By special request: Lineup stats

While it has been very quiet around these parts for the past few months, I was prodded by someone over at Hoyatalk to dust off the old Cray II computer in my mom's basement and run some lineup stats for your beloved Georgetown Hoyas.

Now this is a bit of a tricky task this year, since the loss of Greg Whittington has forced the team to re-make itself on the fly, to surprisingly good results.

So, in light of the new WithOut Whittington era now upon us, I decided to break out the season into two parts, much like OverTheHilltop did over at Casual Hoya. One difference, though: instead of looking at all thirteen games played with Greg, I decided to pare the list down to the nine games either against top-150 competition or where the game remained competitive into the second half.

WithWhit        WoW
Duquesne        St. John's (a)
UCLA            Providence
Indiana         S. Florida
Tennessee       Notre Dame
Texas           Louisville
Towson          Seton Hall
W. Carolina     St. John's (h)
Marquette (a)   Rutgers (a)
Pittsburgh      Marquette (h)
.               Cincinnati

First, let's take a look at lineup minutes by position, using the same rules we've used before - players are sorted by height, shortest to tallest, with weight serving as the tie-breaker (one exception here: even though Whittington is bigger than Porter, I slot Otto in the bigger position between the two). All heights and weights come from the GU website. Not all slots will add up to 40 minutes, both due to rounding and because I don't show any player with less than a minute played at a position.

WithWhit:

1. Starks [31], Smith-Rivera [9]
2. Trawick [19], Whittington [9], Smith-Rivera [9], Domingo [2]
3. Whittington [24], Porter [11], Trawick [4], Domingo [2]
4. Porter [23], Lubick [14], Whittington [3]
5. Hopkins [22], Lubick [14], Ayegba [4]

WoW:

1. Starks [37], Smith-Rivera [3]
2. Smith-Rivera [26], Trawick [13], Caprio [1]
3. Trawick [15], Porter [15], Bowen [9]
4. Porter [19], Lubick [18], Bowen [1], Hopkins [1]
5. Hopkins [20], Lubick [11], Ayegba [9]

In spite of starting as the shooting guard, Greg spent about 2/3 of his time on the court as the small forward - his natural position - and this is where Coach Thompson had to now find players to fill those minutes.

Jabril Trawick has picked up about 10 of those available minutes per game, playing as a slightly undersized "3" in conference play, depending upon match-up. Also, Aaron Bowen has stepped into the lineup for about nine minutes a game (skipping over Stephen Domingo, who struggled in the OOC).

But this also causes a bit of a cascade effect, as DSR is now playing the major role as the shooting guard on the team (with some help from Trawick), meaning that Markel Starks has to play nearly the entirety of every game as the point guard.

Otto Porter is also playing a few more minutes as the small forward (i.e. his position in the starting lineup), but this is really from the effect of playing Moses Ayegba a bit more each game, letting Nate Lubick spend less time as an undersized center.

After the jump, lineup efficiencies.

I'll offer these stats with little comment, as it's getting late. Just remember that most of these combinations have small sample size, and none are corrected for the level of their opponents when on the floor together.

Also, due to the Pitt game the WithWhit numbers are going to be a bit depressed relative to the WoW stats. I thought hard about pulling that game out of the dataset, as I suspect the terribly showing was in part due to the team knowing that Greg was about to be lost for (most likely) the season. But in the end, it was a legitimate game and can't be tossed out just because the Hoyas got their butts handed to them.

WithWhit:

                                                 Offense                  Defense             Net
Lineup                                    # poss   Eff    Time     # poss   Eff    Time       Eff
HOPKINS-LUBICK-PORTER-STARKS-WHITTINGTON    124     95    18.3       123     84    19.4        12
LUBICK-PORTER-STARKS-TRAWICK-WHITTINGTON     84    110    18.1        87    103    19.6         6
HOPKINS-PORTER-STARKS-TRAWICK-WHITTINGTON    47     87    20.6        51     77    22.3        11
LUBICK-PORTER-DSR-TRAWICK-WHITTINGTON        39    100    21.4        40     83    20.7        18
LUBICK-PORTER-DSR-STARKS-WHITTINGTON         25    128    20.0        23     96    19.9        32
LUBICK-DSR-STARKS-TRAWICK-WHITTINGTON        21     86    15.3        23     70    18.1        16
HOPKINS-PORTER-DSR-TRAWICK-WHITTINGTON       22    118    18.8        21    110    28.5         9
HOPKINS-LUBICK-DSR-STARKS-WHITTINGTON        16     88    13.5        17    124    19.5       -36
HOPKINS-LUBICK-STARKS-TRAWICK-WHITTINGTON    15     80    17.5        16     69    13.4        11
HOPKINS-LUBICK-PORTER-DSR-TRAWICK            11    127    19.0        11    136    17.7        -9
HOPKINS-DSR-STARKS-TRAWICK-WHITTINGTON       10     90    21.0        11     91    14.6        -1
HOPKINS-PORTER-DSR-STARKS-WHITTINGTON        11     73    19.0        9      78    27.3        -5
HOPKINS-LUBICK-DSR-TRAWICK-WHITTINGTON       10     80    16.7        10     40    18.6        40

WoW:

                                                 Offense                  Defense             Net
Lineup                                    # poss   Eff    Time     # poss   Eff    Time       Eff
Hopkins-Lubick-Porter-Starks-Trawick       123      98    19.5       122     92    20.7         6
Lubick-Porter-DSR-Starks-Trawick           116     105    20.7       111     78    16.7        28
Hopkins-Porter-DSR-Starks-Trawick           48     119    21.0        44    105    18.3        14
Bowen-Lubick-Porter-DSR-Starks              36     111    18.6        36     69    16.2        42
Hopkins-Lubick-DSR-Starks-Trawick           35      91    20.7        33     76    19.1        16
Ayegba-Lubick-Porter-DSR-Starks             33     152    19.5        31     61    16.8        90
Hopkins-Lubick-Porter-DSR-Starks            29     135    19.4        31    100    22.3        35
Ayegba-Porter-DSR-Starks-Trawick            23     100    23.9        26     50    19.6        50
Bowen-Hopkins-Porter-DSR-Starks             23      74    18.8        25    128    19.6       -54
Ayegba-Bowen-Porter-DSR-Starks              21     124    21.0        20     65    25.2        59
Hopkins-Lubick-Porter-DSR-Trawick           10     150    20.8        10    110    19.5        40
Ayegba-Hopkins-Porter-DSR-Starks            10      80    15.2         9     89    23.7        -9