Yeah, not much going on around here

If you're looking for your Georgetown Hoyas fix, as always your best bet is HoyaTalk.

Having said that:

• Max Wasserman of the Big Lead (and Cornell University) has worked out the odds that UMCP and Georgetown will actually meet up in the last round of the Old Spice Classic: 9%. Feel free to critique his methodology, but at least he's offering Hoya-related analysis in this long summer of our discontent. He also explains the convoluted reasons why the Terrapins and Hoyas don't play every year.

• I haven't been completely complacent this summer - I took a tempo-free look at a couple of Hoya recruiting targets based on their performance at the 2008 FIBA Americas U-18 Championship (with John Thompson III serving as an assistant coach). Yes, I did already post these tables in that thread, but I'll repost here.

Player Name          G   % Min  % Poss  O Rat  PPWS  eFG%   OReb%   TO%   A Rate  FT Rate
Walker, Kemba        5   70.0    21.9   105.7  1.11  52.8    3.0   24.9    26.5    27.8
Kelly, Ryan          5   60.0    20.1   86.1   0.82  36.2    9.9   23.7    4.6     27.7
Releford, Travis     5   52.5    13.2   116.0  1.04  51.6    2.4   10.4    10.8    18.8
Lee, Malcolm         5   49.5    21.4   113.1  1.13  53.4    6.0   18.0    12.7    25.0
Wear, Travis         5   43.0    20.7   116.7  1.07  50.0   13.8   10.7    6.9     65.6
Green, JaMychal      5   41.5    22.0   131.5  1.51  72.4   19.4   20.9    4.0     58.6
Wayns, Maalik        5   39.5    22.1   88.9   0.96  44.8    4.3   32.8    23.2    17.2
McDonald, Leslie     5   36.0    15.4   86.2   0.76  32.0    2.4   17.2    5.6     24.0
Cheek, Dominic       5   31.0    19.3   96.3   0.88  42.6    6.8   16.0    4.6     22.2
Plumlee, Mason       5   30.5    21.3   101.9  1.01  40.0   12.5   25.7    13.2    55.0
Humphrey, Matt       5   28.0    24.6   101.4  0.79  37.5   13.6   10.4    12.8    25.0
Wear, David          5   18.5    19.2   119.6  1.28  64.3   11.5   20.1    13.1    14.3


Player Name          DReb%  Bl Rate  St Rate  FTM   FTA    %    2FGM   2FGA    %    3FGM   3FGA    %
Walker, Kemba        10.8%   1.8%     2.0%     10   15   0.667   21     38   0.553    5     16   0.313
Kelly, Ryan          16.2%   6.3%     0.4%     9    13   0.692   14     36   0.389    2     11   0.182
Releford, Travis     6.4%    0.8%     3.6%     3     6   0.500   15     27   0.556    1     5    0.200
Lee, Malcolm         9.4%    1.7%     3.9%     8    11   0.727   19     35   0.543    3     9    0.333
Wear, Travis         12.8%   3.9%     2.2%     12   21   0.571   16     32   0.500    0     0    0.000
Green, JaMychal      23.4%   11.1%    5.2%     13   17   0.765   21     29   0.724    0     0    0.000
Wayns, Maalik        9.6%    2.1%     3.0%     4     5   0.800   10     21   0.476    2     8    0.250
McDonald, Leslie     5.9%    1.2%     0.0%     5     6   0.833    8     20   0.400    0     5    0.000
Cheek, Dominic       9.5%    0.0%     2.3%     3     6   0.500    7     10   0.700    3     17   0.176
Plumlee, Mason       29.1%   8.2%     2.3%     9    11   0.818    5     16   0.313    2     4    0.500
Humphrey, Matt       15.1%   3.0%     1.7%     4     8   0.500    3     13   0.231    6     19   0.316
Wear, David          18.2%   2.3%     2.6%     1     2   0.500    9     14   0.643    0     0    0.000

Potential Hoya targets italicized.

News: Julian Vaughn Eligible for 2008-9 Season

Just dropping in to report that the NCAA has granted Julian Vaughn a waiver from standard transfer rules, allowing him to play with the Hoyas during the upcoming season.

From the Georgetown Athletics press release (link):

"Julian transferred to be closer to his home for personal reasons which he wishes to keep private. This was considered by the NCAA along with his good academic standing and the lack of objection from FSU. They granted him a waver from the usual transfer rules and we're very pleased that Julian will be part of our program and have the opportunity to lend support to his family." - JTIII

Last season, Tyler Smith was granted a similar waiver when he transferred from Iowa to Tennessee.

Team Performance Update

I've finally started to get around to posting final stats for the 2007-8 season. I've run into a bit of a snag, in that I don't have 1st half / 2nd half split box scores for the NCAA games (Tom Gower, help!!), so I've only posted the final performance charts.

