Box Score
gophersports.com
Plus Minus:
+21 | T Bello |
+12 | Pitts |
+6 | Hubbard |
+5 | Powell |
+3 | Brunson |
+2 | Scalia |
0 | Adashchyk |
-14 | K Bello |
For this particular game, it's even more interesting to look at the +/- by quarter.
| Player | +/- Game | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | 4th |
| T Bello | +21 | +10 | +15 | -2 | -2 |
| Pitts | +12 | +18 | +11 | -11 | -6 |
| Hubbard | +6 | +10 | +13 | -2 | -15 |
| Powell | +5 | +8 | +7 | -7 | -3 |
| Brunson | +3 | +18 | +10 | -11 | -14 |
| Scalia | +2 | +18 | +10 | -11 | -15 |
| Adashchyk | 0 | n/a | +9 | -2 | -7 |
| K Bello | -14 | +8 | 0 | -9 | -13 |
If one had a "tale of two halves" theory about this game (which one should), the quarterly +/- data pretty much proves that theory. We're all pluses for all players in the first half, and all minuses for all players in the second half. Q.E.D.
On the other hand, one should not put too much stock in +/- statistics, since it doesn't carry much information. The main thing you can do with it is make a good guess as to who played with whom the most (especially the more fine-grained quarterly data).
For instance, it's fairly obvious (as if you didn't know that already) that Taiye and Kehinde didn't play with each other, but rather subbed for each other. Also, looking at 4th quarter +/-, well what happened there is that the whole quarter was pretty much a bad minus for the team, but players stuck in the game throughout the bulk of the 4th quarter got on the order of -14 or -15 for the quarter, whereas Taiye was (shall we say) "lucky enough" to foul out so as not to get the full credit (blame?) for the bad quarter, most of which +/- blame befell Kehinde who had to sub for her sister.
But (other than the "tale of two halves" and "who played with whom"), the +/- data (both for the game and quarterly) tells you pretty-much nothing about crucially important game facts. For instance, Scalia had a +2 for the game - kind-of a neutral middle-of-the-road plus/minus statistic. But in contrast to that impression (that might make a naïve statistics reader think that Sara had a run-of-the-mill boring game), Scalia (with 4 buckets in a row) was largely responsible for leading the charge in the first quarter (something that the first-quarter +/- at least gives us a hint towards, albeit not making it clear); and her couple threes in the (otherwise bad) fourth quarter pretty much saved us from the likelihood of ignominious defeat. Yet she gets a -15 for the fourth quarter along with everyone else who played most of that quarter. Sara's +2 for the entire game pretty much reflects the simple fact that she played the most minutes (and thus is the most correlated to the final score) in a game in which we barely squeaked by (+2) a team that we led by about 35 points at halftime.
Also, the plus/minus data (based on points) does not tell us that Kehinde was almost (but not quite) as productive in rebounding as her sister Taiye was (albeit, it is conceded that Taiye was a much more efficient scorer in this game - and perhaps generally).
So consider the +/- stats interesting, but not very useful for making any conclusions (unless you also saw or heard the whole game on TV/radio so that you already arrived at those conclusions from detailed knowledge of the game, and then the +/- data just provides some additional evidence to support your conclusions).
