Recap: Georgetown 75, UMCP 48

In a long awaited match-up of local rivals, the good guys won in a landslide. I hate to bump SFHoya's great post on rebounding off the top of the page, but progress waits for no man.

Let's run the numbers:

TEMPO-FREE BOX SCORE
 
.            Visitor                         Home      
.            GU                              Maryland 
.            1st Half  2nd Half   Total      1st Half  2nd Half   Total
Pace            30        33        63

Effic.        126.2     111.4     118.4        66.4      84.3      75.8

eFG%           60.0      60.4      60.2        36.0      32.8      34.2
TO%            19.9      30.1      25.3        26.6      15.1      20.5
OR%            46.2      45.5      45.8        22.2      39.1      31.7
FT Rate        40.0      50.0      44.9        12.0      28.1      21.1

Assist Rate    69.2      38.5      53.8        37.5      30.0      33.3
Block Rate     11.1       9.5      10.3        25.0       0.0      13.8
Steal Rate      3.3       6.0       4.7         0.0       3.0       1.6

2FG%           56.2      76.9      65.5        33.3      42.9      38.5
3FG%           44.4      27.3      35.0        28.6       9.1      16.7
FT%            80.0      66.7      72.7        66.7      77.8      75.0  

The game was certainly played at the Hoyas' pace - this was the slowest game of the year for Georgetown, 2 possessions slower than the slog against WSU.

The first half was a defensive clinic for Georgetown. The Terrapins struggled greatly on 2-pt shots (33.3%) and couldn't corral many of their misses (4 OR's on 18 available misses). The Terps also turned the ball over on more than 1 in 4 possessions, although the low Hoya steal rate (3.3%) indicates that many of Maryland's TOs were self-inflicted.

Meanwhile, the Hoyas made 4-9 3FGs in the half, led by J. Sapp's 2/3 3FG shooting, crashed the offensive glass (6/13 available missed shots) and finally kept their turnover rate below 20% for the first time in a half since Drexel.

Now to be fair, Maryland came into the game well-regarded on defense, but not particularly strong offensively, except for a low TO Rate and good FT shooting. The Terps managed only 3 FTA in the 1st half, so even extraordinary marksmanship from the stripe would have been no help.

The 2nd half was more of the same, as the Hoyas eventually stretched the lead out to 73-38 at the under-8:00 media timeout before the game devolved into garbage time. The end of the bench managed to turn the ball over in 7 out of the last 12 possessions, which will certainly give JTIII something to work on before next weekend's game against American.

One further point - something that I will continue to point out so long as G'town keeps it up - the Hoyas made 2/3 2-pt jumpers in the game, while the Terps made only 6/24 2-pt jumpers.

INDIVIDUAL NET POINTS STATS

GU                    Off    Poss           Individ     Def             Individ                
Player                Poss   Used    ORtg   Pts Prod    Poss    DRtg   Pts Allow   Net Pts
Summers, DaJuan        26     8.2   135.7    11.1        26     50.6      2.6       +8.4
Freeman, Austin        46     9.4   178.1    16.7        45     73.8      6.6      +10.1
Monroe, Greg           43     8.4   133.3    11.2        42     74.5      6.3       +4.9
Wright, Chris          50     7.6   126.5     9.6        48     72.5      7.0       +2.7
Sapp, Jessie           35     9.0   106.9     9.6        37     51.6      3.8       +5.8
Mescheriakov, Nikita   19     4.2     9.3     0.4        19     69.4      2.6       -2.2
Jansen, Bryon           2     0.0     -       0.0         1    400.0      0.8       -0.8
Clark, Jason           38     5.3   102.0     5.4        39     78.8      6.1       -0.8
Vaughn, Julian         20     5.0   115.9     5.8        21     89.7      3.8       +2.1
Sims, Henry            16     1.0   200.0     1.9        16     95.0      3.0       -1.1
Wattad, Omar           20     3.0     0.0     0.0        21     88.9      3.7       -3.7
TOTALS                 63    61.0   117.6    71.7        63     76.2     46.4      +25.3

Maryland              Off    Poss           Individ     Def             Individ             
Player                Poss   Used    ORtg   Pts Prod    Poss    DRtg   Pts Allow   Net Pts
MILBOURNE, Landon      39     8.7    55.0     4.8        40    118.9      9.5       -4.7
MOSLEY, Sean           42     4.9    83.7     4.1        43    137.2     11.8       -7.7
DUPREE, Braxton        33     6.0    69.1     4.1        33    125.6      8.3       -4.1
HAYES, Eric            48     7.0   118.4     8.2        48     99.9      9.6       -1.3
VASQUEZ, Greivis       41     9.8    41.6     4.1        40    151.2     12.1       -8.0
KIM, Jin-Soo           16     4.8    94.5     4.6        16     64.0      2.0       +2.5
BOWIE, Adrian          39    12.4    73.8     9.1        38    112.9      8.6       +0.6
PEARMAN, David          2     0.0     -       0.0         2      0.0      0.0       +0.0
TUCKER, Cliff           5     0.0     -       0.0         5    140.0      1.4       -1.4
BURNEY, Jerome         13     3.3    84.4     2.8        13     86.0      2.2       +0.5
GREGORY, Dino          15     4.0    58.2     2.3        15     90.7      2.7       -0.4
NEAL, Dave             22     1.0   243.8     2.5        22    103.8      4.6       -2.1
TOTALS                 63    61.9    75.4    46.7        63    119.0     72.8      -26.2    

J. Sapp had a nice 1st half offensively, but was quiet in the 2nd half, with only two missed FTs (thanks to Gary Williams' technical foul). However, his main assignment for the evening was to harrass G. Vasquez (1/3 2FG, 0/4 3FG), and the stats appear to have captured this, as he ended up with an excellent D. Rating for the game.

C. Wright played strong offensively through most of game, perfect on 2FGs (with some nice drives) and FTs, and only missing on his 2 3FG attempts. His stats are a bit suppressed by some sloppy play during garbage time, where he missed a 2FG and a committed a turnover. He'll need to practice his blowout-win offense this week.

D. Summers sat a bit with foul concerns in the 1st half, and was the first started to the bench as the game got out of hand in the 2nd half, so his possessions were limited. He was able to ride a hot outside shooting hand (3/5 3FG) to a nice offensive day, although at least one shot from inside the arc would have been nice. It will be interesting to see if Summers can return to his aggressive play from earlier in the tournament, or if his recent success from deep will encourage him to stay on the outside in the offense.

G. Monroe kept up his steady play for the fifth game in a row. His FT shooting will be something to keep an eye on (5/9 against Tennessee, 2/4 tonight). Yeah, that's about all I could come up with for a criticism.

And, the player of the game goes to . . . Austin Freeman, who was his usual ultra-efficient self on the offensive end. In addition to missing only 3 of 10 shots from the field, he also had 2 assists and 2 ORebs. He appears to be comfortably moving into the possession usage range of 20+% without any apparent drop-off in production.

Other players of note:

• J. Clark had the most possessions of the bench players tonight - he rebounded strongly, but was a bit careless with the ball (2 TOs / 5.3 poss used).
• J. Vaughn had a quietly nice offensive game
• O. Wattad came back down to earth after Friday's hot shooting
• H. Sims finally had a 100+ ORating game (made a lay-up, missed a 3FG, got an offensive rebound)
• N. Mescheriakov is still in search of his shooting touch, but I thought he looked more comfortable out there (that's something).
  

HD BOX SCORE

GU vs Maryland
11/30/08 5:30 p.m. at Lake Buena Vista, Fla. -- The Milk House
Final score: GU 75, Maryland 48

GU                      Min   +/-   Pts  2PM-A 3PM-A FTM-A  FGA    A    Stl    TO   Blk    OR    DR   PF
Summers, DaJuan        16:18  +26  14/43  0- 0  3- 5  5- 6  5/19  2/11  1/26  2/26  0/18  0/ 5  3/19   2
Freeman, Austin        28:58  +27  18/61  6- 8  1- 2  3- 3 10/38  2/14  0/45  1/46  0/27  2/19  4/25   2
Monroe, Greg           27:27  +29  12/59  5- 8  0- 0  2- 4  8/35  2/15  0/42  1/43  1/29  1/16  5/27   1
Wright, Chris          31:14  +23   8/62  3- 4  0- 2  2- 2  6/42  5/20  1/48  1/50  0/29  0/21  3/29   4
Sapp, Jessie           23:20  +35  10/57  1- 2  2- 3  2- 4  5/26  1/15  1/37  3/35  0/23  1/ 8  3/25   3
Mescheriakov, Nikita   11:45  - 4   0/11  0- 1  0- 1  0- 0  2/12  0/ 4  0/19  2/19  0/12  1/ 9  2/14   1
Jansen, Bryon          00:53  - 4   0/ 0  0- 0  0- 0  0- 0  0/ 0  0/ 0  0/ 1  0/ 2  0/ 1  0/ 0  0/ 1   0
Clark, Jason           23:59  + 6   5/36  1- 2  1- 3  0- 0  5/31  1/11  0/39  2/38  1/25  2/20  4/28   2
Vaughn, Julian         12:33  - 2   6/16  2- 3  0- 1  2- 3  4/14  1/ 4  0/21  1/20  1/10  1/ 9  1/14   2
Sims, Henry            09:58  - 5   2/10  1- 1  0- 1  0- 0  2/14  0/ 2  0/16  0/16  1/ 8  1/11  1/ 7   0
Wattad, Omar           13:35  + 4   0/20  0- 0  0- 2  0- 0  2/14  0/ 8  0/21  2/20  0/13  0/ 7  0/16   4
TOTALS                 40:00       75    19-29  7-20 16-22    49 14/26  3/63 16/63  4/39 11/24 28/41  21
.                                        0.655 0.350 0.727       0.538 0.048 0.254 0.103 0.458 0.683

Maryland                Min   +/-   Pts  2PM-A 3PM-A FTM-A  FGA    A    Stl    TO   Blk    OR    DR   PF
MILBOURNE, Landon      25:52  -18   3/32  1- 5  0- 2  1- 3  7/30  2/12  0/40  0/39  1/16  1/18  2/15   2
MOSLEY, Sean           28:31  -28   4/29  2- 5  0- 1  0- 0  6/35  0/10  0/43  1/42  1/19  1/24  0/16   2
DUPREE, Braxton        21:18  -18   6/24  3- 6  0- 0  0- 0  6/27  0/ 8  0/33  1/33  0/14  0/17  0/10   2
HAYES, Eric            29:28  -22  11/31  2- 3  1- 3  4- 4  6/43  0/ 8  1/48  3/48  0/26  0/34  3/23   0
VASQUEZ, Greivis       25:18  -30   2/31  1- 3  0- 4  0- 0  7/36  4/12  0/40  4/41  0/17  1/25  1/11   1
KIM, Jin-Soo           09:54  + 2   5/12  2- 2  0- 2  1- 1  4/15  0/ 2  0/16  1/16  0/ 8  1/11  0/ 7   1
BOWIE, Adrian          24:02  -10  11/34  3- 8  1- 4  2- 2 12/38  0/ 8  0/38  2/39  0/18  1/27  2/17   1
PEARMAN, David         01:31  + 4   0/ 4  0- 0  0- 1  0- 0  1/ 3  0/ 1  0/ 2  0/ 2  0/ 0  0/ 2  0/ 0   0
TUCKER, Cliff          03:57  - 2   0/ 5  0- 1  0- 0  0- 0  1/ 5  0/ 2  0/ 5  0/ 5  0/ 1  0/ 3  0/ 1   0
BURNEY, Jerome         08:02  - 2   2/12  1- 3  0- 0  0- 0  3/11  0/ 3  0/13  1/13  2/ 9  2/ 7  2/10   1
GREGORY, Dino          08:09  - 5   1/ 9  0- 2  0- 0  1- 2  2/17  0/ 2  0/15  0/15  0/ 8  3/16  1/ 6   2
NEAL, Dave             13:58  - 6   3/17  0- 1  1- 1  0- 0  2/25  0/ 4  0/22  0/22  0/ 9  2/21  1/ 9   3
TOTALS                 40:00       48    15-39  3-18  9-12    57  6/18  1/63 14/63  4/29 13/41 13/24  15
.                                        0.385 0.167 0.750       0.333 0.016 0.222 0.138 0.317 0.542

Efficiency: GU 1.190, Maryland 0.762
eFG%: GU 0.602, Maryland 0.342
Substitutions: GU 23, Maryland 23

2-pt Shot Selection:
Dunks: GU 2-3, Maryland 1-1
Layups/Tips: GU 15-23, Maryland 8-14
Jumpers: GU 2-3, Maryland 6-24

I haven't gotten around to the team and individual stats pages yet after all, but I will get them running soon.

