SWC75
Bored Historian
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I’ll continue doing a statistical analysis of games this year with some of the off-beat numbers I like to look at. I’ll post them after each game, probably the next day.
The first thing I’ll look at is “NET POINTS”. The idea is that each statistic in the box score is arguably worth a point, (that is, somewhere between 0.5 and 1.5 points). A point is a point. Teams score an average of a point per possession so anything that gets you possession is a point. A missed shot will more often than not wind up in the possession of the other team. Most baskets are for two points so if the passer who set up the shot is given half credit, that’s worth a point. One half of the blocked shots will likely have gone in and they are almost always two pointers, so that’s a point. If you add up the “positives”, (points, + rebounds + assists + steals + blocks) and subtract the “negatives”, (missed field goals, missed free throws, turnovers and fouls), you have a number that summarizes a player’s statistical contributions to a game. Then, by averaging the net points per 40 minutes of play, you factor out differences in playing time and have a look at the player’s rate of production. Both are important. The game is won based on what you actually did, not the rate at which you did it. But the rate is a better measure of the skills you can bring to the game.
Of course, there are things players do both on and off the court that contribute to victory. Leadership, hard work, keeping the team loose, scrambling for loose balls, (that could be a statistic: when neither team is in control of the ball, who winds up with it?), sneaker-sneaker defense, keeping the ball moving on offense, etc. etc. My experience is that with rare exceptions, the players who are the most statistically productive are the ones who grade highest in the things not measured by statistics, as well.
Here are the NET POINTS of our scholarship player in the most recent game and their averages per 40 minutes of play for the season, (exhibitions games not included):
Tyler Roberson……. 18NP in 38 minutes season: 262NP in 727 minutes per 40: 14.4
Rakeem Christmas 9NP in 30 minutes season: 552NP in 986 minutes per 40: 22.4
Ron Patterson…….. 6NP in 15 minutes season: 45NP in 398 minutes per 40: 4.5
Trevor Cooney…… 6NP in 32 minutes season: 261NP in 1077 minutes per 40: 9.7
Chinoso Obokoh….. 3NP in 10 minutes season: 16NP in 88 minutes per 40: 7.3
Michael Gbinije….. 0NP in 40 minutes season: 344NP in 971 minutes per 40: 14.2
Kaleb Joseph……….. -2NP in 17 minutes season: 149NP in 819 minutes per 40: 7.3
B. J. Johnson……….. -4NP in 18 minutes season: 82NP in 330 minutes per 40: 9.9
DNP-CD
INJURED
DaJuan Coleman…. 0NP in 0 minutes season: 0NP in 0 minutes per 40: 0.0
Chris McCullough.. 0NP in 0 minutes season: 171NP in 450 minutes per 40: 15.2
SUSPENDED
None
Comment: We never have gotten all the tent poles up this year. Against Notre Dame BJ Johnson had 19 points and Tyler Roberson had 1 point. Against Duke, Roberson had 16 points and Johnson was shut out. Rakeem Christmas again lost his battle with Jahlil Okafor but it didn’t help that he only had the ball enough to get 6 shots off. He got off 17 in the first game. Michael Gbinije has great run with 21, 26, 33 and, 23 net points in consecutive games, (with the 33 coming against the Blue Devils). Since then he’s 11,14 and 0, (also against Duke). It’s not the flying. It’s the taking off and landing.
Rakeem Christmas has led in net points 15 times, Mike Gbinije 5 times, Chris McCullough and Tyler Roberson 4 times, BJ Johnson twice and Trevor Cooney once.
POSSESSION
Before you can score you’ve got to get the rock. Syracuse had 18 offensive and 18 defensive rebounds. They had 16 offensive and 26 defensive rebounds. Against Notre Dame only 16 of 74 rebounds were taken down by the offensive team: 21.6%. In this game it was 34 of 78, 44.6%. Your guess is as good as mine.) When we missed we got the ball 18 of 44 times, (40.9%). When they missed, they got the ball 16 of 34 times (47.1%). We’ve won the rebounding battle by this measure 18 times in 27 games. For the year we’ve averaged getting 34.7% of our misses and our opposition has gotten 30.6% of theirs.
Effective offensive rebounding: We got 16 second chance points off our 18 offensive rebounds, 0.89 points per rebound. They got 16 for their 16 = 1.00. For the year we’ve averaged 1.01 points per offensive rebound: they’ve averaged 0.92. We’ve led in this stat 16 times in 29 games.
