Conference Play So Far: What Happened?

Nine games into conference season and the Hoyas' offense has cratered.  Despite a strong start, it's ranked 51st nationally just weeks after it was top 20.  In conference it is ranking 9th, decidedly mediocre for the first half and has registered sub-90 efficiencies in four of its nine games.  This hasn't been overly uncommon -- but it just happens in those years like last year or 2008-09. 

The usual commentary will be written:  people have figured out Georgetown's (gimmick) offense.  On one hand, it's not illogical that this offense would perform better out of conference than in -- after all, few out of conference teams will take the time to prepare as well as a team that sees Georgetown two to three times a year.

On the other hand, it doesn't fit all the facts.  For one, the offense has been in place for years, opposing coaches have seen it for years and as late as Season 6 of the John Thompson era, we had a Top 10 offense.  In addition, plenty of programs runs offenses with Princeton elements, and Georgetown incorporates a lot of elements from non-Princeton sources.  Those other teams aren't suddenly shut down, either.

So, what is it?  As always on this blog, let's look at the facts before coming to a conclusion.

Let's look at some basic team numbers, non-conference and in conference play. I've included the 2007-08 team so we can contrast current stats with a successful team -- after all, we'd expect every team to be worse in conference play. Just how worse is the question. I'm also not claiming 2007-08 as perfectly representative of how much the competitive increase affects these stats -- but it's an easy way to get some reference.

                       Difference (Conf. Play - OOC Play)
Statistic              2011-12 (thru 9 games)     2007-08

Overall
Offensive Efficiency         -15.7                 -12.1
Defensive Efficiency         -10.4                 - 5.0

Offense
eFG%                         - 5.0                 - 7.6
TO Rate                      + 4.0                 + 1.7
OReb Rate                    - 1.8                 - 2.9
FTA/FGA                      + 3.8                 - 0.4

2PT FG%                      - 5.6                 - 7.9
3PT FG%                      - 2.1                 - 4.9
FT%                          - 9.2                 +12.1

Defense
eFG%                         + 2.4                 + 1.7
TO Rate                      - 2.5                 + 1.6
OReb Rate                    + 3.6                 - 2.4
FTA/FGA                      + 4.9                 + 9.5

2PT FG%                      + 0.8                 + 2.6
3PT FG%                      + 3.9                 + 0.7
FT%                          + 5.3                 + 0.0

In absolute terms, the offense has cratered worse than the defense from the non-conference to conference play, but neither has held up well. In 2007-08, the Hoyas actually declined similarly on offense and much less on defense, but this quick glance says that neither side of the ball is holding up particularly well.

When we look at the components, it's not surprising what is driving many of the losses on offense. The team is, of course, shooting worse, as anyone would expect. But the decline from preseason to conference play in both 2PT and 3PT field goals is actually less than the 15-3 '07-'08 team saw. And this Hoya team, thanks to the Rutgers game, is actually shooting more free throws than in non-conference.

However, there are two key declines that are perhaps worse than expected. First, the team is giving away 2-3 more turnovers a game. That decline in offensive efficiency is about 10 points per game -- and turnover account for about three of those. One would expect an increase, but that amount -- going from 17.8 to 21.8%, is fairly disastrous.

The other unexpected problem is FT shooting. Turnovers can be caused by many things, but poor FT shooting is fairly isolated to just poor play if there isn't a huge shift in who is shooting the FTs. The 2007-08 improved to over 70% in conference play while this year's Hoya team is down near 60% in conference play. That's worth a point or two on average.  

On defense, the issues are more standard across the board. Our comparison year helped keep its defense strong by forcing more turnovers and did better defending the three. That team extended its perimeter D but Hibbert was there to stop those that tried to take advantage of that aggressiveness. This team has not been able to control the three point line as well, though some of that may be opposition and luck.

Breaking it down by player after the jump

Season review: Lineup stats

Hola amigos,

It's been a while since I've rapped with you all, but things have been pretty hairy here at Chez HP, what with another depressing end of the season for the Hoyas and real life and all.