The Problem of Rebounding

There's understandably a lot of teeth-gnashing about the Hoyas' rebounding this year. It's been abysmal, or at least it seems that way to most people watching, including myself.

In addition, there's a perception that Thompson's teams have never rebounded well. A perception that the offense cripples rebounding; that Thompson's choice of personnel has left the team lacking in the ability to grab boards.

Has Georgetown under Thompson really been that poor at rebounding? What are the possible reasons why this would be true? Is it the result of personnel choices or strategic choices or both? If the team has rebounded well at some time, what was different?


How do you measure rebounding?

The most commonly used measure of rebounding is rebounding margin. There's a number of problems with this:

• Rebounding margin mixes offensive and defensive rebounding. Rebounding margin nets offensive and defensive rebounds for both teams, but the problem is that offensive and defensive rebounding are related, but different skill sets. Good offensive rebounding tends to be the result of strong individual effort. Defensive rebounding is much more of a team effort because it is much more highly dependent on all players establishing proper position. Good offensive rebounders often rely more on athleticism; defensive rebounders on position. More importantly, players rebounding on defense have positional advantage -- and rebounding margin doesn't account for that.

• Rebounding margin fails to compensate for differences in opportunity. There's an opportunity for a rebound on every missed shot. But not every possession ends on a missed shot. Some end on a made shot; some on a turnover. Since a team is more likely to get a defensive rebound than an offensive one, rebounding margin can make a team appear worse or better than it is simply because a team has more offensive opportunities than defensive or vice versa. For example, a team that forces a ton of turnovers will have less defensive rebounding opportunities and a lower rebounding margin than you'd expect. (Georgetown under Thompson would actually have an inflated rebounding margin over the years -- a negative turnover margin and better shooting than opponents means many more defensive rebounding opportunities).

• Rebounding margin fails to account for pace. More possessions means more opportunities for rebounds. This will not make a good rebounding team look poor, but a faster pace will make a good rebounding team look even better under rebounding margin.

A much better statistic is rebounding percentage. It is simply the number of rebounds a team gathers divided by their opportunities to grab a rebound. It is split into offensive and defensive rebounding percentage so as to avoid the problems of rebounding margin. All the rebounding percentages here will be from www.kenpom.com unless otherwise noted.


What is a good rebounding percentage? Poor? Average?

In 2007-2008, the average offensive rebounding % -- the % of shots the offense got an offensive rebound on -- was about 33%. The best offensive rebounding team in the nation was North Carolina at over 42%; the worst was Air Force at 20%.

About 70 teams (of 341) were under 30%. Only about 60 were over 36%. So 210 of the 341 teams -- about 2/3 -- were within 3% either way of average.



For defensive rebounding, obviously the average is the reverse -- 67% is about the average. The best defensive rebounding team last year was Utah at 75%. Only two teams were at 60% or lower -- Maryland Eastern Shore and Kennessaw State. Just like offensive rebounding, 2/3 of the teams were between grabbing 64% and 70% of defensive opportunities. (Note: Pomeroy's stats state defensive rebounding % as opponents' offensive rebounding %. I've just flipped the numbers.)



Think about those for a second. On average, 1 in 3 rebounds are grabbed by the offense. How often is the scream "Box out!" heard at the first offensive rebound allowed? Most fans treat defensive rebounding like a save opportunity -- something that should be converted at 100%. It's simply not going to happen.

The rebounding percentages Ken Pomeroy calculates aren't adjusted for competition. So while we'd obviously expect Georgetown to be well above average in terms of all 341 DI teams, we're also facing a Big East schedule that most of those teams aren't playing.


So, has Georgetown really been that bad? Have they always been that bad?

This year, they're pretty bad.

More of the focus from fans has been on the defensive rebounding. Before the Tennessee game, the Hoyas were only grabbing 63% of defensive rebounds -- ranking 264th in the nation. The Tennessee game didn't help -- they only grabbed 56% of all possible defensive rebounds.

What's the difference between 60% and an average 67%? Let's say there are about 45 opportunities for a defensive rebound for the Hoyas in a game. That's actually been high for this season -- but even with 45 opportunities, the 7% difference there is about three rebounds a game.

Of course, we expect them to be better than average, but improvement here is likely around five points per game. That's huge over the course of the season, but it isn't the only reason we lost to Tennessee.

Just as disturbing is the offensive rebounding. Before the Tennessee game, the Hoyas were only grabbing 25% of our possible offensive rebounds, ranking 316th. The Tennessee game was an improvement at 30%, but still awful. Our previous season low was seven and half percentage points higher. A great offensive rebounding team would be 15% points higher.

So Georgetown is not a good rebounding team. But have the Hoyas always been that bad?

Year	O Reb %	O Reb Rank	D Reb %	D Reb Rank
2005	34%	92	65%	287
2006	35%	70	71%	38
2007	40%	8	66%	191
2008	34%	132	67%	157

Some interesting notes:

• The Hoyas haven't been a bad rebounding team under Thompson. Georgetown has been an average rebounding team overall during Thompson's tenure. Only two years have they been below average on either stat (of eight) -- in defensive rebounding in Thompson's first year and just slightly in defensive rebounding in the Final Four year.
• They've been a good -- or great -- rebounding team twice. Offensive rebounding during the Final Four run was fantastic, and defensive rebounding the prior year was very good as well.

What has caused the mediocre defensive rebounding?

Well, one thing that hasn't caused it is the offensive system. It's amazing to me that people blame the mediocre defensive rebounding on the offense, but they do.

But several defensive choices could have caused it. And number one on the list has to be the usage of zone defense.

It is no secret that conventional wisdom states it is much harder to defensive rebound out of a zone. A player isn't guarding an individual player so it is simply harder to body up.

How much teams pay man to man and play zone is not publicly available information, so there was no systematic way to verify this or quantify this. But we can look at Syracuse.

Syracuse played the 2-3 almost exclusively over the past five years (and longer). From 2004-2008, which is the five years where we have complete rebounding numbers from Pomeroy, they have had a slew of quality rebounding personnel -- Craig Forth, Hakim Warrick, Paul Harris and Arinze Onuaku.

That has been reflected in their offensive rebounding percentage -- 38% over that time period. That ranked an average of 33rd in all of college basketball, despite playing conference games against NBA frontlines.

On the other hand, their defensive rebounding % was just 65% and ranked 240th. That's 200 teams of ranking difference and 8% difference from average.

The simplest explanation why is that they have played almost exclusively zone.

Unlike his father, Thompson has shown a willingness to play zone. More importantly, the Hoyas tend to play zone when they have a thin frontline -- when personnel already are weaker on rebounding. It is a way to protect big men from foul trouble, but it is not helping the rebounding.

There are other systematic choices that hurt rebounding.

One is releasing your guards and forwards on the fast break. This may be exacerbating the issue this year (Freeman has a ton of fast break points but not so many defensive rebounds), but was hardly an issue in prior years.

Another is the decision to funnel drivers to the shot blocker. By challenging shots, the shot blocker is commonly out of position for the rebound. This enhances our FG% against but hurts on the back end. The other guards and forwards need to do a better job of rebounding if Monroe is going to continue to help. But overall, given how good our defenses have been, isn't this a trade off proven to be worth making?

What about personnel? There's no doubt Thompson likes to play players "down" a position. This is his fifth year, and for most of his time here, he's had a small forward playing power forward (Bowman and Summers) and a weaker rebounding player at SF (Owens, then Freeman).

What effect has it really had? Our defensive rebounding when Green was the center with Hibbert his only backup was awful, but the next year Thompson had his best rebounding team of his tenure at Georgetown.

Hibbert was still only playing 60% of the minutes, and Jeff was playing 80%, which means that only 40% of the time did we actually play them together and even less of the time did we have Bowman at the three for a truly strong rebounding team.

With Hibbert, Green and Bowman, we had three strong defensive rebounders.

The next year, with Summers replacing Bowman, the rebounding dropped off, and almost all the difference was in that Summers was awful where Bowman was a strong rebounder even from the three.

Was there something else going on, defensive scheme-wise, that made Bowman a better rebounder than Summers? Perhaps. But there's also a good chance that Bowman was simply a senior and Summers a freshman.

More importantly, Thompson has had a strong defensive rebounding team when he's had a rotation of enough strong rebounders to always have two of them on the floor at the same time.

When he wasn't had that, the rebounding hasn't been nearly as strong.


What about offensive rebounding?

In his first four years at Georgetown, Thompson's teams have average a ranking of 75th in the country in offensive rebounding. In 2005, with Bowman playing PF, the team ranked 92nd. Last year, with Summers at PF, the team ranked 132nd. Again, these numbers aren't adjusted for competition, so ranking in the Top 1/3 of basketball isn't bad.

And in 2007, Georgetown ranked eighth. Yes, they had an NBA frontline in Hibbert and Green. Roy in particular was an excellent offensive rebounder. But still, to grab 40% of our team's misses while playing teams like Pitt and Connecticut is fairly incredible, and it was an unsung driver of the team's amazingly efficient offense that year.

The team is not grabbing any offensive rebounds this year. Why not? It's most likely a combination of small sample sizes and a young frontcourt. More important is what is not driving it: the offensive system.

The traditional Princeton offense has usually involved abandoning offensive rebounds in exchange for getting back on defense. Since the teams that run it have historically been disadvantaged in speed and overall talent, that trade-off has made a lot of sense.

Thompson has never run a traditional Princeton, though. Not at Princeton; not at Georgetown. And at Georgetown, he hasn't given up on getting offensive rebounds.

The system, despite often placing big men on the perimeter, has not significantly hindered our offensive rebounding. Why would it start now?

If this drop in offensive rebounding is not just a small sample, it would seem to be personnel driven in two ways. Summers, though improving last year in his defensive rebounding, has never been a good offensive rebounder. Monroe so far has not been as good a rebounder as Roy. Though I suspect that will change.

The second way is in how the team's personnel scores. Offensive rebounds seem to often occur after help defense down low. If the Hoyas low post scoring and drives to the basket do not create those situations, the offensive rebounding will suffer.


The Future

Unfortunately, the future is somewhat bleak for rebounding. Rebounding woes seem to be personnel-driven. The team has successfully rebounded both offensively and defensively in the past, but when it has done so, it has done so when it has had a strong rotation of quality rebounders. The players needn't have been all traditional big men, but there needs to be at least enough quality rebounders to always have two of them on the floor at the same time.

Right now, the Hoyas only have one player who might be strong (Monroe) and a player who has played
the third player in a rotation (Summers). Monroe will likely develop into a quality rebounder by year's end, but the key seems to be if Vaughn or Sims can become a strong enough rebounder to play well when Monroe and Summers are out, and if they can become a strong enough defender and offensive player that the Hoyas can play less zone to protect Monroe.

