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Thursday morning discussion fodder

CappyNU

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Mar 3, 2004
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There's a cool website called hoop-explorer.com that allows you to look at any team's stats based on an infinite amount of queries, such as what does team A look like when player B is on or off the court, etc. Figured I'd look at it to see how we've changed in the two games since Leach went down.

For this exercise, I looked at our stats against the top 200 teams in the country to remove some of the garbage games, and also filtered out garbage time possessions.

LineupOffenseDefenseeFG% O/DTO% O/DRebounds O/DFTRate O/D3pt Rate O/D3pt% O/D
With Brooks or Leach75th77th259th/203rd40th/82nd159th/215th278th/248th289th/193rd153rd/314th
Without both60th124th197th/363rd1st/15th306th/9th348th/333rd289th/49th190th/363rd
Lineup2pt% O/DMidrange Rate O/DRim Rate O/DMidrange%Rim%
With Brooks or Leach285th/119th7th/115th349th/213th62nd/206th315th/93rd
Without both182nd/352nd20th/268th313th/261st8th/341st289th/350th

So what jumps out here, keeping in mind that only 17% of possessions have come without the two players? Our defense has suffered greatly, as we are 2nd-worst in the country when it comes to opponents' eFG% (51.4% to 59.2%) and 3pt% (36.4% to 40.5%). We are also letting our opponents take significantly more 3s as a % of overall shots (38.7% to 43.8%), and somehow we have also let opponents shoot significantly better if they get to the rim (54.7% to 65.0%). On the upside, our turnover % has increased (19.3% to 22.1%) and our defensive rebounding has been lockdown (30.2% to 24.5%). But essentially if we aren't getting a turnover, teams are scoring at will.

On offense, we've actually improved a bit from an efficiency standpoint, though it is largely due to reducing our turnover rate (15.4% to 12.5%). We have a slight increase in eFG% (49.1% to 50.5%), driven by increases in our 2pt shooting% (48.1% to 50.8%) and getting more shots at the rim vs midrange. The bad is that our offensive rebounding has fallen off a lot (30.7% to 25.2%) and we get to the FT line even less than before (29.8% vs 25.6%). In conjunction with the lack of offensive rebounding, our ability to score off offensive rebounds or on transition opportunities has really tanked as well. Where we have improved our efficiency is on drives to the rim and backdoor cuts from the perimeter, and we have increased the number of post-up plays as well.

From an individual standpoint, here's what jumps out (again, small sample size caveat!):

Martinelli's usage rate goes from 26.2% with Brooks or Leach to 35.2% without both. Despite that increased usage, his shooting percentage is higher without them (48.7% to 50.8%), he gets significantly more rebounds (no surprise there, 6.7% to 11.9% on offense, 10.6% to 18.8% on defense), takes fewer 3s (19.7% to 12.9%) and midrange shots (47% to 41.9%) while doing a lot more himself instead of being assisted (48% assisted shots to 8% on midrange, 59% to 33% on layups). His defense has suffered though, unsurprisingly given the loss of the players and the overall team issues on defense.

Berry's usage rate has gone up, but just slightly (16% to 17.2%), though his shooting percentage has skyrocketed (46.8% to 62.5%) across the board. He's actually taking a smaller percentage of shots from 3 (68.3% to 56.3%) while his shooting percentage has gone from 36.1% to 44.4%. His 2pt shooting % has gone from 31.1% to 57.1% driven by creating off the dribble and shooting midrange shots.

Nicholson's usage has somehow gone down, from 12.4% to 9%, which may be driven by the fact that his offensive rebound rate has dropped from 10.1% to 5.1% and his FT rate has dropped from 92.6 to 50.0 though his FT% has gone from 54% to 75%.

Mullins has seen his performance improve quite a bit due to the increased playing time. He has cut his turnover rate from 15.8% to 5.1% despite the same usage rate, he gets to the line at a slightly higher rate (15.8 to 26.3 with his FT% going from 50% to 80%), though his shooting percentage has dropped quite a bit (61.8% to 47.4%) as he has taken more 3s (50% to 68.4%) and fewer shots at the rim (42.1% to 26.3%). His steal rate has improved from 1.2% to 3.1%, which is great, and he has also cut his fouls committed/40 in half (5.0 to 2.5).

