Monday, November 30, 2009

Recap: Georgetown 83, Mount St Mary's 62

I didn't get a chance to watch tonight's game, and the WTNT-AM radio feed was also down (no Chvotkin!), so instead I had the pleasure of listening to Roy Sigler (and play-by-play man Steve Stofberg) on WTHU.  I highly recommend it the next time Georgetown plays Mount St. Mary's.

Let's run the numbers:

TEMPO-FREE BOX SCORE
 
.            Home                            Visitor   
.            Georgetown                      Mount St Mary's         
.            1st Half  2nd Half   Total      1st Half  2nd Half   Total
Pace            33        40        73
 
Effic.        119.6     108.6     113.6        86.7      83.4      84.9  
 
eFG%           60.9      45.9      52.9        48.3      47.8      48.1  
TO%            20.9      20.2      20.5        17.9      25.3      21.9  
OR%            33.3      40.9      37.8        16.7      14.3      15.6  
FT Rate         3.1      29.7      17.4         0.0      65.2      28.3  

Assist Rate    52.9      37.5      45.5        66.7      60.0      63.6  
Block Rate     23.8      11.8      18.4        18.2       9.7      13.2  
Steal Rate      6.0      12.6       9.6         6.0      10.1       8.2  
 
2FG%           54.5      45.2      49.1        33.3      47.1      39.5  
3FG%           50.0      33.3      43.8        55.6      33.3      46.7  
FT%           100.0      81.8      83.3          -       73.3      73.3

I won't be offering much of a recap tonight, just a few bullet points of statistical wisdom:
  • This was easily the fastest-paced game of the year for the Hoyas.  Last year's game against the Mountaineers was played with 65 possessions.  Mt. St. Mary's had the faster offensive possessions, so it seems that they were attempting to push the pace this year, especially in the 2nd half.

  • This was a fairly humdrum game for team stats (note the lack of color on the tempo-free box).  The biggest advantage for the Hoyas was on the glass, as they did a great job limiting the Mountaineers on second-chances.

  • The Hoyas are shooting 40% on 3FGA for the year, and have made 40% of their attempts in 4 of 5 games played so far - the only struggle was vs. Temple [3/18 3FGA].  After 5 games last season, the Hoyas were at 28% against admittedly tougher opponents.


INDIVIDUAL NET POINTS STATS

Georgetown            Off     %           Pts      Def           Pts   
Player                Poss  Poss  O.Rtg   Prod     Poss  D.Rtg  Allow    Net Pts
Wright, Chris          54   19.0  128.8   13.2      55    76.0    8.4      +5.1  
Monroe, Greg           50   36.4  119.4   21.7      51    81.4    8.3     +10.2  
Freeman, Austin        58   20.2   72.1    8.5      57    73.7    8.4      -0.1  
Clark, Jason           56   19.8  110.9   12.3      55    74.0    8.1      +4.1  
Vaughn, Julian         42   20.2  179.9   15.3      42    84.1    7.1      +8.2  
Thompson, Hollis       40   11.7  133.9    6.3      39    84.2    6.6      +1.0  
Mescheriakov, Nikita   10   10.0    0.0    0.0      11    94.1    2.1      -1.5  
Sanford, Vee           17   26.9   68.8    3.1      17    94.3    3.2      -0.6  
Dougherty, Ryan         2    0.0    -      0.0       3   200.0    1.2      -1.2  
Benimon, Jerrelle      11    9.1    0.0    0.0      11   122.1    2.7      -2.0  
Sims, Henry            25    6.4   76.8    1.2      24   103.1    5.0      -2.1  
TOTALS                 73         112.4   81.6      73    83.5   61.0     +20.9  

Mount St Mary's       Off     %           Pts      Def           Pts   
Player                Poss  Poss  O.Rtg   Prod     Poss  D.Rtg  Allow    Net Pts
CAJOU, Jean            56   25.1   77.1   10.8      57   118.1   13.5      -4.2  
GOODE, Jeremy          56   18.8   82.2    8.6      57   107.2   12.2      -3.1  
BEIDLER, Kelly         49   17.3   70.2    6.0      50   106.6   10.7      -3.9  
ATUPEM, Shawn          54   23.9   45.3    5.8      54    99.9   10.8      -6.0  
KRAJINA, Kristijan     27   24.0   60.5    3.9      28   122.9    6.9      -3.5  
BROWN, Pierre          34   13.3  116.1    5.3      35    90.0    6.3      +0.1  
BROWN, Oliver           3   33.3  200.0    2.0       2   120.0    0.5      +1.2  
HARVEY, Mike            3    0.0    -      0.0       2   120.0    0.5      -0.5  
TRICE, Lamar           21   35.8  120.8    9.1      20    91.7    3.7      +3.8  
JACKSON, Tayvon        41    9.1  174.4    6.5      38   127.5    9.7      -0.7  
THOMPSON, Danny        21    8.2   83.5    1.4      22   102.1    4.5      -1.7  
TOTALS                 73          83.8   59.5      73   108.4   79.1     -18.8

Julian Vaughn + more layups - FT attempts = success.

Greg Monroe attempted 19 shots tonight (although at least a few were tip-in attempts on offensive rebounds) without a big hit to his offensive efficiency.

Reports of the demise of Chris Wright's outside shot were slightly exaggerated.   If Wright, Freeman, Clark and Thompson can all keep shooting >38% for the rest of the season, there may suddenly be a lot more space for those backdoor cuts.

Jason Clark got hosed by the official scorer.  He drew a charging foul on Lamar Trice in the 2nd half, but the official scorer accidentally gave the foul and turnover to Clark.  The play-by-play parser complained, or I wouldn't have noticed myself.  The Net Points and HD box scores are corrected.


HD BOX SCORE

Mount St Mary's vs Georgetown
11/30/09 7:30 at Verizon Center
Final score: Georgetown 83, Mount St Mary's 62

Mount St Mary's         Min   +/-   Pts  2PM-A 3PM-A FTM-A  FGA    A    Stl    TO   Blk    OR    DR   PF
CAJOU, Jean            30:56  -30  16/41  2- 6  4- 6  0- 0 12/41  0/10  0/57  4/56  0/39  0/26  4/26   5
GOODE, Jeremy          30:42  -21   5/43  1- 4  0- 1  3- 4  5/39  7/15  1/57  4/56  1/39  0/24  3/29   0
BEIDLER, Kelly         28:15  -21   5/36  1- 6  1- 3  0- 0  9/39  1/11  1/50  1/49  2/31  2/27  4/20   0
ATUPEM, Shawn          28:44  -20   6/37  3-10  0- 0  0- 2 10/40  0/10  1/54  2/54  0/33  1/28  3/22   1
KRAJINA, Kristijan     15:08  -10   3/27  0- 2  1- 3  0- 0  5/21  1/ 9  0/28  2/27  0/22  1/12  3/15   1
BROWN, Pierre          18:51  - 2   4/32  1- 1  0- 0  2- 2  1/23  2/11  1/35  2/34  1/32  0/11  2/26   0
BROWN, Oliver          00:59  + 4   2/ 6  0- 0  0- 0  2- 2  0/ 1  0/ 1  0/ 2  0/ 3  0/ 2  0/ 0  0/ 1   0
HARVEY, Mike           00:59  + 4   0/ 6  0- 0  0- 0  0- 0  0/ 1  0/ 1  0/ 2  0/ 3  0/ 2  0/ 0  0/ 1   0
TRICE, Lamar           11:29  + 5   8/24  1- 2  1- 2  3- 4  4/16  3/ 5  1/20  2/21  0/15  0/ 9  0/11   3
JACKSON, Tayvon        21:29  -12  11/36  5- 5  0- 0  1- 1  5/28  0/ 9  0/38  1/41  2/32  1/14  3/20   1
THOMPSON, Danny        12:28  - 2   2/22  1- 2  0- 0  0- 0  2/16  0/ 6  1/22  0/21  1/18  0/ 9  1/14   0
TOTALS                 40:00       62    15-38  7-15 11-15    53 14/22  6/73 18/73  7/53  5/32 23/37  11
.                                        0.395 0.467 0.733       0.636 0.082 0.247 0.132 0.156 0.622    

Georgetown              Min   +/-   Pts  2PM-A 3PM-A FTM-A  FGA    A    Stl    TO   Blk    OR    DR   PF
Wright, Chris          30:48  +24  18/68  3- 6  4- 5  0- 0 11/55  3/22  1/55  2/54  0/30  0/25  3/25   1
Monroe, Greg           27:55  +18  19/59  7-17  1- 2  2- 2 19/47  3/16  0/51  3/50  1/26  5/24  6/24   2
Freeman, Austin        31:13  +22   9/64  4- 9  0- 1  1- 1 10/54  2/23  1/57  3/58  0/31  0/26  1/27   2
Clark, Jason           29:26  +16  12/64  3- 4  1- 3  3- 5  7/54  3/22  4/55  3/56  0/26  2/29  3/21   1
Vaughn, Julian         22:10  + 9  14/44  7-10  0- 1  0- 0 11/37  3/11  0/42  0/42  3/23  3/19  5/18   0
Thompson, Hollis       22:38  +13   5/43  1- 3  1- 2  0- 0  5/40  0/14  0/39  0/40  1/22  3/25  4/18   2
Mescheriakov, Nikita   05:34  - 2   0/ 7  0- 0  0- 1  0- 0  1/ 5  0/ 2  0/11  0/10  0/ 6  0/ 3  0/ 8   0
Sanford, Vee           08:11  - 6   4/11  0- 2  0- 1  4- 4  3/13  0/ 2  1/17  1/17  0/ 5  0/13  2/ 5   0
Dougherty, Ryan        00:59  - 4   0/ 2  0- 1  0- 0  0- 0  1/ 2  0/ 1  0/ 3  0/ 2  0/ 1  0/ 1  0/ 0   2
Benimon, Jerrelle      05:42  + 3   0/16  0- 0  0- 0  0- 0  0/ 8  0/ 4  0/11  1/11  0/ 4  0/ 6  0/ 4   0
Sims, Henry            15:24  +12   2/37  1- 1  0- 0  0- 0  1/30  1/15  0/24  1/25  2/16  0/14  3/10   1
TOTALS                 40:00       83    26-53  7-16 10-12    69 15/33  7/73 14/73  7/38 14/37 27/32  11
.                                        0.491 0.438 0.833       0.455 0.096 0.192 0.184 0.378 0.844    

Efficiency: Georgetown 1.137, Mount St Mary's 0.849
eFG%: Georgetown 0.529, Mount St Mary's 0.481
Substitutions: Georgetown 24, Mount St Mary's 28

2-pt Shot Selection:
Dunks: Georgetown 3-3, Mount St Mary's 0-0
Layups/Tips: Georgetown 17-29, Mount St Mary's 11-20
Jumpers: Georgetown 6-21, Mount St Mary's 4-18

Fast break pts (% FG pts): Georgetown 16 (21.9), Mount St Mary's 7 (13.7)
Pts (eff.) after steal: Georgetown 6 (85.7), Mount St Mary's 9 (150.0)
Seconds per poss: Georgetown 17.0, Mount St Mary's 15.8


Stats pages won't get updated until tomorrow night.

