SWC75
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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 player 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):
C. J. Fair………………. 16NP in 40 minutes season: 360NP in 1133 minutes per 40: 12.7
Rakeem Christmas 13NP in 28 minutes season: 242NP in 698 minutes per 40: 13.9
Tyler Ennis………….. 12NP in 37 minutes season: 383NP in 1060 minutes per 40: 14.4
Tyler Roberson……. 4NP in 23 minutes season: 27NP in 153 minutes per 40: 7.1
Trevor Cooney…… 2NP in 35 minutes season: 303NP in 975 minutes per 40: 12.4
Michael Gbinije …. 1NP in 21 minutes season: 95NP in 440 minutes per 40: 8.6
Baye Moussa Keita -1NP in 16 minutes season: 90NP in 443 minutes per 40: 8.1
DNP
Jerami Grant……….. 0NP in 0 minutes season: 331NP in 867 minutes per 40: 15.3
Ron Patterson…….. 0NP in 0 minutes season: 12NP in 50 minutes per 40: 9.4
B. J. Johnson……….. 0NP in 0 minutes season: 1NP in 51 minutes per 40: 0.8
INJURED
DaJuan Coleman…. 0NP in 0 minutes season: 61NP in 169 minutes per 40: 14.4
Comment: There’s a fine line between success and failure in college basketball, especially for a team that plays almost nothing but close games. When we are fully healthy, we are above that line and will usually win. When we are missing a key player, we are below the line and will usually lose. My definition of a bad team is a team that you can play poorly against and still win. We’ve played all but one team in this conference and it’s clear that there are no bad teams in this conference. There are mediocre teams with bad records because they are playing good teams in most of their games. Boston College and Georgia Tech are clearly not bad teams. If we don’t have all our players and/or we play poorly, we are going to lose, no matter what ACC team we are playing. I just wish somebody would play a bad game against us for once.
Tyler Ennis has led, (or tied for the lead), in net points 12 times. CJ Fair has led 6 times, Trevor Cooney, and Rakeem Christmas 5 times, Jerami Grant 4 times and DaJuan Coleman and Baye Keita once each. CJ had been tied with Trevor Cooney and Rakeem Christmas before last night. Think about that.
Possession:
Before you can score you’ve got to get the rock. Syracuse had 13 offensive and 25 defensive rebounds. They had 8 offensive and 31 defensive rebounds. When we missed we got the ball 13 of 44 times, (29.5%). When they missed, they got the ball 8 of 33 times (24.2%). Even those numbers were deceiving. 6 of our 13 offensive rebounds were “team” rebounds, meaning the ball went out of bounds and we had no chance for a put-back. One of Tech’s 8 offensive rebounds was a “team” rebound.
We’ve averaged getting 38.1% of our misses and our opposition has gotten 32.3% of theirs. We have won the rebounding battle by this measure 21 times in 30 games.
Of our 6 turnovers, 4 were their steals and 2 were our own miscues, (but those late bobbles by Fair and Ennis were counted as “steals”). Of their 9 turnovers, 6 were Syracuse steals and 3 were their fault. Syracuse has had fewer turnovers in 26 of 30 games, with two even. Overall we are ahead by 142 turnovers on the season, (266-408) and are also ahead in unforced errors, (138-166). We have had single digit turnovers in 14 of 17 ACC games and no more than 11 of them in any conference game. That’s very impressive for a team with a young backcourt.
If you add our 38 rebounds to their 9 turnovers, we had 47 “manufactured possessions”. They had 39 + 6= 45, so we were +2. We’ve won that battle 25 times this season in 30 games, with an average margin of +7.9. We’ve won by double figures 13 times. It’s a big reason we are 26-4.
Shooting:
It’s still what the game is all about. It’s what this game was all about, for sure. We were 20 for47, (.426) inside the arc, 5 for 17, (.294) outside it and 7 for 16 (.438) from the line. They were 20 for 39 (.513), 4/12 (.333) and 15/21 (.714). Through the first Duke game, we were shooting 50.2% inside the arc. We shot 50% or better in 12 of those first 21 games. We haven’t shot 50% in any game since, averaging 41.7% (153 for 367). It’s not just clanging three pointers that has slowed us down.