But, I've dusted off the Cray II in my mom's basement and fired it up for the first time in a couple of months to take a look at last season, because those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

For today's episode, we'll take a look at lineup stats from last season.  I'm going to break the stats out two ways:  for all games played against Top 100 teams, and looking at the last ten games played (all games in Feb and March, as the Hoyas went 4-6).

Here we go:

vs. Top 100 Opponents (min. 15 poss both off and def)

.                                             Offense                 Defense
Lineup                                 # poss  OEff   Time     # poss  DEff   Time
Clark-Freeman-Thompson-Vaughn-Wright    288    126    17.4       277   103    19.5
Clark-Freeman-Lubick-Vaughn-Wright      221    103    17.1       221   103    18.6
Clark-Freeman-Lubick-Sims-Wright         88    101    18.2        90   121    19.3
Clark-Freeman-Sims-Thompson-Wright       88    123    17.0        86   107    17.3
Benimon-Clark-Freeman-Vaughn-Wright      63    114    17.7        64   123    19.7
Clark-Freeman-Lubick-Thompson-Vaughn     57     83    18.9        58   109    20.1
Freeman-Lubick-Thompson-Vaughn-Wright    47    132    18.5        44   100    20.5
Benimon-Clark-Freeman-Sims-Wright        38    111    16.4        42    88    18.3
Freeman-Lubick-Sims-Thompson-Wright      30     83    19.9        34    74    17.6
Clark-Lubick-Thompson-Vaughn-Wright      28    125    17.4        30    80    17.1
Clark-Freeman-Lubick-Starks-Thompson     22    100    16.6        17   100    16.1
Benimon-Clark-Freeman-Sims-Thompson      19    126    22.3        18   117    15.9
Freeman-Lubick-Starks-Thompson-Vaughn    18     61    23.5        16   138    15.7
Clark-Freeman-Lubick-Sims-Starks         16    100    20.4        18    56    22.3
Benimon-Freeman-Sims-Thompson-Wright     18    106    16.6        16    38    18.8
Benimon-Clark-Thompson-Vaughn-Wright     17     71    19.8        17   106    20.6
Freeman-Lubick-Sanford-Sims-Wright       18    100    20.3        16   163    18.1

For the season as a whole, Coach Thompson had two preferred lineups, with his four upperclassmen (Clark, Freeman, Vaughn and Wright) and either Hollis Thompson or Nate Lubick playing the "4".  These represent the main two starting lineups used, where Lubick replaced Thompson as a starter for the second St. John's game forward.

The immediate takeaway from the top two lines is that JT3's move to insert Lubick into a more prominent role by making him a starter didn't work.  I'm unaware of a direct quote as to why Coach Thompson swapped the two midway through conference play, although it was likely to improve a struggling defense.  However, the stats reveal that the team was equally efficient defensively with either player on the floor, but gave up a huge amount on the offensive end without Hollis on the floor.  In fact, effective offensive lineups for the Hoyas last season [120+ OEff] had only one constant:  Hollis Thompson.

More interestingly, of those lineups with at least 20 possessions played on both ends of the court, the two most effective last season had Lubick and Thompson on the court together [Freeman-Lubick-Thompson-Vaughn-Wright: +32 net efficiency; Clark-Lubick-Thompson-Vaughn-Wright: +45].  It's expected that Hollis will move to the "3" spot next season, so this bodes well.  Of course, neither Chris Wright nor Julian Vaughn will be around to help.


A look at the last ten games of the season after the jump

2009-10 Season Post-Mortem: The Basics

For the third straight year, the ending sucked.

I'm not sure this really means anything; last year the definition of "ending" was a lot longer than this year or 2007-08, where the "ending" was pretty much 2-3 games.

It's a good thing for me that I'm not a fan of defining success by the results of a single-elimination tournament. It's fun for excitement, but it isn't a good method of evaluation, whether it be the highs of a BE tournament Georgetown could/should have won or the lows of getting blown out by the Hoyas' poor play and the hot shooting of Ohio.