Of our 15 turnovers, 7 were their steals and 8 were our own miscues. Of their 17 turnovers, 12 were Syracuse steals and 5 were their fault. We’ve had fewer turnovers in 20 of 29 games with 2 even and fewer unforced turnovers in 12 games with 6 even. Last year we had fewer turnovers in 29 of 34 games with 2 even. We are averaging 12 turnovers, 6 unforced. Our opposition is averaging 14/6.
If you add our 36 rebounds to their 17 turnovers, we had 53 “manufactured possessions”. They had 42 + 15 = 57, so we were -4. We have won that battle 20 of 29 times with 1 even. For the season we’ve averaged 51 to 46 (+5).
SHOOTING
It’s still what the game is all about. It’s what this game was all about, for sure. We were 16 for 42, (.381) inside the arc, 3 for 20, (.150) outside it and 13 for 17, (.765) from the line. They were 20 for 35 (.571), 8/23 (.348) and 9/16 (.563). We’ve led in two point field goal percentage in 15 of 28 games, and in free throw percentage in 13 games. We’ve led in three point field goals percentage, believe it or not, in 16 games. For the season we are .487/.306/.661. Our opposition is .457/.312/.705.
We had 26 points in the paint, 14 off turnovers, 16 “second chance” points, 6 fast break points and 2 from the bench. Our opposition had 38 points in the paint, 17 off turnovers, 16 “second chance” points, 12 fast break points and 2 from the bench. We also had 19 of Pat’s “first chance points” (total points minus second chance points, fast break points and made free throws) to 36. That’s where we lost this game: the initial sets. Both we and Duke had exactly two points from their bench: neither team is deep. Our starters played 157, theirs 173. They didn’t seem to get tired.
We’ve led in PIP 19 times with 2 ties, POTO 19 times with 1 tie, FCP 17 times with 1 tie, SCP 15 times with 2 ties, FBP 15 times with 4 ties and BP 11 times, with 3 ties. For the season we are averaging 33-25 PIP, 15-11 POTO, 33-32 FCP, 12-11 SCP, 9-7 FBP and 10-15 BP.
We had 54 points, 26 in the paint, 9 from the arc and 13 from the line so we had 15 ”POP”, (points outside the paint: 54-26-13) and scored 6 points, (15 POP-9 from the arc), from what I’ll call the Twilight Zone”: that area between the paint and the arc that is the land of the pull-up jump shot, a lost art but a great weapon. They had 73/38/24/9= 26 POP with 2 from the Twilight Zone. We’ve only led in POP 12 times but we’ve led in TZ points 16 times with 1 tie in 29 games. For the year we are averaging 23 POP and 8 TZ, our opposition 26/7. The game is so much easier when you don’t have to go to the basket for all your points.
10 of our 19 baskets were assisted (.526) and also 18 of their 28 (.643), very high percentages. There wasn’t a lot of slashing to the basket in this game. For the year we are assisting on 62.0% of our baskets to 66.7% for the opposition, who have had a higher percentage in 18 of 28 games, with 1 tie. Assists tend to come more often from jump shots than lay-ups or dunks so the more assists you get, the more you are settling for jump shots to try to win the game which is often a bad strategy.
You compute “Offensive Efficiency” by taking field goal attempts – offensive rebounds + turnovers plus 47.5% of free throws attempted and dividing that into the number of points. We were 62 FGA - 18 OREBs + 15 TOs + (.475 x 17) = 67.075 possessions. They were 58 -16+ 17+ (.475 x 16) = 66.6 possessions. Since possessions shouldn’t be more than one off, I’ll count that as 67 possessions in which we scored 54 points, (0.806 points per possession) and 67 possessions in which they scored 73points, (1.090). We have, of course, led 18 of 29 games in offensive efficiency since the winning team always leads in that stat. For the year we are averaging 1.023 points per possession to 0.947 for the opposition.
There were 134 combined possessions in this game. We’ve averaged 133 possessions this year. We averaged 122 last year, so the pace appears to be better than it was last season.
Hubert Davis once told us to “Get an offensive dude”. I decided to name an “Offensive Dude Of the Game, or an O-Dog, and use the hockey concept of points + assists. In this game Tyler Roberson scored 16 points with 2 assists for 18 “hockey” points and thus was our ODOG for the first time this year, (which tells you something about our offense in this game). He’s really developing into a star quality player and is making the defense pay for the extra attention on Rakeem. Rakeem Christmas has been the O-Dog 11 times, Michael Gbinije 8 times, Trevor Cooney 6 times, BJ Johnson twice, Kaleb Joseph, Chris McCullough and Tyler Roberson once each.
