Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Hoyas win again, wrapping up China trip

Image courtesy GUHoyas.com
Your Georgetown Hoyas completed their road trip to China with an 83-64 win against the men's national team of Chinese Taipei (aka Taiwan).

As per Google, this generated ~250 hits just within the past 24 hours for the search phrase "Georgetown basketball 'without incident.'"

A cursory comparison of the box score versus the Taiwanese team's roster indicates that the Hoyas did play the national team, not a junior-version or a second string.  The crack staff over at Casual Hoya tells us that Taiwan was ranked 41st in the world by FIBA - for context, Villanova beat the #27 team (Israel) but lost twice to the #35 team (Senegal).


Let's run the numbers:


TEMPO-FREE BOX SCORE
 
.                Visitor           Home   
.               Georgetown       Chinese Taipei        
 
Pace               66

Score              83                 64

Eff.             126.3               97.4

eFG%              48.1               40.2
TO%               10.7               13.7
OR%               51.2               27.8
FTA/FGA           16.9               87.0
FTM/FGA           11.7               58.7

Assist Rate       58.8               26.7
Block Rate        17.2                0.0
Steal Rate         7.6                1.5

2FG%              50.9               27.6
3FG%              27.3               41.2
FT%               69.2               67.5

Attempts/Poss.
2FG               0.84               0.44
3FG               0.33               0.26
FT                0.20               0.61

Today's game was the slowest paced of the three that were completed on the trip - much more in line with last season's pace than the first two up-and-down affairs.

The biggest factor in today's game was the huge advantage the Hoyas had on the offensive glass - Georgetown gathered more than half of their own missed shots [22/43] while keeping Taiwan from gathering many of their own.

Taiwan also couldn't make many shots inside, thanks largely to the 17% block rate [blocks / 2FGA].  Georgetown finished the trip blocking 17.5% of their opponents' two point attempts, which would be a very high rate for a collegiate season.

The Hoyas shot poorly from behind the arc today [6/22], but also made more than 2/3 of their free throw attempts for the first time on the trip.  Speaking of free throws, the Hoyas were once again at a big disadvantage on free throw attempts [13 to 40].  It's not clear to me if the officials were "biased" once again towards Georgetown's opponent, but the Hoyas ended the trip with a split of 54 to 172 (FT taken to opp FT taken), including the reported 15/57 fiasco in the aborted second game.

And with that, the Hoyas wrap up a most eventful 10-day goodwill tour of China and fly home tomorrow, just a few days ahead of the start of the academic year.

After the jump, full player stats for the three official games.

I can't emphasize enough that you shouldn't read too much into these numbers.  The games, especially the last two - were more glorified scrimmages than true competition.

But the summer is long, and until one of the Kenner League recappers starts posting full box scores, this is the best we'll have until the season tips off.


Player Name        G   %Min %Poss %Shot  O Rtg   TS%  eFG% OReb%  TO% A Rate FTA/FGA D Rtg
Thompson, Hollis   3   51.6  20.3  23.5  123.2  1.08  55.2 10.7   8.1   8.9   10.3   88.9
Starks, Markel     3   50.8  17.1  21.4  101.8  0.96  48.1  0.0  14.6   6.4    0.0   98.1
Sims, Henry        3   45.3  22.7  17.5  115.5  1.21  63.2  7.0  20.6  25.2   36.8   83.5
Clark, Jason       3   47.7  28.5  28.1  121.0  1.22  59.4  1.7  15.6  18.3   31.3   94.3
Lubick, Nate       3   50.0  15.7  10.0  131.8  1.17  54.2  7.9  16.2  27.5   58.3   96.4
Porter, Otto       3   55.5  21.6  24.1  108.7  0.99  50.0  8.5  14.2  12.4    3.1   85.3
Hopkins, Mikael    3   52.3  14.7  15.2   96.8  0.85  42.1  7.5  16.5   5.8   10.5   94.3
Trawick, Jabril    3   46.1  23.5  24.5  121.3  1.23  57.4  6.8  15.7   8.0   18.5   92.9
Whittington, Greg  3   49.2  13.7  11.9   89.0  0.80  39.3  9.6  25.1   5.9   14.3   97.9
Bowen, Aaron       3   41.4  20.3  21.2   87.6  0.82  42.9  1.9  20.1  12.8    9.5   90.0
Caprio, John       3   10.2  34.0  28.8  122.2  1.29  64.3 23.3  24.6  39.6    0.0   65.1

Player Name          DReb%  %Blks St Rate FTM FTA   %   2FGM 2FGA   %   3FGM 3FGA   %  
Thompson, Hollis     20.1    1.9    3.3    1   3  0.333  10   18  0.556   4   11  0.364
Starks, Markel        5.1    0.0    0.8    0   0  0.000   8   16  0.500   3   10  0.300
Sims, Henry          19.0   15.0    3.7    3   7  0.429  12   19  0.632   0    0  0.000
Clark, Jason          7.2    0.0    2.7    7  10  0.700  10   17  0.588   6   15  0.400
Lubick, Nate         25.9    3.9    0.0    5   7  0.714   5   10  0.500   1    2  0.500
Porter, Otto         20.2    3.5    4.6    0   1  0.000  13   28  0.464   2    4  0.500
Hopkins, Mikael      14.8    5.6    1.6    1   2  0.500   8   19  0.421   0    0  0.000
Trawick, Jabril       7.5    0.0    3.7    5   5  1.000  14   22  0.636   1    5  0.200
Whittington, Greg     8.8    5.9    0.9    1   2  0.500   4   11  0.364   1    3  0.333
Bowen, Aaron         20.8    0.0    2.0    0   2  0.000   6   15  0.400   2    6  0.333
Caprio, John          8.5    0.0   16.7    0   0  0.000   3    5  0.600   1    2  0.500

Some bullet-point thoughts to wrap it up:
  • Coach Thompson did a good job dividing up the minutes amongst the 10 healthy scholarship players.  The difference between the most minutes [Otto Porter - 71] and fewest minutes [Aaron Bowen - 53] is not too bad.  I don't think this means we should expect a 10-man rotation during conference play, but rather that JTIII saw this as an opportunity for all players to get significant court time.
  • Jason Clark was the usage leader - appropriate as the nominal senior leader.  The four players with major experience (Clark, Thompson, Sims, Lubick) all were comfortably efficient on offense [+115 OEff].
  • Of the new players, Jabril Trawick played well on offense simply by making shots [5/5 FT, 14/22 2FG].  Otto Porter did a lot of things well - assists, offensive rebounding - to put up a respectable offensive rating.
  • For a team plagued by turnover problems last year, it's a surprise that only two players (Whittington and Caprio) turned it over significantly more than 20% of the time.  Likely an indictment of the opponents' defense more than anything else.
  • The defensive stars were Henry Sims ("The Human Flyswatter"?), Hollis Thompson and Otto Porter.  This just reinforces the notion that Porter could be Mr. Do-Everything for the Hoyas this year.

2 comments:

  1. Not to nit, but our man Henry is a senior too.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Do you mean as it reads now or as originally posted? I fixed it a few minutes ago.

    ReplyDelete