Sunday, November 29, 2009

Fun with lineups

I'm still playing around with new coding for the HD Box Score generator.  Mostly behind-the-scenes stuff to make it run smoother and hopefully in a bit more automated fashion.

One thing I've just added is a possession tracker that compiles performance by lineup.  This is simply the team's offensive and defensive efficiency when any particular set of 5 players is on the court.

For instance, here are all lineups that had at least 15 offensive and defensive possessions last season, looking at all available games from the conference opener at UConn forward.  The compiler ignores all possessions when the game is statistically over (at nominally 69% [1σ] confidence), to avoid garbage time stats.

.                                                Offensive                    Defensive
Lineup                                    # Poss.  Rating Secs/poss     # Poss.  Rating Secs/poss
Freeman-Monroe-Sapp-Summers-Wright             294     108     18.2          280     104     17.8
Freeman-Mescheriakov-Monroe-Summers-Wright     109     102     19.3          101     107     19.0
Clark-Freeman-Monroe-Summers-Wright             74      99     19.6           76     136     18.7
Clark-Monroe-Sapp-Summers-Wright                42     102     15.8           40      92     17.7
Clark-Mescheriakov-Monroe-Summers-Wright        36     106     18.7           35     100     16.0
Freeman-Sapp-Summers-Vaughn-Wright              31      61     23.5           34     112     17.5
Clark-Freeman-Monroe-Summers-Wattad             30     123     14.5           30     107     20.6
Freeman-Mescheriakov-Monroe-Sapp-Wright         30      97     18.3           32     112     20.4
Clark-Freeman-Monroe-Sims-Wright                29     138     18.7           33      45     19.6
Clark-Freeman-Monroe-Sapp-Summers               25     108     18.5           24     133     16.3
Clark-Freeman-Mescheriakov-Monroe-Wright        24      92     19.2           21     100     19.2
Mescheriakov-Monroe-Sapp-Summers-Wright         20     135     20.2           20      90     17.1
Monroe-Sapp-Summers-Wattad-Wright               19      95     19.4           19      74     16.5
Clark-Freeman-Sapp-Summers-Vaughn               16      75     25.0           16     162     17.9
Freeman-Monroe-Sapp-Sims-Wright                 15     147     18.2           15      73     18.5
Freeman-Monroe-Sims-Summers-Wright              15     127     14.9           15      73     16.3
Clark-Freeman-Summers-Vaughn-Wright             15      53     19.4           18     167     18.7


Right now I'm just tracking offensive and defensive efficiencies and average time of possession.

As you can see, this might not be the most informative exercise for the Hoyas, as Coach Thompson likes to run a short bench, so only three lineups had more than 50 possessions together at either end. 

Looking at those three lineups, when either Mescheriakov or Clark substituted for Jessie Sapp last year, both the offense and defense took a substantial hit.  The defense with Clark, Freeman and Wright at the guards, Monroe at center and Summers at forward was especially generous.


How about this season, albeit against lesser competition (no lineup data for the Savannah St. game)?

.                                                Offensive                    Defensive
Lineup                                     # Poss.  Rating Secs/poss    # Poss.  Rating Secs/poss
Clark-Freeman-Monroe-Vaughn-Wright              82      109    15.1          83       63     19.8
Clark-Freeman-Monroe-Sims-Wright                32      113    15.0          32       72     16.9
Clark-Freeman-Monroe-Thompson-Wright            27      115    18.4          26      112     17.7
Clark-Freeman-Sims-Thompson-Vaughn              12      117    15.5          10       80     20.2
Clark-Monroe-Sims-Thompson-Wright               11      136    25.5          12      108     14.8
Freeman-Monroe-Sims-Thompson-Wright             11      136    14.3          13       92     21.0
Freeman-Monroe-Thompson-Vaughn-Wright           7        86    19.7          7        29     20.0
Clark-Mescheriakov-Monroe-Thompson-Wright       6       133    19.7          4       175     20.2
Freeman-Mescheriakov-Monroe-Thompson-Wright     6       133    15.5          7        71     26.9
Freeman-Sims-Thompson-Vaughn-Wright             6       100    21.8          5       120     13.4
Clark-Freeman-Monroe-Sanford-Thompson           6        50    16.5          6        83     11.8

This year's table now updated through the Mount St. Mary's game.

Note that the top 2 lineups are 3-4 seconds quicker per offensive possession than the top 2 last season.  A faster pace than last year, or just feasting on a steady diet of cupcakes?

Someone prod me in a few weeks and I'll update this year's lineup table.

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Recap: Georgetown 97, Lafayette 64

Didn't see the game today, so hopefully Alan or Tom can jump in and edit in some useful comments today if they were able to watch.

Let's run the numbers:

TEMPO-FREE BOX SCORE
 
.            Home                            Visitor   
.            Georgetown                      Lafayette         
.            1st Half  2nd Half   Total      1st Half  2nd Half   Total
Pace            36        31        66
 
Effic.        126.4     168.2     146.2        87.1     106.7      96.4  
 
eFG%           53.2      87.5      69.5        53.6      48.2      50.9  
TO%            16.9      16.2      16.6        30.9      16.2      24.1  
OR%            37.5      55.6      44.0        29.4      38.9      34.3  
FT Rate        38.7      21.4      30.5         7.1      28.6      17.9  

Assist Rate    53.3      76.2      66.7        75.0      58.3      66.7  
Block Rate      7.1      12.5      10.0         5.3       5.0       5.1  
Steal Rate     11.2       9.7      10.5        14.0      16.2      15.1  
 
2FG%           63.2      70.0      66.7        42.9      56.2      50.0  
3FG%           25.0      87.5      50.0        42.9      25.0      34.6  
FT%           100.0      50.0      83.3        50.0      75.0      70.0

The game pace was the fastest so far this season, nosing out the Tulane game by a possession.  This wasn't garbage-time slop, as the quick pace was during the 1st half.  Certainly Lafayette's 12 first-half turnovers helped, but it was actually the Hoyas pushing the action, as they averaged less than 15 seconds per possession in the Lift-Off half.

For a time the Leopards were able to keep in the game on the strength of their outside shooting, trailing only by 6 points with 5:10 left in the first half.  Unfortunately for them, the Georgetown closed out the half on a 13-2 run to settle comfortably ahead.

Georgetown made all 12 free throws in the 1st half, hopefully putting an end to that meme before it even gets started.

The 2nd half was easily the best offensive half for the Hoyas all season, thanks in large part to the ludicrous 7/8 3FG shooting (Jason Clark was 3/3 on 3FG in the Vesper half).  Once the lead ballooned to 20 points, Georgetown seemed content to trade baskets with Lafayette for a good stretch, but I'd chalk that defensive lapse to indifference rather than any systematic problem.


INDIVIDUAL NET POINTS STATS

Georgetown            Off     %           Pts      Def           Pts   
Player                Poss  Poss  O.Rtg   Prod     Poss  D.Rtg  Allow    Net Pts
Wright, Chris          54   22.4  121.1   14.7      55    97.1   10.7      +3.4  
Monroe, Greg           51   28.2  130.2   18.7      50    86.0    8.6      +8.2  
Freeman, Austin        49   16.2  149.4   11.8      50    95.6    9.6      +3.3  
Clark, Jason           54   22.8  136.7   16.8      52    74.4    7.7      +8.4  
Vaughn, Julian         37   22.9  122.6   10.4      36    69.9    5.0      +4.9  
Thompson, Hollis       31    8.2  257.3    6.5      32   121.8    7.8      +1.1  
Mescheriakov, Nikita   13    3.2  264.1    1.1      11   164.6    3.6      -1.1  
Sanford, Vee           11   22.4  228.5    5.6      12   102.9    2.5      +3.1  
Dougherty, Ryan         5    0.0    -      0.0       5   110.0    1.1      -1.1  
STEPKA, Stephen         4    9.4  200.0    0.8       4    65.0    0.5      +0.4  
Sims, Henry            21   14.2  139.3    4.2      23    73.9    3.4      +1.4  
TOTALS                 66         141.6   90.6      66    91.7   60.5     +31.5  

Lafayette             Off     %           Pts      Def           Pts   
Player                Poss  Poss  O.Rtg   Prod     Poss  D.Rtg  Allow    Net Pts
Karl, Jeff             35   27.0   87.1    8.2      34   117.9    8.0      -1.3  
Gruner, Michael        44   10.6  174.4    8.1      46   128.0   11.8      -0.7  
Willen, Ryan           37   19.4   79.8    5.7      33   144.3    9.5      -4.2  
Benbow, Darion         28   26.9   71.2    5.4      32   126.7    8.1      -3.5  
Mintz, Jared           43   27.1  114.8   13.4      41   139.4   11.4      -0.5  
Wheeler, Ben           26   15.6  157.2    6.4      23   130.4    6.0      +0.7  
Moore, Andy             9   12.7   30.4    0.3       9   178.4    3.2      -2.3  
Mower, Jim             28   27.8  102.7    8.0      27   159.2    8.6      -2.5  
Johnson, Tony          28    7.7  133.9    2.9      30   143.1    8.6      -2.9  
Giese, Levi            12   22.1   48.8    1.3      13   153.6    4.0      -2.7  
Delaney, Rob            7   10.1  200.0    1.4       7   177.1    2.5      -0.5  
Petkovich, Nick         7   14.3    0.0    0.0       7   162.3    2.3      -1.9  
Orchowski, Alex         7    0.0    -      0.0       7   181.0    2.5      -2.5  
Pelham, J.D            16   14.6   33.4    0.8      17   151.3    5.1      -3.6  
Koltun, Marek           3   66.7    0.0    0.0       4   110.0    0.9      -1.5  
TOTALS                 66          96.3   61.9      66   140.2   92.5     -29.8

We saw signs that Hollis Thompson was starting to get into the groove in the last game against Savannah St., but Mr. Thompson went off this afternoon with perfect shooting (2/2 2FG, 4/4 3FG) and no turnovers.  He's still rather shy in using possessions (<10% today) which may indicate even more room for growth as he continues to gain confidence.