Every other level of basketball plays quarters. To check the consistency of our performance, I look at what the score was at the 10 minute mark of each half to see what the quarterly scores would be. At a minimum, I think we want to score at least 15 points in each quarter and try to hold the opposition to less than that. The quarterly breakdown for this game 14-14, 11-20, 13-23, 16-16. For the season we have an average of 16-13, 17-14, 16-17, 19-18. We’ve won 64 of 116 quarters with 4 even. We’ve scored 15 or more in 75 quarters and held the opposition under that 54 times.
I also like to keep track who sits us down in each half. Besides being fun it gives an indication of who Coach B likes to design plays for since opening possessions are more likely to be scripted. Tyler Roberson opened with a lay-up at 17:54 and Rakeem Christmas did the same at 18:39 of the second half. The longest we’d had to wait this year (5:02) was the first half against Miami. The average time we’ve had to wait is 1 minute 28 seconds. Rakeem Christmas has sat us down 16 times, Trevor Cooney 10 times, and Michael Gbinije and Tyler Roberson 8 times, Kaleb Joseph 6 times, (more than you’d think), and Chris McCullough 5 times.
Another fun fact is the “Taco Bell MVP”: the guy who gets us to 75 points so people can free, (or is it discounted?) tacos at Taco Bell. No Tacos in this one, Trevor needed to hit one of those threes he kept clanging. Michael Gbinije and Rakeem Christmas have twice got us Tacos, Trevor Cooney, BJ Johnson and Ron Patterson have done it each once. (I wonder how many point we have to score to get real meat in the tacos?) The longest we’ve had to wait after getting close to 75 points is 3:31.
FOULS
My theory about fouls is that the team that attempts the most two point shots and scores the most in the paint will tend to get fouled the most. If the numbers are as predicted or close, there’s nothing to be read into them but if there’s a big disparity, it makes you wonder about how the game was called.
In this game, we attempted 42 two point shots to 35, scored 26 points in the paint to 38 and got fouled 10 times to 14, attempting 17 foul shots to 16. The ratio of two point attempts to times fouled was 4.2 for us and 2.5 for them. The ratio of points in the paint to times fouled was 2.6 for us to 2.7 for them. The ratio of free throw attempts to fouls called on the other team was 1.7 for us and 1.1 for them. The refs were reluctant to call fouls on the Duke players defending our guys.
Last year we attempted 1368 two point shots to 993 for the opposition and scored 1028 PIP to 753. We committed 546 fouls to 598 and went to the line 720 to 607 times, suggesting that there should be a relationship between two points attempts and points in the point and how many fouls are called on the other team and how many times you got to the line. The ratio of two point attempts to times fouled was 2.3 for us and 1.8 for them. The ratio of points in the paint to times fouled was 1.7 for us to 1.4 for them. The ratio of free throw attempts to fouls called on the other team was 1.2 for us and 1.1 for them.
This year we have taken 1189 two point shots and scored 934 points in the paint. We’ve been fouled 510 times and taken 598 free throws. Our opposition has taken 1008 two point shots and scored 743 points in the paint. They’ve been fouled 443 times and taken only 496 free throws. The ratio of two point attempts to times fouled has been 2.3 for us and 2.3 for them. The ratio of points in the paint to times fouled has been 1.8 for us to 1.7 for them. The ratio of free throw attempts to fouls called on the other team has been 1.2 for us and 1.1 for them. So the officiating overall has been pretty even-handed.
“MY MAN”
A reporter once asked Casey Stengel how come he won so many games with the Yankees. He said “Because I never play a game without “my man”. The reporter wondered who his man was. Casey suggested “You could look it up.” The reporter did look it up and found that Yogi Berra had played in every game that season at some positon: catcher, left field, pinch-hitting, something. He was the player Stengel had the highest regard for and the most trust in, so he didn’t want to do without him.
Who is Jim Boeheim’s “man” this season? The only way to tell is to see who plays the most minutes each game. In this game Michael Gbinije led with 40 minutes. Trevor Cooney has been the “Man” 17 times, Michael Gbinije 11 times, Rakeem Christmas 10 times, Chris McCullough and Kaleb Joseph 4 times each and Tyler Roberson once. Cooney still leads the team in minutes played with 1077, 91 more than any other player.
