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Pomeroy

SeanMayTriedToEatMe said:
Oddly, Duke’s worst team stat by far is offensive block%. Don’t understand why this team gets blocked so much. Might be a bit fluky, and if there is some regression, it should be pretty impactful - blocks turn into fouls and free throws instead.
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It seems like Flip, Mitchell, and McCain all get blocked at the rim a lot. Flip sometimes forces shots at the rim. Mitchell doesn't always have good lift. And McCain is just small.
 
Much has been made by butthurt Duke fans here about UNC’s elite 3pt defense this season, so I looked into this in an effort to validate Hubert Davis’s coaching and debunk the theory that UNC is simply getting lucky in opponent 3pt% thus far.

To be fair to UNC while staying within Coach Davis’s tenure on their coaching staff, I went back to UNC’s national runner-up season of 2016 and stopped there, which would also include their national title season of 2017. Since 2016, UNC has ended the season ranked anywhere from #105 to #315 in 3pt% allowed.

If UNC this season were merely allowing the lowest 3pt% they’ve allowed since 2016 in terms of national ranking (#105), they would be allowing 31.9% 3pt. Coach Davis has coached these young men up to allow only 28.8% 3pt thus far. Even if we dubiously adjust this to 31.9%, UNC would have allowed only 13 additional 3s this season, which roughly translates to 39 additional points.

However, we must keep in mind UNC has been extremely unlucky in opponent FT% this season, allowing 74.4% (#313), when the national median is 71.1%. If we adjust for 3pt% allowed, we should be fair and adjust for FT% allowed as well to get a more comprehensive picture of Coach Davis’s defensive brilliance. UNC would have allowed 9 fewer made FTs thus far if their opponents shot at the national median level from the line.

Adjusting for both 3pt% and FT% allowed in this manner, we can roughly conclude that this UNC machine would have allowed 30 more points to date. UNC has played 1150 total defensive possessions, based on their average possessions per game of 71.9 (using Kenpom). Allowing 30 more points over 1150 possessions equates to allowing 2.6 more points per 100 possessions.

Using Kenpom’s numbers, this would roughly bring UNC’s defensive efficiency to 94.3, or #17 in the country, and UNC’s net efficiency margin to +23.3, or #12 in the country, only 2 spots behind their historical ACC rival, Duke. Without these adjustments, Coach Davis of course has his Tar Heels at #5 defensively and #6 overall.

In summary, UNC is the best team in college basketball right now.
 



This isn't even being done widely in the NBA yet, so college is probably a long way off. Then again, college has the single bonus and much worse FT shooters at the bottom of the range, so it's possible that this will be a prominent strategy at the college level before the NBA despite painful inertia in college coaching. But no college coach takes advantage of the single bonus at all currently, which is ridiculous, so who knows.
 
It's funny because basketball gamers have been abusing that single bonus for decades in close games because fouls are deflated in video games. Most of the time, you'll enter the closing minutes of a tight game with like six fouls to give. The one and one window is always the sweet spot to steal points off the deficit because we'd engineer fouls on the center in that 5-7 foul range.

I always thought of this as a video game glitch rather than a real world strategy because of how rarely you're in the single bonus late in games that matter.
 
With a 1 and 1, with a 60% FT shooter your expected points allowed is .96. Which is better than probably your actual expected PPPA pf around 1 to 1.1 depending on how good your defense is and how good their offense is. But that doesn't even take into account of chances they have to grab a missed rebound, if you assuming even a 15-20% chance of an offensive rebound that pretty much evens the odds that there is no net advantage to forcing a 1 and 1 on purpose instead of just playing straight up defense.. So I don't know if its worth it to do it on purpose unless you are in a must foul situation anyway.
 
There’s an important benefit of getting a final possession on offense if you foul. At best, it’s an entire extra possession, like getting 20 seconds instead of being at the mercy of Austin Rivers taking a 3 with zero time left or some fool taking a 2 and sending the game to OT with zero time left. At worst, it’s a little more time to work with. The most common result is probably having something like 15 seconds instead of 5 seconds, which is significant in college with no halfcourt inbounds after timeouts.
 
Fell right in line with kenpom.

83-69 vs 84-70 and O stayed at 11, D at 37. Moved up to 12.

We suck.
 
aiw said:
Fell right in line with kenpom.

83-69 vs 84-70 and O stayed at 11, D at 37. Moved up to 12.

We suck.
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I don't think we know how good we are. We haven't played a healthy game since the Pitt road game.

After that game our O/D splits were 8/14. I think that's more reflective of what the healthy version of this team is. The Kenpom results are absolutely meaningless to me unless you tell me that we're going to be missing one key player for at least half a game every game from here on out.
 
Offense improves by 0.4 for scoring 84 against Carolina
Defense goes down by 0.6 for giving up 93 to Carolina.
Still 14th in KenPom as we were before our game tonight.
 
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