Analysis: Georgetown 58, Rutgers 46

Workmanlike, or perhaps desultory.

Both would seem to accurately describe Georgetown's 12 point win at the RAC this afternoon in Piscataway against struggling Rutgers. It certainly is an indicator of how far Georgetown has come in the last 3 1/2 years that a 12 point road win in conference can leave one disappointed, but the Hoyas have raised the bar and fans are happy to oblige.

Behind 11-23 3FG shooting, Georgetown closed the 1st half on a 10-2 run, then opened the 2nd half 14-5 to turn a 1-point deficit into a 16-point lead. Let's run the numbers:

	Offense				Defense
	1st Half	2nd Half	Total		1st Half	2nd Half	Total
Pace	29	29	58
Eff.	94.7	106.1	100.5		70.2	89.0	79.7
eFG%	58.7%	63.2%	60.7%		33.3%	35.5%	34.4%
TO%	21.1%	24.0%	22.5%		31.6%	20.5%	26.0%
OR%	8.3%	23.1%	16.0%		47.6%	52.2%	50.0%
FTA/FGA	0.0%	68.4%	31.0%		0.0%	29.0%	14.8%
FTM/FGA	0.0%	36.8%	16.7%		0.0%	12.9%	6.6%
Assist Rate	54.5%	44.4%	50.0%		55.6%	50.0%	52.6%
Block Rate	8.3%	14.3%	10.5%		13.0%	11.5%	12.2%
Steal Rate	7.0%	17.1%	12.1%		14.0%	13.7%	13.9%
2FG%	50.0%	42.9%	47.4%		30.4%	30.8%	30.6%
3FG%	45.5%	50.0%	47.8%		28.6%	40.0%	33.3%
FT%	-	53.8%	53.8%		-	44.4%	44.4%

*Neither team shot a FT in the 1st half


The 1st half was the least efficient offensive 1st half for Georgetown this season (previously, that honor went to the Alabama game), thanks mostly to a poor showing on the offensive glass, where the Hoyas normally average an OReb percentage of 35%. Georgetown collected a total of 4 offensive rebounds on 25 opportunities.

While the offense improved in the 2nd half, the defense did worse. But, thanks mostly to the Scarlet Knights terrible shooting, the game was never in doubt. Rutgers came in with an eFG% = 44.2% (315/341 teams), so this was not a surprise, but the OR of 50%(!!) certainly was, especially as they came in as a middle-of-the-road offensive rebounding team (34.4%, 139/341). I suspect that Georgetown's recent struggles with rebounding may have encouraged Fred Hill to have his team crash the offensive glass, and frankly that was about all that went well for Rutgers today.

Today's highlight (courtesy of Jon Wallace):



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More on Rebounding

Today's game, along with the Memphis game, most prominently exposed a weakness of this Georgetown team, namely rebounding. I thought I'd take a further look at what tempo-free stats can tell us about rebounding performance.

First, allow me to introduce yet another stat to the canon, Total Rebounding %. This is simply the sum of OR% and DR%, divided by 2 (as I normally report opponent's OR%, DR% is the equivalent of [1- Opp OR%]). If 2 teams are equally adept at rebounding, you'd expect each to have Tot. Reb. = 50%, regardless of how many times each team missed a shot. And therefore, if your team has a Tot. Reb. > 50%, they did a better job than their opponent on the glass that game.

Here's a plot of both last year's and this year's Tot. Reb. %, both plotted against month and day.

That egregiously high data point from last season was the Seton Hall game, while the lowest point this season was today's game against Rutgers. Through the first eight games of this season, the rebounding effort was comparable to last season, but the Memphis, Fordham and now Rutgers games are all poorer than anything seen last year.

But comparing total rebounding % from game to game may be a bit too simplistic; after all, getting beat on the boards 60% to 40% by Memphis is one thing, but is it on a whole 'nother level when Fordham does it?

We can account for this by using KenPom.com's offensive and defensive factors stats to produce something analogous to my performance stats, but for rebounds. I can work out what we would expect each team to allow for total rebounding against Georgetown, and compare this to what Georgetown actually got. That is to say:

Tot. Reb. Performance = Total Reb. % / [(Ave. Tot. Reb. % + Opp. Ave. Tot. Reb. % Allowed)/2]

Here's the same plot as above, but now we're looking at Tot. Reb. Perf. rather than Total Reb. % (note that Tot. Reb. Perf. is also a percentage, where 100% would mean that your team rebounded as well as expected, higher = better, lower = worse).

While the two plots look similar, there are some subtle improvements. Now we can see that last season, Georgetown was normally quite strong on the glass and never rebounded less efficiently than 89% of expected. At Seton Hall, the Hoyas rebounded at 152% of expected efficiency, and, yes, that 89% was the Final Four game against Ohio St.

Meanwhile, the last 2 games this season have truly terrible (Fordham = 80%, Rutgers = 66%). For the Memphis game, Georgetown rebounded at 86% of expected efficiency, which is still poor but no where near as bad as today's effort; the 4th, and earliest, bad rebounding game was against ODU, where just about everything else went right.

As always, I must remind my reader(s) that the stats data I'm using for this year are subject to change as the season progresses - who knows, maybe Fordham and Rutgers will suddenly turn out to be great rebounding teams (I doubt it).

To sum up, if you are worried about how well the Hoyas have been rebounding the ball, you've got every right to be.