Some basketball stats to chew on - Printable Version
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Some basketball stats to chew on - iyengar06 - 03-05-2012
Interpret these however you like, but I think some of the following stats call our team's coaching into question. I've put together some stats that I believe are more indicative of efficiency and effectiveness than certain traditional metrics.
Team Leaders: Points per 40 Minutes
Josh Owens, 17.8
John Gage, 17.4
Chasson Randle, 17.3
Aaron Bright, 15.0
Jack Trotter, 14.2 (I suspect that "garbage time" skewed this)
Stefan Nastic, 13.5
Perhaps some evidence here that Gage and Nastic should have seen the court more. When they play, they produce - no two ways around it. Dawkins left Gage buried on the bench for long stretches of many games. Perhaps that was matchup-based, as I assume Gage is more productive against zone defense than man defense. I suppose you could interpret this as saying that Dawkins knows when to play Gage, but in watching nearly every single game this season, I came to the conclusion that Gage should have been playing a lot more - why was Zimmerman getting those minutes?
Team Leaders: Points per Field Goal Attempt
Stefan Nastic, 1.48
Josh Owens, 1.44
Jack Trotter, 1.32
Chasson Randle, 1.27
Aaron Bright, 1.26
John Gage, 1.24
I love looking at this statistic. I think this says a lot more than just "total points." Not surprisingly, players who play around the basket are very efficient. We need to do a substantially better job establishing position down low and getting the ball into the post.
Team Leaders: Free Throws Attempted per 40 Minutes
Stefan Nastic, 8.3
Josh Owens, 5.2
Dwight Powell, 4.8
Jarrett Mann, 4.7
Josh Heustis, 3.8
Aaron Bright, 3.7
A few ways to interpret this, in my mind. First, another data point showing that Nastic makes an impact when he plays. Second, getting to the free throw line only helps if you make your free throws, which we do far too infrequently. Third, our "best" free throw shooters don't show up very high on this list. Bright cracks the top six, Randle is close behind, and Gage is dead last on the team by a wide margin (with the exception of Lemons, who didn't attempt a FT this year) at 1.7.
My thought here would be that we need to see Randle and Bright get to the line more often without sacrificing ball security.
Team Leaders: Turnovers per 40 Minutes
Stefan Nastic, 5.2
Dwight Powell, 3.5
Jarrett Mann, 3.4
Chasson Randle, 3.3
Aaron Bright, 3.2
Nastic is clearly nervous/jittery with the ball. "Smoothness" is just a brobdingnagian area for improvement for him. You have to give Bright and Randle a break here, since they touch the ball so much more than the others. Powell and Mann - yuck. On the more positive side ...
Josh Heustis, 1.5
John Gage, 1.8
Josh Owens, 2.1
Anthony Brown, 2.3
Andrew Zimmerman, 2.5
Gage and Owens: low risk, high production. They don't turn the ball over, and they score like hell when they get the ball. Really a missed opportunity to have failed to get them scoring looks more consistently this season.
Well, I hope this is of interest to some of you. I would love to hear how others interpret these data points. What am I missing (plenty, most likely)? I do think this provides a level of insight you don't get out of box scores or broadcasts. I should actually do some analysis to see whether these metrics are actually more tightly correlated with wins than more traditional ones. I suspect they are but we'll see...
Re: Some basketball stats to chew on - washingtonismoney - 03-05-2012
Yeah, the problem with all efficiency statistics is they don't tell us whether someone is efficient only because he only takes good shots (i.e. Nastic) or whether it's efficiency allied with shot-creation.
To me the most damning statistical factoid about our season is this: our defense has improved since last year, if you take the raw statistics (not including strength of schedule). But a big reason for that is a decrease in opponent 3 PT%. The problem here is that basketball statistics mavens have established pretty conclusively that team 3pt% is highly uncorrelated from year to year. The best approach, this implies, to defending the three point shot is preventing it from ever occurring (especially in a March Madness context, where a team can ride fluky 3 point shooting to an upset). Anyway, the improvement in our team is due to the improvement in our defense, which is due to something which may or may not be a nonrepeatable fluke.
(The comparison. In 2010-11 we scored about .99 points per possession--which is ever-so-slightly below average--and gave up 1.03 points per possession, which is a decent bit below average. In 2011-12 we're scoring...the same per possession and giving up .97 points per possession. The change is due in large part to the improvement in three point shooting, but also--and I realize this may seem strange if you saw the game last night--a marked improvement in rebounding. Still, the lack of improvement on the offensive end is damning and likely due to Dawkins's insistence on playing Jarrett Mann so many minutes, often in tandem with other scoring nonentities like Andrew Zimmerman and Josh Huestis.)