BE Game of the Night: Seton Hall 90, Syracuse 68

Just a quick look at the biggest shocker so far of the Big East season, as Seton Hall blew the doors off of the Syracuse Orange in the Carrier Dome tonight.

I ran the stats mostly because I was curious if Jeremy Hazell had a good a night statistically as he thought he was having. 

He did.

The box score shows that he scored 28 points in the game, but my preferred stat (Net Points) gives him credit for producing 22 points on offense.  What's more impressive to me is that he also lead the Pirates defensively, with a 71 DRating in the game thanks to 9 def. rebounds and 4 steals.  Hard to believe that this guy was literally running for his life a month ago.

While the outcome was a real surprise, I don't think I'd take away too many lessons from this game. 

Seton Hall came into the game as the worst outside shooting team in conference play, at 22% [= 31/147].  That included a 3/26 effort at the Prudential Center just 17 days ago.  I'd expect that the game plan was very much to let the Pirates have at it from behind the arc, and it must have come as a slowly horrifying realization that Hazell and Theodore weren't going to miss many, even if the shot was from 28 feet.

But what should worry Syracuse fans a bit is the Orange offense.  This is the second time in three games that the team hasn't broken 1.0 ppp, and those performances were against Pitt and Seton Hall, neither elite defenses. 

Syracuse now departs on a three-game road trip, and Pomeroy currently pegs them as underdogs for the first two games.  These next two games probably will tell us how good Syracuse really is.

All the goofy stats are below the jump.

BE Game of the Night: Notre Dame 56, Pitt 51

Just a quicky for the BE Game of the Night post today.

Image take from here.

Notre Dame walked into the Peterson Event Center tonight, and walked out even more slowly with a five point win over the Pitt Panthers.

This was a big win for the Irish - Pomeroy pegged them as an 11-point underdog going into the game - and effectively turns the rest of their Big East season from playing for a Big East tournament bye to playing for a double-bye (i.e. a top-4 seed).

The main reason I wanted to look at the game is because of Notre Dame's "burn" offense, which shortens the game by stalling until 10 seconds or so remains on the shot clock for each offensive possession. For the game, the Irish averaged an amazing 29.2 seconds per possession, and they sucked Pitt into this pace: the Panthers averaged more than 20 seconds on their offensive possessions. The end result was a 48(!)-possession game.  Contrast this with the last Pitt game I looked at (vs. Syracuse), when Pitt punished the Orange by getting scores early in the shot clock.

To put that in perspective, the slowest-paced team in college this season, the Wisconsin Badgers, averages 58 possessions per game and hasn't played a game with less than 50 possessions all year.

The Irish were led by a hot shooting night from Carleton Scott (5/6 3FG), and forced a defensive mismatch by isolating Ben Hansbrough. Additionally, the normally sharp-shooting Pitt guards struggled from behind the arc:  Ashton Gibbs leads the team in 3FG%, but was 1-5 tonight, and Gilbert Brown - a 41% shooter himself - was 1-4.  I wonder if Notre Dame's size across the backline [Hansbrough 6'3", Abromitis 6'7", Scott 6'8"] had something to do with that?

The fancy-pants stats package is after the jump.

BE Game of the Night: Pitt 74, Syracuse 66

In a truly shocking development, I actually got to sit down and watch a couple of non-Georgetown Big East games today.

Image lifted from here

The headliner:  Syracuse at Pittsburgh

Just like the Villanova-UConn game, the visiting team came in a man down; but the Orange were missing one of their big-3 stars, Kris Joseph.  Just as I did for Villanova, I'm willing to give Syracuse some slack in having to go on the road without a player that would have given their opponent some problems.

However, such is life in the Big East.