The first thing I’ll look at is “NET POINTS”. The idea is that each statistic in the box score is arguably worth a point, (that is, somewhere between 0.5 and 1.5 points). A point is a point. Teams score an average of a point per possession so anything that gets you possession is a point. A missed shot will more often than not wind up in the possession of the other team. Most baskets are for two points so if the passer who set up the shot is given half credit, that’s worth a point. One half of the blocked shots will likely have gone in and they are almost always two pointers, so that’s a point. If you add up the “positives”, (points, + rebounds + assists + steals + blocks) and subtract the “negatives”, (missed field goals, missed free throws, turnovers and fouls), you have a number that summarizes a player’s statistical contributions to a game. Then, by averaging the net points per 40 minutes of play, you factor out differences in playing time and have a look at the player’s rate of production. Both are important. The game is won based on what you actually did, not the rate at which you did it. But the rate is a better measure of the skills you can bring to the game.
Of course, there are things players do both on and off the court that contribute to victory. Leadership, hard work, keeping the team loose, scrambling for loose balls, (that could be a statistic: when neither team is in control of the ball, who winds up with it?), sneaker-sneaker defense, keeping the ball moving on offense, etc. etc. My experience is that with rare exceptions, the players who are the most statistically productive are the ones who grade highest in the things not measured by statistics, as well.
Here are the NET POINTS of our scholarship player in the most recent game and their averages per 40 minutes of play for the season, (exhibitions games not included):
Tyler Roberson……. 18NP in 38 minutes season: 262NP in 727 minutes per 40: 14.4
Rakeem Christmas 9NP in 30 minutes season: 552NP in 986 minutes per 40: 22.4
Ron Patterson…….. 6NP in 15 minutes season: 45NP in 398 minutes per 40: 4.5
Trevor Cooney…… 6NP in 32 minutes season: 261NP in 1077 minutes per 40: 9.7
Chinoso Obokoh….. 3NP in 10 minutes season: 16NP in 88 minutes per 40: 7.3
Michael Gbinije….. 0NP in 40 minutes season: 344NP in 971 minutes per 40: 14.2
Kaleb Joseph……….. -2NP in 17 minutes season: 149NP in 819 minutes per 40: 7.3
B. J. Johnson……….. -4NP in 18 minutes season: 82NP in 330 minutes per 40: 9.9
DNP-CD
INJURED
DaJuan Coleman…. 0NP in 0 minutes season: 0NP in 0 minutes per 40: 0.0
Chris McCullough.. 0NP in 0 minutes season: 171NP in 450 minutes per 40: 15.2
SUSPENDED
None
Comment: We never have gotten all the tent poles up this year. Against Notre Dame BJ Johnson had 19 points and Tyler Roberson had 1 point. Against Duke, Roberson had 16 points and Johnson was shut out. Rakeem Christmas again lost his battle with Jahlil Okafor but it didn’t help that he only had the ball enough to get 6 shots off. He got off 17 in the first game. Michael Gbinije has great run with 21, 26, 33 and, 23 net points in consecutive games, (with the 33 coming against the Blue Devils). Since then he’s 11,14 and 0, (also against Duke). It’s not the flying. It’s the taking off and landing.
Rakeem Christmas has led in net points 15 times, Mike Gbinije 5 times, Chris McCullough and Tyler Roberson 4 times, BJ Johnson twice and Trevor Cooney once.
POSSESSION
Before you can score you’ve got to get the rock. Syracuse had 18 offensive and 18 defensive rebounds. They had 16 offensive and 26 defensive rebounds. Against Notre Dame only 16 of 74 rebounds were taken down by the offensive team: 21.6%. In this game it was 34 of 78, 44.6%. Your guess is as good as mine.) When we missed we got the ball 18 of 44 times, (40.9%). When they missed, they got the ball 16 of 34 times (47.1%). We’ve won the rebounding battle by this measure 18 times in 27 games. For the year we’ve averaged getting 34.7% of our misses and our opposition has gotten 30.6% of theirs.
Effective offensive rebounding: We got 16 second chance points off our 18 offensive rebounds, 0.89 points per rebound. They got 16 for their 16 = 1.00. For the year we’ve averaged 1.01 points per offensive rebound: they’ve averaged 0.92. We’ve led in this stat 16 times in 29 games.
