Get to know Mike Scott
01.05.12
It’s getting to that time of year where people start talking about All-American teams and player of the year honors. There always seems to be that one guy that is having a large impact but fails to get the proper recognition because his team plays at a very slow pace and thus said player is unable to accumulate the shiny counting stats that other big-time players use to get the media’s attention. The first player that appealed to me like this was Georgetown’s Roy Hibbert in 2007. He was somewhat minutes-challenged, but his advanced stats were extremely impressive when he was on the floor.
Last season, you’ll recall Wisconsin’s Jordan Taylor filled this role. It wasn’t until he hit people over the head with his performance against Ohio State on January 9 that folks began to take his play seriously. Taylor hasn’t been able to maintain the blistering statistical pace that he did last season, but fortunately for tempo-free lovers, someone has taken his place.
According to bbstate.com, through Tuesday’s games, Virginia forward Mike Scott ranked 131st in the nation with 16.0 points per game and 47th with 9.0 rebounds per game. On Monday night, he went for 17 points and nine rebounds against LSU in a 57-52, 60-possession contest. The pace-contaminated numbers aren’t inspiring, and even though a few folks covering the ACC are giving Scott his due acclaim, I expect he’s less known nationally than he should be. Even if he maintains his current production through conference play, it will be a struggle for him to get consideration for ACC player of the year.
However, accounting for the brutally slow tempo UVa plays at, Scott provides one of the best scoring and rebounding combinations in the country and anchors one of the nation’s best defenses on top of that. Pick your favorite big-man player of the year candidate for comparison and drink the tempo-free nectar. (All stats through Tuesday’s games.)
ORtg %Poss OR% DR% A% Scott 125 27 14 26 16 T-Rob 110 28 12 32 13 Sully 126 26 11 34 8 A Davis 129 18 12 26 6 C Zeller 129 22 12 17 7 D Green 103 28 9 24 20 Henson 113 23 10 24 10
This is a good time to mention that from an individual level, offensive rebounds are more valuable than defensive rebounds because when a player grabs a defensive board he is more likely to be taking away a rebound from a teammate. This is especially true for Scott’s offensive rebounds since UVa typically only sends two players to the offensive glass. I put assist rate in the comparison also, because Scott is no slouch in that department, either. Draymond Green gets praise for his passing, and rightfully so, but statistically at least, Scott isn’t far behind, setting up one in every six of his teammates’ buckets.
Obviously, the difference between Scott and the others is that (a) his team is not as good and (b) Virginia has played mainly a collection of atrocious defenses thus far. But hey, if reputable people are going to rave about Doug McDermott, then Scott should be getting some national love, too.
Keep in mind, that without Scott on the floor most of last season, the Cavaliers were significantly worse on both sides of the ball. The improvement this season isn’t all due to Scott – the players around him have improved with another year of experience and Malcolm Brogdon has made a small impact as a freshman – but Scott’s numbers indicate he can take credit for much of the difference. It’ll take some good play in the three games UVa has against Duke and UNC for him to get the mainstream publicity he deserves, but tempo-free fanatics have already noticed.
The untrained eye: Wyoming vs. Utah Valley
01.04.12
Wyoming beat Utah Valley 76-70 in a 59-possession game on Tuesday night. I was there. This is what I saw.
A (Mountain/Great) West showdown
Why was I at the Utah Community Credit Union Center last night? For one, I can now say that I’ve seen a game in a Great West Arena, and I’m guessing you can’t. But also, I felt a little guilty for missing out on a chance to see surprising Georgia State play here two weeks ago. Besides, Wyoming actually has a non-zero chance of getting an at-large bid at this point and that’s saying something for a team that started out in the 270’s in my ratings.
Oh, those points!
