Saturday, November 03, 2007

Duke 105, Barton 44

After, getting off to a slow start, the Devils turned it on and completely ran away with this one in the second half. The outside shots never really started falling, but everything else looked pretty strong. Once again, Duke was over 50% on the offensive rebounds and over 70% on the defensive glass. They forced a TON of turnovers - 43% of Barton possessions were turnovers, and Duke stole the ball better than 1 in every 4 times down the court. That resulted in a lot of fast break points and layups for the Devils, and another high possession game. The rotation broke down into 4 groups for this game - Henderson, Smith, Singler, and Scheyer played starter's minutes, Nelson and Thomas played 6th man minutes, Paulus, Zoubek, and Pocius played "rotation" minutes (although Pocius' were quite effective - again, we were a full point per possession better than the opponent with Marty on the court), and Davidson and McClure (welcome back Dave) got very short court time. Here's the HD Box:

O. Poss D. Poss +/- Pts 2PM-A 3PM-A FTM-A FGA Ast TO STL BLK ORB DRB
Singler 51 52 +47 27/71 9-9 1-3 6-6 12/50 1/14 1/51 2/52 1/32 5/27 5/23
Smith 52 52 +35 18/62 8-11 0-3 2-3 14/52 6/18 4/52 2/52 0/31 3/29 1/23
Nelson 44 43 +33 14/58 3-7 0-2 8-12 9/34 4/14 0/44 6/43 0/29 2/18 1/19
Scheyer 52 52 +32 11/60 3-6 1-5 2-2 10/51 2/19 0/52 4/52 0/30 2/29 3/23
Pocius 32 33 +32 6/48 0-2 2-3 0-1 5/37 1/17 0/32 2/33 0/19 2/20 1/14
Henderson 50 49 +31 16/57 4-6 1-2 5-6 8/39 1/14 3/50 2/49 1/32 3/21 4/24
Paulus 32 32 +26 2/43 0-5 0-4 2-2 9/24 1/10 1/32 2/32 0/22 0/14 0/15
King 32 32 +21 5/37 1-1 1-5 0-0 6/28 2/12 2/32 2/32 1/19 2/16 5/13
Thomas 42 42 +20 2/47 1-3 0-0 0-0 3/35 1/13 1/42 1/42 0/29 1/23 3/19
Zoubek 24 24 +19 4/29 1-3 0-0 2-2 3/24 0/9 0/24 0/24 1/16 1/14 4/13
Davidson 4 5 +11 0/11 0-0 0-0 0-0 0/4 0/4 0/4 0/5 0/2 0/1 0/2
McClure 4 3 +0 0/2 0-0 0-0 0-0 0/2 0/0 1/4 0/3 0/3 0/2 0/2
Duke 84 84 +61 105 30-49 6-27 27-34 76 19/36 13/84 23/84 4/53 22/43 27/38





0.612 0.222 0.794
52.78 15.48 27.38 7.55 51.16 71.05

It was another good game for the freshmen: Singler was an all-around beast, Smith had another solid game (including a 33% assist rate), and King again showed a nose for the ball on the defensive glass (better than 33% on the season). Aside from the shooting, everyone else turned in a solid output as well. All in all, it was another good warm up.
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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.
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Thursday, November 01, 2007

Duke 134, Shaw 55

There wasn't a whole lot of doubt that Duke was going to win this game, but that was quite an impressive performance nonetheless. Duke was up 51! after the break, hanging 68 points in a 47 possession half, and then followed that with a just slightly lower 66 points in a 47 possession second half. Without actually seeing the game, it's tough to tell if the pace was a breakneck as 94 possessions looks, or whether it was a product of Shaw's complete inability to hold on to the ball (they turned it over on 37% of their possessions), but it any regard, it's clear that the Devils got out and ran last night. Duke was dominant in all aspects of the game (except maybe 3-point shooting) - huge rebounding edge, huge turnover edge, excellent interior shooting, and lots of blocks. A good start to the season. Here's the HD Box:

