The horrors of school statkeepers

I work at a weekly where I cover the major school in town, and six small schools on the outskirts. The school in town is the only one that has an "official" statkeeper for boys basketball. On Friday, the big school had a road game an hour and a half away and an outlier had a Hall of Fame ceremony, so I went to the HOF thing.

Yesterday, I listened the archived radio feed to get some basic play-by-play from the big school's game, and there were several breakaway steals. Today, I got that stats. The statkeeper listed 30 assists, which is makes you raise an eyebrow anyway. Then I look at the shooting numbers...27. I wasn't a jerk about it, but I called her on it. Her reply? "I actually had 27, sorry."

We've disagreed on rebounding numbers in the past, but nothing ever this glaring. Anyone seen anything like this from a statkeeper before?

 

30 assists on 27 (field) goals? What is this, hockey?

 

That's what I thought. I'm guessing she counted it like they do in hockey, though...lol

 

Every time a soccer goalkeeper touches the ball, it's a save!

 

What do you usually see as a field goal-to-assist ratio for a team? Roughly 2-to-1? So on average, if they had 27 FGs, it'd be 13 or 14.

Assuming they had a hell of a night from their guards, it'd be roughly 20-21, tops, if they had passes working out the ass.

But 30 assists on 27 FGs? Way to bend the space-time continuum, statkeeper.

 

It's been 20 or so years now, but during my first time through with the Sacramento Bee, we held a pre-football season stat clinic on a Saturday in August and invited all the statkeepers. I recall it being a pretty good turnout and it went well. The kids learned some things.

Our prep editor at the time brought a tape of a 49ers playoff game, which we watched, paused along the way and took stats. One play still stands out to this day: Roger Craig caught a pass and ran for more yardage. A flag was thrown and holding called on the 49ers from the spot of the infraction. We stopped the tape and asked how many yards Joe Montana and Craig should get on the pass and catch. When we explained the penalty would take away X amount of the yards, one youngin' innocently popped, "But that's not his fault."

 

Had a mid-40s statkeeper at a major high school football school in our area who would give a quarterback completions and yardage for passes that were clearly drops by the receivers. I wish I was lying.

 

Hell, I've seen college games where one team only has 8-9 assists.

Newinthefield, doesn't the coach look at the stats at all? Most of the schools that I've covered, the coach will watch the film after the game and compile stats himself, even if they have statkeepers at the game.

 

I don't know if any of you have heard of something like this, but we have a local coach who pays a service to send his game tapes out and they compile all the stats for him.
It's not timely, but that's pretty damn efficent.

 

i used to convince the girl keeping stats for our high school team that the pass leading to the pass leading to the basket was an assist. she marked 'em down. of course, she was talking to three girls sitting next to her about what they were doing after the game and not always paying attention to the game.

once i started covering games, i never believed any stat kept by the team other than points.

 

I doubt he does. Especially not this season, because his team is underachieving and he barely even gives me a quote afterwards. He's really frustrated this season. I wasn't here last season, so I can't speak for it, but all of the stat sheets from last year are by the same chick so I assume he hasn't done it in the past. Dude does seem kind of lazy as it is.

I do notice there are dots in the official book (kept by the scorers table or an assistant) for assists and rebounds, and those often match up with what I have.

 

Keep in mind the girl probably didn't pay attention to basketball at all until a) her boyfriend made the team, or b) she needed extra credit in a course taught by the basketball coach.

The other night I was covering a girls basketball game where the regular scorer was out, so a player on the JV team kept the book. I started doing my check of my scoresheet after the game and every time I asked a question about point totals, it was "I don't have that." Finally walked over to the visiting team's scorerkeeper, an adult, and got what I needed in about five minutes. They even asked if I was going to call it in to their hometown paper, but refused.