Anson Winder and BYU's Success in 2014

I fully believe that Anson Winder is the key to BYU this season.  His lockdown defense has been sorely missed in BYU's losses.  I have watched as he sat on the bench multiple times in the 2nd half while BYU's lead was whittling away.  In BYU's biggest wins, I have seen him play and lock down folks in the 2nd half, as he did on the road against St. Mary's this past weekend.  In losses against Portland, Pacific, Oregon, and Pepperdine, he played a very limited role as BYU gave up large amounts of points in the 2nd half.

So, I sat down tonight with his stats and the results of BYU's games.  I ran 30 regressions trying to pinpoint what his impact means.  There were a few more variables I would like to have/include in the model, but this is a part-time hobby for me and I'm a full-time student, so I did the best I could.  The short answer: I had a hard time finding a meaningful relationship between Anson Winder's performance (and/or minutes played) and the outcome of the game.  The correlation between Anson Winder's minutes on the margin of victory was usually positive, but only one time was it a statistically significant variable.

To summarize what that one model predicts where it was significant: if BYU is going to win a road game, Anson Winder must play at least 17 minutes.  In BYU's road wins, he averaged 15.75 minutes.  In BYU's road losses, he averaged just 10.5 minutes.  The model wasn't too crazy then I suppose in terms of minutes and margin.  It only accounted for 27% of the variation in margin of victory (i.e. the adjusted R-squared for you stats geeks).  So, after 30 tries, I have one model that doesn't really say anything, and has limited predictive power, but it did kind of show that Anson Winder has a non-zero, non-negative impact on BYU's margin of victory (or defeat).  Of course, there were 29 models that said his impact was not distinguishable from 0...

Maybe I'm wrong, maybe BYU doesn't need Anson Winder's defense.  I think if I had a few more spare hours and a few more variables, I could find a way to quantify his meaning.  My gut tells me that BYU's defense sucks, but Anson Winder is a great defender and they could use him, particularly away from home.  Unfortunately, math and science tell me I'm wrong...BYU just loses road game after road game for some other reason besides him sitting on the bench...either way, I'm tired of watching the same guys lose games.  I'm ready to see more of Anson Winder, particularly when BYU has leads in the 2nd half!