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Message: [QUOTE="IthacaMatt, post: 5317937, member: 405"] I've been a stat head since I was a kid, but I have shied away from modern advanced metrics to an extent. Maybe that's because I've been watching Syracuse sports for over 50 years, and I trust my own eyes / judgment at this point. Or maybe I'm just too lazy to look things up. But this time I did. Here are the current season's Advanced Stats, followed by last year's below. Then I'll talk about what I see in the numbers, and I invite your responses. 2024-25 Advanced Stats: [ATTACH type="full" alt="Syracuse 2024-25 Advanced Stats.jpg"]248690[/ATTACH] And here are last year's advanced stats: [ATTACH type="full" alt="Syracuse 2023-24 Advanced Stats.jpg"]248691[/ATTACH] Discussion: I better understand why everyone has been so hard on Starling, certainly based off last year's performance. He was maybe the least effective player on our team last year, and had the worst +/- (an admittedly flawed stat, but still useful in my eyes) of anyone on last year's team. This year, though, Starling is clearly our most improved player. While he still remains a bit below average defensively, he is light years ahead of last season. Last year, Maliq Brown and Judah Mintz were both better than anyone we have on this year's roster. Mintz's defensive rating is actually noticeably above average. Yet, despite being a "better" player in the eyes of the Advanced metrics, Mintz's +/- is a negative 17. That was on a 20 win team, a clearly better team than we have this year. On this year's team, our top 4 rated guys ALL have positive +/- ratings on a clearly worse team. So, to me, that's where the Advanced Stats meet the eye test. How could Judah have a negative plus/minus? From all the yapping at the refs and failure to get back on defense. Sure, when he bothered to get back, he could prevent his guy from scoring, but he just didn't do it with any consistency. This is where Bob Knight was right - defense is about effort, not necessarily talent. Here's a surprise. Maliq Brown was our best player last year. I think most people agree with this. The surprise is that Eddie is pretty close to Maliq in defensive efficiency, and as a team, we actually are more efficient this year when Eddie is on the floor than when Maliq played. Maliq's hidden contributions to our offense (offensive rebounds, and in particular his interior passing) made us a much more efficient team offensively than Eddie does. On last year's team, only Chris Bell was a worse defender than Starling, according to the stats. This year, Starling is about our 3rd best defender (roughly tied with Moore), despite still being below average. This year's team has SO MANY terrible defenders. But who has the absolute worst +/-? Yes, it's Jaquan Carlos. So, eyes and advanced stats sometimes agree! (Bell is still terrible, by the way ...) Some people here didn't think that Petar was good enough to play for Syracuse. Too slow. Guess what? He's our 2nd best defensive player, after Eddie. Miles better than Mr. McDonald's AA, although Freeman is playing well offensively. Another surprise for me was that Jyare Davis is getting lit up defensively. He is almost on par with Freeman offensively, according to the stats. That's one I wasn't expecting. Here's another - while Kyle Cuffe had a bad year last year, and hardly got to play in his first 10 games or so, one of our most efficient offensive lineups is with him on the floor. Same with Petar, even though those guys are not scorers. So, the ball must be moving better when those guys are on the floor. Your turn - what do you see in here that either supports things you've been saying, or that surprised you? [/QUOTE]

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