December 12, 2006
ACC Basketball Review - 12/12/06
It's been a while since I went through the ACC games, so I'll be pretty brief on most of these.
Wednesday, Nov. 22
Providence 73, BC 64
UVa 81, UNC Asheville 65
Gonzaga 82, UNC 74
UCLA 88, Ga. Tech 73
The first bad day of the ACC season, with three teams going down. The Carolina game was particularly interesting because it was the first game to show that they're having some adjustment problems mixing in all of the new freshmen. Tyler Hansbrough was suspiciously inactive, seeming to defer to Brandan Wright. I think he learned his lesson though. The UNC offense must go through Hansbrough no matter how talented the other players are.
Thursday, Nov. 23
Western Michigan 71, Va. Tech 68
Ouch.
Friday, Nov. 24
Maryland 81, High Point 63
N.C. State 88, Gardner-Webb 76
Clemson 74, Charleston Southern 50
UNC 101, Tennessee 87
Nice recovery by the Heels. Tennessee wasn't ranked at this point, but they are a good team with a good coach.
Va. Tech 77, Montana 56
Pitt 88, FSU 66
The Big East has been pounding the ACC so far this year.
Saturday, Nov. 25
Miami 98, Lafayette 66
BC 86, Rhode Island 68
Wake 88, App. State 78
Duke 75, Davidson 47
Nothing really of note here other than to point out that BC took a step towards getting back on track.
Sunday, Nov. 26
UVa 104, UMES 63
Southern Illinois 69, Va. Tech 64
The Hokies were supposed to be good this year, right? They returned just about everyone and last year was an aberration because of all the off-court turmoil. So what's going on? In fairness, Southern Illinois is actually pretty good. In fact, the MVC is the second rated conference in the RPI right now (standard disclaimer - I don't like the RPI, but thought this stat was noteworthy).
Monday, Nov. 27
N.C. State 74, Michigan 67
And now the ACC-Big Ten "Challenge" gets under way. I already covered this game here.
Tuesday, Nov. 28
Maryland 72, Illinois 66
Wisconsin 81, FSU 66
GT 77, Penn State 73
Duke 54, Indiana 51
Northwestern 61, Miami 59
A very nice night for the ACC! More about it here.
Wednesday, Nov. 29
BC 65, Michigan State 58
VT 69, Iowa 65
Purdue 61, UVa 59
UNC 98, Ohio State 89
Clemson 90, Minnesota 68
And the ACC wraps up the win. More here.
Air Force 94, Wake 58
Holy crap! Read that score again! Now, losing to Air Force, especially at their place - it's a long trip and at high altitude - but losing by nearly 40 points? Damn. Keep in mind though, as I wrote here when Duke played them, Air Force is actually really good. They now have three 30+ wins over teams from major conferences. I think if their jerseys said "Big State U" instead of "Air Force," they'd be in the top 10 right now. You do NOT want to see this team in the NCAA tourney.
Saturday, Dec. 2
UNC 75, Kentucky 63
Clemson 74, South Carolina 53
Georgia 87, Wake 86
And the ACC-SEC Challenge gets under way! Wouldn't it be nice if that were actually true? Instead, we just have to settle for scheduling quirks like this. Two very good wins for the ACC and actually a pretty good loss for a reeling Wake team. Overall at this point, the ACC is 5-1 against the SEC on the season. More games to come.
Duke 61, Georgetown 52
This was a nice win for Duke. Remember, the Blue Devils lost to G-town last year, and this year's squad isn't as good as the Redick-Williams team. Offense is still a major weakness though, particularly the continued soft play of supposed All-American Josh McRoberts.
BC 84, UMass 73
Sunday, Dec. 3
UVa 67, N.C. State 62
And the conference season kicks off! UVA won the game, but I was actually more impressed with NC State. Without Engin Atsur, they were shorthanded, but gave the Cavs all they could handle. This game was one shot from going the other way. State fans have reason for optimism as the Wolfpack appeared to have four of the best six players on the floor.
