Housekeeping: New Stats Feature and Big East HD Boxes

I've added a new pages of stats analysis on the sidebar to the right:

Individual Net Points

It's a work in progress, where I'm trying to summarize the individual net points tables I generate after each game. The goal is to provide a simple way to visually compare offensive, defensive and overall performance of each player per game. Obviously, you can look at the game stats of any individual game if you want to delve into the details.

Let us know what you think:

• a worthwhile effort
• a waste of time, space and electrons
• whaaaa?

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I'm sure I'll regret it, but I'm still planning on posting HD Box scores for all available Big East conf. games. At this point, however, there are a number of schools that are not posting complete play-by-play data, so this may be limited.

Here's a summary of what I've found so far (table edited, thanks to info from FriarBlog.com in comments):

School           PBP Good?      Comments
Cincinnati        Maybe         No substitution data at team site; StatSheet.com?
Connecticut        Yes          Only pbp & final box score; should be able to handle this
DePaul             No           No substitution data
Georgetown         Yes          Preferred style
Louisville         Yes          Same format as G'town
Marquette          Yes          Same format as G'town
Notre Dame         Yes          No 2nd half box score; can handle this
Pittsburgh         Yes          No 2nd half box score; can handle this
Providence        Maybe         Box score only at team site; StatSheet.com?
Rutgers           Maybe         Box score only at team site; StatSheet.com?
St. John's         No           Box score only
Seton Hall         Yes          Only pbp & final box score; should be able to handle this
South Florida      Yes          Only pbp & final box score; should be able to handle this
Syracuse           No           No substitution data
Villanova          Yes          Same format as G'town
West Virginia     Maybe         Box score only at team site; StatSheet.com?

As I understand it, the home team will determine what kind of game data is available, so right now only 9 teams will put out play-by-play that I can process. With StatSheet.com, that would be 13 teams, with only DePaul, St. John's and Syracuse missing.

I'll send off an e-mail to each school's S.I.D. where the game data is lacking, and maybe I can fill in some of these gaps.

I don't want to clutter up the front page with box scores that may not be of great interest to my reader (e.g. DePaul v. South Florida), so I'll put a link on the right side bar to a master page with links to all teams, and then sub-pages for each team. I'll try to get that set up tonight.

Let me know if you'd like to see something that I'm not providing, either in the HD box score or in how it's presented here. And please be patient if a game isn't posted right away - real life duties will likely take up most of my time on-and-off during the rest of the season.

Hoya +/-, and some odds and ends

Georgetown Individual +/-

The stats available here on Hoya Prospectus got a big boost tonight, thanks to the hard work of HoyaJake (formerly known as GUJake) of HoyaTalk. He's gone through the play-by-play data for all games this season (except @ Old Dominion) and worked out each player's +/-. Plus/minus is the number of points scored by the Hoyas, less the number of points allowed to the opposition, while a player was on the court - very similar to +/- in hockey. I'll keep the stats on a separate page, as he provides them. There is also a permanent link to this page on the right side bar.

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Other news from around the web:

• Georgetown plays 2 this weekend (I'm off Monday and Tuesday, so I'm treating it as a four-day weekend). See HoyaSaxa.com for all the previews and pertinent links you could ever want.

• There was a Georgetown sighting on Basketball Prospectus - Ken Pomeroy has a followup article on players whose possession usage is much different than last year, and Jessie Sapp is one of three cited as having greatly increased Poss %. Here's the pertinent section:

  Jessie Sapp, Georgetown: There was some concern over who would pick up the slack left by Jeff Green. It turns out that just about all of it has been taken by Georgetown's starting two-guard, who has used 27.5% of the Hoyas' possessions while he has been on the floor, compared to just 18.7% last season. Amazingly, he's been more involved in the offense than the ultra-efficient Roy Hibbert. However, while Sapp's role has increased, his playing time has decreased from 32.8 minutes per game last season to just 22.0 this season. Freshman Austin Freeman has taken up some of the minutes, and an injury that kept Sapp out for most of the Fairfield game accounts for a bit more of the shortfall. With the increased responsibility, Sapp has been more efficient as well, seeing his eFG% increase from 49.3% to 59.0%. The improvement can be attributed to his 44.1% shooting from three-point range. Given that Sapp was a career 27.3% shooter from that range entering this season, and that he's made merely 64.4% of his free throws in his two-plus seasons at Georgetown, his chances of staying over 40% by season's end aren't good. Sapp appears to be an outlier who will fall back once his shooting suffers against the better competition on the Hoyas' schedule, and the necessity of getting Hibbert more touches increases.

  Just a couple of additional comments to this excellent analysis:
  
  • If you throw out the Fairfield game, Sapp is averaging 24.0 minutes/game, not a lot more than his season average. After getting 33 minutes in the season opener against William & Mary, he hasn't played 30 minutes in any game - a tribute to the play of Austin Freeman, Jeremiah Rivers and, more recently, Chris Wright.
  
