As we continue to work towards our goal of covering college basketball's shot-clock era (since 1985-86), we have recently added player stats for the 1993-94 college basketball season.

That was the season in which Arkansas rode its 40 Minutes of Hell style to a national championship and National Player of the Year Glenn Robinson averaged an incredible 30.3 PPG (an average that no one has bested since).

You can check out the player leaders for this season here. Additionally, similar player leaderboards can be found for each conference page for the season. Or you can check out tables that have the player stats for every player in a given conference that season.

This addition has also allowed us to extend our leaderboards back to 1993-94 for many categories, such as the yearly national PPG leader since 1993-94 or the most career assists since 1993-94.

If you preferring making your own, customized, leaderboards, you can do so back to 1993-94 in the Player Season Finder.

Here's a few sample searches:

• Most PPG averaged by any player since 1993-94 (1993-94 Glenn Robinson: 30.3)
• Most RPG averaged by any player since 1993-94 (1993-94 Jerome Lambert: 14.8)
• Players with at least 2,000 career points and 1,000 career rebounds since 1993-94
• Players to average at least 2o PPG, 5 RPG & 5 APG since 1993-94

One more thing to note: Since we only have full team stats back to 1995-96, at this time we are not yet able to calculate player win shares for seasons before 1995-96.

After months of shuttle runs, bench presses, and anonymous sources attacking the culinary skills of 22-year-olds, the time has come for the 2016 NFL Draft. For some franchises, this is an exciting time. For others, it's an annual, Groundhog Day-esque nightmare. And for Pats fans, it's a good night to catch up on The Americans or Game of Thrones.

A lot of NFL conventional wisdom relates to the importance of taking certain players in certain rounds. Some people think you should draft interior lineman in later rounds. Others suggest that wide receivers taken in the 1st Round tend not to succeed.

So, to get ready for tonight, let's break the draft down by round, in order to examine two questions: Which teams have drafted the best in each round, and which positions are good targets in each round. Read the rest of this entry

The results have been announced for the Fourth Annual Greg Spira Award, which is given annually in recognition of the best published article, paper, or book containing original baseball research by a person 30 years old or younger.

This year's winner is Jeff Long, for his piece "Every Player in Its Right Place" for Baseball Prospectus (follow the link to read the winning submission).

Long’s winning piece featured the comparison of players using proprietary information through an arrangement with Ayasdi, an analytics company that uses machine intelligence software to analyze data sets. Looking at all 311 players with at least 250 plate appearances in 2014, Long analyzed the resulting topological maps, providing a new look at “the old ballgame,” those who play it at the highest level, and how many have more similar skill sets than would otherwise.

Second Prize went to Jon Feyen for "Analytics: The New Currency of Major League Baseball," the capstone project in his Sports Management graduate degree program at Cardinal Stritch University in Fox Point, Wisconsin.

Third Prize was awarded to Ben Diamond for "What is the Success Rate of Shoulder Surgery." At 18 years of age, Diamond is the youngest person to receive a prize in this competition.

The award is named after Greg Spira, a longtime member of the Society for American Baseball Research, who was the founder of the annual Internet Baseball Awards (IBA) in 1991. A graduate of Harvard University, Spira was also an early adopter and a pioneer in using the Internet to advance baseball analysis, particularly via Usenet’s groundbreaking rec.sport.baseball group and via BaseballProspectus.com.

Spira later contributed to many sports books as a researcher, writer, and editor, including the ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia, the ESPN Pro Football Encyclopedia, Total Baseball, and annual periodicals about the Mets. A lifelong and passionate Mets fan, Spira passed away on December 28, 2011 in his native New York City.

For remembrances of and more information about Greg, visit GregSpira.com. For more information about the award, visit SpiraAward.org. Thanks to everyone who submitted a piece in the 2016 competition and congratulations to all three prize winners!