Of our 15 turnovers, 7 were their steals and 8 were our own miscues. Of their 17 turnovers, 12 were Syracuse steals and 5 were their fault. We’ve had fewer turnovers in 20 of 29 games with 2 even and fewer unforced turnovers in 12 games with 6 even. Last year we had fewer turnovers in 29 of 34 games with 2 even. We are averaging 12 turnovers, 6 unforced. Our opposition is averaging 14/6.
If you add our 36 rebounds to their 17 turnovers, we had 53 “manufactured possessions”. They had 42 + 15 = 57, so we were -4. We have won that battle 20 of 29 times with 1 even. For the season we’ve averaged 51 to 46 (+5).
SHOOTING
It’s still what the game is all about. It’s what this game was all about, for sure. We were 16 for 42, (.381) inside the arc, 3 for 20, (.150) outside it and 13 for 17, (.765) from the line. They were 20 for 35 (.571), 8/23 (.348) and 9/16 (.563). We’ve led in two point field goal percentage in 15 of 28 games, and in free throw percentage in 13 games. We’ve led in three point field goals percentage, believe it or not, in 16 games. For the season we are .487/.306/.661. Our opposition is .457/.312/.705.
We had 26 points in the paint, 14 off turnovers, 16 “second chance” points, 6 fast break points and 2 from the bench. Our opposition had 38 points in the paint, 17 off turnovers, 16 “second chance” points, 12 fast break points and 2 from the bench. We also had 19 of Pat’s “first chance points” (total points minus second chance points, fast break points and made free throws) to 36. That’s where we lost this game: the initial sets. Both we and Duke had exactly two points from their bench: neither team is deep. Our starters played 157, theirs 173. They didn’t seem to get tired.
We’ve led in PIP 19 times with 2 ties, POTO 19 times with 1 tie, FCP 17 times with 1 tie, SCP 15 times with 2 ties, FBP 15 times with 4 ties and BP 11 times, with 3 ties. For the season we are averaging 33-25 PIP, 15-11 POTO, 33-32 FCP, 12-11 SCP, 9-7 FBP and 10-15 BP.
We had 54 points, 26 in the paint, 9 from the arc and 13 from the line so we had 15 ”POP”, (points outside the paint: 54-26-13) and scored 6 points, (15 POP-9 from the arc), from what I’ll call the Twilight Zone”: that area between the paint and the arc that is the land of the pull-up jump shot, a lost art but a great weapon. They had 73/38/24/9= 26 POP with 2 from the Twilight Zone. We’ve only led in POP 12 times but we’ve led in TZ points 16 times with 1 tie in 29 games. For the year we are averaging 23 POP and 8 TZ, our opposition 26/7. The game is so much easier when you don’t have to go to the basket for all your points.
10 of our 19 baskets were assisted (.526) and also 18 of their 28 (.643), very high percentages. There wasn’t a lot of slashing to the basket in this game. For the year we are assisting on 62.0% of our baskets to 66.7% for the opposition, who have had a higher percentage in 18 of 28 games, with 1 tie. Assists tend to come more often from jump shots than lay-ups or dunks so the more assists you get, the more you are settling for jump shots to try to win the game which is often a bad strategy.
You compute “Offensive Efficiency” by taking field goal attempts – offensive rebounds + turnovers plus 47.5% of free throws attempted and dividing that into the number of points. We were 62 FGA - 18 OREBs + 15 TOs + (.475 x 17) = 67.075 possessions. They were 58 -16+ 17+ (.475 x 16) = 66.6 possessions. Since possessions shouldn’t be more than one off, I’ll count that as 67 possessions in which we scored 54 points, (0.806 points per possession) and 67 possessions in which they scored 73points, (1.090). We have, of course, led 18 of 29 games in offensive efficiency since the winning team always leads in that stat. For the year we are averaging 1.023 points per possession to 0.947 for the opposition.
There were 134 combined possessions in this game. We’ve averaged 133 possessions this year. We averaged 122 last year, so the pace appears to be better than it was last season.
Hubert Davis once told us to “Get an offensive dude”. I decided to name an “Offensive Dude Of the Game, or an O-Dog, and use the hockey concept of points + assists. In this game Tyler Roberson scored 16 points with 2 assists for 18 “hockey” points and thus was our ODOG for the first time this year, (which tells you something about our offense in this game). He’s really developing into a star quality player and is making the defense pay for the extra attention on Rakeem. Rakeem Christmas has been the O-Dog 11 times, Michael Gbinije 8 times, Trevor Cooney 6 times, BJ Johnson twice, Kaleb Joseph, Chris McCullough and Tyler Roberson once each.