Like last year, this will likely be a meandering series of posts hitting some of the key spots of the year. I'll start at the top and see where it leads me...

Final* Kenpom Stats

Overall Rank:  13th

Adj. Offensive Efficiency Rank:   9th
Adj. Defensive Efficiency Rank:  47th

*There's a few games to play, so these may change slightly but not materially


How good were the Hoyas this year?

Most of the data says somewhere between the 12th-20th best team in the country.

After a year in which the team didn't make the tournament, Pomeroy puts Georgetown at 13th, the NCAA Selection Committee in the 9-12 range, Sagarin at 18th, RPI rank is 12th and the polls would likely have the Hoyas in the 15-20 range.

I don't think there's a particularly strong argument that focuses on body of work that puts the Hoyas outside the Top 25.

Are people unhappy with this? I'm definitely unhappy about the way the season ended, but this is a consistently Top 20 program at this point.

Season      Pomeroy     Sagarin     AP     RPI    NCAA seed
2003-04       110         113        -     133        -
                        ----Thompson hired----
2004-05        42          54        -      70       NIT 
2005-06        14          10       23      36        7
2006-07         5           6        8       9        2
2007-08         7          10        8       8        2
2008-09        27          45        -      57       NIT
2009-10        13          18       14      12        3

Based on body of work, who can complain about this?

I bring this up only because it sets the tone for this post-mortem. It was a frustrating season because of the inconsistency, and because of the perceived brilliance of many of our players.

But it wasn't a bad season.


Offense and Defense

My big pet peeve, as I'm sure our regular reader knows, is the attribution of wins and losses to only one side of the ball. The offense tends to get credit or blame, regardless of the actual reality of the game.

So, just to set the record straight for the season: the offense got very, very good by the end of the season, and the defense fell apart, relatively.

I've posted this before, but early in the season, the big wins were defensive-driven: Temple, Butler, Washington, UConn. The loss to Old Dominion was mostly the fault of a sub-par offense.

But that shifted as the year went on, and after the Connecticut game, the worst Offensive Efficiency the Hoyas had in a win was a 112 (South Florida and Providence) while all of Georgetown's big wins were driven by offense: 120 at Pitt; 121 vs. Duke; 120 vs. Villanova; 114 at Louisville; 123 versus Cuse; 126 versus Marquette.

The losses were not as sparkling, but the team still posted good offensive efforts at Rutgers, vs. Notre Dame, versus WVU in the BE title game and versus Ohio in the NCAA.

This team was simply a better offensive team. Post-Connecticut, the team didn't win any grind-it-out games. It could play good defense for part of a game, but there's no win in the second half of the season won on the defensive side of the ball.

As the off-season progresses, I'm going to dive into the offense, the defense and individual players.

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.)

Experience and Depth

One of the more commonly blamed culprits for this year's disappointment in Hoyaland was experience, and, as an extension, depth of the experience.

The Hoyas had only an average of 1.11 years of experience per player on the floor this year, according to Ken Pomeroy, which ranked 317th out of 344 teams in DI.

There were less or similarly experienced teams who were more successful than the Hoyas. Kansas (333), Ohio State (327), West Virginia (291), and Butler (341) all had very successful seasons despite being young.

Georgetown was also not the only disappointment. Mississippi (344), Florida (312), and Oregon (330) all had very talented teams with disappointing seasons. And Arkansas (340) had a very similar collapse to the Hoyas.

This sort of anecdotal comparison is not yielding anything definitive. It certainly does not disagree with the idea that young teams are inconsistent; that they can be affected negatively by lack of experience. But it does not definitively say that, either.

I also ran some correlations on a team's experience versus different results, such as the overall Pomeroy rankings, offensive and defensive efficiency, Pomeroy's luck factor, etc.

One major issue with running this kind of analysis is that in college basketball, younger players are not just younger, but they are more physically talented. The NBA draft and other professional opportunities pull the players with the most talent before they can become experienced.