With the NFL Draft rapidly approaching (thus bringing an close to the endless months of draft prognostications), now might be a good time to point out all the draft resources we have available at Pro Football Reference. You can check out:

• Top 2016 NFL Draft prospects, along with links to their college stats on our sister site College Football Reference.
• The current 2016 NFL Draft order which features a look at past picks at each slot, best picks at that spot, and the average value that pick has produced over the years.
• The draft trade value chart, showing which picks each team has and their values based on the Jimmy Johnson draft point system
• Our draft play index tool, which can help you break down the draft using tons of criteria - want to find first round linebackers since 1970?
• Our trade finder tool which has trade data since 1994 - use it to find stuff like all top-2 picks traded since 1994.
• We have full team draft histories as well as year-by-year draft listings since 1936.
• We also have yearly breakdowns of drafts by positions picked. This chart also shows Approximate Value for players picked, so you can compare draft strengths.
• We have results from the NFL Draft Combine and Pro Days back to 2000. You can run customized searches like best 40 time by a QB or just look at lists of results for a particular draft.

Hopefully these are of some assistance to you as you're tuned into the draft wondering if your team is going to pick the next Peyton Manning or.. not.

The range of outcomes when taking a QB with the first or second pick in the NFL Draft is enormous. This year's Super Bowl, a matchup of 2 QBs drafted with the 1st overall pick in their respective Drafts, showed just how high the ceiling can be for teams who draft a QB early. And, on the other hand, the Rams drafted a QB with the #1 pick just six years ago; now they've traded six picks, including two in the First Round, for the chance to do so again.

With the LA Rams and Philadelphia Eagles trading a lot for the right to pick first and second, it's exceedingly likely the first two players off the board will both be QBs. If either franchise nails the pick, they could be on the same path that took the Carolina Panthers to the Super Bowl this year. If they miss, we'll probably be seeing them back here in a few years. Read the rest of this entry

Everyone knows who the best team of the 1990s was. The 1995-96 Chicago Bulls had Michael Jordan, the greatest player of all-time, leading a cast that included two of the greatest defenders of all-time, a legendary sharpshooter, and a Hall of Fame coach. That team's 72-win regular season seemed like the modern equivalent of Joe DiMaggio's hit streak, a record so unfathomable that we all knew it would never be broken.

Except that this year, it was. The Golden State Warriors still have a title to win, but it's not too early to say that, if they are crowned NBA Finals' champs, they'll likely be remembered as the best team of the 2010s (at least, until the 2019 76ers, under Bryan Colangelo's leadership, win 74 games). Read the rest of this entry

The 2015-16 Golden State Warriors have earned a seat at the table in the discussion of the greatest teams in NBA history. They've set a new standard with 73 regular-season wins. Let's examine some of their other accomplishments this season:

• 6th-best SRS in NBA history: SRS stands for Simple Rating System and is a rating method that takes into account margin of victory and strength of schedule.
• 6th-best average margin of victory in NBA history: The Warriors outscored their opponents by 10.76 PPG, which was the best by any NBA team since the 1996-97 Bulls outscored their opposition by 10.80 PPG. However, the Warriors outscored their opponents by 10.0 PPG in the 1st three quarters of games alone, which is something none of the teams ahead of them on the list managed.
• Most road wins in NBA history: The Dubs went 34-7 on the road, surpassing the 33 road wins by the 1995-96 Bulls.
• 2nd-longest winning streak in NBA history: After winning their final four regular-season games in 2014-15, the Warriors ran off 24 straight wins to start 2015-16, coming up five games short of matching the 1971-72 Lakers' 33-game winning streak.
• Longest home winning streak in NBA history: The Warriors' 54-game home winning streak was enough to surpass the old record (44) by the mid-90s Bulls.
• 3rd-longest road winning streak in NBA history: Their 14-game road winning streak was good enough for a tie for the 3rd-longest in NBA history (just two games shy of the record).
• Best Effective FG% in NBA history: When accounting for the added value of the three-point shot, the Warriors surpassed the 2013-14 Heat as the best field goal shooting team in NBA history.
• Best True Shooting Percentage since at least 1983-84: The Warriors also bested the 2013-14 Heat for best True Shooting Percentage since 1983-84.
• Most 3-pointers made per game in NBA history: Last season the Rockets set this record by making 11.4 3-pointers per game. The Warriors made over 13 per game.
• 2nd-best 3-point FG% in NBA history: Incredibly, the same team that set the record for makes also managed to have the 2nd-best 3-point percentage in NBA history. It should be noted that the only team with a better 3-point field goal percentage, the 1996-97 Hornets, did so during a season in which the 3-point line was closer to the basket (22 feet all around).

