Individual Stats Primer
09.20.05
Since there will be more discussion of individual stats on this site this season, I thought I’d throw together a post to let people know what values of each are exceptional. These are the measures I refer to on a regular basis. I’ll add to and adjust this document as events warrant.
Percentage of possible minutes played (%Min): Self explanatory, I think. La Salle’s Steven Smith (97.3%) led all D1 players in 2005. He missed just 32 of the 1,185 minutes that the Explorers played. Wyoming point guard Jay Straight (96.9%) was second, including a Ripken-esque nine consecutive games without a rest. Few players exceed 90%.
Offensive rating (ORtg): A measure of personal offensive efficiency developed by Dean Oliver. The formula is very complicated, but accurate. For a detailed explanation, buy Basketball on Paper. Anything over 110 is good, and 120 is excellent for a player that is the workhorse on his team. The best I saw from last season was Utah State’s Spencer Nelson at 133.
Percentage of possessions used (%Poss): A measure of personal possessions used while the player is on the court. Simply assigns credit or blame to a player when his actions end a possession, either by missing a shot that isn’t rebounded by the offense or committing a turnover. 20% is average, and 25% indicates a go-to guy. 15% is a player with a limited role in the offense. Higher values do not indicate a player is better, merely that he is more involved in the offense. It’s almost impossible to get to 30% in the college game, although Vermont’s Taylor Coppenrath did so in 2004 and 2005. It is difficult to combine high possession usage with high offensive rating.
Percentage of shots taken (%Shots): This is the percentage of a team’s shots taken, while the player is on the court. This is a pretty good proxy for %Poss, and significantly easier to calculate. It is PlayerFGA / (%Min * TeamFGA).
Effective field goal percentage (eFG%): Same as regular field goal percentage, except that made three-pointers are appropriately given 50% more credit. The top ten in this category with at least 300 FGA from the 2005 season, with players in bold returning in 2006:
1 Salim Stoudamire Arizona 64.8 2 Jaycee Carroll Utah St. 64.2 3 John Reimold Bowl Green 63.6 4 Dee Brown Illinois 63.6 5 Josh Almanson Bowl Green 63.2 6 Andrew Bogut Utah 63.0 7 Eric Williams Wake Forest 63.0 8 Daniel Kickert St.Mary's 62.8 9 Michael Harris Rice 61.6 10 Seamus Boxley Portland St 61.1
It’s mostly players that shoot a lot of threes and shoot them well, but there are some post players that sneak in also.
Offensive rebounding percentage (OR%): This is the percentage of possible offensive rebounds a player gets:
PlayerOR / [%Min * (Team OR + Opp. DR)]
The denominator is scaled based on the percentage of a team’s minutes played by the player. Anything over 10% is good. Sean May of North Carolina was the best I saw for the 2005 season at 16.7%.
Defensive rebounding percentage (DR%): This is the percentage of possible defensive rebounds a player gets:
PlayerDR / [%Min * (Team DR + Opp. OR)]
Anything over 20% is good. Bogut was the best I discovered for the 2005 season at 31.0%.
It is generally believed that offensive rebounds are more attributable to individual effort than defensive rebounds. Due to its relative rarity, an offensive rebound is considered more valuable than a defensive rebound.
FT Rate: Free throw rate is calculated by 100*FTA/FGA. This measures a player’s ability to get the line using the number of free throws shot per 100 field goal attempts. Players that shoot a lot of free throws tend to be efficient scorers, so a high free throw rate is a good thing unless the player is horrible from the line. Anything over 50 is good, and 70 is excellent. Dwayne Jones (109.3) of Saint Joseph’s was the only player in 2005 to exceed 100 in this category among players with at least 200 FGAs. Jones shot only 54% from the line, so all those trips to the line didn’t hurt the opposition much. The oft-injured Jason Fraser of Villanova deserves mention for posting 115 FTAs with 90 FGAs for a free throw rate of 127.8. Below are the top ten players in FTRate with at least 200 FGAs. Only two return in 2006.
1 Dwayne Jones St. Joseph's 109.3 2 Ellis Myles Louisville 98.8 3 Steven Thomas Texas Arl. 91.9 4 Jamar Howard Wichita St. 91.4 5 Jason Maxiell Cincinnati 90.4 6 Ronny Turiaf Gonzaga 83.8 7 Blake Hamilton Monmouth 83.2 8 Ike Diogu Arizona St. 78.1 9 Chad McKnight Morehead St. 77.6 10 John Bowler E. Michigan 77.6
Turnover Rate (TORate): This is the percentage of personal possessions used on turnovers. It is highly dependent on context, but anything below 15% is great. Average in 2005 was around 20%. Point guards are typically in the 20-25% range due to the nature of their position. Players that do little passing or dribbling will have an artificially deflated TO%.
Assist Rate (ARate): This is assists divided by the field goals made by the player’s teammates while he is on the court. [Changed 4/9/06]
Block Percentage (%Blocks): This is the percentage of opponents’ two-point shots that are blocked by the player while he is on the court. It is computed by Blocks/(%Min * Opponents’ two-point attempts). Anything greater than 8% is very good.