Just some random thoughts, as it's getting late:

• Ken Pomeroy expected Pitt to score about 1.11 points per possession tonight, which is about what they did [1.09].  He figured Syracuse to get 1.05 PPP, but they fell a bit short [0.97].  I think James Southerland for Joseph tonight shows up right there.
• During that 19-0 run to start the game for Pitt, the Panthers shot 9-12 on 2FGs, all of which were dunks, layups or tip-ins. 
• During the ensuing 17-0 run by the Cuse, the Panthers shot 0-6 on 2FGs, all of which were jump shots.
• Pitt did a great job on Syracuse's starting guards (Scoop Jardine and Brandon Triche).  You can't overstate the athleticism of the Pitt backcourt, which played great tonight.
• But the backups - C.J. Fair and Dion Waiters - were the best two players for the Orange tonight.
• Speaking of athleticism, Gilbert Brown's block on Waiters was amazing in real-time speed.  That should be on YouTube any minute now.
• I think Nasir Robinson and Brown will get the press clippings tonight, but I'm always most impressed by Brad Wanamaker.  As a fan of one of Pitt's competitors, I am so glad he's leaving after this season.

Something else I noticed tonight was how often the Panthers tried to push the ball up-court for a quick shot.  This always seems to make sense against Syracuse, as you want them to scramble and not be able to set up into their 2-3 zone.  But in a game that ended up with a pace about 4 possessions over what Pomeroy expected, I think this was a big part of Jamie Dixon's strategy (it sure is nice to have the guards to pull it off).  Did it work?

Here's a breakdown of Pitt's possessions tonight by time until "first action":

Time     Poss.   Points   Eff.
0-8       18       27     1.50
9-20      17       21     1.24
21-25     16       15     0.94
26+       16       11     0.69

Now some of that effect would be normal - teams are more efficient at scoring on the fast break than in their half-court offense - but I was mostly impressed that more than 1/4 of Pitt's possessions had a scoring chance within 8 seconds of getting the ball.


Full stats breakdown after the jump, if you're into that sort of thing.

BE Game of the Day: UConn 61, Villanova 59

In a truly shocking development, I actually got to sit down and watch a couple of non-Georgetown Big East games today.

Image lifted from here

The undercard:  Villanova at UConn

Vegas had the Huskies as 2-point favorites for the game, and that's just how it turned out.  Ken Pomeroy only had UConn as at -1, but we'll cut Ken some slack tonight since his computer didn't know that Dominick Cheek would have to sit this one out.

I'm not going to spend too much time discussing the basics stats for the game, as VBTN will undoubtedly turn out a massively in-depth recap soon.

I decided to run through the numbers of this game for a couple of reasons - besides the marquee match-up, this was UConn's third try at beating an upper-echelon Big East team (after losses at Pitt and Notre Dame) and I still wasn't convinced they were legit, even after the win at Texas.

Meanwhile, Villanova had lost Cheek in the Maryland game.  He was someone I thought could switch out on Kemba Walker to slow down his outside shot, but would also give Jeremy Lamb fits - I do think it's fair to discount the result tonight a bit, presuming Cheek returns soon.  And I wanted to watch Corey Stokes play, as he's having an amazing senior season (much like Austin Freeman last year, before the diabetes kicked in).


By my estimate, the pivotal sequence in the game started after the under-8:00 timeout in the second half with Maalik Wayns heading to the line to shoot free throws with the Wildcats up four points, 45-41.

He missed the second, and what followed was a terrible stretch for Villanova, as they committed three turnovers and attempted an end-of-the-shot-clock 3FG (to go along with a made dunk) over their next five possessions.  Meanwhile, UConn got in the paint every time down the court, with Alex Oriakhi making a couple of close-in shots, Walker hitting 3/4 FTs and Lamb adding a couple of layups.

Now, at the under-4:00 timeout, UConn lead 52-48 and never trailed the rest of the way.


In the end, it was Jeremy Lamb who was the revelation today, rather than Stokes.  Sure the headlines will be about Walker, who really didn't have a Kemba-Walker-like game until the last few seconds, and Corey Fisher, who had a tremendous game.  But Stokes didn't show up tonight - in fact, by my math only Roscoe Smith was a bigger negative in the game - while Jeremy Lamb did.  Which again make me wonder what would have happened if Cheek could have played.

