Greg Monroe and Jeff Green

Want to see something a little eerie? Look at Greg Monroe's freshman year versus Jeff's freshman year (Big East stats only).

Statistic              Monroe '08-09        Green '04-05
% minutes played             80 %               78 %
% possessions Used           24 %               24 %
% shots used                 21 %               22 %
Off. Rating                 106                110  
True Shooting %              59 %               59 %
2 PT FG %                    56 %               52 %
3 PT FG %                    2/4                43 %
FT %                         66 %               72 %
FT Rate                      47 %               48 %
Off Reb %                     9 %               10 %
Def Reb %                    18 %               13 %
Assist rate                  21 %               21 %
Turnover rate                23 %               21 %
Steal rate                    4 %                2 %
Block rate                    3 %                3 %
Fouls per game              2.5                3.3  

Aside from a few small differences, they are remarkably similar. They created for their teammates at almost the exact same rate. They shot and controlled the ball at almost the exact same rate.

They were equally effective shooting -- despite doing it slightly differently as Jeff got his more from long range and the line, while, for all the talk of Greg's deficient right hand, he was stronger inside than Green was.

Jeff was slightly more effective offensively because he didn't turn the ball over quite as much. Greg, shockingly, was a better defensive rebounder and very possibly a better defender (more steals, less fouls, better def. rebounder).

Does this tell us anything? I don't know.

Jeff actually had a bit of a sophomore slump. His three point shooting dropped off by 15%, and his FT % fell as well. So did his assist rate, his steal rate and his offensive rebound rate.

However, he cut down a bit on turnovers and rapidly improved on the D boards, which might have been helped a bit by Hibbert getting more time.

I'm not sure this says anything about Monroe for next year. He already drastically improved his rebounding from the beginning of the year to the end. He could make some gains cutting down on turnovers and making himself even more effective down low, and those would be nice improvements.

What it is really saying to me is that improvement for the Hoyas is likely to come from somewhere other than Monroe. Any huge gain for Monroe is likely to be in the matter of extending his shooting range. And that's something that generally takes a large amount of time. Considering that reports from Kenner didn't have him nailing mid-range jumpers off the dribble, that may need to wait until junior year.

Just like it did for Jeff.

Season Post-Mortem V: Conference Stats

Yes, I realize it is August. And that it is probably a little late for post-mortems. After all, it's beginning to rot a bit.

But I finally got around to looking at conference-only stats for the Hoyas, player by player. One offensive stat in particular stuck out to me: turnovers.

I haven't really focused much on them in the off-season. The Hoyas have never been a good ball-handling team under JTIII, whether because of personnel or the time- and pass-intensive offense that they run. And they've won despite it. But I'm not sure that's possible given the turnover rates in-conference play last year.

Turnover rate (turnovers / total possessions used) in conference play:

Player                   TO Rate
Awful
Vaughn                      32%
Clark                       29%
Mescheriakov                27%
Wattad                      27%

Merely Really Bad
Summers                     24%
Monroe                      24%
TEAM                  23%

Borderline
Wright                      22%

Decent         
Sapp                        20%
Sims                        18%

Really Good     
Freeman                     12%

To quote Talia Shire, "You can't win!" Well, at least not with turnover rates like that.

For example, Jason Clark had a true shooting percentage of 58%. That's fantastic (he was our best 3 point shooter in conference). But his turnovers were so prevalent he was a below average offensive player.

The same thing happened to DaJuan Summers. In fact, only three Hoyas had an in conference Offensive Rating of over 100 -- Freeman, Monroe and Wright -- and the latter two declined significantly from the non-conference schedule.

To make the point even more emphatically, Henry Sims was our fourth most effective offensive player on a possession used based -- and that's solely because he didn't throw away the ball every chance he got.

(Ok, not solely. He also limited himself to mostly dunks. But you get my point.)

The cleanup continues . . .

Here's the next installment in the highlight packages from last season: the Big East opener at UConn.

It's remarkable to think that this game (played Dec. 29th) represented the high-water mark for the Hoyas last season, as they came away with an impressive road win against the #2 ranked - and eventual Final Four - team. This win propelled Georgetown to the #1 overall ranking in KenPom.com's ratings . . .

Then, the wheels came off.

But we've dwelt on the '09 portion of the '08-'09 season already around here, so now let's just enjoy the highlights (to download a higher quality version, click here).

Dusting off the cobwebs . . .

After fading as badly as the Hoyas this spring, I've returned to turn the lights on, mow the lawn and pick up the newspapers - don't want the neighbors to think we've moved out!

It surely has been a quite summer around here, and elsewhere in Hoya nation, as even Hoya Hoops looks to have quieted down. Another favorite blog (TVBB) may have even gone belly-up - no posts since January! Sure, there's always HoyaSaxa and HoyaTalk to get your Kenner League fill, but even there strange things are afoot as a rogue board seems to have sprung up. And, of course, the wags at CasualHoya are still churning out the Hoya-flavored snark.

So what do we (or at least I) have to show for the months off? Not much, at least in the basketball world. But, I've started to churn through some recorded games from last season (thanks Tom!) and will try to compile at least of couple of game highlight packages.

Kicking it off is the Maryland game from the Old Spice Classic last November (to download a higher quality version, click here).

I'll try to update the links this week - HoyaBalla's board needs to get posted, at least. And as the month moves along, I'll start to crank up the HD box score program to finally churn through the rest of last Big East season, and then get to re-writing the darn thing to work a bit better for next year.

Also, I'll be dusting off some remaining charts and graphs from last season's team, as we look at what went wrong one more time as a lead-up towards what we expect (hope) we'll see this year.


P.S. - Tom, I promise to send out that Duke game DVD any day now . . .