Steal Percentage (%Stls): This is the percentage of possessions that a player records a steal shile he is on the court. It is computed by Steals/(%Min * Team Possessions). Anything greater than 5% is very good.
Unfinished Business
09.11.05
On January 19th, LSU beat Arkansas 66-63 in overtime. It was a particularly fortunate victory for LSU, because the game went to overtime only when officials conferred about a would-be game-winning three-pointer by Arkansas’ Michael Jones at the end of regulation. The shot was ruled a three by one official and a two by the other. Ultimately, replays were inconclusive (can we get some HD monitors, please?), the officials ruled the shot a two, and LSU got an extra chance with the overtime.
This is one example of how a goofy break can influence the outcome of a contest. Over the course of a season, these breaks are supposed to even out, but they don’t for some squads. For some closure on my earlier look at the unluckiest teams of 2005, here were the 20 luckiest teams in conference play from 2005, based on the difference between expected and actual conference winning percentage, with actual conference record in parenthesis.
1 Davidson +0.224 (16- 0) 2 Arkansas Little Rock +0.214 (10- 4) 3 Virginia Tech +0.189 ( 8- 8) 4 Dartmouth +0.187 ( 7- 7) 5 NC Wilmington +0.165 (13- 5) 6 Jacksonville +0.161 (11- 9) 7 Wisconsin Green Bay +0.158 (10- 6) 8 Louisiana St. +0.154 (12- 4) 9 Pacific +0.154 (18- 0) 10 St. Mary's +0.150 (11- 3) 11 Texas Tech +0.147 (10- 6) 12 Missouri +0.136 ( 7- 9) 13 West Virginia +0.136 ( 8- 8) 14 Boston College +0.124 (13- 3) 15 Northwestern St. +0.123 (13- 3) 16 Charlotte +0.120 (12- 4) 17 Southern Illinois +0.118 (15- 3) 18 Missouri Kansas City +0.116 (12- 4) 19 Nevada +0.113 (16- 2) 20 Minnesota +0.113 (10- 6)
Interestingly, Southern Illinois makes the list for the third year in a row - they were 3rd in 2004 and 4th in 2003 - suggesting their performance isn’t so much luck, but more related to not stretching that 10-point lead to 20 in garbage time. They’re the bizarro-Cincinnati.
Much like the unluckiest list contained mainly losing teams, the lucky list contains mostly winners. It’s most interesting to pick out the teams on the list that didn’t win so much. Virginia Tech improbably played their way into a 4 seed in the ACC tournament despite an expected conference record of 5-11. They lose their second-leading scorer from last season in swingman Carlos Dixon. They also have faced an unfair share of off-season tragedy, what with junior forward Allen Calloway diagnosed with a rare form of cancer and freshman forward Deron Washington losing the family house to Katrina. They return enough talent, including a couple of quality recruits, to maintain their level of performance from last season, but it probably won’t be reflected in their ACC record.
Then there’s West Virginia, whose expected winning percentage was actually lower than Providence’s. Providence finished 4-12 in Big East play, four games behind the Mountaineers. WVU was 8-9 within the conference regular-season window (8-8 in the Big East plus a January loss to Marshall) with losses to bad teams and a couple that went beyond lopsided. But they were 17-2 outside this period with quality wins out the ying-yang.
The turnaround at the end of the season was fueled by “center” Kevin Pittsnogle getting increased minutes. It’s hard to believe a guy who played less than half of his team’s minutes (by coach’s decision) could seriously consider an early jump to the NBA. Well, the NBA didn’t seriously consider Pittsnogle. But take a look at his line from last season, and you can see why he makes for a great player in the John Beilein system, surrounded by four excellent passers.
O-Rtg %Poss %Shots %Min PPG TO% OR%/DR% FTA/FGA eFG% PITTSNOGLE..116 28.1 34.1 47.7 11.9 12.3 8.8/14.8 .248 56.1
Pittsnogle has an incredible appetite for shooting the ball, hoisting over a third of his team’s shots while he’s on the court. In playing only 19 minutes per game, he was just 7 field goal attempts from leading the team in that category. He provides little else - you give him the ball, he shoots. He doesn’t turn it over much, he won’t get to the line often, his rebounding is nothing special, and he doesn’t set up his teammates (22 assists all season). But he shoots in bulk, and is successful an awful lot.
Something to watch in ‘06 is how his numbers will be affected by more playing time. Prorate last season’s stats to 30 minutes a game and he would have placed 12th in the nation with 488 field goal attempts. Among the top 20 in FGAs, only Pat Carroll had a better eFG% (57.6) than Pittsnogle. Which leads me me to believe that Pittsnogle won’t duplicate either the volume or the efficiency (or both) from last season. This is not to say that WVU is headed for a disappointing season. They’ll be somewhere in between the 17-2 version and the 8-9 version. But the only way they will challenge for the top of the Big East is if Pittsnogle can approach his 2005 production with the massive increase in playing time he is likely to receive.