Wednesday, May 31, 2006
STAT OF THE DAY: STEALS PER MINUTE
From 2006 PL Play:
@ 4:17 PM 3 HC Alums are angry about this post | Bitch about it on the PL hoops messageboard 
From 2006 PL Play:
@ 4:17 PM 3 HC Alums are angry about this post | Bitch about it on the PL hoops messageboard
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
DADDY LEFT FOR CIGARETTES AND NEVER CAME BACK
Did you miss me? I missed you.
Many apologies for the hiatus, I assure you it was as unexpected to me as it was to you. After a number of exciting and rewarding journeys across our United States, your PL blogger has returned for good. Try not to get too emotional.
A lot of things have happened since I left, so let's get to them first.
1) Bucknell - Another great PL tournament performance that translated into their 2nd NCAA tournament win in two years, which gives them two more victories in the big dance than AU and Army have appearances. Kevin Bettencourt may go play pro for a while, but if he needs something to do after he is done with basketball, the mayoral job in Lewisburg is his.
2) Holy Cross - Has to be a disappointment for Kevin Hamilton to get beat by Bucknell twice in two years, but them's the breaks. Hamilton, who ranked as the #1 player in the league in my PL player ratings for the second straight year (more on that later) was bouyed by Keith Simmons, who continued to play so well it makes Ralph Willard look extra crazy for not giving him more minutes in the 04-05 campaign.
3) Everyone else - Most teams did not overachieve last year, with neither AU or Lehigh able to make the leap into the top tier of the league, Navy unable to follow up on the late success of last year, Army being Army, and CU and Lafayette regressing somewhat. As it was in 2005, the story of the PL in 2006 was of Bucknell and Holy Cross. No serious observer would put any of the other teams in their category last year.
I BROUGHT PRESENTS FROM MY TRIP
Let's get down to the one thing I can offer that other guys can't: Nerdy computer junk. As mentioned above, Kevin Hamilton ranked #1 yet again in my PL player rankings (for which you can get explanations here and here, and which are only for the 14 league games). These rankings aren't perfect, but they do a good job approximating the value of each player given what we can measure about them. Here's the top ten:
You'll notice that four of the five HC starters made the list, with three of them in the top four-- very impressive. The ranking system rewards taking care of the ball, rebounding, and taking high percentage shots, something HC did very well last year. Clifford's rebounding prowess and high shooting percentage put him here.
But the real outlier of stats this year was Keith Simmons, who ought to be the preseason player of the year for 2007. Most impressively, Simmons shot at a 59% tilt in PL play, far beyond anyone else who played significant minutes. While Chris McNaughton's excellent shooting percentage has been talked up, Simmons shot 9% better than him, including a ridiculous 51% on the 56 treys he attempted. Shooting more than 50% from outside the arc is a feat only AU freshmen Derrick Mercer and Garrison Carr could replicate this year. However, neither of them shot as well from inside the arc, or had near the shot attempts of Simmons.
One stat I've used in the past (link) to evaluate who ought to be getting more shots or taking fewer shots the kind of unsane offensive PL campaign Simmons had. We take the percentage of team shots he took and multiply by the team shot percentage to get an idea of how many points we could expect if he was an average offensive player on his team.
Simmons is almost off the chart-- while other guys are overperforming at the rate of 10-20 points (still an impressive margin given we are only talking about 14 games here), Simmons scored 50 more points than the average offensive player on HC could have expected to score given his shots taken. Part of that is becuase HC was not a great offensive team, and part of it is that Simmons is just really good.
Above is the chart of the opposite. Notable here are Torey Thomas and Andre Ingram. Thomas has never had very good offensive numbers, but makes up for it with good rebounding and assist numbers, while Ingram was stuck bearing the load on a freshman-heavy team trying to create his own shot much of the time, which you can see did not work so well. It's to Ingram's credit that he kept trying to get his shots in, even when it was apparent that he wasn't going to put up the numbers he hoped for, as it wasn't fair to put the impetus on the rest of the inexperienced team.
GRADUATING COLLEGE SUCKS
Twenty PL players who played significant minutes will not be with us next year. Lehigh, Holy Cross, and Bucknell are hit hardest, as they will lose significant offensive and rebounding options. Here's the chart of how many of their team's shots Seniors took last year:
Joe Knight, Kevin Bettencourt, Charles Lee, Kevin Hamilton, Alvin Reed and Andrei Capusan were all major contributors to their teams' offenses. Replacements are in place for many of those players (I'm looking your way John Ford Griffin), but as AU learned the hard way last year, you can't just plug guys in and expect them to perform immediately.
As you can see, Bucknell and Lehigh are losing ~40% of their shot attempts to graduation, while Colgate, HC, and Lafayette are around 30%. Lehigh is in for even more trouble, as their rebounding will suffer as well:
With 40% of their offense and rebounding leaving this year, Lehigh will have to make serious adjustments (like maybe putting Jason Mbegroff in touch with Jared) to be competitive in league play.
