Some interesting 2014-2015 stats from the NCAA here.

Highlights:

• In the CAA, Tribe was near the top of most offensive categories, as would have been expected. Obvious exception: Offensive rebounding, where we were dead last.
• Tribe was 2d in defensive rebounding, which surprised me.
• And 2d in blocked shots, which shocked me.
• 7th in free throws attempted, but second in FT's made. That's free money there.
• 3-pt defense: 6th in the league, right behind Northeastern. This really surprised me. I had been pretty Rocconian in my view of the 3 pt defense--I thought we would fare much worse in the stats.
• And finally, what a special player we have coming back in Terry Tarpey: 2nd in Assist-to-Turnover Ratio, 2nd in blocks per game, 1st in defensive rebounds per game, 1st in overall rpg, 6th in FT% (and we all know that story), 1st in steals per game. Wow!!
  

When I get a chance, I'm going to try to chart billymac's theory on the lack of bench scoring in the final part of the season. I have a hunch he's right and that there's a strong connection to wins and losses.

Anyway, onward!

Got Ribe!

"When I get a chance, I'm going to try to chart billymac's theory on the lack of bench scoring in the final part of the season. I have a hunch he's right and that there's a strong connection to wins and losses."

Haven't you heard of baseball season?

My Intimidator's (local minor league team) start a week from Thursday.

This will keep me busy until Labor Day.

Play Ball!

(03-28-2015 08:03 AM)NC Tribe Wrote:  "When I get a chance, I'm going to try to chart billymac's theory on the lack of bench scoring in the final part of the season. I have a hunch he's right and that there's a strong connection to wins and losses."

Haven't you heard of baseball season?

My Intimidator's (local minor league team) start a week from Thursday.

This will keep me busy until Labor Day.

Play Ball!

I'll be charting billymac as I watch Mookie Betts lead off for the Red Sox!

(03-28-2015 09:04 AM)Got Ribe Wrote:  

(03-28-2015 08:03 AM)NC Tribe Wrote:  "When I get a chance, I'm going to try to chart billymac's theory on the lack of bench scoring in the final part of the season. I have a hunch he's right and that there's a strong connection to wins and losses."

Haven't you heard of baseball season?

My Intimidator's (local minor league team) start a week from Thursday.

This will keep me busy until Labor Day.

Play Ball!

I'll be charting billymac as I watch Mookie Betts lead off for the Red Sox!

And watch big popi take a bat to a dugout phone after he is told to stay in the batter's box ...haha...sorry could not resist..
Go Os...

I'm not surprised by the 2nd in blocked shots. Tarpey, Omar, Daniel, and Marcus were all good shot blockers this year. I've said it before, but one of the strengths of our defense was having a nose for the ball, which led to steals where we jumped passing lanes and shots blocked that our opponents did not expect. Think about Dixon's shot block on Eatherton at the end of our home game against them. On paper you would not expect that result, but it was not out of character for our team. I think we may see similar results next year with Tot and Malinowski.

I would love to see a breakdown of our defensive numbers before and after Dixon got hurt. I think we were at least an average defensive team and maybe above average prior to his injury, and a bad defensive team after. Dixon's injury forced us to play a lot of zone and we got crushed by good shooting teams.

I think billymac is right on, but I'd also like to see the minutes played numbers for our starters vs. bench, not including the center position. Even Greg lost time the closer we got to the end of the season. The bench was a big strength for us in the middle of the season, and we went away from it at the end. I felt like the freshmen didn't necessarily play worse, but they were on a much shorter leash and they were tight because of that. Earlier in the season they were allowed to play through some mistakes, but that didn't happen later.

I should clarify, I think that billymac is right that our bench scoring dropped off, but I bet that their per-minute scoring was about the same. The big difference was the number of minutes, not the production during those minutes.

For the sake of this discussion, here is part of what I wrote back in the TULSA thread. This includes the part about the bench scoring:


My opinion was that at the end of the season, our biggest problem (other than a lack of defense) was that our bench just flat out disappeared. That disappearance led to a lot of the other problems we encountered. The production we had gotten earlier just dried up when the bright lights came on (end of the season, playoffs, tourney).
The shooters, coming off the bench, lost that touch of earlier in the season and the defenders did not defend as well as was needed. That was never more evident than in the Hofstra game, when we got only 36 minutes of bench help and the entire group went a total of 1 for 1, 2 points, from the field for the whole game. That was mostly because no one, who played coming off the bench, ever looked like they were really comfortable out there. That put more pressure on the starters to play extended minutes, especially critical in a tournament situation. The results were evident the next night.

In the last four contests of the year, the Tribe bench supplied a total of 170 minutes of game time out of a possible 850 minutes (10 minutes of OT). In that time they scored 29 total points. To make matters worse, 15 of those points were by Tom Schalk (in 65 minutes of playing time), so the youngsters scored 14 points over 4 games, or 3.5 points per game (or .13 points per minute played). Your bench accumulating 3.5 ppg (0.13 ppm) won't cut it very often.

You can chalk a lot of the end of the season bench slump up to youth, inexperience and hitting the proverbial "freshman wall", but it is still a concern.

The youth and inexperience thing may be our biggest concern again next season. We are still going to be very young.
Again, in my opinion, Tot and Schlotman have to get better at running the offense and seeing the floor, Malinowski and Burchfield have to get better on D and Whitman has got to get some confidence...and about 15 more pounds.




I have added the points per minute that TiTB mentioned to the above. It is still not pretty, anyway you look at it.

The silver lining here is that Freshmen Do become Sophomores and tend to have more confidence than they did in year one, but to continue our upward trek, that really does need to happen.

.

The unspoken factor here is how Dixon's injury the final month distorted everything.

More pressure on bench, different combinations and substutution patterns with him either out or hobbling.. Plus we lost his great defense even when he could play as his lateral and stop/start movement was hindered greatly.

I'm more concerned about problems at center final month when play and production at that position eroded badly. Either or both of two things must occur next season: (a) Whitman
must step up from a charge under his rear end set by Tony and play like the 3-star recruit
he was, and (b) Sheldon has to improve his play around the basket...better positioning, better
blocking out, offensive aggressiveness.

A third option there is a long, long longshot...Seacat can play and contribute as a freshman. Very doubtful to say the least.

I believe this year's freshmen and redhirt freshmen were very talented and one or two will step forward as excellent players.