It may not get any better the next couple of years. While Sims may develop into a strong rebounder, Summers and Monroe are not locks to return next year. With DaShonte Riley decommitting, that means Georgetown may go into next year with a possibly strong Henry Sims and Julian Vaughn, who was not a strong rebounder at Florida State. Even the year after, when Summers and Monroe are all but guaranteed to be gone, the only big man recruit is Nate Lubick, who will be a freshman.

The Hoyas may fill in some of the gaps with recruits who can come in and rebound right away. But if Summers and Monroe jump, get used to screaming "Box Out!"

Recap: Tennessee 90, Georgetown 78

Georgetown faded down the stretch against a very athletic Volunteer team to drop their first game of the year, 90-78. This marks the 4th time in 5 seasons at Georgetown that John Thompson's team has dropped at least 1 of their first 4 games.

The Hoyas will face off against the Maryland Terrapins on Sunday at 5:30pm EST on the Deuce.

Let's run the numbers:

TEMPO-FREE BOX SCORE

.            Home                            Visitor
.            Georgetown                      Tennessee   
.            1st Half  2nd Half   Total      1st Half  2nd Half   Total
Pace            36        37        73

Effic.        100.8     109.8     105.7       106.2     136.6     121.9

eFG%           59.6      60.9      60.2        60.7      63.0      61.8
TO%            30.0      24.1      27.1        21.8      21.4      21.7
OR%            21.4      38.5      29.6        26.7      58.8      43.8
FT Rate        30.8      78.3      53.1        25.0      88.9      56.4

Assist Rate    69.2      38.5      53.8        66.7      50.0      58.6
Block Rate      0.0       0.0       0.0         0.0      12.5       6.5
Steal Rate     16.3       8.0      12.2        16.3      16.1      16.3

2FG%           53.3      68.8      61.3        52.4      44.4      48.7
3FG%           45.5      28.6      38.9        57.1      66.7      62.5
FT%            75.0      72.2      73.1        71.4      70.8      71.0  

In a strange way, the loss today against UT felt like a more positive performance than yesterday's grinding win against WSU. Georgetown still struggled with turnovers and rebounding (a mantra for the season, I suspect), and ended up losing in all four factors, albeit by small margins in eFG% and FT Rate.

• The nominal 73 possession pace was as fast as the most rapid game the G'town played last season (v. Radford). While this was more typical of the Volunteers' tempo, this may also be a reflection of the new Hoyas, looking to run quite a bit more than previous seasons under JTIII. This will be an interesting story to follow as the season progresses.

• The Hoyas finally broke out of their early season shooting woes, breaking the 30% mark on 3FGs for the first time this season (thanks to O. Wattad's 3/3 3FG game). The shooting was stronger in the 1st half than the 2nd (tired legs?), but is hopefully a sign that the team's shooting touch is returning.

• Speaking of shooting, Georgetown continues to eschew the 2-pt. jumper, taking only 6 (and making 2) today. On the season, Georgetown has shot 8/26 (31%) on 2-pt jumpers, while their opponents have gone 23/78 (29%). That is, the Hoyas have settled for 2-pt jump shots (typically made at about the same percentage as 3FGs) about a third as often as their opponents. This is absolutely the correct strategy, which will eventually pay dividends.
  

• The Vols' steals rate for the game was truly impressive, and well above their average for last season (12.6% [24th nationally]).

While it's tempting to look at the ridiculous 3FG% by Tennessee as a fluke (which it was) that was the reason G'town lost, in truth the Hoyas were outplayed in many areas. While this wasn't a Memphis-style beatdown, it was a loss to a team clearly better than the Hoyas right now. Thankfully, it's only November.

INDIVIDUAL NET POINTS STATS

Georgetown            Off    Poss           Individ     Def             Individ        
Player                Poss   Used    ORtg   Pts Prod    Poss    DRtg   Pts Allow   Net Pts
Summers, DaJuan        55    13.4    98.2    13.2        50    105.9     10.6       +2.6
Freeman, Austin        66    15.2    83.4    12.7        65    128.4     16.7       -4.0
Monroe, Greg           51    10.0   153.8    15.4        47    116.9     11.0       +4.4
Wright, Chris          69    12.8   121.7    15.6        67    116.8     15.7       -0.1
Sapp, Jessie           57     8.9    90.5     8.0        57    120.3     13.7       -5.7
Clark, Jason           12     0.5   270.6     1.5        17     85.0      2.9       -1.4
Vaughn, Julian         11     1.0     0.0     0.0        14    119.6      3.4       -3.4
Sims, Henry            12     5.2     9.5     0.5        14    138.2      3.9       -3.4
Wattad, Omar           27     3.6   199.3     7.2        29    124.6      7.2       -0.0
TOTALS                 72    70.7   104.8    74.1        72    125.0     85.0      -10.9    

Tennessee             Off    Poss           Individ     Def             Individ             
Player                Poss   Used    ORtg   Pts Prod    Poss    DRtg   Pts Allow   Net Pts
Smith, Tyler           65    18.0   122.1    22.0        65    106.1     13.8       +8.2
Chism, Wayne           26     9.8    87.6     8.6        24     94.7      4.5       +4.1
Woolridge, Renaldo     34     5.6    74.6     4.2        32    128.2      8.2       -4.0
Maze, Bobby            57     9.2   185.9    17.1        58     95.1     11.0       +6.1
Hopson, Scotty         37     5.2    84.0     4.3        36    113.0      8.1       -3.8
Negedu, Emmanuel       37     2.1   257.5     5.5        36     85.4      6.1       -0.7
Pearl, Steven           1     0.0     -       0.0         2    200.0      0.8       -0.8
Tatum, Cameron         30     4.8   165.6     8.0        28     99.1      5.5       +2.4
Tabb, Josh             19     1.7   200.0     3.4        20    106.0      4.2       -0.8
Prince, J.P            38    10.3   113.7    11.7        40     90.5      7.2       +4.4
Williams, Brian        16     4.2    10.2     0.4        19     97.5      3.7       -3.3
TOTALS                 72    71.0   120.1    85.3        72    108.3     73.4      +11.9

Yesterday, I called out C. Wright and J. Clark for not taking care of the ball. Today . . . no turnovers between them. Coincidence?

Unfortunately, I am not yet master of my precious mojo - rather than correcting an ill, I merely moved it onto others: A. Freeman had 6 turnovers in 15.2 possessions used (39% TO Rate) and J. Sapp had 5 TOs / 8.9 poss (56%). I apologize to both, and hope that I - and they - will be more careful next time.

D. Summers turned the ball over 4 times for the 2nd game in a row (30% TO Rate), but was efficient otherwise (4/5 2FG, 2/4 3FG) and played respectable defense to provide a net positive perfomance for the game.

The three leading rebounders in today's game were Freeman, Sapp and Wattad - guards or swingmen.

Speaking of Mr. Wattad, it should be pointed out that this was, if not a homecoming, at least an opportunity for him to play against familiar opponents. He went to school at Science Hill High School in Johnson City, TN.

The player of the game goes to . . . Greg Monroe. Hoo-hum, just another day at the office for Mr. Monroe (15 points on 5/6 2FG). Unfortunately, Greg battled foul trouble once again in the 2nd half, and wasn't able to match the number of possessions played of the other starters.

HD BOX SCORE

Tennessee vs Georgetown
11/28/08 1 p.m. at Lake Buena Vista, Fla. -- The Milk House
Final score: Tennessee 90, Georgetown 78

Tennessee               Min   +/-   Pts  2PM-A 3PM-A FTM-A  FGA    A    Stl    TO   Blk    OR    DR   PF
Smith, Tyler           37:01  +15  21/85  6-12  0- 0  9-10 12/51  4/21  1/65  4/65  0/30  2/30  0/26   2
Chism, Wayne           13:08  - 3   9/26  1- 4  1- 1  4- 5  5/21  1/ 7  2/24  4/26  0/ 8  2/13  4/ 5   5
Woolridge, Renaldo     18:18  - 1   3/38  0- 3  1- 4  0- 1  7/28  0/12  0/32  0/34  1/16  2/19  2/11   0
Maze, Bobby            32:03  +13  14/73  2- 2  2- 2  4- 7  4/43  9/21  3/58  0/57  0/25  0/22  2/23   2
Hopson, Scotty         21:05  + 7   6/45  3- 5  0- 1  0- 0  6/30  0/13  0/36  1/37  0/18  0/17  1/12   0
Negedu, Emmanuel       20:09  +25   5/57  2- 3  0- 0  1- 2  3/27  0/15  1/36  0/37  1/17  2/14  4/14   2
Pearl, Steven          00:42  - 4   0/ 0  0- 0  0- 0  0- 0  0/ 1  0/ 0  0/ 2  0/ 1  0/ 1  0/ 1  0/ 1   0
Tatum, Cameron         15:43  +11  17/40  1- 2  5- 6  0- 0  8/23  0/ 6  1/28  1/30  0/ 9  0/13  0/10   2
Tabb, Josh             10:44  - 5   4/22  1- 1  0- 0  2- 3  1/14  2/ 4  2/20  0/19  0/10  0/12  1/ 8   1
Prince, J.P            21:42  +13  11/52  3- 5  1- 2  2- 2  7/27  1/12  2/40  4/38  0/15  3/13  1/16   3
Williams, Brian        09:25  -11   0/12  0- 2  0- 0  0- 1  2/10  0/ 5  0/19  2/16  0/ 6  1/ 6  4/ 9   3
TOTALS                 40:00       90    19-39 10-16 22-31    55 17/29 12/72 16/72  2/31 14/32 19/27  20
.                                        0.487 0.625 0.710       0.586 0.167 0.222 0.065 0.438 0.704    

Georgetown              Min   +/-   Pts  2PM-A 3PM-A FTM-A  FGA    A    Stl    TO   Blk    OR    DR   PF
Summers, DaJuan        28:53  -10  17/51  4- 5  2- 4  3- 4  9/32  1/11  2/50  4/55  0/30  1/19  2/23   4
Freeman, Austin        35:57  -13  12/71  4- 5  0- 3  4- 4  8/45  4/20  0/65  6/66  0/35  0/25  5/28   3
Monroe, Greg           26:19  - 1  15/59  5- 6  0- 0  5- 9  6/33  1/15  2/47  1/51  0/25  1/17  2/22   3
Wright, Chris          38:04  -10  18/73  5- 8  1- 4  5- 7 12/46  2/18  2/67  0/69  0/39  0/26  1/31   3
Sapp, Jessie           33:25  - 9   4/64  1- 4  0- 2  2- 2  6/42  4/21  1/57  5/57  0/33  2/22  4/26   2
Clark, Jason           06:51  - 1   3/16  0- 0  1- 1  0- 0  1/ 8  1/ 4  2/17  0/12  0/ 4  0/ 4  0/ 3   3
Vaughn, Julian         08:11  + 0   0/15  0- 0  0- 0  0- 0  0/ 9  0/ 5  0/14  1/11  0/ 8  0/ 4  0/ 8   2
Sims, Henry            06:31  -11   0/ 7  0- 2  0- 1  0- 0  3/ 8  0/ 2  0/14  2/12  0/ 6  1/ 6  0/ 2   2
Wattad, Omar           15:49  - 5   9/34  0- 1  3- 3  0- 0  4/22  1/ 8  0/29  1/27  0/15  2/12  3/17   3
TOTALS                 40:00       78    19-31  7-18 19-26    49 14/26  9/72 20/72  0/39  8/27 18/32  25
.                                        0.613 0.389 0.731       0.538 0.125 0.278 0.000 0.296 0.562    

Efficiency: Tennessee 1.250, Georgetown 1.083
eFG%: Tennessee 0.618, Georgetown 0.602
Substitutions: Tennessee 34, Georgetown 34

2-pt Shot Selection:
Dunks: Tennessee 3-3, Georgetown 4-4
Layups/Tips: Tennessee 9-19, Georgetown 13-21
Jumpers: Tennessee 7-17, Georgetown 2-6

Recap: Georgetown 58, Wichita State 50

Happy Thanksgiving.

