From the Editor • Fall 2024
Katherine Comer, W’26
Former Editor-in-Chief
Dear Readers,
In 2023, the Wharton Sports Analytics Journal was revamped with the vision of becoming a platform where students can showcase their novel research and foster knowledge within the sports analytics community. A year and two excellent editions later, we’re delighted to continue building on this momentum.
As the new Editor-in-Chief, I’m excited to share the Fall 2024 edition of the Wharton Sports Analytics Journal with you. We continue to present the work of talented students from high schools and universities across the country, showcasing an array of analytical methods and diverse student backgrounds. This edition, we spotlight many sports rising in popularity across the world, including fencing, competitive robotics, and cricket.
As we look forward, I’d like to invite any high school, undergraduate, or graduate student doing research in sports analytics to submit their work to the journal. We would love to consider your submission for our next edition.
We hope you feel informed and inspired by the papers selected to be a part of this edition. As always, please let us know your thoughts and feedback as we strive to bring you the best of sports analytics.
I’m honored to head the journal as we continue to establish our name as a premier destination for student sports analytics research. We’re excited for what’s to come.
Sincerely,
Katherine Comer, W’26
Editor-in-Chief
Fall 2024
Expected Value Curves Don’t Tell the Full Story: Exploring NFL Draft Position Trade Value Curves
Wharton Sports Analytics Journal Open Access · ISSN 3070-4065 FALL 2024 Expected Value Curves Don't Tell the Full Story: Exploring NFL Draft Position Trade Value Curves AUTHOR Blake Zilberman, University of Pennsylvania Ryan S. Brill, University of Pennsylvania ABSTRACT Football analysts traditionally value a future draft pick position by its...Read More
College Basketball: An In-depth Study of the “Foul Up 3” Dilemma
Within college basketball, the decision to foul or not with a 3-point lead (the “foul up 3” dilemma) significantly impacts teams. A single fouling decision can directly determine the outcome of a game or even an entire season. Within this research project, I take a novel look at the “foul up 3” dilemma. As opposed ...Read More
To Go for Two or Not to Go for Two? A Statistical Analysis of the Biggest Prisoner’s Dilemma in the National Football League
In the National Football League, after a team scores a touchdown, they can kick an extra point or attempt a two-point conversion. Historically, teams have opted for the former, as it had a much higher likelihood of success. In 2015, however, the NFL instituted a rule to move the extra point distance back 13 yards, ...Read More
Beyond the Boundary: Revolutionizing the IPL MVP Index
Since its inception in 2008, the Indian Premier League (IPL) has attracted many of the world’s most skilled cricket players, offering a highly competitive arena for them to showcase their talents. Each season, the IPL awards the Most Valuable Player (MVP) title to the player who achieves the highest rating on the league’s MVP metric. ...Read More
Examining regional and familiarity bias of referees in USA Fencing Division I bouts
This study examines whether USA Fencing referees exhibit favoritism toward competitors from their designated regions, as frequent officiating within local areas could establish familiarity and potentially lead to unconscious bias. This issue is particularly relevant in foil and saber, where referees make subjective judgments on “right-of-way” during simultaneous hits, and in epee, where penalty decisions ...Read More
Clutch Matches Are In The Middle: Optimizing OPR with Weighted Least Squares
In this paper, we present an improvement to Offensive Power Rating (OPR), a popular linear regression model for assessing team performance at a given event. One key assumption of linear regression is the independence of the errors, but in the FIRST® Robotics Competition (FRC) context, this assumption is not exactly true. Using data from all ...Read More
Exploring various NBA draft value curves
NBA teams often trade draft picks. We are interested in the relative value of draft positions, which determines whether a team should accept or reject a trade, or which draft picks it should offer in a trade to make it fair. In this work, we explore various NBA draft value curves. We introduce a novel ...Read More
Calculating Win Probabilities of Any Matchup of Soccer Teams: A Whole-History Rating Approach for the Wharton High School Data Science Competition
This study presents a novel approach to evaluating soccer team strength and calculating win probabilities given any two matchups of soccer teams in the fictional North American Soccer League (NSL), whose data is provided for the Wharton High School Data Science Competition. Traditional win-loss metrics have many limitations, like failing to account for the strength ...Read More
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