Defensive Assist Percentage
02.11.05
This blog has been one-dimensional this season: it can shoot the three, it can dish the rock, but it plays no defense. Today, I look at a defensive statistic that gets little press - the ability to prevent assists. See the stats page for the defensive assist percentage of all 330 teams.
Defensive assist percentage = assists allowed/total possessions
On Wednesday, the North Carolina Tar Heels were bottled up for 40 minutes like no other time this ACC season. They didn't get many points on the fast break, and they didn't get easy points out of the half-court set. UNC, a team that averages two assists on every three field goals made, had only ten assists in 25 made buckets. Shocking.
Or was it? In fact, there must be some skill at preventing fast breaks, preventing the smooth flow of the offense in the half-court, and thus preventing assists. It just so happens that the Duke Blue Devils are the best team in the nation at preventing assists. We can't rule out that the Cameron scorer's table is unusually stingy in awarding assists, given that Duke's own assist total is exceptionally low. But since Duke doesn't play all its games at home, the data has to be in the neighborhood of reality.
As a footnote, defensive assist percentage correlates less to an efficient defense than offensive assist percentage does to an efficient offense. You can look for yourself - while Duke and Kansas have great defenses and prevent assists well, there are some really bad defenses in the top 20 of defensive assist percentage.
More on Assistststss
02.10.05
What you may have missed last night:
1) Miami Ohio and Kent State both won tight MAC road games, staying on a collision course for a March 2 showdown between the conference's two most deserving at-large teams. Miami's win was tainted by buzzer-beating controversy.
The headline on the above Miami link at the time of this posting:
RedHawks Pull Out Close 54-54 Win at Ball State
This article explains why the game should have gone to overtime.
[Update: the Muncie Star Press has produced a brief documentary video of the final moments.]
2) There was a rare late-season showdown to settle the debate between the nation's biggest underachievers. Missouri won, er...lost, 74-71 to UNLV.
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I got a few thoughtful responses on a contradiction posed last Friday regarding teams with efficient offenses that don't get many assists. Dear reader Matt broke out some numbers...
Ken,
Your post about assist percentage and its correlation to efficient offense was interesting. A possible explanation for the fact that Duke and Villanova have efficient offenses but low assist percentage could be that they have 3 players that score an overwhelming proportion of their offense. Consider:
Duke
Reddick, Williams and Ewing account for 66.2% of their scoring.
Villanova
Ray, Sumpter and Foye account for a very similar 66% of their scoring.
By contrast very efficient offenses like Wake Forest and Illinois have much lower proportions for their top 3 scorers.
Wake Forest 56.2%
Illinois 52.4%
UNC which has been repeatedly lauded for their unselfish, share-the-ball attitude has a very low 50.5%.
It would seem reasonable that if a smaller number of players were responsible for a team's scoring there would be fewer opportunities for assists during the normal course of a game.
Great website!
Matt
It can't be disputed that an efficient offense without a lot of assists means that the team has players that are able to score on their own. I think this tidbit that Matt uncovered is a function of that. 'Nova is the poster child for this kind of team, with three players that can regularly create their own shot.
The third team that fell into the high efficiency/low assists bin was Texas. They never had the dominating trio to which Matt refers. But it's not a coincidence that the Longhorns offense has been noticeably weaker after losing one of their scorers, PJ Tucker. By contrast, both Villanova and Duke have withstood prolonged absences from starters without any impact. This is probably because their trio of scorers has remained healthy and their scoring ability isn't as dependent on getting help from teammates.
Texas Toast
02.09.05
I posted 32 tournament locks on Monday, and by Tuesday night, I no longer had confidence in one of them. Injury-riddled Texas is reeling after getting routed in Boulder, despite a 27 and 21 performance from Brad Buckman.
The character of the team has changed since the nearly simultaneous loss of starters PJ Tucker and LaMarcus Aldridge for the season. These were the two best interior scorers for the Longhorns, and as you might expect, Texas has become more of a jumpshooting team in their absence.
Here's a chronological breakdown of the Longhorns' shooting percentage, and percentage of shots coming from three for games this season. I've weeded out the patsies on the non-conference schedule.
FG% 3PA/FGA Result
45.9 34.4 vs Iowa, L 82-80
52.4 39.7 vs Tennessee, W 95-70
39.3 30.4 at Seton Hall, W 70-62
48.5 35.3 at Wake Forest, L 89-88
51.8 33.9 vs UNLV, W 89-82
44.0 36.0 vs Memphis, W 74-67
54.7 47.2 vs Baylor, W 79-60
32.3 33.9 at Texas A&M, L 74-63
40.8 36.7 at Nebraska, W 63-53
Aldridge Gone
42.3 28.8 vs Oklahoma St., W 75-61
Tucker Gone
42.9 24.5 at Oklahoma, L 64-60
50.0 38.9 vs Texas Tech, W 80-73
37.3 39.0 at Kansas, L 90-65
40.5 40.5 vs Iowa State, L 92-80
41.3 46.0 at Colorado, L 88-79
The most noticeable trend is with the perimeter shooting: the last four games have ranked among Texas' six highest three point attempt games (by percentage) this season. Similarly, three of Texas' six worst shooting games have occurred since the loss of Tucker.
Suddenly, the Horns have gone from a team thinking Final Four wasn't out of the question, to a team that is going to have to work hard for an at-large bid.
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