A few points:

• Before I get into the details of Georgetown's perfomance this season, I thought I'd direct my reader's attention to a post on VBTN (yes, a month ago), reviewing Big East teams' offensive and defensive ratings. greyCat may have the axes mislabelled, but he does a nice job explaining the relative strengths of the 16 BE teams. In a nutshell, Louisville and G'town played defense at a much higher level than the other 14 teams, while G'town's offense was only slightly better than league average. I believe that greyCat is using the entire season for his analysis, and I'd like to see his analysis reworked for only conference games, as the non-conf. SOS varied widely.

• The winner(?) for worst game of the season goes to the BET final against Pitt, where the Hoyas were more than 13 points worse than expected. This number is likely skewed by the fact that Pitt was playing much better at that point due to the return of Levance Fields - indeed, this is a great example of a shortcoming of using Pomeroy's stats to predict performance, as his system isn't "aware" of injuries.

• In their last 10 games, Georgetown was 7-3 versus expectation. That is, the Hoyas played better than Pomeroy predicts in 7 of their last 10 games (averaging +1 point versus the "spread"). G'town was 8-2 in those ten games, with the lackluster win against St. John's being the only disappointing win. The previous season, the Hoyas finished 4-6 versus expectation (+0.1 net), with a terrible game at Syracuse and disappointing efforts against Vanderbilt and Ohio State in the NCAAs.

Finally, I thought I'd break down the team's performance into their four factors, aggregated by performance. I've separated the season into 3 chunks, good performances (> ~3 pts. above expected), poor performances (< ~6 pts. below expected) and middling (those games in between). This is somewhat similar to KenPom's correlations, found at the bottom of his game plan page, reprinted here for reference.

                          Correlations
               to OE       to DE
        Pace:  +0.13       -0.08

        eFG%:  +0.71*      -0.24
         OR%:  +0.32       -0.07
         TO%:  -0.44*      -0.07
         FTR:  +0.09       -0.16

    Opp eFG%:  -0.03       +0.65*
     Opp OR%:  -0.26       +0.26
     Opp TO%:  +0.14       -0.55*
     Opp FTR:  -0.18       +0.33

    Bold  values are significant with a 95% confidence
    Bold* values are significant with a 99% confidence

First, general info:

          Good  Middling  Poor
Record    11-0    10-2    7-4
Pom Rank 100.0    92.6    91.0
Pace      64.8    62.9    61.9

Even when Georgetown played poorly they usually won; since performance accounts for opponent quality, a close win against a big underdog would be considered a poor performance. The Hoyas best games came against the weaker teams, but this is a small effect. Faster pace seems to track performance (the "good" pace appears significantly faster).


Next, offense:

          Good  Middling  Poor
OEff      121.1   114.4   104.1
eFG%       60.9    58.2    53.9
OR%        33.3    32.9    30.8
TO%        19.4    20.8    22.8
FT Rate    25.2    22.3    24.1

It's no surprise that Offensive Efficiency tracks performance; after all, it represents half of performance. As Pomeroy suggests, eFG% shows a good correlation with OEff, the other factors less so. What can be seen here is that the Hoyas shot well even in average games, but poor shooting meant poor performance. Georgetown shot 34% (76/223) on 3FG in their poor performances, versus 40% (193/478) in other games; the Hoyas were 54th of 341 teams in dependence on 3FGs, and this shows here. I was expecting a bigger difference in TO% (turnovers committed), but the effect seems small here.


Finally, defense:

          Good  Middling  Poor
DEff      85.9    90.1    98.9
eFG%      37.0    42.0    42.8
OR%       34.1    32.1    31.0
TO%       21.8    22.0    15.5
FT Rate   39.1    35.6    39.0

The difference between middling and poor defensive games wasn't opponents' shooting or defensive rebounding, but turnovers forced. I didn't expect that, although the Davidson game would be a clear example of this. When Georgetown played very well, their opponents had a miserable time putting the ball in the basket.

Apparently, anyone can blog

I know it's a slow time of year for college basketball, but come on. I found this on the inter-webs today:

Georgetown Slipping Back Into Its Early-’00s Self
" . . . the Hoyas may be falling back to obscurity . . . Is Georgetown in the midst of disintegrating?"

Just checking in . . .

. . . to let you know that, while blogging activity has been non-existent here since the end of the season, things will be picking up again in the fall. I've been out of the country for the last 2 months, and have just recently returned.

I'd like to thank Tom Gower for so ably filling in for me while I was gone. Hopefully, he'll be willing to keep contributing in some capacity next year. I'd also like to thank HoyaJake, for all of his hard work this past season working out player +/- numbers - it seems to have become one of the most popular stats pages.


Now that I'm back, I'll be trying to finish running the numbers for the end of last year. I'm also working on some more analysis of individual player performance, but that is only a work-in-progress, and one that is a low priority for me. No promises if and when that will be forthcoming.

For now, the best sources for Hoya news are:

• HoyaSaxa.com
• HoyaTalk
• Van Buren Boys
• Hoya Hoops

These are always linked on the right side (although you may have to scroll down a bit).

Cheers!