Sunday, November 18, 2007

Analysis: Individual Stats after 2 Games

Since Pomeroy hasn't posted individual stats yet on his site (as of this writing), I thought I'd put up some numbers after the 1st two games. Caveats:
  • SMALL SAMPLE SIZE: only 2 games played, so the significance of these stats is sketchy, at best (there's a reason why KenPom doesn't have his posted).
  • METHODOLOGY: I make no warranty on these numbers. I hope I've done all of the calcs correctly, but I've certainly made a math error or two before. I do know that Pomeroy and I get slightly different numbers for team stats, due to differences in how we calculate team possessions. I use the method listed on his website, but he is apparently using something else these days. The differences there are negligible, however, and hopefully that's also true for these individual stats. I did make a change from the original formulae that Dean Oliver published for calculating possessions and ORatings, but I think Pomeroy would have made the same correction (it involves the factor to convert FTs to possessions used).
Offense
## Player Name % Min
% Poss
O Rat PPWS eFG%
OReb% TO% A Rate
21 Sapp, Jessie 65.0%
27.8%
130.7 1.47 75.0%
2.4% 21.9% 19.6%
3 Summers, DaJuan 61.3%
17.7%
98.2 1.08 54.2%
5.1% 22.0% 1.7%
2 Wallace, Jonathan 60.0%
19.1%
154.6 1.44 73.3%
2.6% 6.9% 15.0%
55 Hibbert, Roy 57.5%
34.7%
119.4 1.22 60.0%
19.0% 11.9% 2.5%
33 Ewing, Patrick 56.3%
12.3%
93.8 1.00 50.0%
8.3% 34.5% 5.2%
1 Macklin, Vernon 50.0%
10.8%
132.2 1.00 50.0%
12.5% 0.0% 2.0%
5 Rivers, Jeremiah 48.8%
6.8%
87.3 0.75 37.5%
0.0% 23.9% 3.9%
15 Freeman, Austin 43.8%
22.3%
85.1 0.92 46.2%
3.6% 24.3% 2.7%
4 Wright, Chris 37.5%
29.8%
66.6 0.91 40.0%
4.2% 42.6% 3.1%


Defense
## Player Name
DReb% Bl Rate St Rate
21 Sapp, Jessie
14.3% 0.0% 1.2%
3 Summers, DaJuan
11.1% 2.6% 2.6%
2 Wallace, Jonathan
2.8% 0.0% 2.6%
55 Hibbert, Roy
10.3% 16.8% 1.4%
33 Ewing, Patrick
4.5% 2.9% 4.2%
1 Macklin, Vernon
6.8% 9.7% 1.6%
5 Rivers, Jeremiah
5.2% 0.0% 1.6%
15 Freeman, Austin
9.7% 0.0% 0.0%
4 Wright, Chris
11.3% 0.0% 4.2%

Quick comments:
  • I cut off players with less than 20% of available minutes played (sorry, Messrs. Crawford, Wattad and Jansen).
  • Sapp has been using a lot more possessions than last season (27.8 vs. 18.7), but thanks to his hot outside shooting (5-9 3pt), this has been a good thing. He may be making his case for taking up the slack from Jeff Green's departure. He won't continue to shoot this well, but his turnovers should come down a bit as well. He's also leading the team in defensive rebounding, which won't keep up.
  • Summers is starting off the season a bit like last season, making turnovers without assists to go along. Otherwise, he's not using as many possessions as last year, but is otherwise playing just as you'd expect. Frankly, I'm most interested in seeing his defense improve this season.
  • Wallace can't keep this up. It's just not possible. It's not his shooting (6-10 3pt, 2-5 2pt) that is so extraordinary, but his lack of turnovers that have his ORating so high. Last season, Wallace turned it over on 24.8% of the possessions he used, worst on the team other than Rivers. Of the ~15 possessions that ended due to Jon so far this season, only one was from a turnover. I'll be thrilled if he can just keep his TO Rate below 15%, more than double where he's at now.
  • For all those who've clamored for 3 seasons for the guards to pound it inside to Hibbert, you're finally getting your wish. He's shooting 60% from the floor (15-25 2pts.), which is actually down from last year, and he's still making great decisions (only 12% TO Rate), cleaning up the offensive glass and protecting the paint (17% block rate!).
  • Ewing has 3 turnovers and is 0-2 from 3pt. Otherwise, he's doing exactly what you'd want. I'm not worried, as he's only played 45 minutes (small sample size, people).
  • Warning: TVBP (thinly-veiled brag post). I said last season that Macklin is making the case for more playing time with his tempo-free offensive stats. Good old Vern is not letting me down with no turnovers, strong offensive rebounding and mostly smart shooting (4-7 2pt.; 0-1 3-pt (!?)). If he just leaves the outside shooting to his teammates and pounds the defensive glass a bit harder, he'll be fine. His % Poss needs to come up, but that may be more difficult.
  • Rivers is still struggling with his shooting, but he's taking care of the ball a lot better than last season. He gets his minutes because of his defense anyway (see Gene Smith), and he's only taken 4 shots so far, so there's no reason to worry here.
  • The freshmen are playing like, well, freshmen. Freeman is struggling from the outside (2-8 3-pts.) and Wright is turning the ball over far too much (6 TOs in 14 possessions used). Frankly, I expected no better, and hope that they can continue to get quality minutes so they can develop in time for conference (and post-season) play.

2 comments:

  1. HoyaChris here:

    I expect Jon's turnovers to be way down this year (although I agree that the offensive rating is unsustainable.) He basically ceased playing the role of "point guard" on the team after the 'Nova loss last year and Jesse became much more of the primary ballhandler.

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  2. Yeah, while I haven't been able to watch a game yet this season, I was first alerted to this by Dan Hanner's blog, where he noted the same thing.

    It's a smart play by JTIII, but it also points to the opportunity for Wright this year - he's a strong outside shooter and defender by reputation, so if these hold up and he can take care of the ball, he can serve as a nice replacement (and eventual upgrade) to Wallace, while Rivers can back up Sapp.

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