On the season, Syracuse is shooting .476/.339/.698, the opposition .455/.345/.662. We complain about our free throw shooting but we are now out-shooting the opposition on the year by 36 points. But is failed us last night. We scored the same number of two pointers, one more three pointer, had one less rebound and 3 fewer turnovers but lost 9 points at the foul line. Here are our two point percentages for every year of this decade: 2009-10: .571-.462 (+109), 2010-11: .562-.444 (+118), 2011-12: .519-.425 (+94), 2012-13: .485-.425 (+60). So far this year: .476-.455 = +21. If we’d have shot .571 inside the arc this year, (and the 2010 team did), we’d have scored 228 more points, 8 more per game. That would have made this year’s games a little easier to take. That’s the difference a real inside game, (Arinze Onuaku, Rick Jackson) can make.
We had 62 points, (we have now scored 61, 57, 58, 56, 59, 60, 57, 56 and 62 points in successive games), 36 in the paint, 15 from the arc and 7 from the line so we scored 4 points 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 67-38-12-15= 2 points in the Twilight Zone. Overall, we had 19 POP: Points Outside the Paint to 14 for them. It wasn’t a shooter’s game. Two games ago, against Maryland we had 40POP and 22 from the Twilight Zone. So far this year Syracuse is averaging 23 POP, 8 from the TZ, the opposition 26/5.
10 of our 25 baskets were assisted (.400) and 18 of their 24 (.750). For the year we are assisting on 50.2% of our baskets to 64.7% for the opposition, who have had more assists or a higher percentage in 26 of 30 games,26 of which we’ve won. 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 64 FGA - 13 OREBs + 6 TOs + (.475 x 16) = 64.6 possessions. They were 51 -8 + 9 + (.475 x 21) = 61.975 possessions. Since possessions shouldn’t be more than one off, I’ll count that as 64 possessions in which we scored 62 points, (0.969) and 63 possessions in which they scored 67 points, (1.063). We haven’t averaged a full point per possession in any of the last 7 games. We’ve averaged 122 combined possessions per game this year. In this game, there were 127.
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: 13-16, 10-15, 13-17, 26-19. The average for the season is: 16-14, 18-14, 16-16, 19-16. We’ve won 71 quarters, (and one overtime), lost 42 and tied 7. We’ve scored at least 15 in 76 of 120 quarters and held the opposition under that 61 times. But we’ve only scored 15 in 12 of our last 36 quarters, (since the first Duke game), and are 17-19-1 plus a lost overtime over that stretch.
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 CJ Fair had 28 points and 0 assists for 28 “hockey points”. So far Tyler Ennis has led 13 times and CJ Fair has done it 11 times, Trevor Cooney 5 times, Jerami Grant has done it 3 times and Rakeem Christmas once, including ties.
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 than those later in the game, (although sometimes we don’t score until later). In this game Rakeem Christmas did it in the first half with a jump shot 1:44 seconds in, (his only field goal of the game). CJ Fair did it in the second half with a lay-up only 14 seconds in. CJ Fair has now sat us down 19 times, Tyler Ennis, Trevor Cooney and, Rakeem Christmas 10 times, and DaJuan Coleman 5 times and Jerami Grant 4 times, (remember he didn’t start until Coleman got hurt) and Michael Gbinije once.
Longest: 8:50, second half vs. Miami. 5:42 first half vs. Boston College. We were 4:51 vs. St. Francis, (second half), 3:12 vs. Villanova (first half), 2:44 vs. Pittsburgh II (second half) 2:37 vs. Notre Dame (first half), 2:29 vs. Eastern Michigan (second half), 2:13 vs. Pittsburgh (first half),2:07 vs. Virginia (second half), 2:05 vs. North Carolina (second half), 1:45 vs. Boston College (first half), 1:44 vs. Georgia Tech (first half) 1:38 vs. Pittsburgh (second half), 1:26 vs. Duke (first half), 1:25 vs. Wake Forest, (1st half) and NC State (second Half), 1:21 vs. Duke (second half) 1:18 vs. North Carolina (first half) and Pittsburgh II (first half), 1:17 vs. Maryland (second half), 1:16 vs. Clemson (first half) and 1:11 vs. Maryland, (first half)
Fouls
We were charged with 15 fouls to 14 for Virginia. We attempted 16 fouls shots to 21 for them. We had 36 points in the paint to 38 for them. We attempted 47 two point shots to 39 for them. So the foul disparity doesn’t seem as “out of whack” as it did in the Duke and Maryland games when Syracuse had a total of 44 PIP to 38 and attempted 94 two point shots to 45 but got called for 39 fouls to 28 and went to the line 20 times to 52.
On the season we have attempted 1201 two point shots to 860 for the opposition and scored 906 PIP to 657. We’ve committed 476 fouls to 535 and gone to the line 645 to 528 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. In this game the problem was that we didn’t make our shots when we got there.