O. Poss D. Poss +/- Pts 2PM-A 3PM-A FTM-A FGA Ast TO STL BLK ORB DRB
Thomas 47 44 +52 15/74 6-6 0-0 3-4 6/47 1/20 2/47 5/44 0/28 5/23 2/19
Scheyer 56 56 +49 11/81 2-4 1-6 4-4 10/51 3/28 0/56 5/56 0/36 1/23 2/25
Henderson 59 55 +48 15/82 6-9 0-2 3-4 11/58 2/24 1/59 2/55 0/36 0/31 5/23
Singler 43 47 +39 23/64 10-10 0-1 3-4 11/43 0/21 1/43 2/47 3/33 2/21 3/24
Paulus 51 50 +38 10/66 1-1 2-6 2-2 7/47 6/21 3/51 1/50 0/34 1/23 4/25
Smith 38 37 +38 11/60 3-4 0-0 5-10 4/35 7/19 0/38 1/37 0/25 2/16 0/16
Nelson 53 53 +38 17/67 4-12 1-4 6-6 16/46 3/21 1/53 3/53 1/38 5/22 3/28
Zoubek 43 41 +31 10/60 5-6 0-0 0-0 6/34 0/17 4/43 1/41 4/33 4/13 5/22
King 55 54 +26 10/70 2-4 2-7 0-0 11/48 3/23 0/55 1/54 1/36 1/23 8/25
Pocius 20 22 +23 10/38 1-1 2-2 2-2 3/17 0/10 1/20 0/22 0/20 0/4 1/14
Davidson 5 6 +3 2/8 1-1 0-0 0-0 1/4 0/3 0/5 0/6 0/4 0/1 1/4
Duke 94 93 +79 134 41-58 8-28 28-36 86 25/49 13/94 21/93 9/65 21/40 35/45





0.707 0.286 0.778
51.02 13.83 22.58 13.85 52.50 77.78

A couple of comments. First, as you can see from the +/- stats, Duke was more than a point per possession better than Shaw while three separate guys were on the floor - Thomas, Smith, and Pocius. That is, um, ridiculous. You'll notice we had almost 2 points per possession when Marty was in - the team shot 10-10 from 2 with him in the game. Second, big game for the post players - Zoubek, Singler, and Lance combined to go 21-22 from 2, gathered nearly 20% of all available offensive boards among them, and blocked about 15% of all Shaw's shots. Third, the "starter's minutes" went to Henderson, Scheyer, Nelson, Paulus, and (surprise, surprise) King. And fourth, Paulus and Smith never shared the floor. They subbed in for directly for each other all night. My hunch is that if Smith is going to get a decent number of minutes this year (i.e., more than 10/game) that will change before too long.
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Returning Today

... but not until late tonight, with (hopefully) an HD box and some lineup data from the exhibition. Update will be late due to my attendance of Sonics-Suns in person - I've moved to Seattle, about a 5 minute walk from Key Arena, and got Sonics tickets to celebrate the arrival of KD (and their last year in town).
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Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Duke Tempo-Free Comparison

So, there's not a whole lot of difference between the "real" tempo free player stats and the standard version. I think the lesson here is that the value is more present in the team-based stats - i.e., how the team plays when a particular player is on the floor. Next season, I may try something a little different - go to lineup based team stats, and use the HD Box rather than the efficiency chart for player stats (or some combination of both). We'll see. Here's how they compare - as you can see, in most cases we're talking about differences of hundredths: (note - there's no difference for things like PPWS, EFG%, A/TO, etc., because they're not possession dependent) (note 2 - these are for all games except Air Force, Gonzaga, St. John's, Maryland at home, and at UNC).

