You can read https://csnbbs.com/thread-938771.html that I made first, second, and third teams at. I gave POY to Butler, and put Wynter on the Second Team. Hofstra's Zach Cooks, who leads in points per game, and Towson's Cameron Holden were my next two best players. I didn't favor Hofstra because I'm a fan, but I gave them two First Team and two Second Team players, which is extremely hard to do. The teams are my opinion, not my prediction.

After watching him in the Princeton game, I just don't see him as a POY candidate. His defense is very weak, especially compared to his backup, Williams. I didn't like the way that Evbuomwan was scoring on him with ease in that game. And this is not the first time I've noticed him getting exposed on defense. I'm sure he will rack up impressive PPG and rebounding numbers, and those offensive stats make him a valuable player. But those numbers don't tell the whole story of James Butler.

yeah...i love the effort he puts in especially as a rebounder. the only thing i was ever good at in basketball was rebounding so i love that about him. he's the type of player you really root for. you're right though that there are still limitations to his game with certain teams being able to really exploit them. in his defense...i think we could do a better job of putting him in positions to make plays as andy reid would say. teams won't be able to double team him if he improves his passing and we improve cutting or having a place for him to quickly unload the ball.

i'm not sure what you do about his defense other than offering a double team like other teams have done to us. butler and williams on the floor at the same time would be an interesting lineup. i'm not sure we'll ever see it given how much we like shooting threes.

one other thing i was thinking about...i'm not sure if evan's analysis is considered "analytics" since i'm not really sure what that term actually means. my understanding is there are certain stats people look at but i don't always know what those are. i guess in football it tells you whether or not to go for it on fourth down based on down and distance.

this is a good example though of the limitations. appreciate the info though evan...i'm not trying to rip you apart. you seem to watch the games and the point i'm making is we've lost sight of the importance of actually watching a game and having a feel for it. we'd love the world to be black and white with clear cut stats...and people assume medicine is like that too...but there's an art to medicine just like there's an art to sports.

(12-24-2021 11:02 AM)hiroshimacarp Wrote:  butler and williams on the floor at the same time would be an interesting lineup. i'm not sure we'll ever see it given how much we like shooting threes.

37.8 percent of your field goal attempts are threes, which is lower than the NCAA average of 38.4 percent. None of your four players with the most field goals have 30 percent of their attempts be threes. It's rare to play two guys at the same time who have under ten percent of their field goal attempts be threes. Williams has more rebounds per minute than Butler, and he has 13 blocks to Butler's 1, but .432 is a very bad field goal percentage for a guy who only shoots twos. Players who only shoot twos shoot near the basket, so their average shot distance is shorter than the average distance shooting twos by players who shoot twos and threes. Therefore players who only shoot twos should shoot them better than average. The NCAA average shooting twos is .508, but a player who only shoots twos and shoots them .508 is a bad shooter. At the end of a close game, do you want Butler for offense and Williams for defense?

Even when I watch games, I don't observe things to make an opinion of players. I use purely numbers. I'm probably not going to watch you play a whole game other than against Hofstra or if you play in the CAA Final or NCAA Tournament. I watched the last couple of minutes against Coppin State.

I don't know the definition of analytics. Sometimes it refers to statistics that fewer people know about. All games at CAA teams use StatBroadcast, which has an analytics section to statistics. I like StatBroadcast better that other in-game statistics formats, and I like that it is available after the game. Some teams use Sidearm Stats, which has one page for a team, and when a game is played it replaces the previous game. http://stats.statbroadcast.com/statmonitr/?id=367231 is for the Coppin State game.

As for your example of when to attempt a fourth down, teams can look at the conversion rate for the whole NCAA or NFL, and how their team does. A team may have too few fourth down attempts to have a significant sample just from them, but before deciding if they should attempt fourth-and-1, they can look at what percent of their runs and what percent of their attempted short passes gained at least 1 yard. I don't know if basketball has any decisions like that. Baseball and football are divided into pitches or plays, but basketbal is continuous.

I wonder how many of the awards voters will know what you know about Butler's defense. I don't know if anybody watches all 90 CAA games.

This thread got me thinking...
Are there numbers and statistics to analytically evaluate a player's defensive ability? On offense, we look at points, and rebounds, and assists. On defense, the only stats we usually see are steals and blocks. But are there any stats that show how many times a defender gets beat by the player he/she is supposed to guard. I keep on thinking back to that Princeton game, and realize that all of the times that Evbuomwan scored at will on Butler doesn't show up negatively against Butler in the box score. And that might be why he's a first team all conference player. Because he's great at racking up the common statistics. But repeating what I wrote in my first post, that doesn't tell the whole story about him.

(12-24-2021 03:16 PM)EvanJ Wrote:  

(12-24-2021 11:02 AM)hiroshimacarp Wrote:  butler and williams on the floor at the same time would be an interesting lineup. i'm not sure we'll ever see it given how much we like shooting threes.

Even when I watch games, I don't observe things to make an opinion of players. I use purely numbers. I'm probably not going to watch you play a whole game other than against Hofstra or if you play in the CAA Final or NCAA Tournament. I watched the last couple of minutes against Coppin State.

like i said...appreciate your posts and the work behind them. personally...i won't make any comments about the best players or teams in the league until i've seen them. i need to "do my own research" and this is a good example of how that can mean different things to different people...and get you into trouble.

(12-24-2021 03:16 PM)EvanJ Wrote:  

(12-24-2021 11:02 AM)hiroshimacarp Wrote:  butler and williams on the floor at the same time would be an interesting lineup. i'm not sure we'll ever see it given how much we like shooting threes.

I wonder how many of the awards voters will know what you know about Butler's defense. I don't know if anybody watches all 90 CAA games.

this college football season...i made an effort to watch games myself through the magic of dvr since we spend so many saturdays at penn state. it was time consuming especially when you want to watch your other sports like the nfl, sprint car racing, nascar racing, etc. honestly it became hard work because i had anxiety about making all the time i needed to watch them. the longer you wait...the more likely you'll find out the score which ruins it for me.

i say this because i probably wasn't giving the sports media enough credit for the amount of preparation they need to do. then again...the proliferation of analytics probably makes them lazy...and they steer their conversations towards all the drama because it doesn't require actually sitting and watching/understanding a game. some sports like nascar are ignored all together and their ignorance about them comes out when they're forced to talk about them.

i wouldn't expect anybody to watch every caa game. i would expect someone in the media who considers themselves to be an insider to at least watch a majority of the games...and certainly enough to understand what's going on beyond the box score.

(12-25-2021 08:44 PM)J.B. Wrote:  This thread got me thinking...
Are there numbers and statistics to analytically evaluate a player's defensive ability? On offense, we look at points, and rebounds, and assists. On defense, the only stats we usually see are steals and blocks. But are there any stats that show how many times a defender gets beat by the player he/she is supposed to guard. I keep on thinking back to that Princeton game, and realize that all of the times that Evbuomwan scored at will on Butler doesn't show up negatively against Butler in the box score. And that might be why he's a first team all conference player. Because he's great at racking up the common statistics. But repeating what I wrote in my first post, that doesn't tell the whole story about him.

You're right that there aren't defensive stats like that. Even if you see an open player score, that may not be sufficient to tell if he was left open to double-team somebody else, or what defender should have been there. The value of statistics is that they don't need anybody's strategy or opinion. There are basic statistics, advanced statistics, and things not measured by statistics.