On behalf of the entire Baseball-Reference team, we want to congratulate the users who contribute to The B-R Bullpen/SABR Encyclopedia! Thanks to your hard work, the encyclopedia now has over 80,000 pages.

If you've never made it over to that part of the site, the Bullpen is a wiki where users collaborate to contribute articles with information on baseball players, teams, events, games, and other nuggets from the vast history of the game. The Bullpen was started in 2005, and in 2014 it merged with the SABRpedia. You can think of it as a baseball-centric Wikipedia

Now's a great time to take a look at all the amazing content. From write-ups of notable events in baseball history from every day of the year, to amazing details about foreign greats, to the unheralded stories of modern independent leagues, there's a deep and vast range of information from all corners of the world of baseball. If you want to join the fun, you can also become a contributor. Learn more about how to contribute here.

So check it out! Just don't blame me if you suddenly find you've lost 2-3 hours exploring some forgotten corner of baseball history.

As Kobe Bean Bryant bids farewell to the NBA, you'll likely hear a lot about all of the great accomplishments during his Hall of Fame career. The buzzer beaters, the 81-point game, the rings, the All-NBA teams, the All-Defense teams, the MVP votes. His great achievements literally go on and on. It's why most consider him one of the greatest guards in the history of the game. These accomplishments should be acknowledged, and chances are you've been hearing about them a lot this week.

However, as Kobe says goodbye tonight, I wanted to look at a part of his legacy that has always fascinated me: the way that he has said goodbye in past seasons. Bryant is considered by many to be one of the all-time great postseason performers. The reasons are obvious: He has five rings and two NBA Finals MVPs. He's the third-leading scorer in NBA Postseason history. However, the ultimate test of a superstar player is how they perform with their back against the wall. So I decided to examine Bryant's performance when facing playoff elimination. I did the same for some players with whom he's often compared: Michael Jordan & LeBron James.

First, let me be explicit: By "facing elimination" I mean any playoff game in which a loss would mean the end of his team's season. So these are games in which his team entered with two losses in a best-of-5 series or three losses in a best-of-7 series.

It turns out Bryant faced elimination 19 times in his career. The table below shows his statistics in these 19 games, with links to the box scores for each (by clicking the date). You'll notice that, coincidentally, the first two elimination games of the Black Mamba's career were against the Jazz (the same team he will finish his career against tonight).

It should be noted that in 1997 and 1998, Bryant was a teenager coming off the bench for the Lakers and did not always see consistent minutes. LeBron and MJ were never in the playoffs as teens, so it's probably unfair to include those years in any comparison. That said, here's Vino's averages in the 17 elimination games he played after becoming a starter. We've also listed the averages for Jordan and James in such games (and have even thrown in Allen Iverson, as a control of sorts, for those who think MJ & LeBron set an impossible standard):

The first thing you'll note is that Bryant is the only of the four to have a winning record in these games (though that record falls to 9-10 if you include losses to the Jazz in his first two seasons). However, you'll notice his personal statistics are a cut below the other players on the list, especially Jordan and James. Of the four, Bryant ranks last a scorer, 2nd-worst in shooting efficiency, 2nd-worst in rebounding, and last in assists. Add it all up and Bryant's average Game Score when facing elimination is 14.7. Game Score was created by John Hollinger to give a rough estimate of a player's productivity for a single game. The scale is similar to that of points scored, so 40 is an outstanding performance and 10 is average. Needless to say, a 14.7 average Game Score in contests of this level of import is very pedestrian for a player of Kobe's standing. For further perspective, Bryant's average Game Score for his entire career is 17.4.

Michael Jordan, meanwhile, was predictably outstanding in these games as he averaged about 31 PPG, 8 RPG and 7 APG, with efficient shooting numbers. His Game Score average of 23.3 crushes Bryant's 14.7. LeBron James, contrary to his reputation, has even better numbers than Jordan in these games, ranking as the best scorer, rebounder and shooter of the group. His average Game Score of 23.7 is also the best. Allen Iverson, meanwhile, put up big scoring and assists numbers, but was the least efficient shooter of the group (though his TS% is close to Kobe's). Still, Iverson's 18.3 Game Score average puts him well ahead of Bryant.