Scoring %


Zoubek25.14Zoubek25.52
Nelson24.56Nelson24.98
McRoberts22.12McRoberts22.42
Scheyer20.78Scheyer20.91
Henderson20.35Paulus19.24
Paulus19.10Henderson19.17
Pocius16.05Pocius18.20
Thomas15.11Thomas14.74
McClure12.51McClure12.35




% Shots Taken


Nelson26.45Nelson26.24
Henderson22.93Henderson22.51
McRoberts21.74Zoubek22.00
Zoubek21.51McRoberts21.96
Scheyer20.16Scheyer19.93
Paulus18.98Paulus19.48
Pocius17.95Pocius18.16
Thomas12.84Thomas12.38
McClure11.99McClure12.00




PPWS


McClure1.16

Thomas1.16

Zoubek1.16

Scheyer1.15

Paulus1.15

Pocius1.15

McRoberts1.12

Nelson1.10

Henderson0.99





EFG%


McClure0.573

Thomas0.561

Nelson0.543

Paulus0.544

McRoberts0.527

Zoubek0.517

Scheyer0.510

Henderson0.474

Pocius0.548





A/B%


Paulus23.01Paulus23.42
McRoberts20.21McRoberts20.63
Nelson14.18Nelson14.39
Henderson13.39Henderson12.71
Scheyer11.41Scheyer11.47
Pocius7.69Pocius7.71
Zoubek5.94Zoubek6.09
McClure4.11McClure3.98
Thomas0.46Thomas0.46




ORB%


Zoubek17.31Zoubek16.88
Thomas11.22Thomas10.55
McClure8.96McClure9.16
McRoberts7.11McRoberts7.22
Henderson6.58Henderson6.56
Nelson5.79Nelson5.72
Scheyer4.62Scheyer4.56
Pocius2.99Pocius2.95
Paulus2.14Paulus2.18




DRB%


McRoberts19.66Zoubek20.07
Zoubek19.57McRoberts19.44
McClure16.88McClure17.86
Nelson14.44Nelson14.13
Thomas12.13Henderson11.71
Henderson11.38Thomas10.55
Scheyer7.08Scheyer7.02
Paulus6.26Pocius6.58
Pocius5.85Paulus6.11




Block%


McRoberts5.18McRoberts5.19
Zoubek2.83Zoubek2.82
McClure2.32McClure2.40
Henderson1.41Henderson1.42
Nelson1.19Nelson1.16
Thomas0.59Thomas0.54
Pocius0.41Pocius0.42
Scheyer0.39Scheyer0.39
Paulus0.16Paulus0.16




A/T Ratio


McRoberts1.44

Paulus1.22

Scheyer1.12

Henderson0.86

Nelson0.82

Pocius0.44

McClure0.33

Zoubek0.19

Thomas0.02





Turnover Rate


Scheyer3.17Scheyer3.16
McClure3.75McClure3.80
McRoberts4.05McRoberts4.04
Henderson4.35Henderson4.28
Nelson4.78Nelson4.77
Pocius5.13Pocius5.40
Paulus5.82Paulus5.87
Thomas6.11Thomas6.00
Zoubek9.25Zoubek9.16




Steal Rate


McClure3.43McClure3.52
Nelson2.44Nelson2.43
Thomas2.41Thomas2.35
Scheyer2.35Scheyer2.35
Paulus2.32Paulus2.34
McRoberts1.95McRoberts1.96
Henderson1.62Henderson1.62
Zoubek1.15Zoubek1.15
Pocius0.63Pocius0.68




Possession %
Minutes %
McRoberts86.10McRoberts86.37
Scheyer83.00Scheyer83.36
Paulus79.42Paulus79.20
Nelson77.92Nelson78.85
McClure54.99McClure54.34
Henderson45.17Henderson45.49
Thomas35.11Thomas36.19
Zoubek18.24Zoubek18.32
Pocius16.50Pocius15.66