The result is a biasing of the data. First, across teams, the most experienced tend to be mid and low majors, which have significantly less talent than high majors. And secondly, even within high majors, teams like Kansas and North Carolina have more talent and less experience, year in and year out, than many of their conference counterparts.

In an attempt to balance for talent, I've done two things. First, I limited my subset to just major conference teams. This should partially eliminate the first issue. Second, I looked at the year over year change for the same team (for all teams), assuming that generally, teams recruit the same level of talent year in and year out. This really limits the amount of data to look at (Luck was only calculated from 2007-2009, so it is two year changes) but it does give a different perspective.

The result certainly does not imply a strong correlation.

Using major conference teams only for seasons ending in 2007-2009, the correlation between experience and Pomeroy Pythagorean winning percentage is .21 and the correlation between year over year change in experience and year over year change in Pythagoran winning percentage is .31. These are not incredibly low correlations in the real world, but they are hardly fantastic indicators of a driving force.

Perhaps the most interesting thing is that Pythagoran Winning % has the highest correlation of the results I tested. Offensive Efficiency correlated at about .20 when I limited to major conference teams; when I did year over year it was below .1. Defense was much stronger in year over year (~.2 again), but was not as strong in the major conference grouping.

Perhaps more surprisingly, in neither data set was there a correlation above .1 for either the Pomeroy "Luck" factor or the Consistency factor.

It does not seem that younger teams are actually more inconsistent or more likely to lose close games.

This goes against much of conventional wisdom. I'd like to do an expanded study at some time but for the moment, what does this mean for the Hoyas?

It seems to me it does not bode that well. I personally was chalking up much of the Hoyas lack of late game execution last season (as well as a general lack of execution) to a lack of experience. I assumed that this execution would improve with experience. That simply may not be true.

On the other hand, the above does not mean it is not true. But we can say that youth doesn't seem to be a uniform cause of "bad luck" (losing close games) or consistency.

Season Post-Mortem IV: More "Luck"

A couple of weeks ago, Tom took a look to see if part of the Hoyas' troubles were caused by "bad luck" due to abnormally high opponents' free throw shooting. He found that most of the Hoyas' bad luck came from playing good shooting teams.

Still, it was a good idea to look into "luck." Even at the end of the season, the Hoyas were still considered a good team by many of the statistical systems out there. That's because those systems look at full year points scored and points allowed. In most cases, those numbers predict actual winning percentage very well. When they don't, the system Pomeroy uses, for example, kicks the difference out to a factors he's unfortunately labelled "luck."

The prime driver of this statistic is performance in close games. (Blowouts can also play a role -- teams that blowout awful teams by more than other teams can be a bit overrated.) There's not doubt that actual random chance can play a role in close games. Think of how many times borderline calls have been made in a one point game, for example.

But there's also a whole lot of execution. Using "luck" to describe the fact that someone doesn't step on the end line in a blowout but does in a close game isn't quite right. Actual performance isn't so consistent as to attribute variances to chance; players play better sometimes and not as well other times. You can call that luck, and you may be right, but you certainly have to also leave open the possibility that college players can be affected by the situation.

In other words, did the Hoyas crumble down the stretch in tight games?

Subjectively, it certainly looked like it all year. How do the numbers back it up?

Year         Pomeroy Luck       Games Lucky/(Unlucky)
2005-06        -.035                   -1.2
2006-07         .001                    0.0
2007-08         .021                    0.7
2008-09        -.113                   -3.5

.

The Hoyas lost three to four more games than they should have based on their points scored and points allowed last year. That's an additional three to four losses on top of most of what plagued the team all year -- it's not how much the Hoyas scored allowed, it's when.

So what causes this?

One possibility is this is simply a consequence of the fact that Pomeroy calculates his ratings on a full year basis. If the team really did, in fact, collapse halfway through the season and in effect become a different team, then the early season Hoyas might be holding up the rating and the late season Hoyas might have just stunk instead of playing poorly in close games. We'll check that in a later post.

Another possible cause is youth. I've looked into that here and found that while you can't rule it out, there's not a lot of evidence saying that youth is a common driver of "bad luck," which is somewhat surprising.