Hopefully you've recovered from the tryptophan-induced (Hoya-induced?) coma and have now come to find out if there were any bright spots from today's grueling 8 point win over the Shockers.

Let's run the numbers:

TEMPO-FREE BOX SCORE

.            Home                            Visitor 
.            Georgetown                      Wichita State       
.            1st Half  2nd Half   Total      1st Half  2nd Half   Total
Pace            31        33        65

Effic.         81.9      96.1      89.2        69.3      84.1      76.9

eFG%           42.5      50.0      46.2        32.3      31.7      32.0
TO%            25.2      27.0      26.1        25.2      21.0      23.1
OR%            20.0      25.0      22.2        34.8      39.1      37.0
FT Rate        65.0      70.0      67.5         9.7      40.0      24.6

Assist Rate    75.0      44.4      58.8        75.0      44.4      58.8
Block Rate     13.6      15.0      14.3         9.1      18.2      13.6
Steal Rate     15.8      12.0      13.8         6.3      15.0      10.8

2FG%           63.6      63.6      63.6        18.2      40.0      28.6
3FG%           11.1      22.2      16.7        44.4      10.0      26.3
FT%            69.2      85.7      77.8        66.7      75.0      73.3

It wasn't an exceptionally slow pace that kept the score so low, it was two offenses that struggled to score points. The last time Georgetown struggled this much offensively in the non-conf. portion of the schedule were the back-to-back losses vs. Oregon and at Duke in the 2006-7 season.

What are the major problems on offense? Turnovers and 3-pt. shooting.

• Turnovers: The main culprits today were C. Wright (5 TOs / 10 possessions used = 50% TO Rate) and J. Clark (4 / 5.9 = 68% TO Rate). D. Summers committed 3 TOs, but did so while using 13.3 possessions, for a pedestrian 23% TO Rate. The fault here is with the young guards.

• 3-pt shooting: Wright (0/4) and A. Freeman (0/3) combined for 7 misses without a make today. In three games against mediocre competition, Georgetown has shot 5/23, 6/21 and now 3/18 on 3FGs. That's a net of 14/62, or 22.6%. These three teams were not especially proficient guarding 3's last season (def 3FG% = 33.9, 33.1, 38.9 respectively for Jacksonville, Drexel and WSU), so there's no evidence that the Hoyas have run up against a series of teams that focus on stopping outside shooting. Outside shooting was critical to last year's team; G'town shot 40.0% on 3FGs in wins, but 27.6% in losses. So long as Summers (2/10 this season) and Freeman (3/11) miss from outside, this team will struggle against anyone willing to play a packed-in zone and dare the Hoyas to beat them from outside.
  

Defensive rebounding continues to be a problem for the Hoyas, although rebounding is clearly the Shocker's great strength - coming into the game, WSU was the best defensive rebounding team in the country (OReb% allowed = 16.5%) and a very good offensive rebounding team (OReb% = 42.5, 25th).

A positive? Georgetown continues to make their opponents miserable on 2pt-shooting. The Hoyas allowed no fast-break baskets today (if my compiler is working correctly).

INDIVIDUAL NET POINTS STATS

Georgetown            Off    Poss           Individ     Def             Individ             
Player                Poss   Used    ORtg   Pts Prod    Poss    DRtg   Pts Allow   Net Pts
Summers, DaJuan        59    13.3    91.9    12.2        60     75.4      9.0       +3.2  
Freeman, Austin        57    13.0   123.8    16.1        59     72.2      8.5       +7.5  
Monroe, Greg           47     7.5   133.2    10.0        48     65.4      6.3       +3.7  
Wright, Chris          56    10.0    62.9     6.3        57     65.4      7.5       -1.2  
Sapp, Jessie           55     8.0   111.5     9.0        57     72.9      8.3       +0.6  
Clark, Jason           17     5.9    29.4     1.7        16     99.5      3.2       -1.5  
Vaughn, Julian         15     3.3    22.5     0.8        15     87.5      2.6       -1.9  
Sims, Henry             4     1.0     0.0     0.0         4     25.4      0.2       -0.2  
Wattad, Omar           10     1.3    44.2     0.6         9    138.3      2.5       -1.9  
TOTALS                 64    63.4    89.4    56.6        65     76.9     48.1       +8.5    

Wichita State         Off    Poss           Individ     Def             Individ             
Player                Poss   Used    ORtg   Pts Prod    Poss    DRtg   Pts Allow   Net Pts
CLEMENTE, Ramon        43     9.6    98.8     9.5        43    107.6      9.3       +0.2  
HAWKINS, A.J           38     5.6    56.1     3.1        38     96.7      7.4       -4.2  
STUTZ, Garrett         32     6.0    33.2     2.0        32     95.7      6.1       -4.1  
HANNAH, Clevin         41     8.0    69.9     5.6        39    100.9      7.9       -2.3  
MURRY, Toure           19     6.1    36.4     2.2        20    122.3      4.9       -2.7  
ELLIS, Aaron           26     4.4   115.3     5.1        25     43.4      2.2       +2.9  
HATCH, Graham          26     3.8    43.3     1.6        24     44.7      2.1       -0.5  
CHAMBERLAIN, Reggie    24     5.8    81.9     4.8        23     54.0      2.5       +2.3  
KYLES, David           38     6.4   145.7     9.3        39     86.1      6.7       +2.6  
DURLEY, J.T            33     8.2    46.4     3.8        33     91.3      6.0       -2.2  
GRISKENAS, Mantas       5     0.0     -       0.0         4    120.0      1.0       -1.0  
TOTALS                 65    63.8    73.6    47.0        64     90.6     56.0       -9.0  

There were only 4 positive contributors today for the Georgetown. G. Monroe was dominant in the 1st half (11 pts. 3 reb., 2 blk., 2 st.) but struggled in the 2nd (0 pts., 1 reb., 1 blk., 0 st.). Conversely, Summers came alive in the 2nd half after little contribution in the 1st (and getting called out by Jay Williams on the half-time show).

The player-of-the-game goes to . . . Austin Freeman. Despite his 0/3 on 3FGs, Freeman made 6/7 2FGs and committed no turnovers.

HD BOX SCORE

Wichita State vs Georgetown
11/27/08 2:25 p.m. at Lake Buena Vista, Fla. -- The Milk House
Final score: Georgetown 58, Wichita State 50

Wichita State           Min   +/-   Pts  2PM-A 3PM-A FTM-A  FGA    A    Stl    TO   Blk    OR    DR   PF
CLEMENTE, Ramon        26:36  -15  10/31  4- 9  0- 0  2- 2  9/40  1/ 7  0/43  1/43  0/14  4/30  6/17   2
HAWKINS, A.J           23:11  -21   2/20  1- 4  0- 0  0- 2  4/37  1/ 6  2/38  2/38  1/11  3/32  2/15   3
STUTZ, Garrett         19:00  -17   2/12  1- 3  0- 0  0- 0  3/29  1/ 4  0/32  3/32  0/13  1/25  2/10   0
HANNAH, Clevin         24:30  -12   6/31  0- 4  1- 5  3- 3  9/38  3/ 9  1/39  2/41  0/13  0/29  2/16   3
MURRY, Toure           12:12  -19   2/ 6  1- 5  0- 3  0- 0  8/18  0/ 2  0/20  0/19  1/ 9  2/15  1/ 6   4
ELLIS, Aaron           16:02  +10   4/27  0- 2  1- 1  1- 2  3/25  0/ 8  2/25  1/26  0/10  3/17  4/12   2
HATCH, Graham          16:34  +14   2/24  1- 3  0- 2  0- 0  5/27  1/ 7  1/24  1/26  0/ 7  0/19  0/15   0
CHAMBERLAIN, Reggie    15:16  + 6   8/19  0- 2  2- 4  2- 2  6/23  0/ 5  1/23  1/24  0/ 9  0/17  1/11   1
KYLES, David           23:04  + 9  11/42  3- 6  1- 1  2- 2  7/33  2/ 9  0/39  2/38  0/13  1/22  1/16   2
DURLEY, J.T            21:09  + 9   3/38  1- 4  0- 3  1- 2  7/32  1/11  0/33  2/33  1/ 9  1/21  2/17   2
GRISKENAS, Mantas      02:26  - 4   0/ 0  0- 0  0- 0  0- 0  0/ 3  0/ 0  0/ 4  0/ 5  0/ 2  0/ 3  0/ 0   0
TOTALS                 40:00       50    12-42  5-19 11-15    61 10/17  7/64 15/65  3/22 17/46 21/27  19
.                                        0.286 0.263 0.733       0.588 0.109 0.231 0.136 0.370 0.778    

Georgetown              Min   +/-   Pts  2PM-A 3PM-A FTM-A  FGA    A    Stl    TO   Blk    OR    DR   PF
Summers, DaJuan        36:37  +11  14/56  3- 6  2- 5  2- 2 11/38  1/12  2/60  3/59  0/36  1/24  2/41   2
Freeman, Austin        35:17  +12  18/54  6- 7  0- 3  6- 9 10/37  0/10  2/59  0/57  0/37  2/25  2/40   0
Monroe, Greg           29:15  +10  11/46  3- 6  0- 0  5- 6  6/30  1/12  2/48  1/47  3/31  0/17  4/31   5
Wright, Chris          34:54  +14   4/54  1- 1  0- 4  2- 2  5/37  5/15  1/57  5/56  1/36  0/24  6/40   1
Sapp, Jessie           34:09  + 7   9/52  1- 1  1- 4  4- 4  5/34  2/15  2/57  2/55  0/34  0/21  4/36   1
Clark, Jason           10:57  - 5   2/10  0- 0  0- 1  2- 2  1/ 9  0/ 1  0/16  4/17  0/14  0/ 9  1/16   3
Vaughn, Julian         10:13  - 5   0/ 8  0- 1  0- 0  0- 2  1/10  1/ 2  0/15  1/15  1/11  1/10  2/12   1
Sims, Henry            02:41  + 0   0/ 2  0- 0  0- 1  0- 0  1/ 2  0/ 0  0/ 4  0/ 4  1/ 5  0/ 2  1/ 5   0
Wattad, Omar           05:57  - 4   0/ 8  0- 0  0- 0  0- 0  0/ 3  0/ 1  0/ 9  1/10  0/ 6  1/ 3  0/ 9   2
TOTALS                 40:00       58    14-22  3-18 21-27    40 10/17  9/65 17/64  6/42  6/27 29/46  15
.                                        0.636 0.167 0.778       0.588 0.138 0.266 0.143 0.222 0.630    

Efficiency: Georgetown 0.906, Wichita State 0.769
eFG%: Georgetown 0.463, Wichita State 0.320
Substitutions: Georgetown 24, Wichita State 43

2-pt Shot Selection:
Dunks: Georgetown 3-3, Wichita State 0-0
Layups/Tips: Georgetown 10-16, Wichita State 8-26
Jumpers: Georgetown 1-3, Wichita State 4-16

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tomorrow, Georgetown continues their inexorable march towards a Sunday game against the Maryland Terrapins with a 1pm meeting against the Tennessee Volunteers. A nice resource for all things Vol is the BruceBall Blog. If the game pace gets above 70 possessions, expect a painful afternoon.


I'll try to get this year's team and individual stats pages up and running this weekend, as long as I can find some time.

Recap: Georgetown 81, Drexel 53

The Drexel Dragons were no match for the Hoyas today at the Verizon Center, succumbing to efficient shooting in the 1st half and a strong defensive effort all game.