For the Cavs, they need to get JR Reynolds and Sean Singletary going. Both are too passive early on. Clearly Singletary is trying to get his teammates involved early, but he needs to learn that he do that while still being aggressive. There's nothing I hate more than seeing a point guard bring the ball up to the top of the key, pass the ball to the wing and then just stand there and watch. That just kills an offense. You have to penetrate or at least cut after you make that pass. When you stand still, the defense can just settle in. Virginia is dangerous when Singletary is pushing the tempo and a threat to drive at any time. Without that, Reynolds isn't good enough to find his own seams in the defense and there's no one else on the team who can create his own shot. Hopefully Dave Leitao is working on that.
GW 63, VT 62
Oof. Is it too early to declare that the Hokies ain't going dancing this year?
Miami 90, GT 82
The second ACC game and the first surprise! This GT loss is actually a dark harbinger of poor games to come. Fortunately the opposite can't be said of Miami.
FSU 70, Florida 66
Woo! I never would have guessed this one. That Florida team is just ridiculously good, but evidently they have some apathy issues. They are a bit too content. This was a huge win for the perpetual bubble-dwelling Seminoles. You'll hear about this win in March. 6-1 ACC.
Notre Dame 81, Md 74
Talk about your up and down days for the ACC. The Domers had lost to the only half-decent team they'd played (Butler) while Maryland was looking like a sleeper. Well, I guess the Terps haven't really fixed everything. This loss makes the ACC just 2-4 against the Big East.
Tuesday, Dec. 5
FSU 82, Stetson 63
Clemson 90, Wofford 66
Yawn. Why does Clemson play so many crappy teams? At least they have a few decent non-conference games this year (MSU, South Carolina, Georgia), but man do they play a lot of cupcakes. Every year!
Wednesday, Dec. 6
BC 75, Fairfield 52
Duke 57, Holy Cross 45
VT 72, ODU 55
Hey, the Hokies got a win! And that's actually a decent win. ODU beat Georgetown earlier in the year.
West Virginia 71, N.C. State 60
Was I praising Sidney Lowe earlier? He only played six players in this game! And one of those only played eight minutes! Four different guys went the full 40 minutes. Sidney, Sidney, Sidney. That's just dumb. I don't care how bad your seventh and eighth best players are, they need to see the floor for a few minutes to give the other guys a rest. You just can't play 4/5 of your starting lineup for the whole game and expect them to make big plays at the end. This game was winnable, but the Pack just didn't have the legs late. And don't get me started on how they handled the Mountaineers 1-3-1 defense. It looked like State hadn't practiced against a 1-3-1 at all. I hope that isn't a blind spot from Lowe's NBA background.
2-5 against the Big East.
Maryland 79, Fordham 59
Thursday, Dec. 7
FSU 87, Georgia State 55
Here is the stretch of FSU opponents between Dec 5 and Dec 23 - Stetson, Georgia State, SE Louisiana, High Point, Coastal Carolina and St. Peters.
Impressive.
Saturday, Dec. 9
Duke 69, George Mason 53
That's the best I've seen Duke's offense play all year. And they scored 69 points. Josh McRoberts had just seven. This team has serious problems.
Miami 79, Lehigh 58
Vanderbilt 73, Ga. Tech 64
What happened to the Yellow Jackets? They were on top of the world a couple of weeks ago and now have three losses in four games. I guess the freshmen aren't infallible. 6-2 against the SEC.
UNC 94, High Point 69
N.C. State 74, Savannah State 53
Again, Lowe uses only six players (OK, a seventh played one minute). If you can't use your bench against Savannah State, when are you going to use it? I think he's taking a dangerous gamble here. Keep running the guys that much and they might break down when they start losing games. Remember the Vince Lombardi quote, "fatigue makes cowards of us all."