In a clash between the Wolverines’ sluggish offense and the Cowboys’ formidable defense, the predictor said this would be a 61-53 Wyoming win in 61 possessions. That would have been a nice improvement for a UVU team that managed just 41 points against the Cowboys in Laramie on November 30. In two fewer possessions, the real game produced 32 more points than expected. After a 33-point Wyoming win in the first game, this one nearly came down to the final possession providing a nice exhibit on the variance possible in college hoops.
(If you want real hoops-style variance, though, check out the North Dakota/South Dakota State series this year. On December 10, South Dakota State beat the nicknameless team by 38. In the rematch five days later, UND won by 19.)
Luke Martinez is the best D-I player from North Dakota
The competition is kind of limited here, as there are just five North Dakotans on D-I rosters. But it’s a close call for statewide honors between the Wyoming shooting guard and Colorado’s Austin Dufault. Martinez has gone from a guy for whom message board-types once speculated about which North Dakota NAIA school he would attend, to a major cog on a team that should put up a respectable record in the Mountain West. One in every eight shots attempted in this game was a Martinez three-pointer, and while he went an unspectacular 4-for-12, he’s 39-for-99 on the season for a team that was second-to-last nationally in three-point percentage last season.
Luck and coaching
Wyoming coach Larry Shyatt is performing his second single-season turnaround as a coach of the Cowboys. Last season, Wyoming went 10-21 under Heath Schroyer. This season, they’re 13-2. In 1997, Wyoming went 12-16 under Joby Wright, and the following season they went 19-9 under Shyatt. In between, Shyatt was on the bench for back-to-back national titles under Billy Donovan. Yet Clemson fans think he’s a moron because during his five-season stint there, the Tigers won just 20 conference games.
Larry Shyatt is probably neither an elite mastermind nor a bumbling idiot, but which one is he closest to? I don’t know how to determine that, but I think this is another illustration that for most coaches, there are a bunch of external factors that influence their perceived success or failure.
Luck and basketball
Of course, I’m much more appreciative of luck that occurs on the court and forces beyond the control of either team influenced the outcome of this one. If you’re on board with the theory that the charge circle has actually caused more charges to be whistled this season, a call with ten seconds to go would have been fuel for your conspiratorial fire. Wyoming’s Leonard Washington took a charge that you’d like to think would be called a block at least 90% of the time.
Were it Mason Plumlee benefiting from the call, it would be talked about for decades, but alas this was a game with a limited TV footprint involving teams of little national interest. It was a brutal call, and it caused UVU head coach Dick Hunsaker to entertain the crowd of 6500 with a decent Mike Davis impression with 0.7 seconds left that made the final margin deceptively large.
State of the game 2011
01.02.12
Last week, Matt Norlander introduced you all to the idea that scoring is down across college basketball this season. This is something I should have done, but despite several people mentioning to me over recent weeks that they thought scoring was down, I never took the matter seriously enough to investigate. You should read the piece for yourself, but the summary is that it appears this season may challenge the modern record for scoring average.
After running a few more numbers, it turns out that probably won’t happen. For Matt’s piece, I computed scoring average using only games that involved two Division I teams which I think is how it should be done. But the NCAA uses all games that a D-I team plays which is going to inflate the numbers slightly. Using that method puts the current scoring average at 68.9 points per game, which would be the second-lowest in the shot clock era. The previous low occurred in 2009, the first season of the extended three-point line. The post-1952 low of 67.6 set in 1982 is going to be safe using this methodology.
Nonetheless, there’s been a pretty consistent trend since scoring peaked at about 77 points per game in 1991. Possessions have been getting longer and efficiency has remained constant and the result is a steady decrease in points per game. As to why this is happening, there is no easy answer. This season, shooting percentages are down across the board from last season and trips to the free throw line are fewer as well. The combination has resulted in a double-whammy of slow pace and less efficiency.
At this point, I’d like to refer you to a piece that is over six and-a-half years old. Way back in May of ought-five, I posted a graph of historical trends in the game based on the stats published in the NCAA record book. It’s worth a re-read if only to take a peek back in time, but if you’re rushed, I shall update that graph below. Keep in mind, excruciating details about the methodology used to produce this are described in the 2005 piece.