The Gang of Four - Monroe, Wright, Freeman and Clark - did their expected thing against light competition, with only a couple of dings:  five (5!) turnovers for Greg Monroe and 1/4 3FG shooting for Chris Wright.  Both of those stat/player combos will bear further watching, as Monroe's TO rate may become an issue in conference play and Wright's outside shooting may become less important if Clark, Freeman and Thompson can keep up their current clip.

Julian Vaughn was the 6th Hoya in double figures today, and finally made a free throw (1/4 FT).  That brings him up to 1/10 FT on the season.  Henry Sims had another quiet yet efficient game in limited time.  If Vaughn continues to struggle at the FT line, Sims minutes may have to increase.

The rest of the bench (sans an injured Benimon) saw some good run in the 2nd half once the outcome was no longer in doubt - Vee Sanford especially looked good on offense (made his 1st 3FG), and is making the case to slide ahead of Mescheriakov in the rotation.  Special kudos to Stephen Stepka for also hitting his first career 3FG. Or not. Apparently his toe was on the line (h/t CasualHoya).


HD BOX SCORE

Lafayette vs Georgetown
11/28/09 12:00 at Verizon Center
Final score: Georgetown 97, Lafayette 64

Lafayette               Min   +/-   Pts  2PM-A 3PM-A FTM-A  FGA    A    Stl    TO   Blk    OR    DR   PF
Karl, Jeff             19:58  - 6   7/41  2- 2  1- 5  0- 1  7/31  2/11  3/34  1/35  0/21  2/19  1/15   2
Gruner, Michael        26:50  -29   9/35  2- 3  1- 3  2- 3  6/33  1/10  2/46  1/44  0/27  1/22  2/19   1
Willen, Ryan           20:50  - 7   3/43  0- 3  1- 5  0- 0  8/29  2/14  1/33  2/37  0/19  2/16  1/13   1
Benbow, Darion         17:27  -16   4/25  2- 5  0- 0  0- 0  5/20  1/ 7  0/32  3/28  0/20  2/12  3/16   1
Mintz, Jared           23:19  -10  16/50  4- 6  1- 1  5- 6  7/35  1/13  1/41  3/43  0/22  2/19  2/15   3
Wheeler, Ben           14:54  - 8   6/24  3- 4  0- 0  0- 0  4/20  2/ 6  1/23  1/26  0/13  1/12  1/ 7   0
Moore, Andy            05:23  -11   0/ 5  0- 0  0- 1  0- 0  1/ 9  1/ 2  0/ 9  0/ 9  0/ 6  0/ 8  0/ 2   0
Mower, Jim             16:33  -14  12/28  0- 3  4- 7  0- 0 10/26  2/ 7  0/27  0/28  0/14  0/16  0/ 9   4
Johnson, Tony          19:17  -13   3/35  0- 0  1- 1  0- 0  1/27  4/13  2/30  1/28  0/17  0/14  1/11   1
Giese, Levi            07:45  -12   2/ 7  1- 1  0- 1  0- 0  2/10  0/ 2  0/13  1/12  0/ 8  0/ 7  0/ 3   0
Delaney, Rob           04:29  - 8   2/ 4  1- 2  0- 0  0- 0  2/ 9  0/ 1  0/ 7  0/ 7  0/ 4  0/ 7  0/ 1   1
Petkovich, Nick        04:28  - 5   0/ 7  0- 1  0- 1  0- 0  2/ 6  0/ 3  0/ 7  0/ 7  1/ 4  0/ 3  1/ 2   1
Orchowski, Alex        03:58  -12   0/ 2  0- 0  0- 0  0- 0  0/ 7  0/ 1  0/ 7  0/ 7  0/ 5  0/ 7  0/ 2   2
Pelham, J.D            12:21  -10   0/14  0- 0  0- 1  0- 0  1/18  0/ 6  0/17  1/16  1/13  1/13  0/ 8   3
Koltun, Marek          02:28  - 4   0/ 0  0- 0  0- 0  0- 0  0/ 0  0/ 0  0/ 4  2/ 3  0/ 2  0/ 0  0/ 2   0
TOTALS                 40:00       64    15-30  9-26  7-10    56 16/24 10/66 17/66  2/39 12/35 14/25  20
.                                        0.500 0.346 0.700       0.667 0.152 0.258 0.051 0.343 0.560    

Georgetown              Min   +/-   Pts  2PM-A 3PM-A FTM-A  FGA    A    Stl    TO   Blk    OR    DR   PF
Wright, Chris          31:35  +18  14/73  5- 9  0- 4  4- 4 13/46  4/22  1/55  2/54  0/22  0/20  2/23   1
Monroe, Greg           29:37  +24  13/71  4- 7  0- 1  5- 5  8/44  6/22  1/50  5/51  1/26  3/18  6/24   1
Freeman, Austin        29:42  +16  12/66  4- 7  1- 2  1- 1  9/43  1/20  1/50  0/49  0/24  1/18  2/25   0
Clark, Jason           30:13  +29  19/76  3- 4  3- 6  4- 4 10/47  6/22  3/52  1/54  0/24  1/19  4/26   1
Vaughn, Julian         21:01  +27  11/54  5- 6  0- 0  1- 4  6/34  2/17  1/36  2/37  0/ 9  2/14  3/14   3
Thompson, Hollis       21:21  +15  16/55  2- 2  4- 4  0- 0  6/28  1/11  0/32  0/31  0/17  1/11  2/22   1
Sims, Henry            14:00  +12   2/30  1- 1  0- 1  0- 0  2/19  2/11  0/23  1/21  2/13  1/ 9  2/18   2
Mescheriakov, Nikita   09:32  + 3   3/21  0- 0  1- 1  0- 0  1/13  1/ 6  0/11  0/13  0/ 6  0/ 7  0/ 7   5
Sanford, Vee           07:13  +12   5/23  1- 1  1- 1  0- 0  2/11  1/ 7  0/12  0/11  0/ 4  1/ 4  0/ 8   0
Dougherty, Ryan        03:12  + 4   0/ 9  0- 1  0- 0  0- 0  1/ 6  0/ 4  0/ 5  0/ 5  0/ 3  0/ 3  0/ 4   0
STEPKA, Stephen        02:34  + 5   2/ 7  1- 1  0- 0  0- 0  1/ 4  0/ 2  0/ 4  0/ 4  0/ 2  0/ 2  0/ 4   0
TOTALS                 40:00       97    26-39 10-20 15-18    59 24/36  7/66 11/66  3/30 11/25 23/35  14
.                                        0.667 0.500 0.833       0.667 0.106 0.167 0.100 0.440 0.657    

Efficiency: Georgetown 1.470, Lafayette 0.970
eFG%: Georgetown 0.695, Lafayette 0.509
Substitutions: Georgetown 24, Lafayette 66

2-pt Shot Selection:
Dunks: Georgetown 3-4, Lafayette 0-0
Layups/Tips: Georgetown 18-25, Lafayette 7-12
Jumpers: Georgetown 5-10, Lafayette 8-18

Fast break pts (% FG pts): Georgetown 8 (9.8), Lafayette 0 (0.0)
Pts (eff.) after steal: Georgetown 15 (214.3), Lafayette 7 (70.0)
Seconds per poss: Georgetown 15.8, Lafayette 20.6

The Hoyas have a fast turn-around, with Jeremy Goode and the Mount St. Mary's Mountaineers coming in to Verizon on Monday night.

Season team and player stats will be updated after Monday's game.

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

I've been doing some programming over the long weekend.  I'm adding some capabilities to my play-by-play parser.  Not sure where it's all headed, but it does let me make some new pretty graphics and such.

For example:


Saturday, November 21, 2009

Recap: Georgetown 63, Savannah St. 44

The Hoyas traveled down to Savannah today as a favor to Tigers' head coach (and former Hoya) Horace Broadnax, and came away with a 19-point victory.

The play-by-play for today's game does not include substitution data, so only estimated Net Points and no HD box score will be available.

Let's run the numbers:

.                    Georgetown                         Savannah St
            1st Half  2nd Half   Total         1st Half  2nd Half   Total
Pace           27        31        58

Eff.         124.8      93.9     108.4           73.4      77.7      75.7

eFG%          70.8      50.0      60.2           30.8      29.5      30.2
TO%           22.0      29.1      25.8           14.7      22.7      18.9
OR%           41.7      53.3      48.1           26.3      27.8      27.0
FTA/FGA       16.7      32.0      24.5           19.2      68.2      41.7
FTM/FGA       0.0       16.0      8.2            15.4      50.0      31.3

Assist Rate   57.1      75.0      65.4           42.9      33.3      38.5
Block Rate    27.8      31.3      29.4           14.3      4.5       8.3
Steal Rate    3.7       13.0      8.6            14.7      6.5       10.3

2FG%          57.1      50.0      52.8           27.8      31.3      29.4
3FG%          60.0      33.3      53.8           25.0      16.7      21.4
FT%           0.0       50.0      33.3           80.0      73.3      75.0

Attempts/Poss.
2FG           0.51      0.71      0.62           0.66      0.52      0.59
3FG           0.37      0.10      0.22           0.29      0.19      0.24
FT            0.15      0.26      0.21           0.18      0.49      0.34


After last season's 100-38 shellacking, a mere 19-point win by the Hoyas must have felt like some sort of moral victory for the Tigers.  While one's first reaction is to assume that Savannah St. must have run at a much slower pace to minimize the carnage, in fact there were only 7 less possessions this time around.