The column on the left is the actual number - so, for example, Brian Zoubek actually scored 25.14% of Duke's points while he was on the floor. The column on the right is the "estimated" number, which is derived from taking Zoubek's points, and dividing by the product of the team's total points and the percentage of minutes Zoubek played. That formula estimated his scoring at 25.52% of Duke's points. This difference is attributable to the fact that the offense scored more points per possession while he was on the floor - to be precise, Duke scored 5.5 more points in Zoubek's 346 offensive possessions than they scored in an average 346 possessions stretch (370 to 364.5). The astute statisticians among you will realize that this means Zoubek was worth almost exactly one offensive point per game above average for this year's Duke team (1 point per 63 possessions); that is, Duke scored one more point every 63 possessions they played with him on the floor than they did when they played without him. So, over the course of the season, the estimates seem to generally regress to the mean, and while they may be off in a particular game, in the long term, they look to be essentially accurate on the whole. Here's one final tidbit - from the last two stats (possession % and minutes %) we can look at the team's pace by player:

Pocius70.51
McClure67.70
Paulus67.08
McRoberts66.69
Scheyer66.61
Zoubek66.61
Henderson66.43
Nelson66.11
Thomas64.91

Duke's average for the games I was able to track was 66.86, so we tended to play essentially around the mean with Paulus, McRoberts, and Scheyer (not surprising, as they got the most PT), faster with McClure, a lot faster with Marty, slower with Nelson, and a lot slower with Thomas.
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. . . And Then There Were None

Last night, everyone finally got to see "the" game from Greg Oden - the one where he unquestionably looked like the best player on the floor for 40 (ok, 38, he sat for 2) minutes and controlled action around the basket. He hit 10 of his 15 shots, pulled down 12 rebounds, blocked 4 shots (I could have sworn it was more) and altered a handful of others, and helped hold the Gators under 50% from inside for the first time in a long time. He looked like the only Buckeye who came ready to play, and he was fantastic. What's more, it didn't look like it was any big thing - not just in the way he reacted, but there wasn't a single play where you reacted, "ha, let's see him do that every game." It looked like he could do that every game, without a problem - not to say he didn't make some exceptional plays (he did), but they were exceptional because he was doing things that he can do on a regular basis that other players can't do more than once in a blue moon.

And in the end, all that fantastic play for Oden mattered for nothing more than a nice video to put together for whichever of the Memphis, Boston, or Milwaukee GMs has the enviable task of selecting between Oden and Kevin Durant. This was a completely different game inside and outside the arc. On the inside, Oden and the Bucks won easy - they shot 63% on twos while holding Florida to 46%. But the Bucks gave away the game on the perimeter, shooting 17% on threes while the Gators knocked down 56%. Any time the Buckeyes made a run, Florida seemed to nail a wide-open three. The Gators also did yeoman's work on the glass, pulling down 37% of their own misses (including all but one of Oden's blocks) and 74% of the Buckeyes' errant shots. There was a stretch in the second half where they seemed to get an offensive rebound any time they missed, turning Buckeye stops into Gator scores in the blink of an eye, and keeping the OSU run at bay.

Florida was an exceptional team. Their five starters were extremely well balanced, providing them with threats on the inside, on the perimeter, and on the drive, plus a legit lock-down defender and three guys who were excellent rebounders. Chris Richard was a superb sixth-man off the bench, and could be a big NBA sleeper. They played with a definite on-off switch all season, but when it was on, there was no match for them. I think the only two teams that could have had a shot at beating the Gators when they were on their game were Kansas and UNC - both had the size to matchup inside, the speed to match up on the perimeter, and the depth to not be worn out by Florida's seemingly endless energy. But those teams had their own flaws that deprived them of the opportunity, so we'll never really know.

College basketball now goes into hibernation, and this website will join it there for the next seven months. I'm about as uninformed on recruiting as can be, and there's only so much playing with numbers that is useful (or that I have the time, energy, and inclination to do). Despite the above, this is not the ultimate post for this season - I still want to take a look at the differences between the "real" and "standard" tempo-free stats for Duke, and I'll also be putting up the season statistics for each team, both in-conference and out-of-conference, as a resource for the summer. In case any of you are laying out by the pool in July and suddenly seized with the compulsion to find out what Tyrelle Blair's defensive rebounding percentage was in conference play, rest assured, you'll have a place for it. For the rest of you, it's been a fun year, and I'll see you back here in November.
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