Net Points, etc. | Syracusefan.com

Net Points, etc.

SWC75

Bored Historian
Joined
Aug 26, 2011
Messages
34,209
Like
66,167
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):


Tyler Ennis………….. 22NP in 39 minutes season: 405NP in 1099 minutes per 40: 14.7

Jerami Grant……….. 20NP in 40 minutes season: 366NP in 942 minutes per 40: 15.5

Michael Gbinije …. 3NP in 12 minutes season: 97NP in 461 minutes per 40: 8.4

Baye Moussa Keita 2NP in 19 minutes season: 94NP in 478 minutes per 40: 7.9

Rakeem Christmas 2NP in 21 minutes season: 244NP in 719 minutes per 40: 13.6

C. J. Fair………………. 0NP in 40 minutes season: 360NP in 1173 minutes per 40: 12.3

Trevor Cooney…… -1NP in 29 minutes season: 304NP in 1040 minutes per 40: 11.7


DNP

Tyler Roberson……. 0NP in 0 minutes season: 27NP in 153 minutes per 40: 7.1

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: Numbers don’t lie but they don’t always tell the whole story. Tyler Ennis led in “net points” but he didn’t do very much leading down the stretch of that game when, after giving us the lead at 58-57 with 3:56 left, he went 0 for 5 with a turnover and it was his job to get the team organized in that last, disastrous possession. Baye Keita’s numbers aren’t horrible but his play was during the 3-13 run midway through the second half that necessitated the great comeback. He seemed to have the ball on every possession and either wasn’t strong enough to hold onto it or didn’t know what to do with it. And he wasn’t stopping anybody on the other end. CJ Fair’s numbers tell us about what he didn’t do but not about what he could have done. He was 9 for 13 vs. Florida State and everything worked. He was 3 for 16 in this game and nothing worked.


I’ve always said that when 1-2 guys play well, we are vulnerable. When 3-4 play well, we win. When it’s more than that, we blow somebody’s doors off. Four guys played well vs. Florida State, (+10NP). Last night it was two guys. That’s not enough.


Tyler Ennis has led, (or tied for the lead), in net points 13 times. CJ Fair has led 7 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.


Possession:


Before you can score you’ve got to get the rock. Syracuse had 15 offensive and 21 defensive rebounds. They had 8 offensive and 21 defensive rebounds. When we missed we got the ball 15 of 40 times, (37.5%). When they missed, they got the ball 8 of 29 times (27.6%). We’ve averaged getting 38.5% of our misses and our opposition has gotten 31.7% of theirs. We have won the rebounding battle by this measure 23 times in 32 games. Bur here again, numbers can deceive: We got five offensive rebounds in that last possession and no points. But those rebounds should have mattered: we just didn’t make them matter.


Of our 7 turnovers, 2 were their steals and 5 were our own miscues. Of their 9 turnovers, 6 were Syracuse steals and 3 were their fault. Syracuse has had fewer turnovers in 28 of 32 games, (and won 27 of them), with two even. Overall we are ahead by 143 turnovers on the season, (285-426) and are also ahead in unforced errors, (150-171). We have had single digit turnovers in 15 of 19 ACC games and no more than 12 of them in any conference game. That’s very impressive for a team with a young backcourt.


If you add our 36 rebounds to their 9 turnovers, we had 45 “manufactured possessions”. They had 33 + 7= 40, so we were +5. We’ve won that battle 27 times this season in 32 games, with an average margin of +8.1. We’ve won by double figures 14 times. It’s a big reason we are 27-4.


Shooting:


It’s still what the game is all about. It’s what this game was all about, for sure. We were 14 for 38, (.368) inside the arc, 4 for 17, (.235) outside it and 23 for 29 (.793) from the line. They were 18 for 36 (.500), 5/14 (.286) and 15/21 (.714). Against Florida State we were 24/45 (.533) inside the arc and 5 for 15 outside of it. The Noles were 15/36 (.417) and 4/14. The difference in those games was all about making two point shots.


On the season, Syracuse is shooting .475/.335/.703, the opposition .455/.344/.669. We complain about our free throw shooting but we are now out-shooting the opposition on the year by 30 points. 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: .475-.455 = +20. If we’d have shot .571 inside the arc this year, (and the 2010 team did), we’d have scored 246 more points, 8 more per game. That would have made this year’s games a little easier to take. If we’d shot .571 inside the arc in this game, we’d have scored 16 more points and won 79-66. SU-Duke III, here we come!