The real difference was the very high offensive efficiency last year, or perhaps better to say the disappointingly low offensive efficiency this year.  It's not clear to me if the presumed advantage to the opposition the second time they see the Princeton/Georgetown offense is real, but at least we should hope that Coach Broadnax did a much better job preparing his defense.  And we should also acknowledge that the offense this November is far behind last November's.

No, you're not seeing things, there is a red-highlighted number blinking up there at you.  For the third time this season (out of 3 games), the Hoyas turned the ball over well above 20% of the time, and much more than their opponent.  The high turnover rate was something that Alan pointed to as a figure of merit for this season, and the early returns are not promising.

On the year, the Hoyas have turned over the ball on ~25% of their possessions, while forcing their opponents to turn it over only ~18% of the time.  That is, Georgetown has four (4) less possessions with a scoring attempt per game than their opponent.  If this continues into the Big East season, that sort of differential will be a huge handicap for the Hoyas to overcome.

Georgetown also had a miserable time at the FT line today, missing on 8 of 12 chances.  If you're scoring at home ([Olbermann] "or by yourself" [/Olbermann]), Julian Vaughn is now 0/6 on the young season - Vernon Macklin redux?  Thankfully, we still have a small sample size to excuse his futility.


INDIVIDUAL NET POINTS STATS - estimate!
Georgetown            Off      %            Individ     Def             Individ                        
Player                Poss   Poss    ORtg   Pts Prod    Poss    DRtg   Pts Allow   Net Pts
Wright, Chris          46    16.7   135.2    10.4        46     85.9      7.9       +3.1    
Monroe, Greg           35    40.6    86.2    12.2        35     74.4      5.3       +4.3    
Freeman, Austin        46    16.1   128.5     9.5        46     80.4      7.4       +2.8    
Clark, Jason           55    14.2   133.8    10.5        55     74.0      8.1       +3.5    
Vaughn, Julian         32    24.1    78.3     6.0        32     80.2      5.2       +0.3    
Thompson, Hollis       30    10.7   121.9     3.9        30     67.7      4.0       +0.8    
Mescheriakov, Nikita   19    16.3    49.9     1.6        19     89.9      3.4       -1.5    
Sanford, Vee           16    23.4    74.4     2.9        16     60.8      2.0       +0.7    
Sims, Henry            16     6.2   200.0     2.1        16     71.5      2.3       +0.5    
TOTALS                 59           108.4    58.9        59     75.7     45.5      +14.7

These stats were derived from the box score rather than the play-by-play, so take them with a larger grain of salt that you normally would. 

Greg Monroe's usage rate today (41%) was silly and easily the highest of his career (previously 34% versus Cincinnati).  As we'd expect, his high usage comes at the cost of efficiency, just as happened during that Cinci game.  His five turnovers led the team, and were certainly a driver in the large number of possessions used.

My first reaction at looking at Monroe's turnover count was to chalk it up to his operating as the initiator of the offense, much like Jeff Green and his turnover rates looked each of his last two seasons (courtesy of StatSheet.com):




But Greg Monroe has the second-lowest turnover rate (22.4%) among all Hoyas after three games - only Julian Vaughn (!) is lower, at 19.7%.  Unfortunately, turnovers are pervasive up and down the roster, and are my current nominee for early-season bugaboo for Hoya fans.

Hat's off to Hollis Thompson, who, after consecutive Off. Ratings in the 40's to start his career, managed to break the 100+ barrier in his third game - admittedly while only using 10% of available possessions.  Just think what we'll do once he starts making his free throws (0/2)!

And a big "huzzah" for Jason Clark, whose 4/6 3FG shooting brings him up to 50% (9/18) on the season.  Dare I say, a long, athletic Jon Wallace?

With limited stats and no television, I guess I'll leave it there for tonight.
 

Time permitting, I'll start up the 2009-10 team and player stats pages this week.  [Edited - Stats pages now up.]




Box Score

VISITORS: Georgetown (3-0)
.                          2-PT  3-PT          REBOUNDS
## Player Name            FG-FGA FG-FGA FT-FTA OF DE TOT PF  TP  A TO BLK S MIN
04 Wright, Chris....... *  4-5    1-2    0-0    1  3  4   1  11  4  2  1  0  31
10 Monroe, Greg........ *  6-10   0-0    1-4    4  3  7   3  13  2  5  0  1  24
15 Freeman, Austin..... *  2-6    2-3    2-2    1  2  3   1  12  0  1  0  1  31
21 Clark, Jason........ *  1-3    4-6    0-0    0  6  6   3  14  2  2  0  1  37
22 Vaughn, Julian...... *  2-6    0-0    0-2    2  3  5   0   4  3  2  2  0  22
01 Thompson, Hollis....    1-1    0-1    0-2    1  3  4   1   2  3  0  3  1  20
05 Mescheriakov, Nikita    0-1    0-1    1-2    0  0  0   2   1  1  1  1  0  13
11 Sanford, Vee........    1-2    0-0    0-0    0  2  2   2   2  2  2  1  1  11
30 Sims, Henry.........    2-2    0-0    0-0    0  2  2   2   4  0  0  2  0  11
   TEAM................                         4  3  7
   Totals..............   19-36   7-13   4-12  13 27 40  15  63 17 15 10  5 200


HOME TEAM: Savannah St. (2-2)
.                          2-PT   3-PT         REBOUNDS
## Player Name            FG-FGA FG-FGA FT-FTA OF DE TOT PF  TP  A TO BLK S MIN
00 HARDY,Patrick....... *  2-2    0-3    2-3    1  1  2   3   6  3  0  0  1  24
02 RANKINS,Tracy....... *  2-6    1-4    2-2    1  2  3   0   9  0  1  0  1  34
22 HASSAN,Rashad....... *  0-6    0-0    4-4    2  2  4   1   4  0  1  2  2  29
23 SMITH,Cedric........ *  1-3    0-0    2-4    0  1  1   1   4  0  1  0  0  19
34 LOUIS,Arnold........ *  1-6    0-1    1-2    1  3  4   5   3  0  3  1  1  29
01 BLACKMON,Preston....    2-3    0-2    3-3    0  0  0   1   7  2  0  0  0  20
04 MITCHELL,Rod........    0-0    0-1    0-0    1  1  2   0   0  0  1  0  0  11
05 ANDERSON,Andrew.....    0-0    0-1    1-2    0  0  0   0   1  0  1  0  0   2
10 STOWERS,Devin.......    0-0    0-0    0-0    0  0  0   0   0  0  0  0  0   3
14 IZEVBIGIE,Glen......    0-2    0-0    0-0    1  0  1   2   0  0  2  0  0   9
54 JONES,Darnel........    0-0    0-0    0-0    0  0  0   0   0  0  0  0  0   1
55 BAUGH,Darius........    2-6    2-2    0-0    0  1  1   2  10  0  1  0  1  19
   TEAM................                         3  3  6
   Totals..............   10-34   3-14  15-20  10 14 24  15  44  5 11  3  6 200


Efficiency: Georgetown 1.068, Savannah St. 0.746
eFG%: Georgetown 0.602, Savannah St. 0.302

2-pt Shot Selection:
Dunks: Georgetown 1-1, Savannah St. 0-1
Layups/Tips: Georgetown 11-23, Savannah St. 6-19
Jumpers: Georgetown 7-12, Savannah St. 4-14

Fast break pts (% FG pts): Georgetown 4 (6.8), Savannah State University 4 (13.8)
Pts (eff.) after steal: Georgetown 5 (100.0), Savannah State University 8 (133.3)
Seconds per poss: Georgetown 17.4, Savannah St. 23.5

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Recap: Georgetown 46, Temple 45

I wasn't able to watch the game live today - I had Rich Chvotkin to keep me company at work - so I'm watching the game for the first time right now as I post this recap.  As I type, we've reached the under-4:00 timeout in the 1st half, and I have to say, this half of basketball has been brutal.

Let's run the numbers:

TEMPO-FREE BOX SCORE
 
.            Home                            Visitor   
.            Georgetown                      Temple         
.            1st Half  2nd Half   Total      1st Half  2nd Half   Total
Pace            29        32        62
 
Effic.         64.6      83.8      74.7        44.2      99.4      73.1  
 
eFG%           32.6      47.4      39.3        21.2      46.7      34.8  
TO%            27.2      24.8      26.0        17.0      15.5      16.2  
OR%            17.6      14.3      16.1        21.7      35.0      27.9  
FT Rate        21.7      73.7      45.2        19.2      26.7      23.2  

Assist Rate    57.1      37.5      46.7        60.0      69.2      66.7  
Block Rate      0.0       5.9       3.0         0.0       0.0       0.0  
Steal Rate      3.4       6.2       4.9         3.4      18.6      11.4  
 
2FG%           46.2      54.5      50.0        25.0      64.7      45.5  
3FG%           10.0      25.0      16.7        10.0      15.4      13.0  
FT%            80.0      64.3      68.4        40.0      50.0      46.2

The pace of this game may have seemed glacial, but the 61 possessions was not an exceptionally slow pace for a Hoya game (Georgetown played 6 games last season with a pace of 61 or less).

There's simply no green marks for the Hoyas offensively tonight, as they simply didn't do any single thing well when they had the ball.  Okay, I just changed it and highlighted that they never had a shot blocked by the Owls in the game.  Woo-hoo!

Temple did themselves no favors today, with <50% shooting from the FT line and 13% on 3FGAs.  Even worse for the Owls, in the 1st half they attempted 26 shots from the field, with 24 as jump shots (10 3FGA, 14 2FGA jumpers) - they made only three of them.  Of course, some of that should be credited to the Hoyas defense, which didn't give up a lot of space inside.

