Getting Started With the Stats Mess
First off, I grabbed the official stats stuff from the Olympic qualifier games. Big mistake. That data was sitting there like a mountain I gotta climb. Downloaded these huge files full of numbers. Point per game? Rebounds? Assists? All mashed together. My eyes started crossing just looking at it. Needed serious cleaning.
Wrestling the Spreadsheets
Cracked open my trusty laptop and fired up the spreadsheet thing. Spent hours just trying to make sense of the columns. Player names here, team names there, stats all over the shop. Filtered, sorted, pulled my hair out. Deleted useless columns nobody needs. Formatted dates that looked weird. Drank way too much coffee. Seriously, this step took forever and felt like digging a ditch. Not glamorous, just grunt work.
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Had to figure out for each team:
- Who scored the most points per game? Pure buckets.
- Who grabbed the most rebounds? Fighting under the basket.
- Who dished out the most assists? Setting folks up.
- Plus steals and blocks? Snatching the ball or swatting it away.
The Fun Part: Finding the Leaders
Finally, data was clean enough. Time for the fun stuff. Started crunching those numbers properly. Grouped everything by team, then hunted for the top dog in each category. Hit the sort button like crazy. Bam! Names started popping out. Saw some familiar superstar names right away leading points – felt good knowing my results matched what I kinda knew.
But man, rebounds were a different beast. Totally surprised me! Some names I didn’t expect, just hustling their hearts out grabbing boards every game. Highlighted those yellow so I could find ’em quick later. Set up different sheets inside the big file – one for points leaders per team, one for rebounds, you get it. Organization finally happened.
Making Sense of the Domination
Stared at the final leaderboards. Okay, cool, I know who leads each team now. But who’s really dominating? Looked deeper. Not just points alone. Who was way ahead of their own teammates? Like, leading points AND rebounds? Or points AND assists? Those guys stood out big time. They weren’t just leading one thing; they were carrying their teams on their backs in multiple ways. That’s domination. Made notes.
That Moment Your Stuff Dies
Typed everything up nice. Feeling proud. Clicked save. Computer froze. Dead. Black screen of doom. Power cord tripped? Felt like screaming. Just spent half my life on this! Slammed the power button. Booted it back up, sweating bullets. Where is the file? Found the save… turns out it was the auto-save from like 20 minutes ago. Lost some tweaks. Absolute rage. Learned my lesson: save constantly, like every 2 minutes. Maybe even annoyingly often.
Wrap Up and Why I Do This
Got it back together, finished the doc. My back hurt from hunching over. Checked the clock – way past dinner time. Why bother? Cause seeing who actually drives the teams behind the fancy highlights matters. Turns out a few players owned the qualifiers, not just scoring, but doing everything else too. That’s the real story the box scores tell if you wrestle ’em long enough. Stats ain’t just numbers; they show who’s working hardest when the pressure’s on. Now I gotta remember to hit publish tomorrow!
