Okay, so today I’m gonna walk you through how I pulled the box score for that USA vs. South Sudan basketball game. It wasn’t too bad, but definitely had a few bumps along the way.
First things first, I hopped online and started searching. I knew ESPN usually has box scores, so I typed in “USA vs South Sudan basketball box score ESPN.” Figured that was a good place to start.
Sure enough, the ESPN link popped right up. I clicked on it, and boom, there it was. The whole box score, staring me right in the face.
At first, I thought about just taking a screenshot, but nah, that’s too messy. I wanted the actual data, something I could mess with later. So, I started digging around the page source.
I right-clicked on the page and selected “View Page Source.” A whole bunch of HTML code showed up. Now, I’m not a coding whiz or anything, but I know a little bit about HTML tables. I figured the box score was probably in a table somewhere.
I used the “Find” function (Ctrl+F) and searched for “table.” Scrolled through the results until I found a table that looked like it had basketball stats in it. Lots of numbers, player names, you know, the usual box score stuff.
The problem was, the table was all messed up. The HTML wasn’t clean, and it was hard to figure out where each stat belonged. Plus, there was a bunch of extra stuff in the table that I didn’t need, like ads and navigation links.
Okay, new plan. I copied the entire HTML table into a text editor. Then, I started cleaning it up by hand. This took FOREVER. I deleted all the extra rows and columns that weren’t part of the actual box score. I also had to fix some of the formatting issues, like missing tags and weird characters.
Once I had a clean HTML table, I saved it as an HTML file and opened it in my browser. It looked much better, but still not perfect. The stats were all there, but they were in the wrong order and the column headers were missing.
So, I went back to the ESPN page and carefully copied the column headers. Then, I added them to my HTML table. After that, I rearranged the columns so they matched the original box score.
Finally, I had a clean, formatted HTML table with the USA vs. South Sudan box score. But I wasn’t done yet. I wanted the data in a CSV file, so I could import it into a spreadsheet or database.
I found a free online HTML-to-CSV converter. I pasted my HTML code into the converter and clicked “Convert.” It spat out a CSV file that looked pretty good. I opened it in my spreadsheet program and made a few minor adjustments to the formatting.
And that was it! I had the complete box score for the USA vs. South Sudan game, in a format that I could easily use for analysis or whatever. It took a while, and it wasn’t the most elegant solution, but it got the job done.
Lessons learned:
- Sometimes, the simplest approach is the best approach.
- Cleaning up messy data can be a pain, but it’s worth it in the end.
- There are lots of free online tools that can make your life easier.
Would I do it again this way?
Probably not. Next time, I’d try to find an API or a more structured data source. But hey, you gotta start somewhere, right?