Every other level of basketball plays quarters. To check the consistency of our performance, I look at what the score was at the 10 minute mark of each half to see what the quarterly scores would be. At a minimum, I think we want to score at least 15 points in each quarter and try to hold the opposition to less than that. The quarterly breakdown for this game 14-14, 11-20, 13-23, 16-16. For the season we have an average of 16-13, 17-14, 16-17, 19-18. We’ve won 64 of 116 quarters with 4 even. We’ve scored 15 or more in 75 quarters and held the opposition under that 54 times.
I also like to keep track who sits us down in each half. Besides being fun it gives an indication of who Coach B likes to design plays for since opening possessions are more likely to be scripted. Tyler Roberson opened with a lay-up at 17:54 and Rakeem Christmas did the same at 18:39 of the second half. The longest we’d had to wait this year (5:02) was the first half against Miami. The average time we’ve had to wait is 1 minute 28 seconds. Rakeem Christmas has sat us down 16 times, Trevor Cooney 10 times, and Michael Gbinije and Tyler Roberson 8 times, Kaleb Joseph 6 times, (more than you’d think), and Chris McCullough 5 times.
Another fun fact is the “Taco Bell MVP”: the guy who gets us to 75 points so people can free, (or is it discounted?) tacos at Taco Bell. No Tacos in this one, Trevor needed to hit one of those threes he kept clanging. Michael Gbinije and Rakeem Christmas have twice got us Tacos, Trevor Cooney, BJ Johnson and Ron Patterson have done it each once. (I wonder how many point we have to score to get real meat in the tacos?) The longest we’ve had to wait after getting close to 75 points is 3:31.
FOULS
My theory about fouls is that the team that attempts the most two point shots and scores the most in the paint will tend to get fouled the most. If the numbers are as predicted or close, there’s nothing to be read into them but if there’s a big disparity, it makes you wonder about how the game was called.
In this game, we attempted 42 two point shots to 35, scored 26 points in the paint to 38 and got fouled 10 times to 14, attempting 17 foul shots to 16. The ratio of two point attempts to times fouled was 4.2 for us and 2.5 for them. The ratio of points in the paint to times fouled was 2.6 for us to 2.7 for them. The ratio of free throw attempts to fouls called on the other team was 1.7 for us and 1.1 for them. The refs were reluctant to call fouls on the Duke players defending our guys.
Last year we attempted 1368 two point shots to 993 for the opposition and scored 1028 PIP to 753. We committed 546 fouls to 598 and went to the line 720 to 607 times, suggesting that there should be a relationship between two points attempts and points in the point and how many fouls are called on the other team and how many times you got to the line. The ratio of two point attempts to times fouled was 2.3 for us and 1.8 for them. The ratio of points in the paint to times fouled was 1.7 for us to 1.4 for them. The ratio of free throw attempts to fouls called on the other team was 1.2 for us and 1.1 for them.
This year we have taken 1189 two point shots and scored 934 points in the paint. We’ve been fouled 510 times and taken 598 free throws. Our opposition has taken 1008 two point shots and scored 743 points in the paint. They’ve been fouled 443 times and taken only 496 free throws. The ratio of two point attempts to times fouled has been 2.3 for us and 2.3 for them. The ratio of points in the paint to times fouled has been 1.8 for us to 1.7 for them. The ratio of free throw attempts to fouls called on the other team has been 1.2 for us and 1.1 for them. So the officiating overall has been pretty even-handed.
“MY MAN”
A reporter once asked Casey Stengel how come he won so many games with the Yankees. He said “Because I never play a game without “my man”. The reporter wondered who his man was. Casey suggested “You could look it up.” The reporter did look it up and found that Yogi Berra had played in every game that season at some positon: catcher, left field, pinch-hitting, something. He was the player Stengel had the highest regard for and the most trust in, so he didn’t want to do without him.
Who is Jim Boeheim’s “man” this season? The only way to tell is to see who plays the most minutes each game. In this game Michael Gbinije led with 40 minutes. Trevor Cooney has been the “Man” 17 times, Michael Gbinije 11 times, Rakeem Christmas 10 times, Chris McCullough and Kaleb Joseph 4 times each and Tyler Roberson once. Cooney still leads the team in minutes played with 1077, 91 more than any other player.