I originally thought that 44.2 Def. Efficiency would have been some sort of historical low, but just last season the Hoyas held two teams lower (American, Savannah St.) in consecutive games.

Georgetown also had their problems shooting in the 1st half, but also struggled to hang on to the ball to even get a shot off.  They did little on the offensive glass throughout the game, although rebounded well defensively.

To Fran Dunphy's credit, Temple adjusted at half time and managed to take 11 of 17 2FGA as layups or dunks in the 2nd half (and made 10 of them). From my eye and for what it's worth, the Owls' big run in the Vesper half (24-6 over 9:21) was mostly against Georgetown's 2-3 zone defense.  Thankfully, Temple's struggles at the FT line continued in the 2nd half, with 4 misses on 8 FTA (including twice on the front end of 1-and-1).

In the end, the Hoyas did enough to win the game, especially with some good defensive stops in the last few minutes of the game.



INDIVIDUAL NET POINTS STATS

Georgetown            Off     %           Pts      Def           Pts   
Player                Poss  Poss  O.Rtg   Prod     Poss  D.Rtg  Allow    Net Pts
Wright, Chris          51   23.6  106.6   12.8      50    74.0    7.4      +4.7  
Monroe, Greg           56   25.5   82.6   11.8      56    46.0    5.2      +5.9  
Freeman, Austin        59   19.7   79.6    9.3      59    69.7    8.2      +1.1  
Clark, Jason           54   16.9   87.3    8.0      53    70.0    7.4      +1.1  
Vaughn, Julian         34   17.6    0.0    0.0      34    64.1    4.4      -4.1  
Thompson, Hollis       37   17.3   46.3    3.0      34    70.9    4.8      -1.7  
Mescheriakov, Nikita    3   33.3    0.0    0.0       4    75.0    0.6      -0.7  
Sims, Henry            16    6.2    0.0    0.0      15   103.4    3.1      -2.1  
TOTALS                 62          72.9   44.8      61    67.3   41.1      +3.6  

Temple                Off     %           Pts      Def           Pts   
Player                Poss  Poss  O.Rtg   Prod     Poss  D.Rtg  Allow    Net Pts
Ryan Brooks            61   19.2   43.6    5.1      62    68.6    8.5      -3.2  
Juan Fernandez         26   29.3   53.3    4.1      25    81.5    4.1      -1.1  
Luis Guzman            54    9.6   48.2    2.5      57    68.8    7.8      -3.2  
Lavoy Allen            60   25.3   95.2   14.5      61    61.9    7.5      +6.0  
Micheal Eric           22   25.9   81.7    4.7      22    61.4    2.7      +1.6  
TJ DiLeo                3    0.0    -      0.0       4     0.0    0.0      +0.0  
Ramone Moore           39   17.5   83.3    5.7      38    77.0    5.9      +0.1  
Craig Williams         26   17.1   79.3    3.5      20   101.2    4.0      -0.8  
Jake Godino            14   27.1   98.2    3.7      21    57.5    2.4      +1.4  
TOTALS                 61          72.3   43.7      62    69.3   43.0      +1.3


This may surprise most Hoya fans, but the most efficient player today for Georgetown was Chris Wright.  While his three turnovers may have been more memorable, Wright was able to score 6 points at the FT line (on 7 attempts) to grind his way to the only 100+ offensive rating in the game.

The most valuable player for the Hoyas was Greg Monroe, and not only for his game-winning layup with 6 seconds left in the game.  He also led Georgetown defensively, and his absence from the game was most noticeable in the 2nd half when he sat at 15:12 (Henry Sims came in) and the Owls quickly ran off 7 points on 2 dunks and a layup (and an and-1).


Not much more to add to this one, other than I was glad the good guys pulled it out.

And if you're in a panic over the game, just repeat after me, "It's only November.  It's only November.  It's only November.  Serenity now!"



HD BOX SCORE

Temple vs Georgetown
11/17/09 4:00 at Verizon Center
Final score: Georgetown 46, Temple 45


Temple                  Min   +/-   Pts  2PM-A 3PM-A FTM-A  FGA    A    Stl    TO   Blk    OR    DR   PF
Ryan Brooks            40:00  - 1   6/45  1- 5  1- 9  1- 1 14/56  1/16  2/62  3/61  0/24  0/43  3/31   1
Juan Fernandez         15:49  -10   5/11  1- 4  1- 3  0- 0  7/21  0/ 2  0/25  1/26  0/ 9  0/18  2/14   3
Luis Guzman            36:20  - 2   0/39  0- 2  0- 1  0- 0  3/50  6/16  1/57  2/54  0/24  1/38  4/29   1
Lavoy Allen            39:35  + 1  12/45  5- 9  0- 1  2- 5 10/56  3/13  2/61  2/60  0/23  8/43  6/31   3
Micheal Eric           13:50  - 5   5/11  2- 4  0- 0  1- 2  4/19  0/ 2  0/22  2/22  0/ 9  2/15  2/14   3
TJ DiLeo               02:44  + 3   0/ 3  0- 0  0- 0  0- 0  0/ 2  0/ 1  0/ 4  0/ 3  0/ 3  0/ 2  0/ 4   0
Ramone Moore           25:10  + 7   8/37  4- 7  0- 2  0- 1  9/39  1/11  1/38  0/39  0/12  0/28  4/15   1
Craig Williams         14:35  + 6   5/24  1- 1  1- 6  0- 0  7/27  1/ 9  0/20  1/26  0/ 8  0/18  1/ 8   2
Jake Godino            12:00  - 4   4/10  1- 1  0- 1  2- 4  2/10  0/ 2  1/21  0/14  0/ 8  0/10  1/ 9   1
TOTALS                 40:00       45    15-33  3-23  6-13    56 12/18  7/62 11/61  0/24 12/43 26/31  15
.                                        0.455 0.130 0.462       0.667 0.113 0.180 0.000 0.279 0.839    

Georgetown              Min   +/-   Pts  2PM-A 3PM-A FTM-A  FGA    A    Stl    TO   Blk    OR    DR   PF
Wright, Chris          30:56  + 3  15/39  3- 4  1- 4  6- 7  8/32  1/ 9  0/50  3/51  0/25  0/23  1/35   4
Monroe, Greg           36:56  + 2  11/38  4- 9  0- 1  3- 6 10/40  3/10  2/56  4/56  0/29  2/29  7/41   3
Freeman, Austin        38:39  + 3  10/44  4- 6  0- 4  2- 2 10/41  0/11  0/59  2/59  0/31  0/30  5/43   2
Clark, Jason           35:15  - 2   8/40  0- 0  2- 6  2- 2  6/36  0/10  1/53  2/54  0/31  2/28  5/35   0
Vaughn, Julian         22:30  + 3   0/26  0- 3  0- 1  0- 2  4/23  0/ 8  0/34  1/34  1/20  0/18  4/24   2
Thompson, Hollis       23:20  + 1   2/28  1- 1  0- 2  0- 0  3/24  3/ 8  0/34  3/37  0/16  0/16  4/25   4
Mescheriakov, Nikita   02:21  + 0   0/ 3  0- 0  0- 0  0- 0  0/ 2  0/ 1  0/ 4  1/ 3  0/ 2  0/ 1  0/ 3   0
Sims, Henry            10:03  - 5   0/12  0- 1  0- 0  0- 0  1/12  0/ 3  0/15  1/16  0/11  0/10  2/ 9   3
TOTALS                 40:00       46    12-24  3-18 13-19    42  7/15  3/61 17/62  1/33  5/31 31/43  18
.                                        0.500 0.167 0.684       0.467 0.049 0.274 0.030 0.161 0.721    

Efficiency: Georgetown 0.742, Temple 0.738
eFG%: Georgetown 0.393, Temple 0.348
Substitutions: Georgetown 20, Temple 28

2-pt Shot Selection:
Dunks: Georgetown 0-0, Temple 3-3
Layups/Tips: Georgetown 8-12, Temple 9-10
Jumpers: Georgetown 4-12, Temple 3-20

Fast break pts (% FG pts): Georgetown 0 (0.0), Temple 4 (10.3)
Pts (eff.) after steal: Georgetown 4 (133.3), Temple 12 (171.4)
Seconds per poss: Georgetown 18.7, Temple 20.2

Friday, November 13, 2009

Recap: Georgetown 74, Tulane 58

The Hoyas tipped off the 2009-10 season in style tonight, shaking off last season's disappointment and a likely food-coma to pull away from the might Green Wave in the second half.

It's a little strange firing up the HD Box score program after the long off-season and sitting down to write a recap. Forgive some rust.

Let's run the numbers:

TEMPO-FREE BOX SCORE

.            Visitor                         Home  
.            Georgetown                      Tulane     
.            1st Half  2nd Half   Total      1st Half  2nd Half   Total
Pace            31        34        65

Effic.        104.7     123.2     114.1        88.3      90.9      89.4

eFG%           51.9      67.3      59.4        42.9      47.6      44.9
TO%            29.4      17.6      23.1        19.6      20.5      20.0
OR%            50.0      30.8      41.4        33.3      14.3      25.0
FT Rate        22.2      46.2      34.0        17.9      76.2      42.9

Assist Rate    50.0      68.8      60.7        72.7      44.4      60.0
Block Rate     17.6       7.1      12.9        11.8      10.5      11.1
Steal Rate      9.8      11.7      10.8        16.4       8.8      12.3

2FG%           47.1      68.4      58.3        52.9      50.0      51.6
3FG%           40.0      42.9      41.2        18.2      28.6      22.2
FT%            66.7      58.3      61.1        60.0      68.8      66.7

There were 64 possessions in the game, with a faster pace in the second half - I think the extra possessions in the Vesper half were accumulated during garbage time in the last five minutes or so.

For those of us watching the Tulane video stream (or at least parts), there was a noticeable improvement in the Hoyas play in the second half, not just the pace - this came on the offensive end, as the Hoyas posted nearly identical defensive efficiencies in both halves of the game.

