Hoya +/-, and some odds and ends

Georgetown Individual +/-

The stats available here on Hoya Prospectus got a big boost tonight, thanks to the hard work of HoyaJake (formerly known as GUJake) of HoyaTalk. He's gone through the play-by-play data for all games this season (except @ Old Dominion) and worked out each player's +/-. Plus/minus is the number of points scored by the Hoyas, less the number of points allowed to the opposition, while a player was on the court - very similar to +/- in hockey. I'll keep the stats on a separate page, as he provides them. There is also a permanent link to this page on the right side bar.

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Other news from around the web:

• Georgetown plays 2 this weekend (I'm off Monday and Tuesday, so I'm treating it as a four-day weekend). See HoyaSaxa.com for all the previews and pertinent links you could ever want.

• There was a Georgetown sighting on Basketball Prospectus - Ken Pomeroy has a followup article on players whose possession usage is much different than last year, and Jessie Sapp is one of three cited as having greatly increased Poss %. Here's the pertinent section:

  Jessie Sapp, Georgetown: There was some concern over who would pick up the slack left by Jeff Green. It turns out that just about all of it has been taken by Georgetown's starting two-guard, who has used 27.5% of the Hoyas' possessions while he has been on the floor, compared to just 18.7% last season. Amazingly, he's been more involved in the offense than the ultra-efficient Roy Hibbert. However, while Sapp's role has increased, his playing time has decreased from 32.8 minutes per game last season to just 22.0 this season. Freshman Austin Freeman has taken up some of the minutes, and an injury that kept Sapp out for most of the Fairfield game accounts for a bit more of the shortfall. With the increased responsibility, Sapp has been more efficient as well, seeing his eFG% increase from 49.3% to 59.0%. The improvement can be attributed to his 44.1% shooting from three-point range. Given that Sapp was a career 27.3% shooter from that range entering this season, and that he's made merely 64.4% of his free throws in his two-plus seasons at Georgetown, his chances of staying over 40% by season's end aren't good. Sapp appears to be an outlier who will fall back once his shooting suffers against the better competition on the Hoyas' schedule, and the necessity of getting Hibbert more touches increases.

  Just a couple of additional comments to this excellent analysis:
  
  • If you throw out the Fairfield game, Sapp is averaging 24.0 minutes/game, not a lot more than his season average. After getting 33 minutes in the season opener against William & Mary, he hasn't played 30 minutes in any game - a tribute to the play of Austin Freeman, Jeremiah Rivers and, more recently, Chris Wright.
  
  
  • Generally, G'town players have been better offensively in the 1st halves of games. Part of this is from the Memphis game, but this was true before last Saturday. It could be because of a few routs led to sloppy endgame play, perhaps there are other reasons. None have been so much worse in the 2nd half than Sapp. Here's a list of the 9 regular players, ranked by the differential between 2nd half & 1st half ORtg:
    
    

    Player	ORtg (2nd - 1st)
    Wright, Chris	22.1
    Freeman, Austin	5.3
    Macklin, Vernon	2.2
    Rivers, Jeremiah	-5.8
    Wallace, Jonathan	-10.8
    Ewing, Patrick	-11.5
    Hibbert, Roy	-12.4
    Summers, DaJuan	-17.4
    Sapp, Jessie	-37.0

    
    Why is Sapp having such trouble? His TO% increases from 18.3 to 39.2% from the 1st to 2nd half (Wallace also struggles on a smaller scale, going from 10.6 to 27.0%).

• If you haven't had a chance yet, check out the newest craze hitting the internet, the Talking Hoya Podcast. There's only been one so far (post-Memphis game), and I understand the founder (P. Grant) is looking for a co-host.