Let's run the numbers:

TEMPO-FREE BOX SCORE
 
.            Home                            Visitor   
.            Georgetown                      DREXEL         
.            1st Half  2nd Half   Total      1st Half  2nd Half   Total
Pace            32        37        69

Effic.        127.8     105.3     115.9        76.1      75.6      75.8

eFG%           67.3      50.0      58.5        38.6      25.8      31.1
TO%            18.3      13.5      15.7        33.5      16.2      24.3
OR%            20.0      12.5      15.4        26.7      26.9      26.8
FT Rate        26.9      55.6      41.5        36.4      48.4      43.4

Assist Rate    68.8      58.3      64.3        57.1      66.7      61.5
Block Rate     14.3       9.5      11.4         0.0       0.0       0.0
Steal Rate     21.3      16.2      18.6         3.0       8.1       5.7

2FG%           76.5      60.0      68.8        28.6       9.5      17.1
3FG%           33.3      25.0      28.6        37.5      40.0      38.9
FT%           100.0      80.0      86.4       100.0      80.0      87.0  

I've bolded and highlighted key numbers from the tempo-free box:

• Just a solid defensive effort by the Hoyas, across both halves.

• Georgetown took good care of the ball today, while Drexel was exceptionally generous in the 1st half.

• Georgetown was very efficient shooting from the floor in the 1st half, by shooting 12 layups or tip-ins and making 11. Drexel had a miserable 2nd half shooting the ball from 2-pt range (2-8 on layups didn't help, but 0-11 on 2-pt jumpers was the killer).

• After 2 games, it looks like rebounding will be a big issue for the Hoyas. They've been outrebounded twice now, by teams that are unarguably inferior athletically.

INDIVIDUAL NET POINTS STATS

Georgetown            Off    Poss           Individ     Def             Individ     
Player                Poss   Used    ORtg   Pts Prod    Poss    DRtg   Pts Allow   Net Pts
Summers, DaJuan        43    10.5   107.1    11.3        45     75.8      6.8       +4.5    
Wright, Chris          52    10.8   119.3    12.9        51     62.3      6.4       +6.5    
Monroe, Greg           54    12.8   172.7    22.1        56     61.3      6.9      +15.2    
Freeman, Austin        36     7.8   194.9    15.1        37     69.4      5.1      +10.0    
Sapp, Jessie           41     5.1   103.0     5.2        40     47.2      3.8       +1.5    
Mescheriakov, Nikita   20     5.0    19.2     1.0        19     88.2      3.4       -2.4    
Jansen, Bryon           4     0.0     -       0.0         4      0.0      0.0       +0.0    
Clark, Jason           44     6.1   112.4     6.8        47     83.1      7.8       -1.0    
Sims, Henry            35     5.9    29.1     1.7        35     77.3      5.4       -3.7    
Wattad, Omar           26     6.8    52.2     3.5        26     77.2      4.0       -0.5    
TOTALS                 71    70.6   112.8    79.6        72     73.6     49.5      +30.1

DREXEL                Off    Poss           Individ     Def             Individ     
Player                Poss   Used    ORtg   Pts Prod    Poss    DRtg   Pts Allow   Net Pts
Rodgers, Scott         63    11.5    84.7     9.8        63    119.4     15.0       -5.3    
Colds. Gerald          35    11.4    82.7     9.5        34    141.6      9.6       -0.2    
Harris, Jamie          66    10.9   105.0    11.4        65    120.7     15.7       -4.3    
Neisler, Evan          33    10.9    28.2     3.1        33    123.2      8.1       -5.0    
Tribbett, Kenny        16     2.0     0.0     0.0        14    168.8      4.7       -4.7    
Hawthorne, Tramayne    45     7.8   120.5     9.4        43     77.3      6.7       +2.8    
Spencer, Leon          32     8.6    27.0     2.3        33    115.7      7.6       -5.3    
Formbor, Yannick       13     2.1    16.0     0.3        13    103.3      2.7       -2.3    
Phillip, Kevin         15     2.3    35.9     0.8        15     39.1      1.2       -0.3    
Givens, Samme          42     4.0   138.4     5.5        42     89.3      7.5       -2.0
TOTALS                 72    71.6    72.8    52.1        71    114.1     82.3      -30.2

Comments:

• Anyone know where Julian Vaughn was today? Edited to add: The crack staff over at Hoya Hoops got the story:

  Coach said that Vaughn had a minor leg injury above the Achilles and below the calf (he couldn’t remember the medical term or which leg) but he said it wasn’t serious. He said Vaughn suffered the injury before the Jacksonville game but played through it and you could notice him limping a bit in that game. Vaughn hasn’t practiced since then but Coach didn’t seem like it was anything major.

• Greg Monroe is slipping (he had a Off. Rtg. of 174 last game).

• Chris Wright didn't miss a FT today.

• Austin Freeman recovered nicely from his 1-10 shooting performance against Jacksonville with a 4-4 2FG, 2-3 3FG game today. I'm going to go ahead and chalk up last game's problems to the obvious leg cramps he was having.

• Henry Sims and Nikita Mescheriakov continued to struggle offensively with a bit more burn than last game. Meshcharakou (alternative spelling!) missed on two 3FGAs today - he'll need to start making those to stay in the rotation. Sims was 0-3 on 3FGAs today - he'll need to stop taking those, but he'll likely stay in the rotation either way.

• Again in this game, Sapp lead the team with his defensive play (5 steals!). I'd suggest that he's doing a great job leading the team right now, by deferring on offense to players who need to get touches as they grow into the offense (Wright & Monroe, especially), but still bringing maximum effort on the other end.

• Player of the game is . . . Greg Monroe. He used about 5 more possessions than last game on offense with virtually no drop in efficiency, while playing a better defensive game (3 steals, 3 blocks, 6 def. rebounds). His most important stat is probably his 4 assists, second today behind Wright (7).

HD BOX SCORE

DREXEL vs Georgetown
11/22/08 1:00 at
Final score: Georgetown 81, DREXEL 53

DREXEL                  Min   +/-   Pts  2PM-A 3PM-A FTM-A  FGA    A    Stl    TO   Blk    OR    DR   PF
Rodgers, Scott         35:14  -29  13/45  3- 8  1- 2  4- 4 10/49  0/ 7  0/63  3/63  0/28  0/39  2/22   4
Colds. Gerald          18:21  -23  11/25  1- 5  2- 5  3- 3 10/24  0/ 3  0/34  2/35  0/16  0/18  0/13   3
Harris, Jamie          36:15  -29  12/49  1- 3  2- 3  4- 4  6/48  2/ 9  0/65  5/66  0/32  3/37  3/25   3
Neisler, Evan          18:40  -23   3/18  0- 6  0- 0  3- 4  6/27  0/ 4  0/33  3/33  0/16  1/23  2/13   3
Tribbett, Kenny        09:10  -18   0/ 6  0- 1  0- 0  0- 0  1/10  0/ 1  0/14  1/16  0/11  0/ 9  0/ 4   1
Hawthorne, Tramayne    25:07  - 1  10/38  1- 2  2- 8  2- 2 10/31  2/ 6  2/43  0/45  0/17  1/23  2/18   1
Spencer, Leon          18:24  -11   1/29  0- 4  0- 0  1- 2  4/23  0/ 7  1/33  4/32  0/12  2/17  2/ 7   3
Formbor, Yannick       08:03  - 6   0/ 7  0- 1  0- 0  0- 0  1/ 9  1/ 2  0/13  1/13  0/ 5  0/ 7  0/ 3   1
Phillip, Kevin         08:31  + 5   0/13  0- 3  0- 0  0- 0  3/16  0/ 4  0/15  0/15  0/ 7  1/12  4/13   1
Givens, Samme          22:15  - 5   3/35  0- 2  0- 0  3- 4  2/28  3/ 9  1/42  0/42  0/16  2/20  2/17   1
TOTALS                 40:00       53     6-35  7-18 20-23    53  8/13  4/71 19/72  0/32 11/41 22/26  21
.                                        0.171 0.389 0.870       0.615 0.056 0.264 0.000 0.268 0.846    

Georgetown              Min   +/-   Pts  2PM-A 3PM-A FTM-A  FGA    A    Stl    TO   Blk    OR    DR   PF
Summers, DaJuan        25:18  +16  10/54  2- 3  0- 4  6- 6  7/28  2/15  2/45  1/43  0/22  0/13  4/24   5
Wright, Chris          29:49  +22  11/57  4- 8  1- 2  0- 0 10/39  7/15  2/51  1/52  0/24  0/21  5/28   1
Monroe, Greg           30:30  +36  20/76  7- 9  0- 0  6- 6  9/42  4/21  3/56  1/54  3/25  2/14  6/28   2
Freeman, Austin        21:01  +31  16/53  4- 4  2- 3  2- 3  7/29  3/15  0/37  1/36  0/22  2/ 8  3/25   2
Sapp, Jessie           23:31  +23   8/49  1- 1  2- 2  0- 0  3/31  2/15  5/40  3/41  1/18  0/13  2/22   2
Mescheriakov, Nikita   09:39  + 1   1/17  0- 1  0- 2  1- 2  3/16  0/ 5  0/19  1/20  0/ 5  0/12  1/ 8   2
Jansen, Bryon          01:52  + 0   0/ 0  0- 0  0- 0  0- 0  0/ 4  0/ 0  0/ 4  0/ 4  0/ 2  0/ 4  0/ 4   0
Clark, Jason           24:47  + 5   9/46  2- 2  1- 4  2- 2  6/31  0/11  1/47  1/44  0/23  0/19  3/27   1
Sims, Henry            18:31  + 3   2/29  1- 2  0- 3  0- 0  5/25  0/ 8  0/35  1/35  0/20  0/17  2/22   2
Wattad, Omar           15:02  + 3   4/24  1- 2  0- 1  2- 3  3/20  0/ 7  0/26  2/26  0/14  0/14  2/17   2
TOTALS                 40:00       81    22-32  6-21 19-22    53 18/28 13/72 12/71  4/35  4/26 30/41  19
.                                        0.688 0.286 0.864       0.643 0.181 0.169 0.114 0.154 0.732    

Efficiency: Georgetown 1.141, DREXEL 0.736
eFG%: Georgetown 0.585, DREXEL 0.311
Substitutions: Georgetown 29, DREXEL 28

2-pt Shot Selection:
Dunks: Georgetown 3-3, DREXEL 0-2
Layups/Tips: Georgetown 16-20, DREXEL 3-11
Jumpers: Georgetown 3-9, DREXEL 3-22

Recap: Georgetown 71, Jacksonville 62

And so begins another season of Georgetown basketball, with a closer-than-you'd-like win over a pesky Jacksonville Dolphins team.

Let's run the numbers.

TEMPO-FREE BOX SCORE

.            Home                            Visitor
.            Georgetown                      Jacksonville
.            1st Half  2nd Half   Total      1st Half  2nd Half   Total
Pace            39        30        69

Effic.         94.7     110.0     101.5        64.0     119.7      88.7                       

eFG%           51.6      35.7      45.2        29.7      45.5      37.7                     
TO%            20.5       9.7      15.7        25.6       9.7      18.6                    
OR%            26.3      21.4      24.2        30.8      50.0      39.6                    
FT Rate        35.5     104.8      63.5        28.1      30.3      29.2                        

Assist Rate    57.1      42.9      52.4        33.3      14.3      21.7                            
Block Rate     19.0       8.3      13.3         0.0       0.0       0.0                           
Steal Rate     17.9       6.5      12.9        12.8       3.2       8.6                           

2FG%           58.8      50.0      55.2        38.1      50.0      44.4                     
3FG%           28.6      11.1      21.7         9.1      22.2      15.0                     
FT%            45.5      86.4      72.7        66.7      70.0      68.4

Comments:

• The 69 possessions from tonight's game is quite a bit faster than last year's team average (62.1). A sign of things to come? Not so fast, my friend; last season's game against Jacksonville had a total of . . . 69 possessions.