Full stats package after the jump, for the curious.

BE Game of the Day: Louisville 71, Marquette 70

While waiting for the Georgetown at Rutgers stats to post, I decided to run the stats for the Marquette and Louisville game.

Besides being a nice rivalry game from the Conference USA days, this game was most notable for the epic collapse/comeback (depending upon your rooting interest) in the last 5 minutes, as the Cardinals came back from 18 points down with 5:40 to play to win the game.

What's really amazing to me is that, while Marquette was outscored 24-5 in the last 11 possessions, the Golden Eagles only turned the ball over once in that stretch (and L'ville did the same). So that means that in the 10 effective possessions each team had, the Cardinals averaged 2.4 points per to Marquette's 0.5 ppp.

Everyone will likely focus on Dwight Buycks blocked layup attempt when Marquette could have held the ball to force a foul and free throws. But the entire endgame is worth recapping.

During that stretch, Louisville forced the Eagles to settle for 7 jump shots (two as 3FGA) out of 9 FGAs, of which 7 were missed and rebounded by the defense. Meanwhile, Louisville's shots from the floor were all layups or behind the arc, five attempts each.

The Cards went 4/5 on each set of those attempts.

But here's the kicker: on their only two misses, Terrence Jennings managed to grab the offensive rebound and draw a foul (whereupon he promptly sank all four free throws).

And it was a combination of all of those events which set up Kyle Kuric for the game-winning layup.

The entire stats package is after the jump, for the curious.

BE Game of the Night: UConn at Pitt

The Big East season kicked off tonight on ESPN2 with UConn playing at Pitt.  Since I actually got a chance to watch most of the game, and since the play-by-play data was clean, I decided to run the game through my stats parser.

A few thoughts after running the numbers:

• Pitt won the game going away, 78-63, with ~66 possessions played.  Hats off to Ken Pomeroy, who wasn't very far off with his prediction (76-66 in 66 possessions).

• For UConn, the narrative coming into the game was whether they were worthy of the #4 ranking, or if their reputation was a bit inflated by Kemba Walker's hot outside shooting touch.  The answer appears to be the latter, as Walker struggled from outside tonight [3/11 3FG] while using fully 40% (!) of his team's possessions while he was on the court.

• A bit more on Walker:  it's easy to rip a guy who scores 31 points on 27 shots and only has 2 assists, but you need to consider the context.  Here is his shooting line for the game, compared to his teammates while he was on the floor:
  

  .               Pts  2PM-A  3PM-A  FTM-A   eFG%   TS%
  Walker           31   7-16   3-11   8-11    43    48
  Rest of team     27   6-18   1- 7  12-15    30    42

  The fact is that Kemba is actually a rational actor here - he's generally better off shooting than passing, at least for tonight.

•  If Walker is going to pass, his best options usually are Oriakhi, Lamb and Smith.  Tonight, Oriakhi was plagued with fouls (and lousy defense) and couldn't stay on the floor while Roscoe Smith couldn't make a shot (much to the schadenfreude-licious delight of Hoya nation).  Jeremy Lamb was about the only Husky that you could point to and say "Kemba should have passed him the ball more."

• Pittsburgh, meanwhile, looks as good as advertised.  What I was really impressed with tonight was how well they shared the ball.  The top six players in possessions played (5 starters plus Woodall) all used between 20 and 25% of available possessions, and only Gilbert Brown had much of an off night on offense.

• The Panthers won in spite of being out-rebounded by the Huskies, and only gathering (gasp) 41% of their own missed shots. Only Texas was previously able to pull off that trick against Pitt this season, and the rebounding margin [40.7% - 47.6% = -6.9%] was much worse tonight.  Pitt countered by making their shots, and once they stopped turning the ball over in the 2nd half their #1 ranked offense got rolling.

• I realize he doesn't shoot much, but why doesn't Dante Taylor get more burn?