Sunday, Dec. 10
FSU 88, SE Louisiana 62
VT 69 Appalachian State 37
BC 73, Maryland 62
This was a good game. BC seems to have put things back together and Maryland is now not quite so confident. Just like with Georgia Tech, the freshmen are going to be up and down and the point guards who are so critical to the Terps combined for 11 points (on 4-16 shooting), 5 assists and 6 turnovers.
For the Eagles, Jared Dudley is making his case for best player in the conference right now. It's basically a two-man contest at this point between Dudley and Hansbrough.
Monday, Dec. 11
Miss. State 70, Miami 52
6-3 ACC. That was quite a thumping on the Hurricane's home court. This Miami team looks like one that will frustrate fans all year. They have good players, but are not a good team very often. With three losses already to teams ranked 100+ and a 18-point home loss to the only top-30 team they've played, there's plenty of evidence that it's going to be a long season in Coral Gables.
[Relatedly: god, I wish Big Ten Wonk would move to ACC country- I'd love to be able to see this year's Duke team compared against the rest of the ACC in a tempo-free manner.]
As to your earlier question, I have two ACC alma maters (not with any training in Latin, however, since I'm not sure if that plural is right), NCSU and Duke.
The State rotation reminds me of the iron five + Buffum year (where Buffum played 5 minutes per game and every one else ran 39), or Coach K's rotations since '98.
As for Duke, I agree that their defense has been sensational, but maybe not quite as good as the points indicate. Yes, they are giving up very few points, but a big part of that is their offensive tempo. They aren't pushing the pace like most Duke teams because they simply can't find good shots. Their tempo ranks #270 in the country! http://www.kenpom.com/sr.php?team=Duke
They are going to need to figure out a way to score once they get into the ACC schedule and play against teams with more firepower than what they've seen so far. I'd like to see McRoberts or maybe Nelson be much more aggressive offensively.
As usual, my take on this is a little different-- I put this mostly on poor play by the interior guys. Whenever Maryland started to make a run, BC was able to get easy inside baskets, more or less at will.
Ibekwe has a real talent for blocking shots, but it's gone to his head, and Gist is playing the same game. If you watch them play defense in the paint, they're terrible on a fundamental level-- they give up good post position all the time, they don't box out worth a damn, they don't shift well as the ball moves. Against bad teams, they can compensate with athletic ability-- both of them can jump right out of the gym-- but against a team with a solid inside game, they get burned all the time. They give up easy shots, they get beat to rebounds, and they pick up a lot of idiotic fouls trying to block the shots that they've given up.
The guards were a little off, to be sure, but BC won this game because they dominated the lane on both ends of the floor.
Oh, definitely. They're going to lose games that Duke teams of the past decade would not have lost, because they're just not going to score points. But only great offensive teams (sadly, this probably includes Carolina) are going to score at will against Duke- everyone else is going to have trouble getting any points either.
They aren't pushing the pace like most Duke teams because they simply can't find good shots.
As BTW would point out, Duke's bad offense is only 1/2 of the story to that tempo. Other teams are having no luck finding good shots against Duke- so they play very slowly on that end of the court as well. I mean, look at that same kenpom page you linked to- #1 in the country in defensive adj. effiency, #7 in EFG%, etc.
| Chad Orzel wrote: |
| This was a good game. BC seems to have put things back together and Maryland is now not quite so confident. Just like with Georgia Tech, the freshmen are going to be up and down and the point guards who are so critical to the Terps combined for 11 points (on 4-16 shooting), 5 assists and 6 turnovers.
As usual, my take on this is a little different-- I put this mostly on poor play by the interior guys. Whenever Maryland started to make a run, BC was able to get easy inside baskets, more or less at will. |
I only saw the last part of this game, so I was basing that in part on the box score. Gist had a good statistical game. Also, I think the biggest difference between this Terps team and the last two is point guard play. Those frosh looked good against Illinois (and some other game I saw, but can't remember which). Having those PGs allows Strawberry to play on the wing and frees up space for the interior guys who aren't good enough to score if there's not a clear lane (Osby excluded - I like his game).