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 player 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):
C. J. Fair………………. 16NP in 40 minutes season: 360NP in 1133 minutes per 40: 12.7
Rakeem Christmas 13NP in 28 minutes season: 242NP in 698 minutes per 40: 13.9
Tyler Ennis………….. 12NP in 37 minutes season: 383NP in 1060 minutes per 40: 14.4
Tyler Roberson……. 4NP in 23 minutes season: 27NP in 153 minutes per 40: 7.1
Trevor Cooney…… 2NP in 35 minutes season: 303NP in 975 minutes per 40: 12.4
Michael Gbinije …. 1NP in 21 minutes season: 95NP in 440 minutes per 40: 8.6
Baye Moussa Keita -1NP in 16 minutes season: 90NP in 443 minutes per 40: 8.1
DNP
Jerami Grant……….. 0NP in 0 minutes season: 331NP in 867 minutes per 40: 15.3
Ron Patterson…….. 0NP in 0 minutes season: 12NP in 50 minutes per 40: 9.4
B. J. Johnson……….. 0NP in 0 minutes season: 1NP in 51 minutes per 40: 0.8
INJURED
DaJuan Coleman…. 0NP in 0 minutes season: 61NP in 169 minutes per 40: 14.4
Comment: There’s a fine line between success and failure in college basketball, especially for a team that plays almost nothing but close games. When we are fully healthy, we are above that line and will usually win. When we are missing a key player, we are below the line and will usually lose. My definition of a bad team is a team that you can play poorly against and still win. We’ve played all but one team in this conference and it’s clear that there are no bad teams in this conference. There are mediocre teams with bad records because they are playing good teams in most of their games. Boston College and Georgia Tech are clearly not bad teams. If we don’t have all our players and/or we play poorly, we are going to lose, no matter what ACC team we are playing. I just wish somebody would play a bad game against us for once.
Tyler Ennis has led, (or tied for the lead), in net points 12 times. CJ Fair has led 6 times, Trevor Cooney, and Rakeem Christmas 5 times, Jerami Grant 4 times and DaJuan Coleman and Baye Keita once each. CJ had been tied with Trevor Cooney and Rakeem Christmas before last night. Think about that.
Possession:
Before you can score you’ve got to get the rock. Syracuse had 13 offensive and 25 defensive rebounds. They had 8 offensive and 31 defensive rebounds. When we missed we got the ball 13 of 44 times, (29.5%). When they missed, they got the ball 8 of 33 times (24.2%). Even those numbers were deceiving. 6 of our 13 offensive rebounds were “team” rebounds, meaning the ball went out of bounds and we had no chance for a put-back. One of Tech’s 8 offensive rebounds was a “team” rebound.
We’ve averaged getting 38.1% of our misses and our opposition has gotten 32.3% of theirs. We have won the rebounding battle by this measure 21 times in 30 games.
Of our 6 turnovers, 4 were their steals and 2 were our own miscues, (but those late bobbles by Fair and Ennis were counted as “steals”). Of their 9 turnovers, 6 were Syracuse steals and 3 were their fault. Syracuse has had fewer turnovers in 26 of 30 games, with two even. Overall we are ahead by 142 turnovers on the season, (266-408) and are also ahead in unforced errors, (138-166). We have had single digit turnovers in 14 of 17 ACC games and no more than 11 of them in any conference game. That’s very impressive for a team with a young backcourt.
If you add our 38 rebounds to their 9 turnovers, we had 47 “manufactured possessions”. They had 39 + 6= 45, so we were +2. We’ve won that battle 25 times this season in 30 games, with an average margin of +7.9. We’ve won by double figures 13 times. It’s a big reason we are 26-4.
Shooting:
It’s still what the game is all about. It’s what this game was all about, for sure. We were 20 for47, (.426) inside the arc, 5 for 17, (.294) outside it and 7 for 16 (.438) from the line. They were 20 for 39 (.513), 4/12 (.333) and 15/21 (.714). Through the first Duke game, we were shooting 50.2% inside the arc. We shot 50% or better in 12 of those first 21 games. We haven’t shot 50% in any game since, averaging 41.7% (153 for 367). It’s not just clanging three pointers that has slowed us down.