Windham has also improved greatly, with his usage rate going from 13.3% to 23.1%, his shooting% going from 31.5% to 48.4% largely driven by an improvement in his 3pt shooting% going from 16.7% to 37.5%, his assist rate going from 10.1% to 25.5%, turnovers down from 20.5% to 12.2%, and fouls committed/40 down from 4.2 to 2.4.

Clayton, as has been mentioned, has been...bad. His usage rate is 27.6%, which is way too high, largely driven by his turnover rate of 22.7%, which is also just too high. His assist rate is good at 23.8%, but his shooting percentage is awful and he's a nightmare on defense.

Hunger...I guess his rebounding and blocked shots have improved in his limited minutes, but he is still an offensive black hole. Fitzmorris is not providing the offensive spark he had been in earlier games, and don't really have much to say about Gelo.

Anyway, just wanted to put some (a lot of) numbers out there on an off day.
 
Cool stuff. Obviously the sample size is too small to conclude anything decisive about the impact of Leach and Barney being gone, but the drop in defensive performance is obvious and expected given the youth at guard. All it takes on defense is for one guy to miss a rotation and the thing falls apart. We are seeing that. The good news is that this is (relatively) easily correctable.

It also a harbinger for next season, when our best remaining defenders (save Mullins) are gone. It is going to be ugly for awhile, but I think we should see significant improvement as the young guys (Gelo and KJ, and whomever is getting minutes among our new arrivals--probably Singleton, Bennerman, Kropp, just shooting from the hip).

Hunger. Sigh. I think he's a lost cause.
 
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Not much talk about Barkley. He hasn't left the bench after Barnhizer and Leach stopped playing.
 
The Clayton exercise is a very interesting one.

After the privilege of time to mull it over since the surprise start...
  1. I believe he burned his red-shirt because the coach and staff don't see him making a huge difference for us in 3 years. Otherwise why would you, with 8 somewhat meaningless games left? If he was seen as fairly important down the road, no way that shirt was burned.
  2. I believe he started because:
    1. OMG, teams now understand we don't have any experience handling the ball, let alone a pure PG.
    2. If we are going to burn the red shirt, let's have you start, maybe that will boost your confidence.
  3. I believe folks believed he did well because:
    1. He looks the part, his frame is strong, his handles are good.
    2. He looks confident, not much hesitation.
And when I say people believed he did well, it includes like 80% of the opinions expressed about it on this board (yes, I pulled that number out of my butt), the talking heads on TV who did not get tired of pointing out how much it did not look like he was red-shirting, and the coach, who gave him a 2nd starting job.

Now, small sample size, but the numbers are not good, we are not good with him. No surprise there because we are not good right now, period. But we are not good, with him either in comparison to having someone else out there. Which makes it even more puzzling he started, two times in a row.

I know some have posted why give up on the kid. That's not what this is about. I might not see him having a considerable ceiling, but I see him being able to develop into a serviceable B1G backup. This is about now, this moment in time. Give more minutes to our future.
 
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Clayton has played a grand total of 240 collegiate minutes and taken 37 shots. 9 of them went in. Perhaps we are all drawing conclusions prematurely? Myself included.

I trust he shows a lot more on both sides of the ball in two years of practice. We need him to figure out how to make that a game reality a week ago. Confidently taking wide open shots is a good start.

Gato is right that he looks the part and that influences armchair scouting reports based on nothing, as do the results of his last ten shots.

The coaches played him as a true freshman to spell Boo. Now they burned his shirt with only a shred of hope left for the postseason. Maybe they have more data to draw on?
 
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Guess I'm in the minority, but I haven't yet thought he really looks the part. Boo looked the part. From the first time I saw him come up the court in the first intra-squad came. Missed shots and threw it away sometimes, but fire in his eyes and full speed. Not saying he should be Boo, but I just don't see those aggressive qualities in him that I think you want your lead guard to have. Mac, Juice, Jitim, Rex, Billy all had it from the get-go. I think KJ has it too.
 
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