All that said, BC is probably a better team regardless. It's just that for Maryland to be as good as they can be, they need those PGs to keep playing well. The interior guys are going to be inconsistent on offense because honestly they aren't that good on that end.
| tieguy wrote: |
| They aren't pushing the pace like most Duke teams because they simply can't find good shots.
As BTW would point out, Duke's bad offense is only 1/2 of the story to that tempo. Other teams are having no luck finding good shots against Duke- so they play very slowly on that end of the court as well. I mean, look at that same kenpom page you linked to- #1 in the country in defensive adj. effiency, #7 in EFG%, etc. |
Yeah, I saw that. I don't think there's any question that Duke's defense is very good. I just don't like when folks quote to points-allowed as a purely defensive statistic. I know you know better, but not everyone does. I think points allowed is actually more indicative of offensive tempo than defensive ability. For an example, look at the points allowed of teams that run the Princeton offense. Now, defensive FG% is an excellent stat - much better than points allowed.
To be honest, I cited it mostly because it was the least bad stat I had to hand- I'd not realized KenPom was putting up stats pages like that this year. So thanks a lot for linking to those- they're great, only partially because they back up what I already intuited :) I'll definitely not reference points allowed ever again, or at least, as long as Ken keeps providing his stats for free ;)
I only saw the last ten mintues myself, but it looked like BC had points in the paint any time they wanted them.
Also, I think the biggest difference between this Terps team and the last two is point guard play.
I don't disagree with that. I just don't think that's as positive a statement as it might sound-- their biggest weakness last year was their bad interior game, which hasn't really improved. The point guard play will be better this year, but bad guard play wasn't the main thing holding them back last year. It didn't help anything, but fixing the guard situation will only do so much.
| tieguy wrote: |
| [Relatedly: god, I wish Big Ten Wonk would move to ACC country- I'd love to be able to see this year's Duke team compared against the rest of the ACC in a tempo-free manner.] |
I noodled around on the ACC site a bit during lunch and came up with the table below. A few notes:
1. I included all (not just conference) games since we're so early in the season.
2. The ACC web page lists VT's total points at 670. My number (based on their numbers) is 668. I used my number -- FTM(117)+2*FGM(250)+3PM(51) = 668.
3. I couldn't figure out a good way to get the tempo-free offensive statistics because it requires an O/D breakdown of opponent's rebounding, which the ACC does not provide.
4. No opponent's FT proficiency, either.
5. Additional tempo-free stats (e.g., assists per possession) may be simply calculated with the given number of possessions.
6. Big Ten Wonk calculates possessions by averaging the number of possessions for each team for each game. This will have a minor (but noticeable) impact on results, but would require more work, so I omitted it.
Here are the numbers:
Posessions Poss./G Points Opp. Pts. PPP Opp. PPP PPP Margin eFG Pct. Opp. eFG eFG Margin TO Pct. Opp. TO Pct. TO Pct. Margin FT Proficiency
Boston College 547 68.4 596 510 1.09 0.93 0.16 0.508 0.445 0.063 0.208 0.219 -0.011 0.327
Clemson 691 69.1 777 589 1.12 0.85 0.27 0.543 0.449 0.094 0.210 0.257 -0.048 0.137
Duke 648 64.8 682 516 1.05 0.80 0.26 0.537 0.405 0.132 0.264 0.253 0.011 0.362
Florida State 703 70.3 745 641 1.06 0.91 0.15 0.544 0.492 0.053 0.236 0.279 -0.043 0.232
Georgia Tech 661 73.4 753 663 1.14 1.00 0.14 0.563 0.521 0.042 0.221 0.226 -0.005 0.262
Maryland 832 75.6 869 714 1.04 0.86 0.19 0.527 0.411 0.116 0.239 0.251 -0.012 0.299
Miami 610 67.7 693 581 1.14 0.95 0.18 0.533 0.491 0.042 0.205 0.215 -0.010 0.251
NC State 538 67.2 591 529 1.10 0.98 0.12 0.553 0.487 0.066 0.186 0.193 -0.007 0.259
North Carolina 615 76.9 721 587 1.17 0.95 0.22 0.559 0.503 0.057 0.198 0.215 -0.016 0.309
Virginia 426 71.0 489 406 1.15 0.95 0.19 0.517 0.453 0.064 0.200 0.190 0.009 0.321
Virginia Tech 609 67.7 668 506 1.10 0.83 0.27 0.528 0.444 0.084 0.179 0.281 -0.102 0.224
Wake Forest 523 74.7 570 550 1.09 1.05 0.04 0.545 0.542 0.003 0.216 0.218 -0.002 0.361
If anyone wants the spreadsheet, let me know. Dave -- can you post this in a more legible manner?