In addition to the relative lack of individual success, the other striking thing about Bryant in these games is the magnitude of several of the losses. It's absolutely incredible that a player on so many great teams was also a part of so many season-ending meltdowns. Let's review:

• Game 5 of 1997 Western Conference Semifinals: Jazz 98, Lakers 93 in OT: This game wasn't a blowout, but it's the one that started it all. Bryant, an 18-year old rookie faced elimination for the first time and responded by putting up 14 shot in 29 minutes off the bench (his most FGA off the bench all season). Unfortunately, these attempts included four airballs late in the 4th quarter and in OT, as he tried to lead the Lakers after Shaquille O'Neal fouled out.
• Game 6 of 2003 Western Conference Semifinals: Spurs 110, Lakers 82: This one, obviously, did not need overtime. The Lakers bid for a four-peat came to a crushing end, as the Spurs handed them a 28-point defeat. Bryant scored just 20 points on 19 FGA and committed 7 turnovers
• Game 5 of 2004 NBA Finals: Pistons 100, Lakers 87: The 13-point final margin doesn't really scream "blowout", but the Lakers all-star team entered the 4th-quarter 23 points down and never really made a a game of it against a blue-collar Pistons team. Bryant shot 7-21 from the field as the Lakers were outscored by 19 points in the 45 minutes he was on the floor.
• Game 7 of 2006 Western Conference First Round: Suns 121, Lakers 90: After missing the playoffs in 2005, Bryant's return to the postseason was a 7-game classic in which the Lakers took three of the first four games from the Seven Seconds or Less Suns. Bryant led the Lakers with 24 points on 8-16 shooting, but attempted just 3 shots in the 2nd half.
• Game 6 of 2008 NBA Finals: Celtics 131, Lakers 92: The 2nd-biggest blowout in NBA Finals history, and still the largest in a Finals clinching game.
• Game 7 of 2010 NBA Finals: Lakers 83, Celtics 79: Sure, the Lakers won and Bryant earned NBA Finals MVP, but: 6-for-24.
• Game 4 of 2011 Western Conference Semifinals: Mavericks 122, Lakers 86: The Lakers, coming off of two straight NBA titles, see their season end via sweep. Perhaps it was a sign of things to come that The Triangle was unceremoniously buried by a barrage of (20) Dallas three-pointers. Bryant had more FGA (18) than points (17), and added five turnovers.
• Game 5 of 2012 Western Conference Semifinals: Thunder 106, Lakers 90: This game isn't really a blowout loss, but Mamba deserves credit for coming up big with 42 points on 18-33 shooting in what will go down as his last ever NBA Playoff game.

If you're counting at home, that's four losses by 28+ points when facing playoff elimination. Does Kobe have one more dramatic ending in store for us?

Attached below are tables showing the elimination games of the other players mentioned in this post.

With playoffs season upon us, we wanted to point out our 2016 NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs section. While it's mostly a shell right now, it will be a good bookmark for info as the playoffs get going. You can find a schedule & results for every game, stats for every skater, goalie & team, as well as leaderboards.

There are also series preview pages to see how opponents match up with each other.

If you're more of a history buff, you can also take a skate down memory lane by checking out past playoff seasons, such as 2015 or 1987. Stats for series are also available, such as the 2013 Stanley Cup Final. Links to all playoff seasons (and a list of champions, runners-up and Conn Smythe winners) are available here.

Other Stanley Cup Playoff resources include our all-time Leaders & Records section, list of frequent champions and our Player Season Finder tool. With the Player Season Finder, you can run restrict your searches to playoff games and run all sorts of custom queries such as leading goal scorers, assists leaders, short-handed goal leaders and many others.

Our Team Game Finder & Player Game Finder also contain options to restrict your searches to playoff games only. You can search for things such as the most recent playoff hat tricks & team records in their playoff openers. You can also run searches for things like worst playoff opening loss by the eventual Stanley Cup champ. For player game searches, it should be noted that our player game logs currently go back to the 1988 Playoffs.

We also have historical sections for Stanley Cup Playoff Comebacks, a game-by-game breakdown of every possible scenario in a 7-game playoff series and every overtime goal in Stanley Cup Playoffs history.

We hope you enjoy these features and please let us know what you'd like to see in the future.