  
  • Generally, G'town players have been better offensively in the 1st halves of games. Part of this is from the Memphis game, but this was true before last Saturday. It could be because of a few routs led to sloppy endgame play, perhaps there are other reasons. None have been so much worse in the 2nd half than Sapp. Here's a list of the 9 regular players, ranked by the differential between 2nd half & 1st half ORtg:
    
    

    Player	ORtg (2nd - 1st)
    Wright, Chris	22.1
    Freeman, Austin	5.3
    Macklin, Vernon	2.2
    Rivers, Jeremiah	-5.8
    Wallace, Jonathan	-10.8
    Ewing, Patrick	-11.5
    Hibbert, Roy	-12.4
    Summers, DaJuan	-17.4
    Sapp, Jessie	-37.0

    
    Why is Sapp having such trouble? His TO% increases from 18.3 to 39.2% from the 1st to 2nd half (Wallace also struggles on a smaller scale, going from 10.6 to 27.0%).

• If you haven't had a chance yet, check out the newest craze hitting the internet, the Talking Hoya Podcast. There's only been one so far (post-Memphis game), and I understand the founder (P. Grant) is looking for a co-host.
  

Analysis: Georgetown 66, Old Dominion 48

The score might be better written: GU 66, G. Lee 24.

The ODU sophomore forward had 24 points (11-20 2pts), 12 rebounds (10 OR !), 2 assists and 0 turnovers. However, 16 of those points and 8 of those rebounds (7 OR) came in the 1st half. Once the Hoyas started crashing the offensive glass and making steals in the 2nd half, the game was essentially over.

Here are the numbers for the game:

	Offense				Defense
	1st Half	2nd Half	Total		1st Half	2nd Half	Total
Pace	29	28	57
Eff.	101.8	128.6	114.9		78.0	89.3	83.5
eFG%	55.8%	58.3%	57.0%		30.3%	38.5%	33.6%
TO%	17.0%	14.3%	15.7%		17.0%	25.0%	20.9%
OR%	21.4%	42.9%	32.1%		48.1%	45.0%	46.8%
FTA/FGA					0.0%	34.6%	14.1%
FTM/FGA	3.8%	33.3%	18.0%
Assist Rate	84.6%	69.2%	76.9%		63.6%	55.6%	60.0%
Block Rate	22.2%	10.5%	16.2%		9.7%	11.1%	10.2%
Steal Rate	10.2%	3.6%	7.0%		6.8%	21.4%	13.9%

And while I'm at it, here are the updated season total individual stats (for players with at least 20% of available minutes). Hopefully, Pomeroy will start posting these soon:

##	Player Name	% Min		% Poss		O Rat	PPWS	eFG%		OReb%	TO%	A Rate
21	Sapp, Jessie	65.0%		27.9%		112.9	1.34	66.7%		2.5%	27.7%	20.4%
3	Summers, DaJuan	65.0%		20.1%		91.2	0.90	38.0%		3.8%	19.2%	5.4%
55	Hibbert, Roy	61.3%		31.1%		120.4	1.23	63.6%		16.1%	8.8%	4.8%
33	Ewing, Patrick	61.3%		13.2%		116.1	1.31	65.6%		9.4%	25.9%	5.4%
2	Wallace, Jonathan	60.0%		18.6%		122.9	1.18	59.6%		2.7%	11.2%	11.1%
15	Freeman, Austin	45.6%		19.9%		106.2	1.26	63.0%		3.6%	23.1%	4.1%
5	Rivers, Jeremiah	45.0%		8.2%		117.6	1.01	42.9%		1.8%	11.4%	4.6%
1	Macklin, Vernon	43.1%		13.4%		110.1	0.94	50.0%		9.5%	7.3%	3.9%
4	Wright, Chris	39.4%		24.1%		80.3	0.95	44.1%		4.2%	35.3%	9.2%

##	Player Name		DReb%	Bl Rate	St Rate
21	Sapp, Jessie		8.9%	2.2%	2.6%
3	Summers, DaJuan		14.6%	2.2%	3.2%
55	Hibbert, Roy		12.8%	13.9%	2.0%
33	Ewing, Patrick		6.1%	3.5%	2.0%
2	Wallace, Jonathan		2.8%	0.0%	1.4%
15	Freeman, Austin		6.3%	0.0%	0.9%
5	Rivers, Jeremiah		5.5%	0.0%	2.8%
1	Macklin, Vernon		5.7%	6.6%	1.0%
4	Wright, Chris		10.5%	0.0%	4.2%

Some quick notes while scanning the numbers:

• Jeremiah Rivers hasn't had a turnover since the 1st half of the game against William & Mary.

• DaJuan Summers is 5-15 on 2-pt. shots so far this year; on the other hand, he already has 6 assists - I believe he didn't reach that total until conference play last season

• Vernon Macklin has scored 2 points total in 1st halves this year (32 minutes), but 12 points in 2nd halves (37 minutes). [Is it halves or halfs? For some reason, halves doesn't look right in this context. Anyone?]
  

• Jonathan Wallace is 9-20 (45%) on 3-pt. shots this year, -4% of where he shot last year; Jessie Sapp is 8-19 (42%) on 3-pt. shots this year, +12.5% of where he shot last year.

• The team has assisted on all but 6 field goals in each of the last 2 games.

• The Hoyas have allowed a 32.3% offensive rebounding rate so far this year, which is actually better than last year (33.9), albeit against inferior competition. This seems to be the team's Achilles heel. Remarkably, the next 3 opponents (Fairfield, Alabama and Jacksonville) have all rebounded better than 40% of available offensive rebounds so far this year, so this problem will need to be addressed sooner rather than later.
  

I still have a report from Ray Floriani on West Virginia in my inbox - hope to get it posted tomorrow.