[Cracked Sidewalks] UW-Madison Numbers Recap

[CrackedSidewalksSays]

UW-Madison Numbers Recap

Written by: noreply@blogger.com (Rob Lowe (aka Henry Sugar))

Good win on Saturday.  How did the numbers look?




In our game preview, we expected both teams to be worse than their season average on efficiency.  This definitely happened, but the game was very much so a defensive battle.  For Marquette, this was their worst Offensive Efficiency of the season.  However, it was also their third best defensive efficiency of the season as well, behind only Houston Baptist (80.7) and UNI (70.3).  The defense stepped up on Saturday.

Marquette lost again on eFG%, but won on the other three factors.  What was a surprise to me (and has already been covered frequently), was the advantage enjoyed by MU at Free Throw Rate and Offensive Rebounding percentage.

How did things shake out against the key recommendations from the game?

#1 - Wisconsin's Turnover Rate - Marquette needs to force UW-Madison into a higher TO% than predicted
Results - Advantage Marquette



#2 - UW-Madison's eFG% - UW-Madison makes a high percentage of threes.  Marquette is showing signs of being the perimeter defensive team they were last year.
Results - Advantage Wisconsin



#3 - Marquette's OR% - Marquette needs to grab as many offensive rebounds as possible.
Results - Advantage Marquette



Therefore, in two of the top three keys to the game, Marquette came out ahead, including the most important key (forcing turnovers).

Finally, no individual player ratings this game.  McNeal obviously ended up with the best "net" contributions, and the only other net positive players were Acker and James.  However, this is clearly an area where the current set of information that's available makes it difficult to quantify a player's impact on the game.  We need look no further than Dwight Burke.  Going straight from the box score, Burke had the worst line of the night.  But that's because the box score doesn't capture the defense that he played on Landry the entire night.  As much as a stat-head as I am, I will be honest on the shortcomings of the current available data and tools for analysis.

Again, good win on Saturday.  Good for the team, fans, and coaching staff.  Best of luck to all students, especially the players, on finals this week.

http://marquettebasketball.blogspot.com/2008/12/uw-madison-numbers-recap.html

[Pardner]

Henry--you touched on FT Rate.  Fact is, MU is really improved (so far, it is still early) in this area and it is one that Buzz has been emphasizing.  Consider this:

• On the offensive side, MU ranks 8th nationally on FT Rate, up from 126th last year.  That is 27.1 FT's/game vs. 20.7
• Defensively, MU ranked a horrid 262nd in FT Rate last year vs. 166th this year.  A drop of 23.1 to 20.1

The difference is a total of 9.3 potential points in MU's favor, or at a 70% clip, that is 6.5 points, on average.  Considering UW made more FG's and treys than MU, this was the difference in the game.  Probability wise, Buzz would prefer that MU shoot the higher % FT's vs.the lower % FG. 

Let's see if that holds post-Cupcake, but it is encouraging.

[Henry Sugar]

Pardner,

Thanks for the additional perspective.  I agree that the FTR numbers are certainly very encouraging and a welcome change from last year.  FTR has been a beef of mine for a while.  I even did a whole CS article questioning the defensive strategy of going for steals.

My problem is that I've gone back and forth on FTR a number of times as I slice and dice the numbers in various ways.  According to the last regression I ran, FTR wasn't statistically significant for either Marquette's Offensive or Defensive efficiency.

Right now, the numbers are saying that we're doing a better job of getting to the line and stopping our opponent from getting to the line, but it doesn't really matter.  Of course, this is based on a regression of only 8 games, so take it for what it's worth. 

[Pardner]

Thanks for your stats Henry...the old "degrees of freedom" problem    I can see why FT rate doesn't pop up in a regression as a causal after so many cupcakes.  But, I like our relative national rankings on these stats this early in the season.  If they hold in the BE where FT's decide games--especially if we can do it on the road--we will be in good shape.   I think we are all still absorbing Buzz's offensive and defensive schemes--but he has stated this as an intended outcome so it is good to see it happen against a team like UW.