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 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……. 12NP in 40 minutes season: 274NP in 767 minutes per 40: 14.3
Trevor Cooney…… 8NP in 40 minutes season: 269NP in 1117 minutes per 40: 9.6
Rakeem Christmas 6NP in 39 minutes season: 558NP in 1025 minutes per 40: 21.8
B. J. Johnson……….. 3NP in 30 minutes season: 85NP in 363 minutes per 40: 9.4
Michael Gbinije….. 2NP in 40 minutes season: 346NP in 1011 minutes per 40: 13.7
Ron Patterson…….. 1NP in 7 minutes season: 46NP in 389 minutes per 40: 4.7
Chinoso Obokoh….. 1NP in 1 minutes season: 17NP in 89 minutes per 40: 7.6
Kaleb Joseph……….. -1NP in 3 minutes season: 148NP in 822 minutes per 40: 7.2
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: I broadly define a competent starter as a guy who averaged 10NP per 40 minutes or more. That’s three guys on the season and one in the Virginia game. Another rule of thumb I have is that if 1-2 guys play well, (against a decent opponent), we likely lose. If 3-4 guys player well we likely win. More than that and we blow their doors off. We haven’t blown anybody’s doors off lately. And we’re 21-18 in our last 39 games after winning 25 straight before that.
Rakeem Christmas has led in net points 15 times, Mike Gbinije and Tyler Roberson 5 times, Chris McCullough 4 times, BJ Johnson twice and Trevor Cooney once.
POSSESSION
Before you can score you’ve got to get the rock. Syracuse had 6 offensive and 14 defensive rebounds. They had 16 offensive and 26 defensive rebounds, (same as Duke). When we missed we got the ball 6 of 32 times, (18.8%- we were worse in only one game). When they missed, they got the ball 16 of 30 times (53.3%- the highest percentage of any opponent all season). We’ve won the rebounding battle by this measure 18 times in 30 games, (and won 18 of 30 games- but they weren’t all the same games). For the year we’ve averaged getting 34.2% of our misses and our opposition has gotten 31.25% of theirs. We lost this game because we got crushed on the boards. Period.
Effective offensive rebounding: We got 6 second chance points off our 6 offensive rebounds, 1.00 points per rebound. They got 15 for their 16 = 0.94. They didn’t use their O-rebs better than we did. They just had a lot more of them. For the year we’ve averaged 1.01 points per offensive rebound: they’ve averaged 0.92. We’ve led in this stat 17 times in 30 games.
Of our 13 turnovers, 9 were their steals and 4 were our own miscues. Of their 20 turnovers, 10 were Syracuse steals and 10 were their fault. We’ve had fewer turnovers in 21 of 30 games with 2 even and fewer unforced turnovers in 13 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 20 rebounds to their 20 turnovers, we had 40 “manufactured possessions”. They had 42 + 13 = 55, so we were -15. Our edge in turnovers didn’t begin to negate their edge in rebounds. We have won that battle 20 of 30 times with 1 even. For the season we’ve averaged 51 to 47 (+4).
SHOOTING
It’s still what the game is all about. It’s what this game was all about, for sure. We were 14 for 28, (.500) inside the arc, 4 for 19, (.211) outside it and 7 for 13, (.538) from the line. They were 18 for 35 (.514), 6/17 (.353) and 5/8 (.625). We’ve led in two point field goal percentage in 15 of 30 games, (a stat we normally dominate: the last 5 opponents have all hit over 50% against us), and in free throw percentage in only 13 games. We’ve led in three point field goals percentage, believe it or not, in 16 games. For the season we are .487/.302/.659. Our opposition is .459/.313/.704.
We had 26 points in the paint, 17 off turnovers, 6 “second chance” points, 6 fast break points and 2 from the bench. Our opposition had 32 points in the paint, 10 off turnovers, 6 “second chance” points, 6 fast break points and 10 from the bench. We also had 28 of Pat’s “first chance points” (total points minus second chance points, fast break points and made free throws) to 33, (I had earlier said it was 28, same as us but I misread my “59” as “54”, sorry).