We had 63 points, 22 in the paint, 12 from the arc and 23 from the line so we scored 6 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 66-30-15-15= 6 points in the Twilight Zone. Overall, we had 18 POP: Points Outside the Paint to 21 for them. Against FSU we had 31 POP and 16 points in the TZ. The game is so much easier when you don’t have to go to the basket for all your points. So far this year Syracuse is averaging 23 POP, 8 from the TZ, the opposition 25/5.


9 of our 18 baskets were assisted (.500) and 14 of their 23 (.609). For the year we are assisting on 49.6% of our baskets to 63.8% for the opposition, who have had more assists or a higher percentage in 28 of 32 games, (and we’ve won 27 of those games). 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 55 FGA - 15 OREBs + 17 TOs + (.475 x 29) = 60.775 possessions. They were 50 -8 + 9+ (.475 x 21) = 60.975 possessions. Since possessions shouldn’t be more than one off, I’ll count that as 61 possessions in which we scored 63 points, (1.033) and 61 possessions in which they scored 66 points, (1.082). For the season we are averaging 1.119 points per possession, our opposition 0.978. We’ve averaged 122 combined possessions per game this year. In this game, there were exactly that number.


To tell you the truth, I’m starting to wonder about this “efficiency” statistic. The logic of it seems unassailable: figure out the number of possessions and divide the number of points by the possessions and you can see how well we were taking advantage of each possession to score. But that was about as inefficient an offense as I’ve ever seen, at least for a Syracuse team. We missed 24 of 38 two point shots and 13 of 17 three point shots. Then there was that last, terrible possession. If we hadn’t gotten to the line 29 times and made 79% from there, we’d have never been in this game. And yet, we averaged 1.033 points per possessions. We’ve had a lower average than that in nine games this year, (Eastern Michigan, Miami, UNC, the first NC State game, the second BC game, second Duke, Maryland, Virginia and Georgia Tech). Looking at the stats on the SU website, (which begin with 1982-83), we’ve had five teams that were less offensively efficient than we were in this game for an entire season: 1996-97, 1997-98, 1998-99, 2001-02 and 2005-06. Those weren’t our best teams but they could put the ball in the basket a lot better than we did last night. Amazingly we’ve had only six teams that have been more offensively efficient than this one on the season: 1985-86 (1.144), 1986-87 (1.144), 1987-88 (1.191), 1988-89 (1.127), 1989-90 (1.135), 2009-10 (1.137), 2011-12 (1.132). This year we are at 1.119.


I think the problem can be seen in that last possession: it was one possession in which we didn’t score. But we had SIX chances to score. Each time we got the rebound, that was really another possession. I’ll continue to quote the efficiency stat but it is imperfect, just like any other stat. it has to be taken in the context of everything else. Those shooting percentages do matter.


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 11-9, 14-19, 19-22, 19-16. The average for the season is: 16-13, 18-15, 17-16, 19-16. We’ve won 77 quarters, (and one overtime), lost 44, (and one overtime) and tied 7. We’ve scored at least 15 in 81 of 128 quarters and held the opposition under that 65 times.


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 Ennis had 21 points and 7 assists for 28 “hockey points”. So far Tyler Ennis has led 14 times and CJ Fair has done it 12 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 lay-up 50 seconds in, (his only field goal of the game). CJ Fair did it in both halves: a dunk at 1:46 of the first and a jumper at 1:34 of the second. HE MADE ONLY ONE OTHER SHOT! CJ Fair has now sat us down 22 times, Rakeem Christmas 11 times, Tyler Ennis and Trevor Cooney 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.


These are the games were we’ve taken more than two minutes to score in a half:

8:50, second half vs. Miami, 5:42 first half vs. Boston College, 4:51 vs. St. Francis, (second half), 3:12 vs. Villanova (first half), 2:44 at Pittsburgh (second half) 2:37 vs. Notre Dame (first half), 2:29 vs. Eastern Michigan (second half), 2:13 vs. Pittsburgh (first half), 2:07 at Virginia (second half), 2:05 vs. North Carolina (second half). Interesting that 8 of these ten games were in the Dome. We were actualy6 standing and clapping for that long on those occasions.


Fouls


We were charged with 17 fouls to 20 for them. We attempted 29 fouls shots to 21 for them. We had 22 points in the paint to 30 for them. We attempted 38 two point shots to 36 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. In fact the arrow was kind of pointing in our direction.


On the season we have attempted 1284 two point shots to 932 for the opposition and scored 960 PIP to 711. We’ve committed 509 fouls to 566 and gone to the line 689 to 569 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.
 

Forum statistics

Threads
171,075
Messages
4,927,953
Members
6,015
Latest member
cusejuice4

Online statistics

Members online
268
Guests online
1,748
Total visitors
2,016


...
Top Bottom