The Hoyas seemed to come out with some jitters early in the game, most apparent in Chris Wright's four turnovers in the half (9 total for the team). This lead to a disappointingly high TO rate, but the team managed "only" six second half turnovers - none by Wright as they got their sea legs after 20 minutes of play.

The team rebounded well against undersized Tulane, with a strong offensive rebounding performance in the 1st half and excellent defensive rebounding in the 2nd.

The team also shot well from the outside, making ≥40% from deep in each half. That uptick in 2FG shooting in the second half may have been at least partially the result of the strong 3FG shooting, which seemed to open up the interior as the Green Wave defenders were forced to guard out to the arc. Outside shooting is going to be a critical item to watch as the season unfolds, as it serves to open up the cutting lanes.

Tulane probably scored a few more points that you'd have expected from the underlying stats, simply because they made a high percentage of 2-pt jumpers (10/16). The Hoyas did a good job forcing more 2-pt jump shots than layup and dunk attempts, but sometimes you run into a hot-shooting team. Thankfully, Georgetown was dominant in most other facets.


INDIVIDUAL NET POINTS STATS

Georgetown            Off     %           Pts      Def           Pts   
Player                Poss  Poss  O.Rtg   Prod     Poss  D.Rtg  Allow    Net Pts
Vaughn, Julian         34   21.5  138.8   10.2      35    90.1    6.3      +3.7  
Monroe, Greg           57   25.7  121.5   17.8      58    87.6   10.2      +6.3  
Wright, Chris          57   15.8   98.6    8.9      57    70.1    8.0      +1.7  
Freeman, Austin        53   22.6  110.7   13.2      51    77.0    7.9      +4.7  
Clark, Jason           55   16.0  134.1   11.8      53    75.0    8.0      +4.5  
Thompson, Hollis       25   15.4   44.5    1.7      26   107.2    5.6      -3.1  
Mescheriakov, Nikita    5   20.0    0.0    0.0       6   166.7    2.0      -1.8  
Sanford, Vee            2    0.0    -      0.0       3   200.0    1.2      -1.2  
Benimon, Jerrelle       2    0.0    -      0.0       2   250.0    1.0      -1.0  
Sims, Henry            30   20.9  122.0    7.6      29   103.0    6.0      +1.4  
TOTALS                 64         113.3   71.2      64    87.5   56.0     +15.9  

Tulane                Off     %           Pts      Def           Pts   
Player                Poss  Poss  O.Rtg   Prod     Poss  D.Rtg  Allow    Net Pts
MCQUEEN, Asim          49   17.8   73.0    6.4      48   112.5   10.8      -3.9  
HOLMES, Aaron          45   17.0   95.6    7.3      47   114.4   10.8      -2.4  
HOGAN, Geoff           24   10.4  115.0    2.9      23   114.0    5.2      -1.2  
RICHARD, Kris          57   24.1  101.9   14.0      56   116.6   13.1      -0.5  
SIMS, Kevin            54   13.9   53.9    4.0      53   123.0   13.0      -7.1  
BOOKER, David          44   24.8  102.4   11.2      46    99.6    9.2      +1.2  
ROGERS, Trent          12   46.1   56.7    3.1      13   112.3    2.9      -1.4  
TIMMONS, Kendall       13    1.8  225.0    0.5      13   103.1    2.7      -0.9  
MAYHANE, Johnny        15   25.5  117.3    4.5      15    86.7    2.6      +1.5  
VIANNEY, Eric           7   20.0   57.1    0.8       6    53.8    0.6      +0.1  
TOTALS                 64          88.2   54.7      64   110.8   70.9     -15.3  

The individual net points stats show the story, with the returning players (except Mescheriakov) all coming out strong. Wright just missed joining five teammates with a +100 offensive rating for the game (one less turnover would have done it), but made up for it with the top rated defense in the game - 5 steals will go a long way towards making amends.

Julian Vaughn posted a particularly strong opening night, thanks in no small part to 4 offensive rebounds grabbed on only 17 opportunities. I had mentioned in his season preview article that he seems to have a talent for offensive rebounding, and if he can keep that rate up he'll make it awfully difficult for Henry Sims to displace him from the starting line-up.

Clark (3/6 3FG), Sims (2/2 2FG, 2 OR) and Freeman (4/6 2FG, 2/3 3FG) all looked at mid-season comfort. Hollis Thompson did not, appearing a bit passive throughout the game. That was to be expected for his first collegiate game, and I'll expect it will take most of the fall semester for Thompson to grow comfortable in game situations.

The player of the game was . . . Greg Monroe, making his triumphant return to his home town. While not a spectacular game by his standards, Monroe looked comfortable stepping up to use 25% of available possessions while keeping a high efficiency and playing his typical strong defense (2 blocks, 8 DR). I hope his family and friends had a great time watching him play in person.


HD BOX SCORE

Georgetown vs Tulane
11/13/09 8:15 p.m. at Fogelman Arena, New Orleans, LA
Final score: Georgetown 74, Tulane 58

Georgetown              Min   +/-   Pts  2PM-A 3PM-A FTM-A  FGA    A    Stl    TO   Blk    OR    DR   PF
Vaughn, Julian         24:02  +14   7/43  2- 5  1- 1  0- 2  6/31  2/13  0/35  1/34  2/20  4/17  1/24   2
Monroe, Greg           35:25  +16  18/66  7-12  0- 2  4- 6 14/48  2/18  0/58  1/57  2/29  3/27  8/30   2
Wright, Chris          35:24  +17  11/66  4- 7  1- 3  0- 0 10/48  2/20  5/57  4/57  0/29  0/27  2/29   1
Freeman, Austin        32:03  +23  16/66  4- 6  2- 3  2- 2  9/43  5/19  1/51  4/53  0/27  0/21  6/28   4
Clark, Jason           34:35  +27  13/68  1- 2  3- 6  2- 2  8/45  5/21  1/53  2/55  0/27  0/23  4/30   3
Thompson, Hollis       16:07  - 5   2/24  1- 2  0- 2  0- 0  4/22  1/ 8  0/26  1/25  0/11  0/15  1/ 8   3
Mescheriakov, Nikita   03:25  - 8   0/ 2  0- 0  0- 0  0- 0  0/ 6  0/ 1  0/ 6  1/ 5  0/ 2  0/ 5  0/ 1   2
Sanford, Vee           01:15  - 6   0/ 0  0- 0  0- 0  0- 0  0/ 1  0/ 0  0/ 3  0/ 2  0/ 0  0/ 1  0/ 1   0
Benimon, Jerrelle      01:14  - 5   0/ 0  0- 0  0- 0  0- 0  0/ 1  0/ 0  0/ 2  0/ 2  0/ 0  0/ 1  0/ 0   0
Sims, Henry            16:30  + 7   7/35  2- 2  0- 0  3- 6  2/20  0/12  0/29  1/30  0/10  2/ 8  2/ 9   1
TOTALS                 40:00       74    21-36  7-17 11-18    53 17/28  7/64 15/64  4/31 12/29 24/32  18
.                                        0.583 0.412 0.611       0.607 0.109 0.234 0.129 0.414 0.750   

Tulane                  Min   +/-   Pts  2PM-A 3PM-A FTM-A  FGA    A    Stl    TO   Blk    OR    DR   PF
MCQUEEN, Asim          29:27  -10   7/47  3- 9  0- 0  1- 2  9/39  0/14  1/48  0/49  0/28  1/23  0/21   3
HOLMES, Aaron          19:27  -24   8/36  2- 5  0- 1  4- 8  6/36  0/ 9  2/47  1/45  2/23  1/28  2/18   0
HOGAN, Geoff           04:51  - 7   2/18  0- 1  0- 0  2- 2  1/15  1/ 4  0/23  0/24  0/ 9  1/13  1/ 9   3
RICHARD, Kris          34:10  -10  15/53  4- 5  1- 7  4- 4 12/41  1/13  0/56  1/57  1/32  1/25  3/25   4
SIMS, Kevin            33:16  -13   3/49  0- 2  0- 4  3- 3  6/43  3/16  0/53  3/54  0/27  0/30  1/24   0
BOOKER, David          28:32  -13  14/43  4- 6  2- 2  0- 2  8/35  2/ 9  3/46  3/44  1/27  2/23  7/20   4
ROGERS, Trent          08:20  - 2   4/13  2- 2  0- 1  0- 0  3/10  1/ 4  0/13  3/12  0/10  0/ 5  1/ 8   1
TIMMONS, Kendall       08:31  - 5   0/ 9  0- 0  0- 0  0- 0  0/ 9  1/ 4  0/13  0/13  0/ 9  0/ 5  0/ 8   2
MAYHANE, Johnny        09:19  - 2   5/14  1- 1  1- 2  0- 0  3/11  2/ 3  2/15  1/15  0/10  0/ 6  0/ 7   0
VIANNEY, Eric          04:37  + 6   0/ 8  0- 0  0- 1  0- 0  1/ 6  1/ 4  0/ 6  0/ 7  0/ 5  0/ 2  0/ 5   0
TOTALS                 36:06       58    16-31  4-18 14-21    49 12/20  8/64 13/64  4/36  8/32 17/29  17
.                                        0.516 0.222 0.667       0.600 0.125 0.203 0.111 0.250 0.586   

Efficiency: Georgetown 1.156, Tulane 0.906
eFG%: Georgetown 0.594, Tulane 0.449
Substitutions: Georgetown 26, Tulane 28

2-pt Shot Selection:
Dunks: Georgetown 3-3, Tulane 1-1
Layups/Tips: Georgetown 12-18, Tulane 5-14
Jumpers: Georgetown 6-15, Tulane 10-16

Fast break pts (% FG pts): Georgetown 7 (11.1), Tulane 8 (18.2)
Pts (eff.) after steal: Georgetown 10 (142.9), Tulane 9 (112.5)
Seconds per poss: Georgetown 17.8, Tulane 20.1

Season Preview: Julian Vaugn and Jerrelle Benimon

There was a constant clamoring heard over the off-season, several variations on a theme:
". . . but if the Hoyas hope to return to the top of the Big East, they will need to do a better job on the boards."

Julian Vaughn will have to be a strong rebounder and hang on to the ball to get major minutes this year.