We’ve led in PIP 19 times with 2 ties, POTO 20 times with 1 tie, FCP 17 times with 1 tie, SCP 15 times with 2 ties, FBP 15 times with 5 ties and BP 11 times, with 3 ties. For the season we are averaging 32-25 PIP, 15-11 POTO, 33-32 FCP, 12-11 SCP, 8-7 FBP and 9-15 BP. We’ve been out-scored form the bench this year 279-440, a 161 point difference.
We had 47 points, 26 in the paint, 12 from the arc and 7 from the line so we had 14 ”POP”, (points outside the paint: 47-26-7) and scored 2 points, (14 POP-12from 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 59/32/18/5= 18 POP with 4 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 30 games. For the year we are averaging 22 POP and 7 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. In the last 5 games we’ve had 77 POP to 115 for our opponents.
12 of our 18 baskets were assisted (.667) and also 13 of their 24 (.541), very high percentages. There wasn’t a lot of slashing to the basket in this game. For the year we are assisting on 62.1% of our baskets to 66.3% for the opposition, who have had a higher percentage in 18 of 30 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 47 FGA - 6 OREBs + 13 TOs + (.475 x 13) = 60.175 possessions. They were 52 -16+ 20+ (.475 x 8) = 59.8 possessions. Since possessions shouldn’t be more than one off, I’ll count that as 60 possessions in which we scored only 47 points, (0.783 points per possession) and 60 possessions in which they scored 59 points, (0.983). We have, of course, led 18 of 30 games in offensive efficiency since the winning team always leads in that stat. For the year we are averaging 1.016 points per possession to 0.948 for the opposition.
There were 120 combined possessions in this game. We’ve averaged 132 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 Trevor Cooney scored 14 points with 2 assists for 16 “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 7 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 8-2, 12-21, 15-22, 12-14. For the season we have an average of 16-13, 17-14, 16-17, 19-18. We’ve won 65 of 120 quarters with 4 even. We’ve scored 15 or more in 76 quarters and held the opposition under that 56 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 14:35, the longest we’ve had to wait this year, (5:25), and BJ Johnson did the same at 19:27 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, Tyler Roberson 9 times, Michael Gbinije 8 times, Kaleb Joseph 6 times, (more than you’d think), and Chris McCullough 5 times and BJ Johnson once.
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 28 two point shots to 35, scored 26 points in the paint to 32 and got fouled 12 times to 13, attempting 13 foul shots to 8. The ratio of two point attempts to times fouled was 2.3 for us and 2.7 for them. The ratio of points in the paint to times fouled was 2.2 for us to 2.5 for them. The ratio of free throw attempts to fouls called on the other team was 1.1 for us and 1.1 for them. Pretty even-handed. Virginia played hard and was physical but unlike with Pittsburgh, I didn’t come away thinking there were a lot of uncalled fouls. They were great at being where they needed to be to make plays and they didn’t do more than they needed to when they got there. A very, very well-coached team.