• Much like last year's game, the Hoyas jumped out to a comfortable 1st half lead with good offense and excellent defense. This time, the Dolphins actually out-played G'town in the 2nd half to keep the game close.
  

• For all of the moaning about FT shooting in the 1st half (C. Wright shot 1-6 FTs during the first half), the team ended the game with a perfectly acceptable 73 %FT.
  

• The OReb% allowed, especially in the 2nd half, was not good. Over the years, it is becoming apparent that JTIII is willing to give up offensive rebounds for the sake of keeping eFG% down. Unfortunately, J'ville shot better in the 2nd half while getting fully half of their own missed shots.

• That 13.3% block rate is comparable to last year's average thanks to G. Monroe and J. Vaughn, but the big men will need to watch their fouls until H. Sims is able to play more minutes.

INDIVIDUAL NET POINTS STATS

Georgetown            Off    Poss           Individ     Def             Individ                   
Player                Poss   Used    ORtg   Pts Prod    Poss    DRtg   Pts Allow   Net Pts
Summers, DaJuan        46    10.1   112.0    11.3        46    103.8      9.5       +1.8                
Wright, Chris          63    10.9   118.3    12.9        62     93.1     11.5       +1.4              
Monroe, Greg           51     7.4   173.8    12.9        50     90.7      9.1       +3.8             
Freeman, Austin        57    15.7    54.1     8.5        56     87.6      9.8       -1.3                
Sapp, Jessie           60    10.2   131.8    13.5        59     79.6      9.4       +4.1             
Mescheriakov, Nikita    7     2.0     0.0     0.0         6     56.1      0.7       -0.7                     
Clark, Jason           23     3.3   135.2     4.4        23    100.0      4.6       -0.2             
Vaughn, Julian         17     2.3   116.2     2.7        18    114.6      4.1       -1.4               
Sims, Henry             4     0.0     -       0.0         4     60.0      0.5       -0.5        
Wattad, Omar           22     6.8    24.6     1.7        21     80.9      3.4       -1.7             
TOTALS                 70    68.8    98.7    67.9        69     89.9     62.6       +5.3             

Jacksonville          Off    Poss           Individ     Def             Individ                     
Player                Poss   Used    ORtg   Pts Prod    Poss    DRtg   Pts Allow   Net Pts
SMITH,Ben              53    15.2    86.7    13.2        54     97.5     10.5       +2.6          
HARDY,Ayron            46    13.8    65.8     9.1        44    110.8      9.7       -0.7            
JEFFERSON,Evan         24     4.3    74.6     3.2        22     98.0      4.3       -1.1               
COLBERT,Lehmon         53     9.5    82.7     7.9        53    100.2     10.6       -2.8               
ALLEN,Marcus           53    10.8   144.5    15.6        52     98.2     10.2       +5.3             
COHN, Travis           24     1.4    66.0     1.0        25    116.5      5.8       -4.9             
GILBERT,Brian          16     0.0     -       0.0        16    112.8      3.6       -3.6          
EDWARDS,Chris          16     0.9   203.0     1.8        16    102.3      3.3       -1.5              
BROOKS,Aric            20     6.6    36.2     2.4        25     76.6      3.8       -1.4            
GALVIN,Tevin           24     1.4   205.3     2.9        25     85.6      4.3       -1.4             
LUKASIAK,Szymon        12     5.8   115.4     6.7        12    111.8      2.7       +4.0                
ALSTON,Will             4     0.0     -       0.0         6    102.1      1.2       -1.2        
TOTALS                 69    69.7    91.2    63.6        70    101.4     69.8       -6.2

Comments

• Most of the Hoyas had good to excellent offensive games. Exceptions were A. Freeman, who made only 1-10 shots from the field, and O. Wattad, who missed all five of his 3FGAs. I'll let N. Mescheriakov slide, as he only played seven offensive possessions.

• A big question coming into this season was who would take over the possessions used by R. Hibbert, J. Wallace and P. Ewing? Freeman certainly took a healthy share today (15.7/57 = 27.5%), and Wattad wasn't bashful either. Too bad they weren't very efficient with their possessions.

• There was much grumbling in the chat room about why Wattad was playing so many minutes (or about 30% of all possessions), but a couple of the lucky few who could actually watch the game pointed out that his defense looked good. The numbers bear this out, as he and Jessie Sapp had the strongest defensive numbers of those with >10 defensive possessions played. Unfortunately, his defense couldn't make up for his poor shooting. Have we found a drop-in replacement for J. Rivers?

• The player of the game is . . . Jessie Sapp, who just nosed out G. Monroe, playing his first game. Let me take a moment to point out just how efficient Monroe was in his ~50 possessions played: 6-8 2FG, 2-3 FT, 2 OReb (only player with more than 1), 1 A, 3 Bl. He flirted with foul trouble most of the 2nd half, but this is to be expected for a freshman center. He looks very good after 1 game.
  

HD BOX SCORE

Jacksonville vs Georgetown
11/17/08 7:30 at Verizon Center
Final score: Georgetown 71, Jacksonville 62

Jacksonville            Min   +/-   Pts  2PM-A 3PM-A FTM-A  FGA    A    Stl    TO   Blk    OR    DR   PF
SMITH,Ben              30:46  - 9  17/45  5- 8  1- 6  4- 4 14/52  1/11  1/54  2/53  0/22  0/38  4/25   1
HARDY,Ayron            27:00  -13   7/36  3- 8  0- 1  1- 2  9/45  0/11  0/44  4/46  0/18  6/34  3/18   4
JEFFERSON,Evan         14:05  - 4   5/18  1- 2  1- 4  0- 0  6/24  0/ 4  0/22  0/24  0/14  0/19  1/11   2
COLBERT,Lehmon         29:19  - 5   7/48  2- 6  1- 4  0- 1 10/48  1/15  1/53  2/53  0/20  3/35  2/23   2
ALLEN,Marcus           29:52  - 7  14/46  6-11  0- 2  2- 2 13/51  1/12  2/52  1/53  0/20  6/36  3/21   3
COHN, Travis           15:09  - 1   0/28  0- 2  0- 0  0- 0  2/26  0/10  0/25  1/24  0/ 9  1/19  2/12   2
GILBERT,Brian          10:38  - 4   0/14  0- 0  0- 1  0- 0  1/19  0/ 5  0/16  0/16  0/ 7  0/15  0/ 8   0
EDWARDS,Chris          09:14  + 0   2/17  0- 0  0- 0  2- 2  0/15  1/ 6  0/16  0/16  0/ 5  0/12  0/ 7   1
BROOKS,Aric            11:47  - 4   3/15  1- 3  0- 1  1- 3  4/16  0/ 4  0/25  3/20  0/ 8  0/13  2/12   1
GALVIN,Tevin           12:02  + 4   2/27  1- 1  0- 1  0- 0  2/23  1/10  2/25  0/24  0/ 5  1/15  4/12   0
LUKASIAK,Szymon        08:09  + 3   5/16  1- 5  0- 0  3- 5  5/13  0/ 4  0/12  0/12  0/ 5  3/11  0/ 7   5
ALSTON,Will            01:59  - 5   0/ 0  0- 1  0- 0  0- 0  1/ 3  0/ 0  0/ 6  0/ 4  0/ 2  0/ 3  0/ 4   1
TOTALS                 40:00       62    20-47  3-20 13-19    67  5/23  6/70 13/69  0/27 20/50 24/31  22
.                                        0.426 0.150 0.684       0.217 0.086 0.188 0.000 0.400 0.774

Georgetown              Min   +/-   Pts  2PM-A 3PM-A FTM-A  FGA    A    Stl    TO   Blk    OR    DR   PF
Summers, DaJuan        28:09  - 1  13/46  4- 5  0- 1  5- 6  6/31  1/ 9  1/46  2/46  1/33  0/19  4/36   3
Wright, Chris          35:56  + 8  16/66  2- 3  3- 5  3- 8  8/45  4/16  1/62  1/63  0/42  0/27  5/44   1
Monroe, Greg           28:16  +15  14/56  6- 8  0- 0  2- 3  8/36  1/10  0/50  1/51  3/28  2/23  5/35   4
Freeman, Austin        33:00  + 5   7/56  0- 5  1- 5  4- 6 10/43  2/19  3/56  2/57  0/38  1/25  6/41   3
Sapp, Jessie           33:45  +14  13/61  2- 3  1- 4  6- 6  7/42  3/14  2/59  2/60  0/40  1/28  5/44   1
Mescheriakov, Nikita   03:54  + 5   0/ 7  0- 1  0- 0  0- 0  1/ 5  0/ 2  0/ 6  1/ 7  0/ 8  0/ 3  0/ 7   1
Clark, Jason           12:25  - 1   4/23  1- 1  0- 1  2- 2  2/13  0/ 3  1/23  0/23  0/13  1/10  2/14   1
Vaughn, Julian         10:23  - 6   2/15  1- 1  0- 1  0- 0  2/13  0/ 4  1/18  0/17  2/16  1/ 8  0/12   1
Sims, Henry            02:23  + 3   0/ 5  0- 0  0- 1  0- 0  1/ 4  0/ 2  0/ 4  0/ 4  0/ 1  0/ 3  0/ 2   0
Wattad, Omar           11:49  + 3   2/20  0- 0  0- 5  2- 2  5/18  0/ 5  0/21  2/22  0/16  0/14  2/15   1
TOTALS                 40:00       71    16-27  5-23 24-33    50 11/21  9/69 11/70  6/47  7/31 30/50  16
.                                        0.593 0.217 0.727       0.524 0.130 0.157 0.128 0.226 0.600

Efficiency: Georgetown 1.014, Jacksonville 0.899
eFG%: Georgetown 0.470, Jacksonville 0.366
Substitutions: Georgetown 30, Jacksonville 50

2-pt Shot Selection:
Dunks: Georgetown 3-3, Jacksonville 0-0
Layups/Tips: Georgetown 11-16, Jacksonville 11-24
Jumpers: Georgetown 2-8, Jacksonville 9-23

Season Player Preview, Part III

This ends my countdown of each of the Hoyas' players, in order of their importance to the team's success this year. For Part I, click here. For Part II, here.

#3. DaJuan Summers.

While I’m sure there is some argument around the placement of prior players in this list, Summers at #3 is probably the one most people will have a disagreement with. After all, this is Summers’ “time”: Green and Hibbert are gone; he’s one of two upperclassmen; and he’s a bona fide NBA prospect who has not truly shown the production expected of one.

With Jeff Green gone to the NBA, Summers took many of his shots. Two years ago, he took about 22% of the shots while he was in the game. Last year he took 25%. The issue with this is that Summers simply was not a particularly efficient Hoya. His 102 Offensive Rating was one of the lowest on the team, meaning that perhaps other players should have taken those shots, if they could have found a quality shot. Summers’ 2 Pt FG % rose from 2006-07 and his turnover rate dropped. His FT% dropped as well, but stayed hovering around 70%. What was the issue?

As you can probably guess, Summers took many more threes. In fact, he took about the same number of two point shots and free throws as he did as a freshman. So all those shots he grabbed from Green went into shooting threes.

Summers shot 34% from three, which is the equivalent of shooting 51% from two. However, Summers himself shot 52% from two last year, plus 71% from the line (and most fouls occur on two point attempts). Furthermore, the team as a whole shot 56% from two and 66% from the line.

