas someone emailed me or IM'd me. Consider yourself a designer of StatSheet. What features would you like to see? Do you have an idea for something you've never seen before but think it would be cool? Don't limit your thinking to the realm of what's been done before. Go far beyond that. Would you like to see how players from Georgia do on the free throw line compared to players from Washington? Let me know. Do you think it would be neat to see a visual of contributions from bench players vs starters for the past 10 NCAA champions? Tell me about it.

The one big caveat in all of this is I can't implement every request I receive. But I've been surprised at the request-to-implementation ratio. It is actually quite high. I'd estimate that I implement at least 1 new thing a week based on a user request. Sometimes it is much more. But if I don't implement your request now, that doesn't mean I won't in the future. Every request goes into a list. If I see a similar request from another person, the priority goes up. Also, if you are hardcore StatSheet user the priority goes up. If you are very stat-savvy the priority goes up. If you are a blogger your requests go near the top.

Regardless of the priority, I'll listen to every request and you'll get a personal response from me. How many of my competitors can say that?

Posted by Robbie | Permalink | Comments

Last June, I started accepting user submissions for College Basketball Referee photos. This turned out to be very successful as I've received many photos from fans and the refs themselves. As a result, I'm going to open up all of StatSheet for user photo submissions. Eventually I'll create a form so you can upload them, but until then just send me an email. But first, you need to agree to this:

If you hold the copyright to a photo (e.g. you photographed it yourself) and would like StatSheet to be able to use it, you will need to release it under a free license, such as the GNU Free Documentation License or the Creative Commons Attribution or Attribution/Share-alike licenses, which allow everyone to use, alter, and redistribute your work for any purpose, including commercial use.

The vast majority of images on the internet are not acceptable for use on StatSheet - you should only provide an image if you are the copyright holder.

If you agree to these terms, please send an email to robbie@statsheet.com and attach the photo.

Thank you!

Posted by Robbie | Permalink | Comments

Back on Dec 12th, I wrote that StatSheet eclipsed the 500,000 page view mark for the prior 30 days. Now, just a month and a half later, I'm getting 750,000 page views per month. I'm still hopeful that I'll pass the million page view mark by March madness. Maybe I'll see a lot more than that!

The interesting thing is that the top 10 pages are college basketball or high school basketball related. That's good news that those sections are able to grow on their own, but bad news that I haven't done enough yet to the NBA and NFL sections. I've actually put those on hold for a couple of weeks while I finish up a NEW sport for StatSheet. That's right, I'm working on adding another sport right now and it has nothing to do with basketball or football. It's going to be pretty cool when I'm done and unlike anything else you can find for that sport on the web currently.

Posted by Robbie | Permalink | Comments

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