Shaw Lineup Look

As a preliminary matter, this year I've partnered with the good folks over at SCACCHoops (see link at right in Outside Reading). They'll be mirroring everything I put up over here that doesn't have an Excel table (so the HD Boxes will be exclusively available here). In addition, I'm going to try to post some original content over there off and on throughout the year - possibly a "keys to the game" kind of thing for select ACC contests. So check out everything that SCACC has to offer - it's great stuff.

One of the things that I was always unsatisfied with about my "Team stats by player" feature is that it doesn't really take into account the four other players on the court. For example, last year our eMargin was best when Zoubek was on the court. But that number doesn't really tell us how much was attributable to his contribution, and how much is noise. So this year, I'm going to try to look at a few different things - what our best 5-man lineups are, what each player's best role is (pretty much inapplicable for Zoubek, since he's always the 5, but could be interesting for everyone else), and groupings of players (i.e., Nelson and Scheyer together, the freshmen together, etc.).

On Thursday, Duke used 22 different lineups over the course of the game. 6 of these were on the court for at least two separate times, and only one (Paulus, Nelson, Henderson, Singler, Thomas) was there three different times. That lineup also saw the most overall PT - 11 possessions each on offense and defense. And it was pretty successful, too - a 19-6 margin over those 11 possessions.

In terms of role, this is a touch subjective, and may be open to adjustment as the season goes on. I assign the traditional position numbers 1-5 in descending order based on the following list:

Davidson
Paulus
Smith
Scheyer
Pocius
Nelson
Henderson
King
Singler
Thomas
Zoubek

So in the lineup above, Paulus is the 1, Nelson the 2, Henderson the 3, Singler the 4, and Thomas the 5. Against Shaw, Paulus, Smith, and Davidson always played 1, Scheyer always played 2, Henderson always played 3, and Zoubek always played 5. The other five guys all split time at multiple positions, although no one played more than two. As the season progresses, it'll be interesting to see if people play noticeably better in one role over another (i.e., Smith better as a 1 or 2, Singler better as a 4 or 5, etc.).

With just one game, the sample size is a little too small to get anything meaningful. It'll probably take until December or January before I have some useful numbers to talk about. In fact, it may take even longer - last year only 8 lineups (out of the 106 we used) played even one full game's worth of possessions. But hopefully, this will give us a little more in depth picture of what our most effective lineups and combinations of players are.