So taking Summers taking more shots from three shouldn’t be the first option in the offense. Of course, it isn’t that simple. Perhaps this additional shots were the next best shots. But from observation, Summers and team seemed to shoot his threes too early in the shot clock and before trying better options, whether it was him driving to the hoop or throwing it down into Roy.

So there is room for improvement. Either Summers needs to press the issue more inside, and finish stronger (something he definitely had issues with last year) or he needs to improve his shot selection and jump shooting. Doing either – or both – may be necessary to stay an elite offense as the team loses three of its top four most efficient scorers in Wallace, Hibbert and Ewing. (Freeman was the other).

On rebounding, Summers gets a bad rap, I think. He has not been a strong offensive rebounder, and that’s not surprising. But his defensive rebounding stats are reasonably average and frankly good for a true swingman. They aren’t any different than Jeff Adrien’s, and he’s put forward as the rough and tumble big man a Big East team needs.

What about Summers’ defense? Here are CO’s offensive and defensive efficiency for each player, based on +/- in BE’s games:

Player                 Off     Def    Total
Hibbert, Roy          122.3    90.2    32.1
Wallace, Jonathan     118.7    94.0    24.7
Freeman, Austin       115.4    95.8    19.6
Sapp, Jessie          108.9    89.8    19.1
Ewing, Patrick        106.1    90.5    15.6
Summers, DaJuan       105.6    90.6    15.0
Wattad, Omar          103.3    88.3    14.9
Wright, Chris         100.8    93.2     7.6
Crawford, Tyler        95.6    95.4     0.1
Rivers, Jeremiah       90.1    94.4    -4.3
Macklin, Vernon        94.4   100.0    -5.6

Summers had the lowest overall efficiency of the starters. But by this methodology, he isn’t a poor defender at all, at least in comparison to the rest of the Hoyas. Georgetown was a fantastic defensive team last year, so it seems unlikely Summers was a bad defender, and he was likely pretty good even when you factor in that Roy probably erased a few mistakes. His overall plus minus is lower than other starter due to his lack of relative offensive efficiency – too many threes.

You can look at DaJuan one of two ways. Either he’s an immensely talented player whose performance has not yet reached his potential, and therefore he has will improve and lead the Hoyas to a deep run in the NCAAs, or he’s an immensely talented player who performance hasn’t reflected his talent, and he’s not that likely to improve enough to be the most important player for us this year.

I’m splitting the difference here.

It’s hard to underestimate the value Summers would have if he improves as much as he could, but who could expect improvement along the lines of what Jeff Green did?

After all, Jeff was watching two senior starters and a talented sixth man leave the program as he entered his junior year…

#2. Chris Wright.

It’s not a surprise that most pundits are not as high on Wright as this ranking is. His full year numbers are not necessarily indicative of a player who will contend for the title of best point guard in the Big East:

eFG%	Assist Rate	Turnover Rate	Steal Rate
56%	25%	26%	3%

Taking a closer look, we see a few things. One, his eFG% was actually pretty strong. His assist rate led the team, as did his steal rate. He also was a strong defensive rebounder and attempted more FTs per shot attempt than any guard on the roster. In fact, it was only his turnovers that kept him from being as effective as Jessie Sapp in his limited play.

But these were his full year numbers. Wright had two breaks in his play all year, forcing him to miss preseason practices and keeping him out of the complete Big East regular season. How did Wright perform at the end of the season, against top competition?

The answer is uneven. In short stints, he played well against Villanova, UMBC and Davidson. In games against Pitt and West Virginia, he played poorly.

The net numbers scream small sample size. He scored 23 points on about the same number of shots. He did this despite not scoring in two games and going one for six from the line. These kind of great yet unsustainable numbers speak to Chris’ ability to score in bunches.

He used a slightly higher percentage of possessions (22%), dished out a few less assists (16%*) and lowered his turnover rate a bit (22%). But that turnover rate was still high for an elite point guard.

In other words, the numbers don’t say much. Watching the games said something different.

There’s definitely a feel that Wright is more aggressive than many Hoyas of the Thompson era. Most criticism of the team falls around shots not taken and lanes not driven than vice versa. Whether it is the players we’ve recruited or simply the effect of stressing good shots and unselfish play, our offense has tended to err on the side of patience.

Wright will likely test that. I’m not talking extremes here. While Wright dominated his offense in high school, his 20% usage rate as a freshman wasn’t even above average, much less anywhere near the thirties, which is where you’ll find players like Luke Harangody.

Defensively, Wright will help mitigate Hibbert’s loss by being an upgrade on Jon Wallace. He’s stronger, quicker and faster, which will translate to more turnovers caused and less drives to the basket. With no seven-footer back there to erase mistakes, the team needs an upgrade to its point defense. Wright should be able to provide that.

In the end, however, Wright holds the number two position on this list because he will be aggressive and take many of the shots and possessions that went to Wallace and Hibbert last year. With his ability to create, there’s a good chance he’ll leapfrog players like Sapp and Freeman in terms of using possessions. Wright’s performance in making good decisions, protecting the ball and creating good shots for himself and his teammates becomes extremely important.

The Hoyas’ offensive kryptonite over the past few years has been turnovers. Wright’s problem last year was turnovers. Wright is going to be handling the ball more this year. You can do the math.

#1. Greg Monroe.

The argument for Greg Monroe as the player who can make the most positive impact towards the team this year is simple.

By almost any objective or subjective method, Roy Hibbert was incredibly important to both the offense and the defense of the Hoyas last year. Roy was an incredibly efficient scorer who anchored one of the country’s best defenses last year. With the loss of Jeff Green, one could have expected the Hoyas to take a step back last year.

But they fundamentally didn’t, at least during the regular season. While the offense suffered from losing Green to the NBA, slipping from amazing to extremely good, the defense went from good to record setting.

Funneling the ball to Hibbert, the Hoyas simply didn’t give up two point baskets. But they also didn’t give up threes – as the safety net of Hibbert allowed the perimeter players to push the issue defending the three. This defense came together during Hibbert’s junior year, and paired with that year’s offense, took the team to a Final Four. Senior year was more of the same.

Can Monroe duplicate Hibbert’s defensive impact? It’s unlikely, simply based on him being a freshman. The last time the Hoyas started a freshman center, the defense was well behind the offense, and ranked 73rd in the country by Pomeroy.

We could hearken back to a couple of other freshman centers in Ewing and Mourning who presided over strong defenses, but Monroe is much more in the Jeff Green mode. Monroe will have stronger defensive players around him than Green did (Sapp and Wright versus Wallace and Cook, for example), but that defense was not good enough to even get to the tourney.

How can Monroe make up some of this production?

Hibbert, of course, was not the perfect player, so there are areas where Monroe can make up the difference. Defensively, Hibbert was not quick, so when he altered a shot, he often could not get into proper position for the defensive rebound. Since Summers and Ewing played most of the year at power forward, this was an issue. The loss at Memphis exemplified this issue as Dorsey repeatedly grabbed offensive boards and put them back.

Monroe can be a better defensive rebounder than Hibbert. He may not alter as many shots, but he can help limit our opponents to one shot.

Offensively, Hibbert struggled to get the ball. It’s been discussed ad nauseum amongst the Hoya Faithful, but he simply didn’t get the ball enough last year. It was not as bad as some would think: Hibbert still took 26% of the shots while he was in the game, and that’s more than anyone has under Thompson. He actually took a higher percentage of his team’s shots than Tyler Hansbrough.

But in pales in comparison to players like Luke Harangody. More importantly, it was obvious that there were many times when not getting Hibbert the ball was not the result of a balanced and unselfish gameplan, but simply inability (or unwillingness?) to get the ball into the big guy.

It wasn’t all that hard to defend the entry pass to Hibbert in the post. The Hoyas struggled when he was fronted – even if not double teamed – as he rarely had the quickness to beat weak side help to the ball thrown over the top. And the Hoyas guards rarely made a good entry pass when they had to try that.

Watching Darrell Arthur repeatedly get easy layups on balls thrown over fronting defenders illustrated the difference between the two players. Hibbert had a better game once he had the ball, back to the basket, close in, but Arthur simply had more options to get the ball.

Monroe is going to have more options to get the ball. He can catch on the perimeter and drive. He will quickly learn to seal his man off and receive the ball traditionally. And he is more than quick enough to handle grabbing a ball thrown over the top or an entry pass that requires him to get the ball.

Of course, he's going to have to get the ball. No current player on the team has any low post game to speak of, and niether Sims nor Vaughn are known for their proficiency down low.

Monroe is likely to have more help, on both offense and defense, than Hibbert did last year. He isn't going to need to have the offense run through him, for example. He'll have stronger perimeter defenders.

But how far the Hoyas go rests, more than any other player, on his shoulders. Can he provide a significant portion of Hibbert's interior intimidation? Can he be the primary defensive rebounder? Can he provide a low post game to balance the offense?

Monroe is an enigma to me. He's the highest rated player Thompson has recruited. His potential is off the charts. But people say not to expect a Durant or Beasley -- and we shouldn't. In most years, the team would be estatic with a player performing like Austin Freeman did last year. This year, the team needs more out of Monroe than that.

Another stats gimmick, and J'ville preview

Excuse this interruption of SFHoya99's season preview, but I thought I'd chime back in to introduce another stats feature that I've been working on behind the scenes.

If you're looking for the Jacksonville preview, you'll need to scroll down quite a bit.

My regular reader may have noticed by now that I've been loathe to assign credit or blame on specific players during a single game, but rather tend to present team stats. I do this in part because I think that it is difficult to evaluate individual play (especially defense) with a simple basketball box score.

There are tools available to glean some additional information when you look at a single game, notably the individual net score box that Dean Oliver describes in Basketball on Paper. Henry Sugar over at Cracked Sidewalks is a particular proponent of this, and has been providing Marquette fans with his version (which he calls "Individual Player Ratings") for most of last season. Here's an example from last year's game between MU and Villanova (hope he doesn't mind me linking):


Note that I've previously discussed this game when I introduced my version of the HD Box Score.

I won't explain Mr. Sugar's work here, but I will point to an excellent post he wrote last season covering the basics of each stat column listed. The bottom line for most fans is in columns 5 and 7 - points produced and net points added. This gives us an idea, based on tempo-free stats, of just how many points each player contributed towards the game result (in this case, a 10 point win for Marquette).

There are some limitations to this work.

Without going into too much detail here, I can assure you that the defensive rating assigned to each player for this game is just loosely tied to reality. Defensive stats are not available for most basketball games (NBA too) at the detail-level needed, so it is somewhere between difficult and impossible to assign blame for each player's defensive effort.

But more generally, the calculations used for the stats in the table above are underpinned by a large number of estimates, which should improve as we aggregate data over the course of a season, but which can be quite a bit off during an individual game. Here are just some examples of missing information needed to make the calculations for the stats above:

1. How many possessions did a player have on offense? Defense?
2. How many offensive/defensive possessions ended in a score?
   
3. What percentage of field goals made by a player were off of an assist?
4. How often are a player's missed shots rebounded by a teammate?
5. How well did the team rebound while the player was on the court?
   
6. How often did a player end a possession by making at least 1 free throw?
7. How often does a player give a foul, and the opponent miss at least 1 free throw (e.g. Hack-a-Shaq)?

None of these questions - and others I haven't posed - can be answered by looking at the game box score. So the only recourse is to make estimates, based on a series of formulas introduced by Dean Oliver (and presumably used by Henry Sugar).

However, all of the questions asked above can be answered by parsing the available play-by-play from the game. And that is what I propose to do.

A few points to consider:

• While I can improve the accuracy of the final stats by replacing estimates with actual tallies of various components of the calculations, I'm not modifying the philosphy (or math) of the final stats. That is, if you don't think individual player Offensive Rating is a good measure of how a player contributes on offense, there is little here to convince you otherwise. Of course, if your main quibble is with D. Oliver's many underlying estimates, keep reading.