More later. This time I mean it. We're back in business. @ 10:05 AM 1 HC Alums are angry about this post | Bitch about it on the PL hoops messageboard
Did you miss me? I missed you.
Many apologies for the hiatus, I assure you it was as unexpected to me as it was to you. After a number of exciting and rewarding journeys across our United States, your PL blogger has returned for good. Try not to get too emotional.
A lot of things have happened since I left, so let's get to them first.
1) Bucknell - Another great PL tournament performance that translated into their 2nd NCAA tournament win in two years, which gives them two more victories in the big dance than AU and Army have appearances. Kevin Bettencourt may go play pro for a while, but if he needs something to do after he is done with basketball, the mayoral job in Lewisburg is his.
2) Holy Cross - Has to be a disappointment for Kevin Hamilton to get beat by Bucknell twice in two years, but them's the breaks. Hamilton, who ranked as the #1 player in the league in my PL player ratings for the second straight year (more on that later) was bouyed by Keith Simmons, who continued to play so well it makes Ralph Willard look extra crazy for not giving him more minutes in the 04-05 campaign.
3) Everyone else - Most teams did not overachieve last year, with neither AU or Lehigh able to make the leap into the top tier of the league, Navy unable to follow up on the late success of last year, Army being Army, and CU and Lafayette regressing somewhat. As it was in 2005, the story of the PL in 2006 was of Bucknell and Holy Cross. No serious observer would put any of the other teams in their category last year.
I BROUGHT PRESENTS FROM MY TRIP
Let's get down to the one thing I can offer that other guys can't: Nerdy computer junk. As mentioned above, Kevin Hamilton ranked #1 yet again in my PL player rankings (for which you can get explanations here and here, and which are only for the 14 league games). These rankings aren't perfect, but they do a good job approximating the value of each player given what we can measure about them. Here's the top ten:
You'll notice that four of the five HC starters made the list, with three of them in the top four-- very impressive. The ranking system rewards taking care of the ball, rebounding, and taking high percentage shots, something HC did very well last year. Clifford's rebounding prowess and high shooting percentage put him here.
But the real outlier of stats this year was Keith Simmons, who ought to be the preseason player of the year for 2007. Most impressively, Simmons shot at a 59% tilt in PL play, far beyond anyone else who played significant minutes. While Chris McNaughton's excellent shooting percentage has been talked up, Simmons shot 9% better than him, including a ridiculous 51% on the 56 treys he attempted. Shooting more than 50% from outside the arc is a feat only AU freshmen Derrick Mercer and Garrison Carr could replicate this year. However, neither of them shot as well from inside the arc, or had near the shot attempts of Simmons.
One stat I've used in the past (link) to evaluate who ought to be getting more shots or taking fewer shots the kind of unsane offensive PL campaign Simmons had. We take the percentage of team shots he took and multiply by the team shot percentage to get an idea of how many points we could expect if he was an average offensive player on his team.
Simmons is almost off the chart-- while other guys are overperforming at the rate of 10-20 points (still an impressive margin given we are only talking about 14 games here), Simmons scored 50 more points than the average offensive player on HC could have expected to score given his shots taken. Part of that is becuase HC was not a great offensive team, and part of it is that Simmons is just really good.
Above is the chart of the opposite. Notable here are Torey Thomas and Andre Ingram. Thomas has never had very good offensive numbers, but makes up for it with good rebounding and assist numbers, while Ingram was stuck bearing the load on a freshman-heavy team trying to create his own shot much of the time, which you can see did not work so well. It's to Ingram's credit that he kept trying to get his shots in, even when it was apparent that he wasn't going to put up the numbers he hoped for, as it wasn't fair to put the impetus on the rest of the inexperienced team.
GRADUATING COLLEGE SUCKS
Twenty PL players who played significant minutes will not be with us next year. Lehigh, Holy Cross, and Bucknell are hit hardest, as they will lose significant offensive and rebounding options. Here's the chart of how many of their team's shots Seniors took last year:
Joe Knight, Kevin Bettencourt, Charles Lee, Kevin Hamilton, Alvin Reed and Andrei Capusan were all major contributors to their teams' offenses. Replacements are in place for many of those players (I'm looking your way John Ford Griffin), but as AU learned the hard way last year, you can't just plug guys in and expect them to perform immediately.
As you can see, Bucknell and Lehigh are losing ~40% of their shot attempts to graduation, while Colgate, HC, and Lafayette are around 30%. Lehigh is in for even more trouble, as their rebounding will suffer as well:
With 40% of their offense and rebounding leaving this year, Lehigh will have to make serious adjustments (like maybe putting Jason Mbegroff in touch with Jared) to be competitive in league play.
More later. This time I mean it. We're back in business. @ 10:05 AM 1 HC Alums are angry about this post | Bitch about it on the PL hoops messageboard