Not much has changed since ’05. Efficiency has increased a bit and pace has decreased slightly, continuing trends that were observed in the early part of the millennium. Overall, the slowing trend is slightly outpacing the efficiency trend, and if we don’t set a new shot-clock era low for PPG this season, it will inevitably be set in the next year or two.
It’s worth considering whether this is a problem. An honest assessment of the popularity of the sport is difficult to do. And whether the decrease in scoring is even a consideration in the decrease in popularity of the sport (if that is even occurring) is another matter, as well.
Furthermore, even if the sport is less popular and the decrease in scoring is a contributing factor, there seem to be few options available to reverse the trend. That’s why it’s interesting to look back at that post from six years ago, before the three-point line was moved. The game really hasn’t changed since then despite that change in the rules. With that in mind, let’s take a fresh look at the three most-discussed rules changes for the near future:
1. Shorten the shot clock.
The introduction of the shot clock helped boost scoring in the mid ‘80s. The reduction from 45 to 35 seconds in 1994 provided another small boost in scoring. It seems inevitable that the clock will be shortened to 30 seconds at some point soon. No doubt this effort would provide a small boost in scoring again, butit would come at a cost. While scoring would increase, I would expect points per possession to decrease, and long term, you’d see more zone defense which would further challenge offenses. Long term, scoring would remain unchanged and we’d just hear the shot clock buzzer go off more often.
2. Clean up rough play.
This idea comes up all the time from coaches and commentators. Through the miracle of YouTube you can easily confirm there is more contact in the game today than there was ten years. And there was more contact ten years ago than there was 20 years ago, etc. However, very few people really want to clean up the contact. You need only look at the reaction when a lot of fouls are called in a game. (Most recent example: Kentucky/Louisville on Saturday.)
Nobody likes those kinds of game. Refs don’t even like those games. That’s why the average number of fouls called in a game has remained nearly constant since 1953. The players define the acceptable amount of contact and, in most games, officials work around that. Everyone involved in the game has become conditioned to that. Which is why when a game has 51 fouls called, people get upset. If you truly want contact cleaned up, you’ll have to sit through a bunch of games like Kentucky/Louisville before the players adjust and I don’t think anybody has the stomach for that.
It should be noted that the NBA has worked diligently to reduce perimeter contact on the ball-handler and has seen scoring and tempo rise as a result. I would say the NBA is a different animal with a central authority that can train all of its officials the same way and also aggressively defend its officials from criticism. The fractured nature of college basketball officiating works against a major overhaul of how the game would be called at this level.
3. Do something with the lane.
Another option is to widen the lane to either the NBA standard or the international configuration. But remarking a court is kind of pain and always seems to meet resistance from administrators, and it gets messier if the women’s game doesn’t follow along. Besides, even were this solution adopted, it may only punish the offense. Moving offensive players farther from the hoop while not doing the same for the defense isn’t going to increase scoring. This was more or less the result of the 2004 rules experiment.
Perhaps in the long run, once post players adjusted to the change, it would open up the half-court game more and offenses would improve. I don’t believe this, though, and it was the same rationale fed to the public for moving the three-point line back. All we’ve gotten out of that is more zone defense, slightly slower possessions, and incrementally less scoring.
Whatever rules changes are made, I hope they benefit the offense. Giving the offense less time to shoot and expanding the lane do not do this, much as pushing the three-point line back didn’t do it, either.
The only real solution is to crack down on perimeter contact, but unfortunately the structure isn’t in place to do it in a way that wouldn’t send fans into an uproar. Perhaps a bunch of games in the 40’s and 50’s is the way basketball will played for many years to come. Just like it was in the early days of the NCAA tournament, but for different reasons. On the bright side, unlike in the 1940’s and early 1950’s, at least the average field goal percentage isn’t south of 40%.