Offensive Efficiency: Pre/Post Duke

[royski]

It seems to be a general belief on this board that the team was playing well until Monroe got T'd up in the Duke game. Specifically, they were playing together offensively. From my own observations, I concur with this belief. But I decided to see what our offensive efficiency was up to and including the Duke game, vs. our efficiency AFTER.

I understand that this is heavily competition inflated, but bear with me.

Pre-Duke O Efficiency: 112.8

Post-Duke O Efficiency: 90.3

YIKES!

For comparison's sake, a 112.8 would rank 34th nationally. While certainly not great for a JTIII Hoya team, it's respectable, and reasonable to expect from a first year team learning the offense. In fact, the only JTIII club that ALL had to learn the offense in the same season was 2004-05. What was their offensive effeciency? 113.1, and 34th nationally.

How about that O after Duke? Well, ummm, hehe, about that... a 90.3 ranks 309th nationally. No, you didn't read that wrong. That's not a typo. 309.


Yes, as I said above, there is a large difference in competition levels. But Georgetown was also worse both offensively AND defensively in BOTH games against St. John's than it was against Memphis. Not sure there's an easy explanation for that. But the point is, for those who point to Duke as the turning point (myself included), there appears to be some real, solid objective evidence behind it besides simple W's and L's. JTIII has some work to do.

[kghoya]

i'm sorry but could you explain the numbers to me. i apologize but im not familiar with the efficiency rankings

is this explained on kempom.com?

thanks

[hoyalawyer]

line up change after duke benching of sapp. Sapp's clock went down and the team started losing... justified or not, Sapp's benching contributed to the teams down fall.

[royski]

Mar 11, 2009 17:22:05 GMT -5 kghoya said:

i'm sorry but could you explain the numbers to me. i apologize but im not familiar with the efficiency rankings

is this explained on kempom.com?

thanks

Sure, sorry about that. Offensive efficiency is how many points a team would score per 100 possessions. Likewise, defensive efficiency is how many points a team would surrender per 100 possessions. The Hoyas averaged 64.5 possessions per game. So, pre-Duke, the Hoyas would, in an average game, be able to score 72.7 points on their 64.5 possessions. After Duke, that number plummets to 58.2 points while playing at the EXACT SAME PACE! As you can see, that's horrific, regardless of competition.

[guru]

We're probably not going to find out what happened with Sapp, but I think it is safe to assume the issue went deeper than a mere starting lineup change.

Beyond rumors of fisticuffs, something bigger happened in that locker room that caused these guys, almost to a man, to completely check out on the season. And we will remain in the dark as to what that was - we can only hope that it can blow over in the offseason.

The most frustrating thing is that we were a good team until the Duke game. Very good. And 10 minutes into that game I really thought that Duke was not going to be able to hang with us. I really thought the ceiling for this group was the national championship - that's the upside they displayed against UMD, Memphis, UConn, Syracuse and the beginning of the Duke game. And then the floor completely dropped out on us. In nearly 40 years of watching sports, I can't remember a team that completely and suddenly shut down for good in the middle of the season like that. It just stopped functioning. Truly bizarre.

[royski]

Mar 11, 2009 19:11:43 GMT -5 guru said:

We're probably not going to find out what happened with Sapp, but I think it is safe to assume the issue went deeper than a mere starting lineup change.

Beyond rumors of fisticuffs, something bigger happened in that locker room that caused these guys, almost to a man, to completely check out on the season. And we will remain in the dark as to what that was - we can only hope that it can blow over in the offseason.

The most frustrating thing is that we were a good team until the Duke game. Very good. And 10 minutes into that game I really thought that Duke was not going to be able to hang with us. I really thought the ceiling for this group was the national championship - that's the upside they displayed against UMD, Memphis, UConn, Syracuse and the beginning of the Duke game. And then the floor completely dropped out on us. In nearly 40 years of watching sports, I can't remember a team that completely and suddenly shut down for good in the middle of the season like that. It just stopped functioning. Truly bizarre.

New York Jets, 08-09.

[Coast2CoastHoya]

Mar 11, 2009 19:54:01 GMT -5 royski said:

Mar 11, 2009 19:11:43 GMT -5 guru said:

We're probably not going to find out what happened with Sapp, but I think it is safe to assume the issue went deeper than a mere starting lineup change.

Beyond rumors of fisticuffs, something bigger happened in that locker room that caused these guys, almost to a man, to completely check out on the season. And we will remain in the dark as to what that was - we can only hope that it can blow over in the offseason.

The most frustrating thing is that we were a good team until the Duke game. Very good. And 10 minutes into that game I really thought that Duke was not going to be able to hang with us. I really thought the ceiling for this group was the national championship - that's the upside they displayed against UMD, Memphis, UConn, Syracuse and the beginning of the Duke game. And then the floor completely dropped out on us. In nearly 40 years of watching sports, I can't remember a team that completely and suddenly shut down for good in the middle of the season like that. It just stopped functioning. Truly bizarre.

New York Jets, 08-09.

Almost every Angels team .... ever ....


As for the numbers, though, (1) thanks, royski, for doing those calculations and providing the empirical evidence for our anecdotal hypotheses, and (2) EGADS!

[longtimesaxa]

NY Mets '07 & '08.

