CMU Numbers Recap and Individual Numbers so farWritten by: noreply@blogger.com (Rob Lowe (aka Henry Sugar))Here is the Four Factors breakdown from the game last night.
(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Xpuy4viivhI/STbjDOIwGzI/AAAAAAAAAcg/icZcRBB66dc/s400/Central+Michigan.png)
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The team's offensive and defensive efficiency were both slightly worse than the season averages. The eFG% was a little lower than one would like for MU, but not outside expectations. Furthermore, although there was a massive Free Throw Rate discrepancy, it wasn't all that surprising, considering what we said in our preview (http://marquettebasketball.blogspot.com/2008/12/marquette-looks-to-bounce-back-against.html). However, the Offensive Rebounding percentages were much, much too high for Central Michigan. Their average for the season at OR% was 32.7%, and their highest percentage before this game was 41.2%. Yeah, the Chippewas achieved a season high on OR% against Marquette. Finally, although we also predicted Marquette would be a little sloppier with the ball last night, the team was just a little too careless.
Individual Player Ratings
(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Xpuy4viivhI/STb160PePUI/AAAAAAAAAdI/zLChsXS7UGc/s400/Player+Ratings.png)
(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Xpuy4viivhI/STb160PePUI/AAAAAAAAAdI/zLChsXS7UGc/s1600-h/Player+Ratings.png)
For some reason, Pomeroy isn't putting up Individual Player Information just yet (http://kenpom.com/sr.php?team=Marquette&y=2009). I assume that it's because he's waiting for more data, but who knows? Anyways, let's get oriented on the eyechart that's above. There are three columns for each year... last year's results and then this year's results so far. The columns are Offensive Rating, Defensive Rating, and then Usage. If you're not familiar with these concepts, I recommend reading this post from last March (http://marquettebasketball.blogspot.com/2008/03/how-to-read-numbers-recaps-individual.html).
Everything has been sorted based on this year's Usage numbers from most to least. Matthews has the highest usage and Burke has the lowest. For the color shading, start first with the team offensive and defensive ratings. This year, the team has a cumulative Offensive Efficiency of 114.8 and a cumulative Defensive Efficiency of 94.0. Last year was 108.7 and 93.5, respectively. Green means that the individual player is performing better than the team average in that category. Orange means worse, and the beige means that they're right around team average.
What does this tell us? First of all, it doesn't tell us that the team is better offensively than the team was last year. However, we do get to see confirmation that:
- The Big Four are really leading the way. James, McNeal, and Matthews are all better than team averages on at least one side of the ball, and Hayward is right around team averages.
- McNeal is still dragging down the team offense with his high usage, but at least he has improved his ORtg this year
- If you want a clear indication of how much better James is playing this year so far (besides his ridiculous A:TO ratio), just look at his individual comparison vs last year
- Cubillan's defense is right around last year's numbers, but his offensive game is off from last year
- Acker too
- Jimmy Butler and Pat Hazel are both efficient offensive players with limited minutes, but their defense hurts the team
- Burke is just a giant mystery to me. He was a positive contributor to the team last year.
edit: I messed up the original picture and formatting
http://marquettebasketball.blogspot.com/2008/12/cmu-numbers-recap-and-individual.html