Another possibility, though, is that it really just was bad luck. Some shots rimmed out, some fouls weren't called, some opponents' shots went in. If that's true, then that is good news for Hoya fans -- this team may just get a bit better by regressing to the mean in "luck" next year.

Free Throw Defense

In looking at the Hoyas' profile on KenPom for the 2008-2009 season, and particularly at the shooting defense, the Hoyas weren't a respectable defensive team in terms of FG% and 3FG%-not up to the standards of the defensively quite good 2007 and 2008 teams, but better than the 2006 squad that reached the Sweet 16. But, Hoya opponents shot 70.8% from the line last year, a well above-average mark and much better than the 68.0% they shot in 2008. The question I wanted to know the answer to is why.

One potential answer is bad luck. The Hoyas had some clear examples of this, particularly losing to Cincinnati in overtime when the Bearcats shot 6-for-6 as opposed to the Hoyas' 4-for-6 in the extra session and Jonny Flynn's 15-16 in the OT loss in the Carrier Dome.

Another potential answer is fouling good free throw shooters. Against Syracuse, fouling Flynn as opposed to Onuaku gives Syracuse an extra almost half an expected point from the line.

To answer these questions, I examined Hoya opponents' free throw shooting beginning with the Big East conference opener, both in terms of how well the team shot compared to how well the team shot over the course of the entire season and how well the individual players shot that game compared to their season statistics. The answer is that the Hoyas were indeed screwed by the luck fairy in terms of opponent free throw shooting, which cost them several comes. Unusually, the luck fairy had an actual name: the St. John's Red Storm. Over the course of those 21 games, Hoya opponents made 10.6 more free throws than you would expect from their season stats, and 10.0 more free throws than you would expect from their players' season stats. The Red Storm were responsible for 9.2 and 9.3 of those, respectively. That means, in those other 19 games, Hoya opponents made 1.4 and 0.7 more free throws than you would have expected based on the team and player stats, respectively.

Here are the numbers for each game, with + numbers meaning the team made more free throws than you would have expected and - numbers meaning fewer made free throws than expected:

Opponent     Team   Players
UConn        +1.1    +1.1
Pitt         -1.4    -1.0
Notre Dame   +3.6    +2.8
Providence   -1.2     0.0
Syracuse     -4.9    -4.1
Duke         +2.5    +2.1
West Va.      0.0    +0.1
Seton Hall   -0.3    -0.5
Cincinnati   +1.2    +0.2
Marquette    +2.3    +2.6
Rutgers      +1.3    +1.1
Cincinnati   +0.5    +0.1
Syracuse     +4.0    +3.8
South Fl.    -4.8    -5.3
Marquette    -1.1    -0.3
Louisville   -0.5    +0.6
Villanova    +0.7    +0.2
St. John's   +4.0    +4.6
DePaul       -1.7    -2.0
SJU (BET)    +5.2    +4.7
Baylor       +0.1    -0.4

TOTALS      +10.6   +10.0

Aside from the aforementioned St. John's games, a couple other games worth noting.

• Syracuse did indeed shoot better than expected in their overtime win at the Carrier Dome. They were, in fact, about as hot from the charity stripe that night as they were cold in the Hoyas' 88-74 win at home.
  

• Cincinnati's perfect-6 in the extra session was not particularly lucky. The Bearcats were only 7 of 13 in regulation- if they shot at their season average, that game doesn't make it to overtime.
  

• The only other game where the FT luck advantage is close to the margin of victory is the Notre Dame game - 3 "luck" points in a game that ended with a 6 point margin.
  

• The difference over these 21 games between the overall team stats and the per-player stats was 0.6 expected made free throws. I think we can lay to rest the idea that the Hoyas had a problem this past season with fouling their opponents' best free throw shooters.

Bottom line: On the whole, Hoya opponents made a lot of their free throws this season because the teams the Hoyas played were good at making free throws.