Up to and including Duke 13.375 TOs per game
Post Duke 16 per game

[GUJook97]

Well, i am a big time Mets fan, and I am still with guru. Nothing was as bizarre as this season. The first time it really hit me, and maybe its because i didnt get to see some games for a stretch, was Rutgers. We looked like a completely different team. That's when I knew we were in deep, deep trouble.

[sleepy]

Mar 11, 2009 17:27:54 GMT -5 hoyalawyer said:

line up change after duke benching of sapp. Sapp's clock went down and the team started losing... justified or not, Sapp's benching contributed to the teams down fall.

Or maybe whatever Sapp did to get benched is what contributed to the down fall.

[momzer]

Whatever is was, whether it was Sapp, Wright or Monroe's T, it all fell apart beginning with the T and then in the locker room at half. We can all presuppose what happened, but whatever it was, it devastated this team for the rest of the season. Let's all hope that they will get past this over the summer and come into the Fall with a new agenda and new purpose. We know that the talent is there, now it is whether the proper focus and inspired play is there to go along with it.

[The Stig]

The team actually fell apart before halftime that game. Duke went on a huge run right before the half. That might have contributed to whatever happened/didn't happen in the locker room.

Remember that Sapp was having a lousy season before the Duke game.

[Nevada Hoya]

I've always placed the timeline for our demise at Greg's phantom T. I guess other people think the same. I guess it is appropriate that the cause of the fall is as unknown as the T (well other than a fan in the row behind the team).

[CO_Hoya]

Mar 11, 2009 17:10:10 GMT -5 royski said:

I understand that this is heavily competition inflated, but bear with me.

Pre-Duke O Efficiency: 112.8
Post-Duke O Efficiency: 90.3

You've got a typo:
Pre-Duke is essentially correct (1125 pts / 999 poss. x 100 = 112.6),
but
Post-Duke is actually 96.4 (884 pts / 917 poss x 100)

But it's still a very good point.


Of course, you can pick other arbitrary point(s) in the season, and reach very different conclusions.

If we break the season into two parts: Pitt (1/3) to Marq (2/23) versus all other games, you get:

Off. Eff.
Pitt-Marq:  104.9
Other:      104.4

Def. Eff.
Pitt-Marq:  107.6
Other:       86.1

[guru]

Mar 11, 2009 22:13:38 GMT -5 The Stig said:

The team actually fell apart before halftime that game. Duke went on a huge run right before the half. That might have contributed to whatever happened/didn't happen in the locker room.

Remember that Sapp was having a lousy season before the Duke game.

True, but the team actually put on a little run and was right back in the Duke game even after they got blitzed at the end of the first half. They were down 4 with 15 minutes to go when the phantom T got called on Monroe.

It's hard not to notice that the team's play quickly disintegrated from that exact point forward, and never returned. All that said, only an extremely soft group of players would allow one incident like that to derail an entire season. There has to be more to the downfall - and our players simply have to get tougher, mentally and physically.

[bmartin]

Counterintuitive stats - it definitely wasn't the turnovers
GU won the three games with the highest turnover rate and lost the two games with the lowest turnover rate.
We were 9-4 in games where we turned it over more on than 22% of possessions, but lost 8 of 9 games when we held our turnovers down between 19% and 22%.

[royski]

Mar 11, 2009 22:33:52 GMT -5 CO_Hoya said:

Mar 11, 2009 17:10:10 GMT -5 royski said:

I understand that this is heavily competition inflated, but bear with me.

Pre-Duke O Efficiency: 112.8
Post-Duke O Efficiency: 90.3

You've got a typo:
Pre-Duke is essentially correct (1125 pts / 999 poss. x 100 = 112.6),
but
Post-Duke is actually 96.4 (884 pts / 917 poss x 100)

But it's still a very good point.


Of course, you can pick other arbitrary point(s) in the season, and reach very different conclusions.

If we break the season into two parts: Pitt (1/3) to Marq (2/23) versus all other games, you get:

Off. Eff.
Pitt-Marq:  104.9
Other:      104.4

Def. Eff.
Pitt-Marq:  107.6
Other:       86.1

Ahhh, that's right. My mistake. Still an ugly difference though. Do you know any way to control that for competition CO? I'd be very interested in that result.

[bmartin]

The important offensive stats were effective field goal percentage and free throw rate.
Turnovers and offensive rebounds were not worse in the losses than the wins, but in the worst offensive games we either shot a poor percentage or did not get to the foul line or both.

[CO_Hoya]

Mar 11, 2009 22:50:51 GMT -5 royski said:

Ahhh, that's right. My mistake. Still an ugly difference though. Do you know any way to control that for competition CO? I'd be very interested in that result.

No worries on the typo, since your point is still very well made, even with the real numbers. ;D


You do need to account for competition, but you also need to account for venue. I suppose you could worry about other things as well (injuries, weather, flu), but I only know about how to do the first two.


Shameless plug

The math is too complicated for HoyaTalk, but I do something like this at Hoya Prospectus as Performance Charts and you can find a discussion of the math from the links on that page (I think).


Edited to add:
You can find the stats that bmartin is talking about at the Team Splits, Wins/Losses page.

[bmartin]

Defense was more responsible for the losses to the top teams in the Big East, but the offense was more responsible for the two St. John's losses, the Seton Hall loss, and at least one of the Cincinnati losses.