| tieguy wrote: |
| Matt: can I suggest google spreadsheets? Lets you post spreadsheets publicly in a readable/usable/downloadable/editable manner. |
Does this work...?
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pf_9tAOY8EltR2X5_om1NRA
| Matt wrote: | ||
Does this work...? http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pf_9tAOY8EltR2X5_om1NRA |
That's pretty cool! And by that, I mean your numbers and Google Spreadsheets. I'd heard of GS, but hadn't seen it in action yet.
I think I will have to do a little post about these numbers.
| Dave wrote: |
| I think I will have to do a little post about these numbers. |
I think that it is very interesting that Clemson and VT are 1 and 2 in PPP margin and TO margin and 3 and 4 in eFG margin. I think, though, that this might have more to do with their opponents than anything else at this point in the season. It will be interesting to revisit these numbers in a month or so.
| Matt wrote: | ||
I think that it is very interesting that Clemson and VT are 1 and 2 in PPP margin and TO margin and 3 and 4 in eFG margin. I think, though, that this might have more to do with their opponents than anything else at this point in the season. It will be interesting to revisit these numbers in a month or so. |
I noticed that too and yes, I think opponents are a big part of that. Still, it makes VT's three losses kind of puzzling.
| John wrote: |
| Dave, please tell me who you would like Sidney Lowe to give more minutes to. There is nobody on the bench which is a well known weakness of this years wolfpack team. |
I won't claim the know the guys' names, but there are dudes sitting on the bench with uniforms on. They may suck, but they can fill in for a minute here and there. If you don't do that, teams are going to run State into the ground and the guys will wear down by the end of the year. You don't need to sit your starters too much, but you can find time here and there, maybe just before TV timeouts to maximize their rests.
http://www.scacchoops.com/forms/TeamStats.asp
I'm just getting into the tempo based stats, so I definitely plan on implementing a lot of Ken Pomeroy's stuff on my site, but also keeping it dedicated to ACC teams.
My offensive player ratings are a bit off right now, but I'm working on them.
Let me know if you have questions.
| scacchoops.com wrote: |
| Hey gang, you can check out my site for offensive and defensive efficiencies for all ACC teams...
http://www.scacchoops.com/forms/TeamStats.asp I'm just getting into the tempo based stats, so I definitely plan on implementing a lot of Ken Pomeroy's stuff on my site, but also keeping it dedicated to ACC teams. My offensive player ratings are a bit off right now, but I'm working on them. Let me know if you have questions. |
Very nice.
<br>
<br>If Albritton could be effective, like Nieman, is this year, I think Lowe would've played him, especially early in the year, to rest Atsur - I'm guessing this because Albritton did start the first game of the season as PG.</br>
<br>
<br>Once Lewadonski and Atsur are healthy, and Ferguson is eligible, we can potentially go nine deep. But right now, I just don't see where you can come up with more than six bodies, for Coach Lowe to play.</br>
| SuperJew wrote: |
| Dave, what is happening at UVA? Appalachaian State? |
Hey, the won the National Championship in football....
| SuperJew wrote: |
| Dave, what is happening at UVA? Appalachaian State? |
And Utah spanked them yesterday by 20+!
The easy answer is that the Cavs just aren't that good. Reynolds has been subpar so far and nobody else (other than Singletary) has stepped up yet.
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