Areas for expansion:
1. Figuring out the numbers for the pre-BE season games. I'll add these to this post in a day or three.
2. Figuring out the same numbers for the Hoyas. This will be a separate post, and will include what the result would have been if both teams had shot free throws at their season averages.
3. Figuring out why Hoya opponents made only 68.0% of the free throws last year, when they made 70.8% this year and 71.0% in 2007.

Season Post-Mortem III: Shot Selection

In Part II of my masochistic rehashing of the season, we looked at the Hoyas' three point shooting and how it all but completely collapsed this season. But ability to make shots is not only affected by shooting ability, it is also affected by what type of shots you take.

How has the Hoyas' shot selection changed over the last three years and what effect has it had?

The Hoyas' offense has declined over the last two years, and its True Shooting % has declined in course. True Shooting % incorporates the added point for three pointers as well as FT shooting.

In 2006-07, the team had a 60.7% TS%. The next year, with Jeff Green gone, it slid to 58.9%. Last year, it slid again, though not nearly as much, to 58.0%.

Thanks to CO's tireless work, we can see the distribution of the Hoyas' shots between dunks, layups, two-point jumpers, threes and free throws. So was this drop because the Hoyas were taking different kinds of shots, or were they taking the same kinds of shots and just not making them?

The reality is, the Hoyas' shooting choices really haven't changed that much, at least by the details that a box scores afford us.

The 2009 shot selection went as follows: 3% on dunks, 32% on layups, 19% on two-point jumpers, 31% on threes and 15% on free throws.

In neither of the previous two years did any of these percentages differ by more than 4% (The Hoyas shot 35% of our shots from three last year). In the Final Four year, the Hoyas had more dunks and less layups, and a few more two point jumpers, but none of these percentages differed by more than 3%.

What's left is simply the ability to make these shots. Compared to last year, the Hoyas were much less effective on dunks and layups, and also significantly less effective on threes.

Compare to 2006-2007, the Hoyas were less effective in both those areas and two point jumpers.

Of course, it's important to note that that one percent drop from last year is equivalent to about twenty points over the course of the season; the three point drop is just sixty points.

Some thoughts:

• One to two points per game is more significant than you think, but this also speaks to the importance of getting more shots (offensive rebounds, turnovers) and defense.


• The reduced shooting percentage doesn't mean shot selection isn't an issue. The team still may be taking worse threes and worse layups. But the team isn't settling for too many jumpers, at least compared to the past.


• In all three years, two point jumpers scored at least at a 20% less points per shot rate than the next worst choice. People trumpet the mid-range game, and there's certainly a place for it. That said, there's a big gap to make up in taking better two point shots before it is really an effective weapon rather than something you settle for.


• The offense probably looks better than it was because it was a good offense for half the season. When I get a chance, I'll look at Big East numbers.

Pace and Turnovers

No great insight in this post, I'm afraid, just a data dump.

First, a look at Georgetown's raw pace, both in all games and in conference regular season games only, during the JT3 era:

        Pace
Year  All    BE
2005  60.2  59.9
2006  59.0  58.6
2007  59.7  58.9
2008  62.1  62.3
2009  64.2  63.5

Next, back when John Gasaway was posting at Big Ten Wonk, he introduced a stat he called ePoss, or "effective possessions" which is simply a team's pace (possessions per 40 minutes) less the percentage of possessions on which they turn the ball over. Here's how those numbers have looked for the Hoyas:

        All games         Big East
Year  ePoss  TO Rate    ePoss TO Rate
2005   47.0   21.9       46.6  22.3
2006   47.9   18.8       47.6  18.6
2007   46.6   22.0       45.6  22.6
2008   48.9   21.2       48.7  21.9
2009   50.3   21.6       49.5  22.2

From both sets of numbers, it's clear that the Hoyas played faster this year than they did last year, and that last year was faster than 2007. 2007 stands out, in ePoss terms, as a clear aberration in terms of being slow-even slower, in fact, than the nominally slower 2006.

If/when I come up with something interesting to say about these numbers, I'll put up a post accordingly. Other reader(s), feel free to come up with potentially interesting comments of your own.