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 1217 two point shots and scored 960 points in the paint. We’ve been fouled 522 times and taken 611 free throws. Our opposition has taken 1043 two point shots and scored 775 points in the paint. They’ve been fouled 456 times and taken only 504 free throws. The ratio of two point attempts to times fouled has been 2.3 for us and 2.2 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 1.1 for us and 1.1 for them. So the officiating overall has been 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 the “big three”, Rakeem Christmas, Trevor Cooney, and Michael Gbinije led with 40 minutes each. Trevor Cooney has been the “Man” 18 times, Michael Gbinije 12 times, Rakeem Christmas 11 times, Chris McCullough and Kaleb Joseph 4 times each and Tyler Roberson once. Cooney still leads the team in minutes played with 1117, 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……. 12NP in 40 minutes season: 274NP in 767 minutes per 40: 14.3
Trevor Cooney…… 8NP in 40 minutes season: 269NP in 1117 minutes per 40: 9.6
Rakeem Christmas 6NP in 39 minutes season: 558NP in 1025 minutes per 40: 21.8
B. J. Johnson……….. 3NP in 30 minutes season: 85NP in 363 minutes per 40: 9.4
Michael Gbinije….. 2NP in 40 minutes season: 346NP in 1011 minutes per 40: 13.7
Ron Patterson…….. 1NP in 7 minutes season: 46NP in 389 minutes per 40: 4.7
Chinoso Obokoh….. 1NP in 1 minutes season: 17NP in 89 minutes per 40: 7.6
Kaleb Joseph……….. -1NP in 3 minutes season: 148NP in 822 minutes per 40: 7.2
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: I broadly define a competent starter as a guy who averaged 10NP per 40 minutes or more. That’s three guys on the season and one in the Virginia game. Another rule of thumb I have is that if 1-2 guys play well, (against a decent opponent), we likely lose. If 3-4 guys player well we likely win. More than that and we blow their doors off. We haven’t blown anybody’s doors off lately. And we’re 21-18 in our last 39 games after winning 25 straight before that.
Rakeem Christmas has led in net points 15 times, Mike Gbinije and Tyler Roberson 5 times, Chris McCullough 4 times, BJ Johnson twice and Trevor Cooney once.
POSSESSION
Before you can score you’ve got to get the rock. Syracuse had 6 offensive and 14 defensive rebounds. They had 16 offensive and 26 defensive rebounds, (same as Duke). When we missed we got the ball 6 of 32 times, (18.8%- we were worse in only one game). When they missed, they got the ball 16 of 30 times (53.3%- the highest percentage of any opponent all season). We’ve won the rebounding battle by this measure 18 times in 30 games, (and won 18 of 30 games- but they weren’t all the same games). For the year we’ve averaged getting 34.2% of our misses and our opposition has gotten 31.25% of theirs. We lost this game because we got crushed on the boards. Period.
Effective offensive rebounding: We got 6 second chance points off our 6 offensive rebounds, 1.00 points per rebound. They got 15 for their 16 = 0.94. They didn’t use their O-rebs better than we did. They just had a lot more of them. For the year we’ve averaged 1.01 points per offensive rebound: they’ve averaged 0.92. We’ve led in this stat 17 times in 30 games.
Of our 13 turnovers, 9 were their steals and 4 were our own miscues. Of their 20 turnovers, 10 were Syracuse steals and 10 were their fault. We’ve had fewer turnovers in 21 of 30 games with 2 even and fewer unforced turnovers in 13 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 20 rebounds to their 20 turnovers, we had 40 “manufactured possessions”. They had 42 + 13 = 55, so we were -15. Our edge in turnovers didn’t begin to negate their edge in rebounds. We have won that battle 20 of 30 times with 1 even. For the season we’ve averaged 51 to 47 (+4).
SHOOTING
It’s still what the game is all about. It’s what this game was all about, for sure. We were 14 for 28, (.500) inside the arc, 4 for 19, (.211) outside it and 7 for 13, (.538) from the line. They were 18 for 35 (.514), 6/17 (.353) and 5/8 (.625). We’ve led in two point field goal percentage in 15 of 30 games, (a stat we normally dominate: the last 5 opponents have all hit over 50% against us), and in free throw percentage in only 13 games. We’ve led in three point field goals percentage, believe it or not, in 16 games. For the season we are .487/.302/.659. Our opposition is .459/.313/.704.
We had 26 points in the paint, 17 off turnovers, 6 “second chance” points, 6 fast break points and 2 from the bench. Our opposition had 32 points in the paint, 10 off turnovers, 6 “second chance” points, 6 fast break points and 10 from the bench. We also had 28 of Pat’s “first chance points” (total points minus second chance points, fast break points and made free throws) to 33, (I had earlier said it was 28, same as us but I misread my “59” as “54”, sorry).
