The Sports Kernel

  You've probably heard of Paige Bueckers. Maybe you've also heard of Sonia Citron and some of the other rookies from the 2025 WNBA rookie class. But, have you heard of Monique Akoa Makani? Undrafted rookie for the Phoenix Mercury who played in France most recently before the WNBA and started in the WNBA Finals in her rookie season! Crazy, right? It's not too often undrafted rookies start in the WNBA Finals and yet there has not been much attention from the media on her. For this project, I sourced data from Pro Basketball Reference, the WNBA website, and proballers.com. Game Score and Points by 2025 Playoffs Series Game score is a stat kept by Pro Basketball Reference analyzing overall performance by players. When looking at game score and points per game in each series the Phoenix Mercury played in the WNBA Playoffs, Monique Akoa Makani improved the bigger the stage was. Super impressive for a rookie to play better in higher pressure moments! There was a slight increase i...

Have you seen Netflix's new documentary on the SEC quarterbacks from last year titled, "SEC Football: Any Given Saturday?" Well if you haven't, it's fantastic and provides a valuable in-depth look at the competitiveness in the best conference in college football. This article is inspired by that Netflix show, as I wanted to provide a quantitative in-depth look at this year's SEC starting quarterback group. I collected data from Sports Reference CFB for an advanced statistic analysis at the QB's 2024 season. Then, I gathered my own collection of data by totaling each QB's 3rd down stats from ESPN's play-by-play for each game. This data was collected for each starting quarterback's last season in FBS play and I was able to compare completion percentage, sacks, and interceptions. By collecting the data myself, I was able to see trends in performance between conference and non-conference play as well as opponent difficulty. Third downs provide a ch...