UPDATE (3/26/09 2215 CT): Per request, I've updated the table with TO Rate for each year, broken down between all games and just BE conference play:

I'll put up a separate post with the numbers for Hoya opponents.

Season Post-Mortem, Part II: Shooting

For the past few years, the Hoyas' offense has been effective primarily because the team takes good shots and makes them. This makes sense: shooting percentage is by far the most important of the "four factors" in terms of driving a strong offense. You have to make shots.

This should not be news to anyone.

This year, the Hoyas' effective shooting percentage was not strong. It was the worst of the Thompson era, and driven primarily by an awful three point shooting percentage.

Below is a chart of 3Pt% of each player and the number of threes they took, ranked by highest 3 pt % (minimum 50 shots).

Rank   2005%/Shots   2006%/Shots   2007%/Shots  2008%/Shots  2009%/Shots
1        40%/60        44%/119       49%/149      45%/159      39%/124      
2        39%/137       41%/120       38%/96       41%/151      36%/89
3        38%/162       38%/132       33%/127      40%/100      33%/79
4        37%/126       32%/92        30%/135      34%/139      33%/89
5        37%/148       29%/91        -            -            -
Rem.     24%/51        25%/56        35%/121      31%/132      28%/156

Overall, the Hoyas under John Thompson III have done a good job of having their best shooters take the most threes. In the early days with Ashanti Cook, DJ Owens and Jon Wallace, the Hoyas had three consistent three point shooters. Jeff Green and Brandon Bowman added years with nice shooting.

Since then, the level of shooter has declined. In the Final Four year, only Wallace and Green were all that effective as higher volume shooters, but Tyler Crawford and Pat Ewing had nice percentages to buoy the team in the remainder column.

Last year, it was Wallace again, as well as Austin Freeman and Jessie Sapp.

This year, there's been three main problems:

First of all, there's no Jon Wallace. DaJuan Summers has really picked up his shooting, but Wallace's mid to high 40's percentages are hard to replace.

Secondly, the team is giving way too many shots to players who cannot shoot. Jessie Sapp shot 36% and only took 89 shots -- by far the lowest total for the second highest shooting percentage on a team in the last five years. In contrast, we gave 156 shots to a group mostly made of bench players that collectively shot 28%. The rotation was too large for a team with very few shooters.

Lastly, Austin Freeman and Chris Wright didn't shoot well. Both shot over 40% last year. Both shot 33% this year. Wright has always been a streaky shooter and his FT % implied his dropoff might come. But Freeman's key offensive asset is his shot. The team just couldn't sustain an offense with one three point threat on the floor most of the time in Summers.

Season Post-Mortem, Part I: How Do You Score? A Brain Dump

There's no doubt the Hoyas' offense was extremely disappointing this year. Thanks to a late season offensive swoon (following a mid-season defensive swoon), this was the worst offensive efficiency in JTIII's tenure:

Year      Adj. Off. Eff.     Rank
2005           113            34
2006           117             9
2007           125             2
2008           117            18
2009           110            57

That's right. Let that sink in. A team with an assumed immense amount of offensive talent simply could not score at the level of even a passable tournament team.


So how does a team score?

There's only so many ways to generate a shot:

• Low post offense


• Dribble penetration


• Outside or mid-range shooting


• Motion/passing penetration (the backdoor cuts, UCLA cuts, pick and roll, high post, etc.)


• Offensive rebounding


• Transition offense

More importantly, it's my opinion that the more diverse an offense is the harder it is to stop. That's really easy to see with, say, offensive rebounding or transition offense, two things that generate shots and points without necessarily impeding a half-court offense. They are additive, occurring after and before the half-court offense.

But within the half-court offense, the other four factors open things up for each other. Low post players or dribble penetrators that require help defense create open outside or mid-range shooting. Quality outside shooting requires extended defenses that allow for better penetration, motion offense and slower (or no) doubles down low. Effective cuts and passes open up shooters outside or discourage too much help defense.