All the gory stats products after the jump

Extra recap: Villanova 78, Pittsburgh 76

I've completely dropped the ball on posting HD box scores for other Big East teams due to time constraints (read: I've been very busy since the end of January), but thought I'd wake up my play-by-play parser for the Elite 8 match-up between Pitt and Villanova.

I'll leave it to others to post comments, but thought the box scores would be of some interest.

Let's run the numbers:

TEMPO-FREE BOX SCORE

.            Visitor                         Home    
.            Villanova                       Pittsburgh      
.            1st Half  2nd Half   Total      1st Half  2nd Half   Total
Pace            32        34        66

Effic.         98.7     134.5     117.2       104.9     122.8     114.1

eFG%           39.1      64.6      50.0        45.8      58.9      52.9
TO%            18.5      20.5      19.5        18.5      14.6      16.5
OR%            42.9      40.0      41.9        26.7      40.0      33.3
FT Rate        21.9      66.7      41.1        62.5      50.0      55.8

Assist Rate    36.4      35.7      36.0        40.0      66.7      56.0
Block Rate     11.8      17.6      14.7        11.1       5.6       8.3
Steal Rate     12.3       5.8       9.0         6.2       5.8       6.0

2FG%           44.4      61.1      52.8        47.1      70.6      58.8
3FG%           21.4      50.0      30.0        28.6      27.3      27.8
FT%           100.0      93.8      95.7        80.0      64.3      72.4

INDIVIDUAL NET POINTS STATS

Villanova             Off    Poss           Individ     Def             Individ
Player                Poss   Used    ORtg   Pts Prod    Poss    DRtg   Pts Allow   Net Pts
Clark, Shane           41     6.2   135.2     8.4        43    111.5      9.6       -1.2  
Anderson, Dwayne       47    11.4   135.7    15.5        51     93.9      9.6       +5.9  
Cunningham, Dante      48    10.9   130.8    14.3        48    115.9     11.1       +3.2  
Reynolds, Scottie      56    13.8   105.7    14.5        54    110.8     12.0       +2.6  
Redding, Reggie        60    10.2    77.8     7.9        62     96.3     11.9       -4.0  
Pena, Antonio          12     0.0     -       0.0        14    118.5      3.3       -3.3  
Fisher, Corey          31     9.4   106.7    10.0        29    116.0      6.7       +3.3  
Stokes, Corey          35     2.7   147.9     4.0        34    135.1      9.2       -5.1  
TOTALS                 66    64.6   115.6    74.7        67    109.6     73.4       +1.2   

Pittsburgh            Off    Poss           Individ     Def             Individ            
Player                Poss   Used    ORtg   Pts Prod    Poss    DRtg   Pts Allow   Net Pts
Biggs,Tyrell           24     1.3    46.3     0.6        24    120.0      5.8       -5.1  
Young,Sam              65    17.3   124.8    21.5        63    120.9     15.2       +6.3  
Blair,DeJuan           57    13.1   125.4    16.4        54     91.7      9.9       +6.5  
Fields,Levance         61     9.5   138.2    13.2        61    121.4     14.8       -1.6  
Dixon,Jermaine         36     7.5    79.8     6.0        35    106.7      7.5       -1.5  
Brown,Gilbert          31     8.2   123.3    10.1        35    138.0      9.7       +0.4
Gibbs,Ashton           14     4.1    23.6     1.0        11     66.0      1.5       -0.5
Wanamaker,Brad         47     5.4   102.7     5.6        47    127.1     11.9       -6.4
TOTALS                 67    66.4   112.0    74.4        66    115.5     76.2       -1.8

HD BOX SCORE

Villanova vs Pittsburgh
3-28-09 7:05 p.m. at TD Banknorth Garden, Boston, Mass.
Final score: Villanova 78, Pittsburgh 76