Jerelle Benimon can earn some minutes if he can play strong defense and grab some rebounds.


Let's take a look at each of these statements (I only made two of them up), one at a time.


Measuring Rebounding and It's Importance

Rebounding has been a topic of great concern here, and all over Hoya nation. But before I jump headlong into the charts and tables, I thought I'd review some of the basics we've covered here.

When we discuss rebounding, we like to talk about rebounding percentages, rather than raw rebounding totals or the slighly more sophisticated rebounding margin (tot. rebounds - opp. tot. rebounds).

Why? Let me re-post a brief explanation Alan provided last season:
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.

Last season, Georgetown's defensive efficiency slumped in conference, as the team finished the Big East regular season allowing 1.03 points per possession, the most since 2004-5. This was often attributed to poor defensive rebounding, allowing many second-chance points (think Pitt or St. John's).

Here are the team's defensive efficiencies and defensive rebounding percentages for the past five seasons:
Year        D.Eff.   Rank       DReb%    Rank
2004-5      105.2     8*        62.9       6*
2005-6      101.9     6         67.2       3
2006-7       97.3     4         63.1      13
2007-8       92.4     2         66.8     t-6
2008-9      103.1     7         63.2      12

*There were 12 teams in the Big East in 2004-5, 16 teams in the following seasons; all data from StatSheet.com

The Hoyas have only been among the league leaders in defensive rebounding once in the past five seasons, and that year (2005-6) was not a particularly strong defensive year. Indeed, while the team struggled to rebound defensively in 2006-7, the defense as a whole showed a strong improvement over the previous season, and the outstanding defensive team the next season were only middling defensive rebounders.

Of course, rebounding doesn't exist in a vacuum but is a component of overall team play. In fact, it is one component of what we call the Four Factors, first named and described by Dean Oliver. Oliver hit open the concept when he realized that each possession will end one of four ways (here from the defensive perspective):
  • a made field goal (opp. eFG%)
  • a missed shot rebounded by the defense (D. Reb. %)
  • a turnover (opp. TO Rate)
  • a foul resulting in free throws (FT Rate)
If you account for these four factors when looking at a box score or season recap, you'll have a fairly good idea of what went well and what did not. Moreover, since rebounding is only a component of total team defense, some context must be considered when looking at rebounding percentages.

For example, Syracuse is normally a mediocre to poor defensive rebounding team, averaging 63.5% Def. Reb. over the past five seasons while playing above-average defense in four of those five years. Of course, Jim Boeheim's squads primarily play a zone defense, which eschews strong defensive rebounding for low shooting percentages allowed and few fouls committed.


Let's return to the table above, but fill in all four of the factors for each season:
Year      D.Eff.  Rank     DeFG%  Rank    DTO%  Rank    DReb%  Rank    FTRate Rank
2004-5    105.2     8      48.5     8     20.4    6     62.9     6      37.5    8
2005-6    101.9     6      48.9     9     19.3    7     67.2     3      26.4    4
2006-7     97.3     4      45.2     3     20.9    8     63.1    13      28.1    1
2007-8     92.4     2      41.8     1     20.3    7     66.8   t-6      39.8   12
2008-9    103.1     7      49.2   t-8     21.0    5     63.2    12      37.1   11

All data from StatSheet.com

Hopefully the first thing that jumps out is that the biggest driver of defensive efficiency is opponent's eFG% - if the other team isn't making shots, they're going to have a hard time scoring.

But we're here to talking about rebounding, so let's take a look at each season:
  • 2004-5: The team was pedestrian across the board (remember, this was the old, 12-team Big East, so a ranking of 6 is just average). The one thing I did notice was that the league average defensive rebounding rate was only 63.2%, which seems especially low. Perhaps most of the teams in the old league favored zone?
  • 2005-6: The Hoyas had an odd combination of strong defensive rebounding (a man-to-man trait) and few fouls committed (a zone trait). Along with the the poor shooting defense and few turnovers forced, this looks like a tall but defensively passive team (likely due to the short bench). Here, the strong rebounding was undoubtedly important - there is a substantial improvement defensively despite worse shooting defense and few turnovers forced.
  • 2006-7: Georgetown's profile is very different here, much more like the zone-defense team that we discussed earlier. This team rebounded just as poorly as last year's club, but were able to ride their famous offense and an under-rated defense to the Final Four. This season shows clearly that, if a team defends shots well along with one other factor (here, committing very few fouls), that team can play stout defense - even if they give up a lot of second shots.
  • 2007-8: And here, the lesson is simple - defend shooters better than any else has in the past five years, and everything else will just take care of itself. Obviously the Hoyas improved on the defensive glass, but that ridiculous shooting defense was the real story [UConn has the 2nd - 5th spots in def. eFG% over the past five years]. Indeed, in the infamous Davidson game, it wasn't the rebounding that failed the team, but a lack of turnovers and a complete inability to defend 2-pt FGs that doomed Georgetown in the second half. The pattern here - good rebounding, lots of fouls - smacks of a team playing mostly half-court man-to-man, and looks to have been a sharp change from 2006-7.
  • 2008-9: Boy, the wheels sure came off that sucker. One reason I made sure to add rank next to each column is because the Big East's overall offensive (or defensive) efficiency varies from year-to-year: 2008-9 was the highest scoring in the past five seasons, at 1.041 points per possession, after 1.027 ppp the previous year. So despite the large uptick in def. efficiency, the Hoyas were actually better than average (or median) defensively in conference. The increase in forced turnovers and still high fouls indicates a bit more pressing by the defense, but the poor shooting defense was too big a handicap to overcome. If we compare last year to 2005-6 and call the differences in TO Rate and FT Rate a wash, the poor defensive rebounding last year looks to have cost the Hoyas about 1 point of defensive efficiency.

Is 1 point of defensive efficiency significant, especially when the typical spread in the conference is about 20 points? Well, it certainly could be when a team is seemingly winning most lopsided games but losing most close ones, and the Hoyas did in conference last season.

Returning to a previous post on luck (as defined by the difference between actual and expected wins), we can actually just plug in that 1 point less defensive efficiency (about 0.6 points per game) and see what it's worth: ~0.4 wins. Not as much as you may have expected - if you want to round up and just call it one more win in conference play, would that have been enough to get the Hoyas on (or even over the bubble)? I'll leave that conjecture for others.


A quick bit on offensive rebounding

Throughout the discussion above, I've been entirely concerned with defensive rebounding. As Alan noted in the section I co-opted from him, offensive and defensive rebounding rates don't necessarily correlate, since they depend upon complementary, not identical, skills and in part on the head coach's game strategy.

How have the Hoyas rebounded offensively the past five seasons?

Year        DReb%    Rank     OReb%   Rank     TReb%   Rank
2004-5      62.9       6       33.5     9       48.2     9
2005-6      67.2       3       38.1     4       52.7     4
2006-7      63.1      13       41.3     2       52.2     4
2007-8      66.8     t-6       31.7    12       49.3    12
2008-9      63.2      12       33.7    12       48.5  t-13

all data from StatSheet.com

Georgetown's best offensive rebounding season (2006-7) was also one of their worst for defensive rebounding. More to the point, despite losing 7'2" Roy Hibbert, 6' 9" Vernon Macklin and 6' 8" Patrick Ewing Jr., last season's team - while no great shakes - actually was a better offensive rebounding club that the 2007-8 team.

I've also included total rebounding percentage [= (OReb% + DReb%)/2] in the table, and this final stat likely jibes better with common perception. Georgetown was not historically bad in either offensive or defensive rebounding last season, but by performing poorly in both the team's total rebounding rate ranked as low as any JTIII-team.

I do wonder though, if the two strong rebounding seasons (Hibbert's sophomore and junior years) may eventually prove the aberration for the 21st-century Hoyas.



Julian Vaughn will be asked to shore up the Hoyas' meager rebounding this season. To understand whether he can help, we'll need to ask how well has Vaughn rebounded in the past, who will he replace, and can we expect an improvement season-over-season.

How well has Julian Vaughn rebounded his first two seasons?
Year       %Min      OReb%      DReb%
Frosh      29.6      10.8       10.2
Soph       21.5      11.1       10.2
I don't have access to conf. only stats for Julian his freshman year at Florida St., so I'll be using full season stats in this section.

Okay, we have some numbers, but can we give them some context? Thankfully, Ken Pomeroy has provided us with a very handy chart, showing average rebounding percentage as a function of height for all college players (click on any figure to enlarge):



Julian Vaughn's height is listed as 6'9" by Georgetown (he was listed at 6'10" at Florida St. [.pdf], so either he is shrinking or the Seminoles may be cooking the books). For the average 6'9" Div. I player, we'd expect an OReb% = 9.3 and a DReb% = 16.5.

From the chart, Vaughn is an above average offensive rebounder, but a suprisingly below-par defensive rebounder. In fact, in each of his first two campaigns, Vaughn was more likely to get an offensive rebound than a defensive one.


Who will Vaughn be replacing?

The primary additional minutes Vaughn will get this year were used by DaJuan Summers last season. To put this bluntly, those minutes will not be hard to replace, at least from a rebounding perspective. Summers' number last season (OReb% = 5.5, DReb% = 11.7) were underwhelming, both as the nominal power forward for the Hoyas, and as a 6'8" college player.

Vaughn looks to have the skill set to greatly improve Georgetown's offensive rebounding this year, but probably won't be able to help much on the defensive glass outside of Greg Monroe (OReb% = 9.0, DReb% = 16.6).

When Vaughn isn't on the floor this year, he'll likely be subbed for by Henry Sims (OReb% = 7.0, DReb% = 12.7), who represents an incremental upgrade from Summers, but not much more.


Will Vaughn be a better rebounder this year?

This seems to be the most intuitive step that I've not addressed - as players get older and stronger, they should be able to out-compete younger players for rebounds, and therefore we'd expect a returning player (e.g. Julian Vaughn) to likely be a better rebounder this year.