We’ve led in PIP 19 times with 2 ties, POTO 20 times with 1 tie, FCP 17 times with 1 tie, SCP 15 times with 2 ties, FBP 15 times with 5 ties and BP 11 times, with 3 ties. For the season we are averaging 32-25 PIP, 15-11 POTO, 33-32 FCP, 12-11 SCP, 8-7 FBP and 9-15 BP. We’ve been out-scored form the bench this year 279-440, a 161 point difference.
We had 47 points, 26 in the paint, 12 from the arc and 7 from the line so we had 14 ”POP”, (points outside the paint: 47-26-7) and scored 2 points, (14 POP-12from 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 59/32/18/5= 18 POP with 4 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 30 games. For the year we are averaging 22 POP and 7 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. In the last 5 games we’ve had 77 POP to 115 for our opponents.
12 of our 18 baskets were assisted (.667) and also 13 of their 24 (.541), very high percentages. There wasn’t a lot of slashing to the basket in this game. For the year we are assisting on 62.1% of our baskets to 66.3% for the opposition, who have had a higher percentage in 18 of 30 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 47 FGA - 6 OREBs + 13 TOs + (.475 x 13) = 60.175 possessions. They were 52 -16+ 20+ (.475 x 8) = 59.8 possessions. Since possessions shouldn’t be more than one off, I’ll count that as 60 possessions in which we scored only 47 points, (0.783 points per possession) and 60 possessions in which they scored 59 points, (0.983). We have, of course, led 18 of 30 games in offensive efficiency since the winning team always leads in that stat. For the year we are averaging 1.016 points per possession to 0.948 for the opposition.
There were 120 combined possessions in this game. We’ve averaged 132 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 Trevor Cooney scored 14 points with 2 assists for 16 “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 7 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 8-2, 12-21, 15-22, 12-14. For the season we have an average of 16-13, 17-14, 16-17, 19-18. We’ve won 65 of 120 quarters with 4 even. We’ve scored 15 or more in 76 quarters and held the opposition under that 56 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 14:35, the longest we’ve had to wait this year, (5:25), and BJ Johnson did the same at 19:27 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, Tyler Roberson 9 times, Michael Gbinije 8 times, Kaleb Joseph 6 times, (more than you’d think), and Chris McCullough 5 times and BJ Johnson once.
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 28 two point shots to 35, scored 26 points in the paint to 32 and got fouled 12 times to 13, attempting 13 foul shots to 8. The ratio of two point attempts to times fouled was 2.3 for us and 2.7 for them. The ratio of points in the paint to times fouled was 2.2 for us to 2.5 for them. The ratio of free throw attempts to fouls called on the other team was 1.1 for us and 1.1 for them. Pretty even-handed. Virginia played hard and was physical but unlike with Pittsburgh, I didn’t come away thinking there were a lot of uncalled fouls. They were great at being where they needed to be to make plays and they didn’t do more than they needed to when they got there. A very, very well-coached team.
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 1217 two point shots and scored 960 points in the paint. We’ve been fouled 522 times and taken 611 free throws. Our opposition has taken 1043 two point shots and scored 775 points in the paint. They’ve been fouled 456 times and taken only 504 free throws. The ratio of two point attempts to times fouled has been 2.3 for us and 2.2 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 1.1 for us and 1.1 for them. So the officiating overall has been 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 the “big three”, Rakeem Christmas, Trevor Cooney, and Michael Gbinije led with 40 minutes each. Trevor Cooney has been the “Man” 18 times, Michael Gbinije 12 times, Rakeem Christmas 11 times, Chris McCullough and Kaleb Joseph 4 times each and Tyler Roberson once. Cooney still leads the team in minutes played with 1117, 91 more than any other player.
