Monday, February 12, 2007

4 In a Row

For the first time this season (heck, first time in a long time), Duke simply got thumped. From the offensive futility early (4 points and 7!!! turnovers in one 14 possession stretch) to the utter inability to get necessary stops in the second half, Duke looked rough throughout. One interesting stat - until the last minute of the game, Maryland scored during every Duke lineup. The Devils never made it from one substitution to the next without giving up points to the Terps.

I don't have much to say about yesterday's game. It was a big step back for everyone except Josh, who had an excellent offensive day (even if a lot of it came against Osby and Bowers, not Ibekwe and Gist). Duke can't linger on this one, as they'll need to be ready for a BC team looking to exact revenge and continue their hold on first place.

Here's the table from the Maryland game. All stats and leaderboards are updated.

Player
O Poss. Points OPPP D Poss. Points DPPP
McRoberts ON 65 54 0.831 66 68 1.030

OFF 5 6 1.200 4 4 1.000
Scheyer ON 62 54 0.871 64 62 0.969

OFF 8 6 0.750 6 10 1.667
Nelson ON 34 30 0.882 34 39 1.147

OFF 36 30 0.833 36 33 0.917
Paulus ON 69 60 0.870 70 72 1.029

OFF 1 0 0.000 0 0 0.000
Henderson ON 26 21 0.808 22 27 1.227

OFF 44 39 0.886 48 45 0.938
McClure ON 40 33 0.825 42 36 0.857

OFF 30 27 0.900 28 36 1.286
Thomas ON 25 23 0.920 24 34 1.417

OFF 45 37 0.822 46 38 0.826
Zoubek ON 9 10 1.111 8 6 0.750

OFF 61 50 0.820 62 66 1.065
Pocius ON 19 15 0.789 20 16 0.800

OFF 51 45 0.882 50 56 1.120
Davidson ON 1 0 0.000 0 0 0.000

OFF 69 60 0.870 70 72 1.029








Duke Overall
70 60 0.857 70 72 1.029

2 comments:

Matt said...

Hi,
I really enjoy your blog, and especially appreciate your points per possession data. I have a question about this data: at what point do you consider aggregate data significant? For example, I added up the totals for the players in Duke's four losses, and both Pocius and Zoubek have improved Duke's offense and defense when they're on the court. However, this is based on 26 and 38 possessions, respectively. Would you consider this significant? If not, how many possessions do you think would be enough to draw conclusions on a trend?

Thanks so much.

Paul Rugani said...

26 and 38 possessions is definitely not enough, particularly for low usage players (not just low usage in terms of minutes played, but in terms of possessions used when on the court). I actually think that the season stats on the whole are tricky for these two because they play in such short spurts, and performance in those spurts is random by nature. For example, if Scheyer can get an equally open three with Z in the post as with McRoberts, and he hits one of every two wide open looks, it's totally random chance which one he makes. If he hits it with Zoubek on the court, does that really mean that Z made the offense more efficient? Probably not. If he plays only in 3 possession spurts, there's so much randomness involved that it's tough to get statistical value even when you put 30-50 of those spurts together.

So there's no one round number at which I say "aha! it's now significant" because it depends overall on how the player is used. The most reliable numbers are for Thomas, Henderson, McClure, and Nelson. They're relatively high usage players who play extended stretches, but (unlike Scheyer, Paulus, and McRoberts) they also sit for extended stretches, so we have meaningful comparable numbers. But even for them, it takes about 5-6 games (150-300 possessions) before we can distill a real pattern.