In deference to Henry Sims

Image from here

About two years ago on this site, Alan was compelled to write the post "In defense of Henry Sims" after the cognoscenti on HoyaTalk had given Sims a particularly unpleasant splenetic going-over after a hard-fought win against the Johnnies.

This season, Nate Lubick had been ably filling the role of whipping-boy for most of the season, but now that Senior Day is upon us, it seems that the poison darts are starting to head back to Henry.

Since I've had this sitting on my laptop for a couple of days now, I thought it might be useful to post a massively unfair comparison between Henry and two other players who operated in essentially the same role (running the offense from the high post) over the past five seasons.

First, some offensive stats (conf. games only):

Player Name          G  %Min %Poss  %Shot  O Rtg  TS%   eFG% OReb%  TO% A Rate FTA/FGA
Sims, Henry (2012)  15  70.9  28.8   23.1   88.1  46.6  37.6  7.5  26.8  26.6    69.6
Sims, Henry (2011)  19  31.8  17.8   13.8   89.2  54.3  55.8  8.0  31.0  11.4    51.2

Monroe, Greg (2010) 23  82.6  27.0   23.6  106.2  58.5  55.2  6.6  22.4  23.2    56.9
Monroe, Greg (2009) 19  79.9  23.6   21.6  104.8  58.5  55.6  8.7  23.5  20.5    48.0

Hibbert, Roy (2008) 23  69.1  25.6   26.4  119.6  64.0  60.6 10.3  17.0  17.6    47.1

The first item to note is that both Sims and Monroe basically held to their offensive rating while increasing their usage (Greg a little, Henry a lot). Since the trend is generally that players are less efficient with greater usage, this is actually showing improvement year-over-year, especially for Sims.

This concept is something we've already look at (you'll have to scroll to the bottom of this epic post) - if Henry had the luxury of using possessions at the same rate as last season, we'd expect that he'd have an ORat = 97 or so. Not great, but not horrible. But due to both the makeup of the team and his own decision-making, Sims is using a ton of possessions.

Other points from this table:

• Henry's biggest problem is his shooting - more on that in a second.
• Sims is turning the ball over too much, but is also generating more assists than either Monroe or Hibbert did.
• Henry is also drawing fouls at a greater rate than either of his predecessors. That offsets his poor shooting from the floor to some degree (note the difference between eFG% and TS%; the second accounts for FTs made).
• Daammmnn! Roy had an amazing senior season. You can forget that sometimes.

Next let's break down shot selection for conference opponents:

Player               Dunks    Layups  2pt J's  %2FG Js    3FGs     FTs

Sims, Henry  (2012)   6/8     18/42    23/75    0.600     0/0     61/87  
.                             0.429    0.307               -      0.701  

Sims, Henry  (2011)   3/4     13/17     8/21    0.500     0/1     10/22  
.                             0.765    0.381             0.000    0.455  


Monroe, Greg (2010)  15/15    90/145   22/67    0.295     4/13    92/136
.                             0.621    0.328             0.308    0.676

Monroe, Greg (2009)  14/14    53/93    15/41    0.277     2/4     44/67
.                             0.570    0.366             0.500    0.657


Hibbert, Roy (2008)  10/10    50/85    36/68    0.417     1/1     65/85
.                             0.588    0.529             1.000    0.765

I've added an extra column ("%2FG J's") that is simply the percentage of 2FGA that were as jump-shots.

Henry is getting a lot of grief for not being able to make his bunnies, but he didn't have that problem last season - it may be a combination of bad luck and pressing to make some high degree-of-difficulty layups this year.

Also, while his jump-shooting is lousy, so was Monroe's. The big difference is that Henry settles for jumpers at about twice the rate that Greg did.


Finally, a brief look at some defensive stats.

Player Name            DReb% % Blks St Rate
Sims, Henry   (2012)    15.0   5.7    1.6
Sims, Henry   (2011)    19.1   4.5    0.8

Monroe, Greg  (2010)    26.2   4.6    2.0
Monroe, Greg  (2009)    18.8   4.0    3.8

Hibbert, Roy  (2008)    17.1   9.4    1.4

Sims can't really match Roy's block rate or Greg's rebounding and steals, but the team defense has certainly been fine in spite of that. I don't see much problem here.


And that's all I've got tonight. Other than to wish Henry, along with Jason Clark (and Hollis Thompson), a happy Senior Day.