Wednesday, November 04, 2009

Wesley Johnson took 39% of his team’s shots

In some future time, that will be the headline from a game like Syracuse’s exhibition loss to Le Moyne on Tuesday. The actual outcome of the contest, while surprising, isn’t terribly significant. Michigan State memorably lost to Grand Valley State in an exhibition two years ago and ended up as a five-seed. Heck, last season Utah lost to Southwest Baptist in a game that counted and also was given a five-seed come March. There’s not much to be learned from early November games against D-II competition.

But it’s worth noting that Johnson’s performance, or more specifically his role in the Orange’s offense, was in every sense of the word, huge. That 39 percent figure doesn’t include four turnovers and seven free throws also credited to him. It’s still early to draw conclusions from this, but it’s conceivable that this season’s battle for highest usage among players on power conference teams will be between Johnson and his former Iowa State teammate Craig Brackins.

Johnson’s reason for leaving ISU was the imminent style change that was expected with the hiring of Greg McDermott after Johnson’s sophomore season. Regardless, it appears that it was a move for the best. Given the incredible appetite for shots that both Johnson and Brackins have demonstrated since their split, it’s difficult to imagine how the two would have continued to happily coexist.

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Schedules are up!

Since exhibitions are being played, it’s about time I got the 2010 schedule pages up. There are surely some errors. If you see one, please let me know. (As always, games where an opponent is TBA are not included.)

Monday, February 16, 2009

Defensive Fingerprint

Defensive Fingerprint attempts to objectively identify the style of a team’s defense. Inputs into the system are the departure from the D-1 norm of the following defensive characteristics…

- assist percentage (triple weight, higher means a more likely zone team)
- 3-point attempt percentage (triple weight, higher means a more likely zone team)
- free throw attempt percentage (double weight, higher means a more likely man team)
- turnover percentage (single weight, higher means a more likely man team)
- defensive rebounding percentage (variable weight depending on offensive rebounding percentage, higher means a more likely man team)

All of these things are thrown together producing a number which will forever remain a secret. The number is then used to book the defense into one of four categories in an attempt to describe what type of defense the team employs…

- Mostly man: The team probably plays man defense on the vast majority of its possessions.
- Inconclusive: The data does not support identifying defensive tendencies.
- Some zone: It’s likely that this team plays a significant number of possessions in a zone defense.
- Mostly zone: It’s likely that this team plays most of its possessions in a zone defense.

A system such as this will have quite a few misses on blindly guessing a defensive style. It could be improved by using stats adjusted for the quality of competition, but for now I’m using the raw stats. Also, consider that labeling a defense simply by zone or man is an oversimplification. Some zone defenses are aggressive enough to function statistically as man defenses, and vice versa. But if you notice a label that looks out of place, let me know. This system will undergo some iterations.