Villanova               Min   +/-   Pts  2PM-A 3PM-A FTM-A  FGA    A    Stl    TO   Blk    OR    DR   PF
Clark, Shane           25:50  + 1  11/47  1- 3  3- 4  0- 0  7/36  0/12  0/43  1/41  0/24  2/20  2/21   4
Anderson, Dwayne       28:20  - 4  17/51  3- 4  2- 6  5- 5 10/42  0/11  4/51  1/47  0/25  3/26  3/24   3
Cunningham, Dante      29:16  +11  14/67  6-11  0- 0  2- 2 11/43  2/15  0/48  2/48  1/29  2/22  3/20   4
Reynolds, Scottie      33:02  +10  15/67  4- 8  0- 3  7- 7 11/46  1/17  0/54  4/56  0/26  1/25  1/27   3
Redding, Reggie        36:03  + 0   5/66  2- 4  0- 2  1- 2  6/50  4/19  2/62  2/60  3/29  2/29  4/30   4
Pena, Antonio          06:46  -10   0/ 8  0- 0  0- 0  0- 0  0/ 5  0/ 2  0/14  0/12  0/ 3  0/ 3  0/ 8   2
Fisher, Corey          17:50  + 9   9/44  1- 4  0- 3  7- 7  7/25  2/12  0/29  2/31  0/16  1/12  3/13   3
Stokes, Corey          22:53  - 7   7/40  2- 2  1- 2  0- 0  4/33  0/12  0/34  1/35  1/18  0/18  2/12   1
TOTALS                 40:00       78    19-36  6-20 22-23    56  9/25  6/67 13/66  5/34 13/31 20/30  24
.                                        0.528 0.300 0.957       0.360 0.090 0.197 0.147 0.419 0.667    

Pittsburgh              Min   +/-   Pts  2PM-A 3PM-A FTM-A  FGA    A    Stl    TO   Blk    OR    DR   PF
Biggs,Tyrell           14:44  -10   0/17  0- 2  0- 0  0- 0  2/20  0/ 4  0/24  0/24  1/12  1/16  1/13   2
Young,Sam              38:20  + 0  28/76  7-10  3- 7  5- 5 17/51  0/15  0/63  5/65  1/33  1/30  6/27   1
Blair,DeJuan           33:47  + 3  20/65  9- 9  0- 0  2- 6  9/44  2/15  2/54  3/57  0/31  2/24  8/29   3
Fields,Levance         37:03  - 3  10/70  0- 3  2- 5  4- 4  8/48  6/21  0/61  0/61  0/33  2/27  1/28   2
Dixon,Jermaine         20:05  - 3   5/36  1- 4  0- 2  3- 4  6/25  2/ 9  1/35  2/36  0/16  1/19  0/15   3
Brown,Gilbert          20:49  - 7   8/38  2- 4  0- 0  4- 6  4/24  2/11  0/35  0/31  1/22  2/11  0/15   1
Gibbs,Ashton           06:10  + 7   0/15  0- 0  0- 3  0- 0  3/10  0/ 4  1/11  1/14  0/ 6  1/ 8  0/ 8   1
Wanamaker,Brad         29:02  + 3   5/63  1- 2  0- 1  3- 4  3/38  2/21  0/47  0/47  0/27  0/20  1/20   5
TOTALS                 40:00       76    20-34  5-18 21-29    52 14/25  4/66 11/67  3/36 10/30 18/31  18
.                                        0.588 0.278 0.724       0.560 0.061 0.164 0.083 0.333 0.581    

Efficiency: Villanova 1.182, Pittsburgh 1.134
eFG%: Villanova 0.500, Pittsburgh 0.529
Substitutions: Villanova 47, Pittsburgh 30

2-pt Shot Selection:
Dunks: Villanova 0-0, Pittsburgh 0-0
Layups/Tips: Villanova 6-12, Pittsburgh 14-21
Jumpers: Villanova 13-24, Pittsburgh 6-13

Fast break pts: Villanova 4 (0.071), Pittsburgh 5 (0.091)
Seconds per off. poss: Villanova 16.1, Pittsburgh 20.0