• As I've said before, the drawback of using play-by-play data is that there are inevitably errors in the transcript, which can lead to uncertainty in assigning credit or blame. However, I am not convinced that these same errors aren't also in the official box score, but are just hidden from view. Just for Georgetown, I know of at least one instance where Ken Pomeroy found an error in the play-by-play that propagated to the box score.

• I am not exploiting the play-by-play fully yet, because if takes a lot of work. I've written over 5000 lines of code so far (yes, that was a brag) and my wife keeps mentioning how much time I spend working on the program, and something about a divorce (at least I think that's what she said, I wasn't really paying attention). For instance, I could record the shooting percentage of each player making an assisted basket, but I don't yet. I could distinguish between assisted dunks, layups and jumpers, but I don't yet.

A bigger point, and it goes back to an early post, is that I don't really believe in D. Oliver's defensive stats, and frankly I don't think he does either. They are merely an estimate, using an exceeding limited toolbox. Here's what I wrote there to briefly explain his Defensive Rating stat:

Defensive rating is an attempt to estimate the contribution of each player to the team's defensive efficiency. It is calculated as team defensive efficiency, plus one-fifth of the difference between team defensive efficiency and individual player stops per 100 possessions played. Player individual stops are estimated from the number of blocks, steals and defensive rebounds each player has, plus some team stats. Since it is not a simple ratio, it is more like being graded on a curve, such as that it is limited to the range of 80% - 120% of team defensive efficiency. So, a player who literally refused to play defense (e.g. Donte Greene) could score no worse than 80% of his team's efficiency. I would describe this stat as a very rough estimate of actual defensive worth . . .

Later in that same post, I discussed an alternative method, which was simply to use available plus/minus stats to calculate the team's defensive efficiency while the player was on the court, and use that (less the team's defensive efficiency while the player was off the court) to rate that player's defensive ability.

The drawback to this method, pointed out on this thread on Hoyatalk, is that it the quality of one's teammates can have a big effect.

So here, I'm proposing a new method: I am using Dean Oliver's basic statistics for player offensive and defensive rating, but the data I am feeding into the underlying equations are only those generated by his team while the player was on the court. This should especially help with defensive stats, in that the base team defensive efficiency used is now the def. efficiency while the player was on the court (i.e. the player receives no credit or penalty for great or lousy defense played by his teammates while he sat on the bench). The remainder of Dean Oliver's def. rating calc. (stops, stop %, scoring poss., etc.) is used as originally described. Additionally, as stated earlier I am removing as many of the estimates used by Oliver as I can, when I have time. The seven listed above are all incorporated, along with a few others (e.g. is a blocked shot recovered by the shooter's team?). I'll try to write up a FAQ covering all of the gory details at some point this season - likely when my wife is out of town.

As a test case, I've run the Marq/Nova game mentioned at the top of this post. Here's what I get:

INDIVIDUAL NET POINTS STATS

Marquette             Off    Poss           Individ     Def             Individ                             
Player                Poss   Used    ORtg   Pts Prod    Poss    DRtg   Pts Allow   Net Pts
HAYWARD, Lazar         59    12.5   111.2    13.9        59    100.9     11.9       +2.0                  
BARRO, Ousmane         51     3.5   149.3     5.2        51     95.4      9.7       -4.6                  
JAMES, Dominic         69    18.0   140.5    25.3        70     97.3     13.6      +11.7                  
MCNEAL, Jerel          66    18.6    79.0    14.7        67     96.4     12.9       +1.8                 
MATTHEWS, Wesley       42    11.7    92.8    10.8        42     86.0      7.2       +3.6                    
ACKER, Maurice         23     4.7   181.0     8.4        23     81.8      3.8       +4.7                  
FITZGERALD, Dan        16     0.3   280.0     0.9        17    104.5      3.6       -2.7                   
CUBILLAN, David        31     3.1    74.8     2.3        32    134.1      8.6       -6.3                   
BURKE, Dwight           6     0.0     -       0.0         7     62.9      0.9       -0.9             
MBAKWE, Trevor         12     2.0   100.0     2.0        12    124.4      3.0       -1.0                  
TOTALS                 75    74.3   112.4    83.5        76     98.7     74.6       +8.9          

Villanova             Off    Poss           Individ     Def             Individ                         
Player                Poss   Used    ORtg   Pts Prod    Poss    DRtg   Pts Allow   Net Pts
Pena, Antonio          62    12.9    75.6     9.8        60    123.0     14.8       -5.0                 
Cunningham, Dante      61    12.0    93.3    11.2        62    112.0     13.9       -2.7                     
Reynolds, Scottie      60    16.1    85.4    13.7        57    123.9     14.1       -0.4                     
Fisher, Corey          62    17.4    76.4    13.3        59    112.0     13.2       +0.1                 
Anderson, Dwayne       54     6.6   154.1    10.1        53    125.3     13.3       -3.1                    
Redding, Reggie        25     2.0   223.2     4.4        28     80.9      4.5       -0.1                   
Clark, Shane            8     0.8   333.3     2.5         9     70.2      1.3       +1.2                
Stokes, Corey          48     7.6   121.7     9.3        47    106.7     10.0       -0.7                 
TOTALS                 76    75.3    98.7    74.3        75    113.3     85.1      -10.8                    

The actual score of the game was MU 85, VU 75.

Several of the columns here are the same as Henry Sugar's above, but there are a few new ones as well. Briefly

• Off/Def Poss - the number of offensive or defensive possessions that a player was on the court; I think this is more useful than minutes played.

• Poss Used - the number of offensive possessions used by a player (partial credit due to assists and offensive rebounds).

• Off. Rating - the number of individual points produced, divided by the number of offensive possessions used, multiplied by 100. This is an estimate of the number of points a player would produce (not simply score) in 100 possessions.

• Points Produced - similar to possessions used, it is an estimate of the team points scored that can be credited to an individual player; again, partial credit due to assists and offensive rebounds.

• Def. Rating - An estimate of the number of points a player would allow in 100 possessions. See the discussion above the table for the details.

• Points Allowed - The actual number of points allowed by the player - again an estimate.

• Net Points - The difference between points produced and points allowed.

I've also included a totals line for all stats, so you can actually check my work.

The total Off Poss & Def Poss are the actual number of possessions in the game.

The total number of possessions used by each team agree very well with the reality - for my data parser, total possessions used are typically within 5% of actual possessions played, but this game worked exceptionally well.

Total points produced for each team are also very close to actual points scored. These should be with 10%, and often with 5%.

The summed points produced divided by total possessions used gives an estimate of team off. efficiency. This is the value listed as the total of ORtg. The estimated team offensive efficiencies (112.4 & 98.7) agree extremely well with actual off. efficiencies for each team (113.3 & 98.7).

At least for this game, it appears that my method is giving a quite satisfactory measure of what happened on offense. It won't always be so accurate, but this is why I want to give these totals - it will allow my reader to decide for himself (do any women read this blog?) how well the stats analysis is working.

Defensive stats are more tightly coupled to team, rather than individual, data so the totals here aren't quite so useful. The DRtg totals are simply team defensive efficiencies, calculated as team points allowed divided by defensive possessions.

Here, the summed individual points allowed for each team agree within 1 point of the actual score, another excellent result - I find typically they will agree within 5 points.

Finally, the net points totals give two estimates of the margin of victory (or loss). The average of the two [(8.9 + 10.7)/2] = 9.9 is almost exactly the true margin. It usually doesn't work quite this well!

I think this method compares favorably to the "classic" method proposed by Dean Oliver. I will keep working at it to remove additional estimated values and fix any bugs (e.g. I wasn't counting missed dunks until last week), but I think the basic framework is now in place. Any feedback would be appreciated.

Edited to add: A year later, and I did incorporate some feedback into net points. See here for the gory details.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Jacksonville

Finally tonight, I thought I'd take a look at last year's game vs. Jacksonville, which the Hoyas won 87-55. That link will take you to my post-game post from last season, which includes the tempo-free and HD box scores (both will be part of each post-game analysis this season, when available). Here, I'll post the net points stats from last year's game - I've bolded and italicized any player who should play tomorrow.

INDIVIDUAL NET POINTS STATS
 
Georgetown            Off    Poss           Individ     Def             Individ                        
Player                Poss   Used    ORtg   Pts Prod    Poss    DRtg   Pts Allow   Net Pts
Wallace, Jonathan      26     9.3    71.7     6.6        25     91.3      4.6       +2.1                         
Summers, DaJuan        39     8.8   125.0    11.0        36    101.8      7.3       +3.7                           
Sapp, Jessie           36     9.2    61.8     5.7        35     75.0      5.2       +0.4                    
Ewing, Patrick         26     2.0   101.6     2.0        26     55.5      2.9       -0.9                      
Hibbert, Roy           24     8.7   115.6    10.0        24     84.4      4.1       +6.0                    
Macklin, Vernon        46     4.4   143.3     6.4        45     97.8      8.8       -2.4                       
Wright, Chris          40    10.0   137.2    13.7        40     74.5      6.0       +7.7                     
Rivers, Jeremiah       28     4.7   152.7     7.1        28     83.6      4.7       +2.4                        
Jansen, Bryon           4     0.0     -       0.0         4     80.0      0.6       -0.6                     
Freeman, Austin        42     4.3   255.1    10.8        43     76.6      6.6       +4.3                       
Crawford, Tyler        29     4.5   123.0     5.5        29     95.5      5.5       +0.0                       
Wattad, Omar           10     2.1   129.3     2.7        10     90.9      1.8       +0.9                    
TOTALS                 70    67.9   120.3    81.6        69     79.7     58.1      +23.5                 

Jacksonville          Off    Poss           Individ     Def             Individ                          
Player                Poss   Used    ORtg   Pts Prod    Poss    DRtg   Pts Allow   Net Pts
SMITH, Ben             54    16.8    64.3    10.8        55    115.1     12.7       -1.9                      
HARDY, Ayron           34     5.4    73.4     4.0        37    125.0      9.3       -5.3                    
MCMILLAN, Andre        37     5.6   143.8     8.0        37    119.7      8.9       -0.8                       
COLBERT, Lehmon        40     9.0    87.8     7.9        40    105.8      8.5       -0.6                           
ALLEN, Marcus          30     3.8    95.6     3.6        30    126.3      7.6       -4.0                         
COHN, Travis           16     3.4    62.0     2.1        16    135.0      4.3       -2.2                        
GILBERT, Brian         30     3.1    97.2     3.0        30    143.6      8.6       -5.6                          
KOHIHEIM, Paul         26     3.8    20.9     0.8        25    120.5      6.0       -5.2                      
BROOKS, Aric           19     5.9    80.9     4.8        19    116.6      4.4       +0.4                        
LUKASIAK, Szymon       33     5.0    79.1     3.9        35    138.1      9.7       -5.7                            
JEFFERSON, Evan        26     5.1    59.6     3.1        26    139.5      7.3       -4.2                       
TOTALS                 69    66.9    77.8    52.0        70    124.3     86.9      -34.9              

DaJuan Summers had a great offensive game, but a lousy defensive game against the Dolphins, while Jessie Sapp was just the reverse (bad O, great D). Austin Freeman was his typical efficient self on offense but didn't use up a lot of possessions (~10%), while Chris Wright was player of the game on both ends of the court. Even Omar Wattad did his thing on the offensive end (1-1 2FG, 1-2 3FG).

I won't go into the Jacksonville players (you can see how they played last year).

The Dolphins lost to Florida State on Saturday, 59-57. J'ville was trailing 57-40 with 3:30 left and proceeded to go on a 15-1 run to bring the score to 58-55 with :20 left in the game, thanks in part to 2-8 FT shooting by FSU.