Tangentially, there was an interesting comment that I noticed on HoyaTalk today about Hollis Thompson, that I suspect was tossed out a bit off the cuff (h/t MCIGuy):
I agree he hasn't exactly arrived. He can shoot. And he is a very good passer, a willing rebounder and a pretty impressive defender. But when he starts driving to the hoop and taking advantage of his speed and athleticism then we can say he has arrived.
Oh, and playing good on the road for once would be a heck of a start.
My first thought was, "Where the heck does he get that idea?" Then I realized that he probably got that idea right here - I do post home/road splits for all players. So I went to take a look:
H.Thompson - Home / Road Splits Venue G % Min % Poss % Shot ORat TS% Home 13 48.7 12.4 11.9 128.0 1.38 Road/Neutral 9 49.7 12.1 12.6 72.0 0.61
Wow, that's quite a difference in offensive efficiency.
So now I felt that I had to dig in a bit more in home / road splits for the Hoyas, both as a team and for individual players. To refine things a bit, I'm going to filter out all games against teams ranked worse than 100 by KenPom.com; this removes seven games from the dataset: @ Tulane, @ Savannah St., vs. Lafayette, vs. Mt. St. Mary's, vs. American, @ DePaul, vs. Rutgers.
Here are the team splits:
. Georgetown Opponent
Home Road/N Home Road/N
Record 7-2 3-3
Pace 69.2 69.1
Eff. 107.2 99.4 98.9 99.9
Eff. Margin 8.3 -0.5
eFG % 57.0 50.0 47.3 47.8
TO % 23.0 22.4 19.9 19.6
OR % 29.4 29.4 35.1 30.7
FTA/FGA 46.5 40.3 31.8 33.6
2FG % 57.6 47.3 48.3 46.7
3FG % 37.1 37.5 30.1 33.3
FT % 71.1 73.4 69.0 75.7I've highlighted the important differences between home and road games. A few of these surprised me.
- Game pace is essentially the same for the home vs. away games, so a comparison of stats not adjusted for pace would be fine.
- The substantial difference between home and road games is from the offense (+7.8 Off. Eff.) rather than the defense (-1.0 Def. Eff).
- The only significant difference in the underlying four factors for offense is shooting accuracy (+7.0 eFG%); TO rate is very similar (and actually better away from Verizon), OR % is exactly the same and the difference in FT rate is probably buoyed a bit by the winning record at home (teams behind tend to foul more).
- The driver for the difference in shooting is 2FG%, not 3FG% which is what I expected. Very strange.
- The only significant difference for the four factors on defense is rebounding - the Hoyas are giving up a few extra chances at home than on the road. But it looks like the small differences in the other factors effectively cancel this out. Also, opponents seem to shoot FTs worse at Verizon than on their own courts.
Next, let's take a look at some player split stats:
Home games Player Name G % Min % Poss % Shot ORat TS% TO% 2FG % 3FG % Freeman, Austin 9 92.5 21.9 25.7 117.6 1.39 20.6 47/71 0.662 17/37 0.459 Wright, Chris 9 89.2 21.8 25.4 116.1 1.20 14.9 43/69 0.623 10/34 0.294 Monroe, Greg 9 89.2 25.5 24.0 103.5 1.10 19.7 47/87 0.540 2/10 0.200 Clark, Jason 9 78.9 14.3 16.2 110.0 1.37 25.6 10/17 0.588 19/41 0.463 Vaughn, Julian 9 62.5 19.8 17.6 99.6 1.11 24.6 28/48 0.583 0/ 2 0.000 Thompson, Hollis 9 45.8 13.3 11.1 107.2 1.11 23.8 5/12 0.417 4/11 0.364 Benimon, Jerrelle 8 27.5 11.5 4.8 73.1 1.02 45.8 1/ 4 0.250 0/ 2 0.000 Road/neutral games Player Name G % Min % Poss % Shot ORat TS% TO% 2FG % 3FG % Freeman, Austin 6 85.8 23.3 26.0 117.3 1.30 18.1 19/43 0.442 16/28 0.571 Wright, Chris 6 85.8 20.6 19.4 100.2 1.06 21.8 18/34 0.529 4/19 0.211 Monroe, Greg 6 88.3 26.0 26.3 95.8 1.05 18.9 35/70 0.500 1/ 4 0.250 Clark, Jason 6 90.8 15.5 18.0 106.9 1.13 17.2 8/23 0.348 13/29 0.448 Vaughn, Julian 6 58.8 20.9 20.9 95.2 1.09 25.6 20/36 0.556 0/ 3 0.000 Thompson, Hollis 6 51.7 12.4 12.2 59.8 0.53 26.5 3/10 0.300 1/10 0.100 Benimon, Jerrelle 6 25.0 11.7 8.8 72.8 1.07 41.4 2/ 5 0.400 1/ 2 0.500
Now there's a lot more numbers here to process, but here are some of the salient points I take away:
- The drop-off from home to road games is much worse for Thompson than any other Hoya:
. Change Player ORat Freeman - 0.3 Wright -15.9 Monroe - 7.8 Clark - 3.1 Vaughn - 1.3 Thompson -47.4 Benimon - 0.3
- Why is he struggling so much more? Well, he just doesn't take a lot of shots compared to his teammates, and he's not had much luck with outside shooting on the road. He also doesn't get the FT line on the road (not shown) [11/14 FT at home, 2/3 FT on the road]. So, while his stats don't look very good, one hot shooting night on the road would help a lot to get him back in line with his teammates.
- The big drop if 2FG% accuracy from home to road games isn't being driven by the bigs (Monroe/Vaughn) missing their layups. Instead, it's coming from the guards, especially Freeman and Clark.
- On the other hand, Clark and especially Freeman don't seem to suffer shooting from deep on the road. If you haven't realized this yet, Chris Wright is just not a good outside shooter against quality teams.
- Wright is doing a great job controlling the ball at home; his road turnover rate is actually acceptable for a primary ball-handler. Jerrelle Benimon turns the ball over a whole bunch. Henry Sims (not shown) is actually worse.
Well, that's all for tonight. Let's see if Georgetown's road offense can get a bump playing against Providence, one of the most generous defenses in the conference.
Very interesting post! I've often wondered about home/road splits and this is a really nice look into it.
ReplyDeleteTo me our offense seems to be trending better lately, and in fact, I've run some quick stats that seem to support this--with statistical significance. Might be more material than just a comment. I'll drop you a line via email and see if you think it's worth a separate post.