That assumption is easy enough to check. Below I've plotted year-over-year defensive and offensive rebounding stats for Big East players from 2005-2008:






A quick explanation
  • The x-axis is a player's rebounding rate for a given season, while the y-axis is that player's rebounding rate the following season.
  • The markers are sized by player's % minutes played (>10% minutes both years to qualify) and colored by player height.
  • The black line is a linear fit to the data, weighted by player minutes.
  • The gray lines are the 95% prediction bands - 95% of the markers should be within these lines.
  • The blue line is the 1:1 line - players that fall along the line performed at the same level both seasons.
The takeaways here are several: the fitted line of defensive rebounding is above the 1:1 line up to about 16%, indicating that defensive rebounders tend to improve year-over-year up to about this point. But the difference from year-to-year is very small, certainly less than 1% change on average. For offensive rebounding, the fitted is below the 1:1 line above about 5%, which implies that those players who are strong offensive rebounders (>5%) do not, in fact, improve from one year to the next. Most importantly, the majority of the data is well-scattered about the 1:1 line, especially defensive rebounding. Therefore, most of the change from one year to the next is just statistical noise, and that players, on average, rebound at the same level each season. That is, rebounding ability (or desire) is fully formed when the players arrive in the Big East from high school.

So the results are mixed for Julian Vaughn. Statistically, if there's any change we'd expect a small improvement in defensive rebounding and a small decline in offensive rebounding.

More likely, what we've previously seen from Vaughn (and Sims) just may be what we can hope for during this season.



Can Jerrelle Benimon help?

A complete unknown coming into this season is Jerrelle Benimon, a player few are expecting to contribute significant minutes this year. Could Benimon be some sort of stealth rebounding freak? Possibly, but we have no way of knowing right now, and no mention of such prowess was made during Kenner League.

What we do know is that he is 6'7" and 242 lbs. From Ken Pomeroy's chart above, we can see that 6' 7" players are part of the upper plateau for defensive rebounding, on average garnering 15.3% of defensive rebounds. So Benimon certainly has the right body-type for rebounding.

But, as we saw near the top, defensive rebounding can be an overvalued stat for overall team defense, and I'd like to see his full skill set before I suggest he should be taking minutes from Vaughn or Sims.

2009-10 Season starts today!

And just like that, another Georgetown basketball season is upon us. The Hoyas are down in New Orleans to take on the Tulane Green Wave (Waves?) tonight.

We don't have much in the way of a game preview, and since we won't be able to watch the game probably won't have much of a recap other than a stats dump.

Speaking of dumps, here's a blogosphere link dump for your pre-game hype:
We'll continue the interminable season preview with a look at rebounding and Julian Vaughn later today. At this rate, we should be finished previewing the season some time in December.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Season Preview: Hollis Thompson

Hollis Thompson isn’t likely to be the best player on the Hoyas. He isn’t likely to be the most important player, either, if you are one of those folks who separate “best” from “most valuable.” However, to an outsider at least, Hollis Thompson is likely the Hoya with the widest range of reasonable expectations for performance this year.

The green-shirt freshman was originally slated to graduate from high school at the end of the 2008-09 school year. A lanky, 6’8” small forward out of Southern California, Thompson was ranked 27th in the RSCI [Recruiting Service Consensus Index] heading into his senior season of high school and was particularly known for his ability to shoot and score.

Due to personal circumstances, Hollis decided to graduate from high school in December and enroll early at Georgetown. Despite the fact that this could only help Thompson – getting college coaching early – his recruiting ranking slipped and he ended up at 76 in the RSCI, due mainly to some recruiting experts dropping him off their Top 100 lists completely, presumably because they no longer considered him a recruit.

Two major contributors from last year, DaJuan Summers and Jessie Sapp, are gone from this year’s team. The Hoyas also played a three guard lineup last year primarily because the team’s power forwards were ineffective. This lineup was not always effective, especially on defense. Summers was the team’s only above average "true" small forward, and he is in the NBA.

There’s room in the rotation for Hollis Thompson.


What are the chances that Thompson is a significant contributor this year? What can the Hoyas expect in terms of production?

We can get an idea of the answer to both those questions by looking at freshmen under John Thompson III at Georgetown.

Playing Time
.                                 # (%) played   # (%) played
Player Group total >10 mpg >20 mpg

All recruited frosh 17 9 (53%) 6 (35%)
RSCI-ranked freshmen 6 4 (67%) 3 (50%)
*The data set excludes Chris Wright, who was injured much of his freshman year, and Nikita Mescheriakov, who red-shirted.


Coach Thompson has had 17 freshmen who were able to play for the majority of their freshman year, and about half of them contributed at a backup level at the minimum. About a third played over 20 mpg, about starter level or strong sixth man.

The fact that Hollis Thomspon is a highly recruited player makes his chances of being a contributor even stronger – 2/3 of RSCI freshmen contribute and half have seized major rotation minutes during their freshman year.

Of course, we know more about Hollis than the average freshman. Between Kenner League performances and JTIII’s commentary, it seems safe to say that his chances of breaking 10 mpg barrier are stronger than 67%.

With this year's short roster, we can also take a fairly educated guess about the Hoyas’ likely rotation this year. Don’t pay too much attention to any one player’s estimate. The takeaway is that, once you exclude Thompson from playing power forward or center and account for a healthy increase in playing time for Jason Clark, there’s about 30 minutes available at either guard or small forward.
Player         Est mpg     Min. Left
. 200
Monroe 32 168
Wright 31 137
Freeman 30 107
Clark 27 80
Sims 23 57
Vaughn 23 34
Mescheriakov/
Benimon as PF 4 30

Mesch. as SF ?
Sanford ?
Thompson ?

So there’s potential for Hollis to take a very significant role. The RSCI-ranked Hoya freshmen play 20 mpg or more about 50% of the time, and that seem about right for Thompson. There are thirty minutes available, but Sanford has been drawing strong review and Mescheriakov played 17 mpg in conference play last year. In other words, Thompson is simply going to have to be better than the competition. That’s been something of a mixed bag, even with ranked freshmen.


If he does get playing time, how good is Thompson likely to be? Will Hollis be able to match or improve upon the player whose minutes and possessions he will be asked to take?

Below is a table comparing DaJuan Summers’ junior year, and three possible bases for projection:
  • DaJuan Summers’ freshman year (the most obvious single player comparison for Thompson)
  • the weighted average of all Hoya freshman years under JTIII
  • the weighted average years of those freshmen who were ranked in the RSCI.

Player
Year mpg %Poss %Shot ORat FG% TS% 3FG% OReb% DReb% ARate TORate

DaJuan Summers, 08-09 29 25 25 104 47 60 39 5 12 10 22
Jessie Sapp, 08-09 25 16 18 101 37 51 38 6 11 13 22
N. Mescheriakov, 08-09 14 15 16 83 34 45 26 5 8 8 28

DaJuan Summers, 06-07 26 22 22 102 41 54 33 9 9 8 24

All Recruited Hoya
Freshmen 24 19 18 103 47 56 30 7 12 13 24
RSCI Ranked Frosh 24 20 19 108 51 59 31 8 12 12 23
*Stats weighted by minutes per game in order to get an approximation of what Hollis Thomspon might produce if he is good enough to get substantial minutes.

While Hollis is a small forward and thus, from a positional perspective, will be the receipient of Sapp's and potentially Mescheriakov's minutes, his offensive role will be much more like Summers'. In addition, neither of Summers' positional replacements had a possession % north of 15% last year, meaning that from an offensive standpoint, they simply will not use anything close to Summers' number of possessions.

What this means is that I'm mostly comparing Hollis' potential contribution to Summers.

The Encouraging
  • The average Hoya Freshman’s offensive rating is not all that different than Summers’ as a junior, and Summers was the most effective offensive player of the three listed above. RSCI-ranked freshmen were substantially better on a per-possession basis.

  • Freshmen generally don’t take as significant a role in the offense as Summers did. Normally this is not necessarily a good thing; this year it is. Those 3% - 7% of shots and possessions that Hollis is unlikely to take will hopefully go to Monroe, Wright or Freeman.

  • While estimating rebounding by averaging a slew of different positions may be a bit suspect here (are the freshman years of Greg Monroe or Jon Wallace really useful for projecting Hollis Thompson?), I’m inclined to let the projection stand as Hollis is playing the “middle” position at a “middle height” with a half year of college practice under his belt. The “good” here isn’t those projected rebounding numbers. It’s that replacing the two departed upperclassmen or Mescheriakov on the boards won’t be difficult to do.

The Discouraging
  • Summers’ major contribution to the offense last year was his three-point shooting. With both he and Sapp departing, the Hoyas lose their top two three point shooters on the year. History shows: freshmen can’t shoot threes.

  • There’s not a lot of hope on the turnover front. Freshmen can’t hold onto the ball.


The Thing Not Mentioned In That Chart

  • I only have net points for last year in order to statistically evaluate defense, and the freshmen are a mixed bag. But from my eyes and general common knowledge, freshmen just aren’t very good. Just like rebounding, we have a bit of good news: according to net points, the defense was worse when Summers was on the floor. Of course, it also ranked Sapp strongly above average. I’m not sure if this says much about whether Hollis Thompson will make the defense better or worse than last year.

The Big East
  • One might expect freshman to decline in effectiveness once the Big East season gets going. But they don’t seem to do so, at least not anymore than other players. Freshmen see their ORating decline from a 103 to 101 with their poss % stable. RSCI freshman see their poss % drop 1% and their ORating drop a point. It could be that the rapid improvement disguises the increase in competition. Regardless, Hoya freshmen do not see a significant decline in effectiveness in Big East play.


What’s the sum total? Hollis Thompson is not likely to fix the Hoyas’ three point, rebounding or turnover issues. Yes, some freshmen have performed at a very high level. But it simply more likely that Thompson will perform similarly to Summers, while taking less possessions. Like in the Greg Monroe preview, look for your year over year improvement elsewhere.

What Hollis will hopefully do is put in 15-25 good minutes, play efficiently by hitting shots inside the arc, and generally replicate Summers’ efficiency, if not his usage or minutes. This is no small feat for a freshman. And, if the Hoyas take that, and then distribute the remainder of the possessions between the Big Three, the offense should improve.