On the season, Syracuse is shooting .476/.339/.698, the opposition .455/.345/.662. We complain about our free throw shooting but we are now out-shooting the opposition on the year by 36 points. But is failed us last night. We scored the same number of two pointers, one more three pointer, had one less rebound and 3 fewer turnovers but lost 9 points at the foul line. Here are our two point percentages for every year of this decade: 2009-10: .571-.462 (+109), 2010-11: .562-.444 (+118), 2011-12: .519-.425 (+94), 2012-13: .485-.425 (+60). So far this year: .476-.455 = +21. If we’d have shot .571 inside the arc this year, (and the 2010 team did), we’d have scored 228 more points, 8 more per game. That would have made this year’s games a little easier to take. That’s the difference a real inside game, (Arinze Onuaku, Rick Jackson) can make.
We had 62 points, (we have now scored 61, 57, 58, 56, 59, 60, 57, 56 and 62 points in successive games), 36 in the paint, 15 from the arc and 7 from the line so we scored 4 points 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 67-38-12-15= 2 points in the Twilight Zone. Overall, we had 19 POP: Points Outside the Paint to 14 for them. It wasn’t a shooter’s game. Two games ago, against Maryland we had 40POP and 22 from the Twilight Zone. So far this year Syracuse is averaging 23 POP, 8 from the TZ, the opposition 26/5.
10 of our 25 baskets were assisted (.400) and 18 of their 24 (.750). For the year we are assisting on 50.2% of our baskets to 64.7% for the opposition, who have had more assists or a higher percentage in 26 of 30 games,26 of which we’ve won. 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 64 FGA - 13 OREBs + 6 TOs + (.475 x 16) = 64.6 possessions. They were 51 -8 + 9 + (.475 x 21) = 61.975 possessions. Since possessions shouldn’t be more than one off, I’ll count that as 64 possessions in which we scored 62 points, (0.969) and 63 possessions in which they scored 67 points, (1.063). We haven’t averaged a full point per possession in any of the last 7 games. We’ve averaged 122 combined possessions per game this year. In this game, there were 127.
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: 13-16, 10-15, 13-17, 26-19. The average for the season is: 16-14, 18-14, 16-16, 19-16. We’ve won 71 quarters, (and one overtime), lost 42 and tied 7. We’ve scored at least 15 in 76 of 120 quarters and held the opposition under that 61 times. But we’ve only scored 15 in 12 of our last 36 quarters, (since the first Duke game), and are 17-19-1 plus a lost overtime over that stretch.
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 CJ Fair had 28 points and 0 assists for 28 “hockey points”. So far Tyler Ennis has led 13 times and CJ Fair has done it 11 times, Trevor Cooney 5 times, Jerami Grant has done it 3 times and Rakeem Christmas once, including ties.
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 than those later in the game, (although sometimes we don’t score until later). In this game Rakeem Christmas did it in the first half with a jump shot 1:44 seconds in, (his only field goal of the game). CJ Fair did it in the second half with a lay-up only 14 seconds in. CJ Fair has now sat us down 19 times, Tyler Ennis, Trevor Cooney and, Rakeem Christmas 10 times, and DaJuan Coleman 5 times and Jerami Grant 4 times, (remember he didn’t start until Coleman got hurt) and Michael Gbinije once.
Longest: 8:50, second half vs. Miami. 5:42 first half vs. Boston College. We were 4:51 vs. St. Francis, (second half), 3:12 vs. Villanova (first half), 2:44 vs. Pittsburgh II (second half) 2:37 vs. Notre Dame (first half), 2:29 vs. Eastern Michigan (second half), 2:13 vs. Pittsburgh (first half),2:07 vs. Virginia (second half), 2:05 vs. North Carolina (second half), 1:45 vs. Boston College (first half), 1:44 vs. Georgia Tech (first half) 1:38 vs. Pittsburgh (second half), 1:26 vs. Duke (first half), 1:25 vs. Wake Forest, (1st half) and NC State (second Half), 1:21 vs. Duke (second half) 1:18 vs. North Carolina (first half) and Pittsburgh II (first half), 1:17 vs. Maryland (second half), 1:16 vs. Clemson (first half) and 1:11 vs. Maryland, (first half)
Fouls
We were charged with 15 fouls to 14 for Virginia. We attempted 16 fouls shots to 21 for them. We had 36 points in the paint to 38 for them. We attempted 47 two point shots to 39 for them. So the foul disparity doesn’t seem as “out of whack” as it did in the Duke and Maryland games when Syracuse had a total of 44 PIP to 38 and attempted 94 two point shots to 45 but got called for 39 fouls to 28 and went to the line 20 times to 52.
On the season we have attempted 1201 two point shots to 860 for the opposition and scored 906 PIP to 657. We’ve committed 476 fouls to 535 and gone to the line 645 to 528 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. In this game the problem was that we didn’t make our shots when we got there.