A defense that doesn't need to worry about outside shooting can simply sag on a team, making cuts and dribble penetration less effective. A team that doesn't need to worry about effective cuts or dribble penetration can extend the defense and give up less open looks. And a team that doesn't have to double a low post threat can do all of the above.


So what does Georgetown have? What did the Hoyas used to have?


Let's knock off what the Hoyas haven't done during Thompson's tenure: transition offense. They've never run much, and when they have, they've been awful at converting.

There's a certainly a strong argument for running more. Chris Wright is better in the open floor than Jon Wallace, and when you are struggling for offense, running can create some easy shots. Unfortunately, there's not a lot of other strong handlers on the team, and the team struggles to make the right decisions and finish on the break. I don't have the numbers, and nothing to compare it to, but I don't think anyone will disagree that the team has an incredibly low conversion rate on the break.


Before we get to the other elements, let's take a look at some of the offensive statistics over the years for Georgetown:

Offensive Stat   2005 (Rank)  2006 (Rank)  2007 (Rank)  2008 (Rank)  2009 (Rank)

Adj. Eff.         113  (34)    117   (9)    125   (2)    117  (18)    110  (57)
Opp. Def. Eff.     96  (24)     96  (22)     96   (8)     97  (31)     96   (3)

eFG%             53.1  (35)   53.4  (28)   57.0   (4)   56.8   (4)   52.5  (56)
2Pt%             51.8  (41)   53.5  (15)   57.8   (2)   56.3   (2)   54.2  (12)
3Pt%             36.5  (75)   35.5 (129)   37.0  (73)   38.4  (38)   33.0 (221)
3PA/FGA            43  (13)     37  (71)     35 (151)     40  (48)     36  (89)

FTA/FGA            30 (302)     32 (277)     37 (164)     34 (237)     43  (35)
FT%              70.4 (114)   70.6 (127)   71.0 (115)   65.2 (286)   71.2  (94)

OR%              35.6  (90)   36.3  (77)   40.2   (8)   33.8 (132)   33.4 (152)
TO%              21.9 (203)   18.8  (35)   22.0 (213)   21.2 (192)   21.6 (246)

A/FGM              63  (32)     66   (9)     49  (75)     62  (44)     57  (92)

Some initial thoughts to look into:

• This by far is the worst three-point shooting team Thompson has had. Why? Personnel, or lack of open shots?
  


• This year marks the largest divide between 2PT % and eFG%, meaning the mix between two point FGs and three point FGs was well off. And this was the first time (not counting fouls) that the Hoyas had definitely taken too many threes for our ability.
  


• We're probably going to need to look at 2009 split out. The team collapsed; the numbers of the early conference game are likely inflating the yearly totals, but that wasn't the issue.


• Two point shooting took a hit post-Hibbert, but less than you'd think, especially when you incorporate in lost offensive rebounds.
  


• Relative to the rest of college basketball, this year was the worst year for the Hoyas in terms of generating shots: the worst ranking the Hoyas have had in TO% and OR%.
  


• Georgetown hasn't always been awful at offensive rebounding (see before Jeff Green left), but there's only been one year where the turnovers have been passable.
  


• In the Final Four year, the team assisted on a lower percentage of its shots than any other year. However, the team also generated many offensive rebounds (which lead to put-backs), upped its FG% and its foul rate from the previous year and still managed to score. This year, the % of assisted baskets dropped, but rebounding did as well (and so did FG%). I'm not sure what this means.

The two things that jump at me more than any other are the poor outside shooting and the inability to generate shot opportunities due to turnovers and poor offensive rebounding.


In future posts, I hope to take a look at what is each of those points. Those two points would explain a lot in context of the six ways to score:

• Outside/midrange shooting: Assumed Poor

• Transition offense: Poor

• Offensive rebounding: Poor

With few shots, and no ability to make outside shots defenses can (and did) sag on the interior to harm those aspects of the offense.

• Low post offense: Mediocre to begin win, made worse by lack of shooting

• Penetration: Wright is better, but lots of turnovers from others, lots of help D

• Motion offense: Decidedly worse -- but defense could, again, sag