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.

5 comments:

  1. The lineup with Sapp did the best. Of course, he lost his spot as the team fell apart.

    So my question would be: if we excluded the early games -- maybe just used BE play or post-Duke game or whatever, how does the above change?

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  2. Given the early lineup data, and granted this is small sample size, etc.:

    Seems like in the three lineups when Freeman and Sims are in the lineup together, the pace is faster (13.8 seconds per possession, in a non-weighted average), and the defensive efficiency much better. Mixed impact on offensive efficiency.

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  3. Alan, I'll run that tonight - I can just replace the 1st table with 2009 games only easily enough.

    How's the formatting look? It's a bitch to get the table to be readable with those long lineup text fields.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Looks great on my computer. Only thing that could be easier is some way to represent the lineups easier.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Now updated (both 2008-9 and 2009-10).

    ReplyDelete