At various points in this young season, I've thought that it was time for Alstork, Frazier, Kipper and Williams to move to the back of the line for playing time. So far, I've been wrong every time. I guess maybe the coach gets this better than I do.
RE: Alstork
Did you even watch last night's game? He's one of the best, if not the best defender on the team and knocked down clutch 3s and free throws near the end of the game. Everyone is still getting a feel for this offense and how they contribute.
When will Aaron Jordan and Kipper Nichols be in the starting rotation????? They have been major contributors the whole season and the team does better when they are on the floor. Its time for Alstork to take a back seat. He is mid major talent and is playing like it.
Playing starter minutes>starting.
Also Alstork locked down the quickest pg in the league last night for long stretches and backed it up by hitting huge shots on O. His mistakes have been made from being too unselfish. He was one of our top 2 players last night, on a team full of players originally recruited for high major basketball. Stop. :hand:
DW was on Cowan half the time...but MA did do a great job last night+1000. Alstork is the only reason Cowan didn't destroy us in the 2nd half too.
Mark and Trent need to curtail their selection and their conversion rates will go up. They take some deep, unnecessary 3s.
Love the stats Townie. I was wondering if maybe you could filter out the cupcakes, once we play a few more "real" games. For example, after the Mizzou game could you just provide the stats for WF, MD, NW, UNLV, and Mizzou?
RE: Alstork and defense
Advanced analytics still have a really hard time quantifying the effect that players have on the defensive end. Defensive win shares is one of the better defensive stats available for CBB, but even that only takes into account minutes played, defensive rebounds, steals, and blocks. So much of what a good defender does isn't included in that calculation.
Take Alstork's great defensive performance against Cowan. How many times did that include a steal, block, or rebound? Hardly ever. Instead, his defense forced Cowan to give up the ball or take bad shots, which doesn't end up in the box-score.
IMO the best defensive stat is Plus-Minus, which is the scoring differential while a player is in the game (Real Plus-Minus is actually even better). This obviously takes offense into account as well, but points allowed while you're on the court is ultimately what wins or loses games.
The problem with Plus-Minus is that is requires pretty advanced score-keeping, since you need to keep track who was on the floor for every point scored. To my knowledge, that data isn't publicly available. Programs pay statistical services for analysis like that, so I'm almost positive our staff has access to those stats.
Say you have a coach or manager keep track of what you would consider “forced bad shots” or “forced (tough) passes + steals/blocks/rebounds/deflections.
How could you combine those into one defensive metric? Asking for a friend.
The problem there is that you're introducing subjectivity into the metric. What is a bad shot? What is a bad pass? Reasonable people will disagree.
I get that but if you’re only doing it for your team I think subjectivity matters less. I get that analytics is about objective numbers painting a picture etc but I don’t want it generalized for comparison, just for my team.
Do you think something like
(forced bad pass+Forced bad shot+steals+deflections+Defensive rebounds+Forced TOs+charges taken)/minutes played
Could give you a good indication? Or change (minutes played) to (defensive possessions). I can literally everything in bold from a hudl breakdown after a game and if I had a simple equation to evaluate from i think it would be really interesting.
Deflections, charges taken, forced TOs would definitely be a good additions. I'd also include blocks. You'd want to make sure you're not weighting things toward guards or forwards too much.
This is just my opinion (I'm no Bill James), but I wouldn't include subjective measures in a metric. IMO, objective measurements + subjective insights from watching games = good analysis.
I didn't get to see the Maryland game, but just going by Cowan's stats it seems like maybe he had a great game even though he was "locked down" for long stretches by our best defender. I would LOVE to see the +/- chart for the whole season and one that just includes the more difficult games. When I look at our stats for the season, Alstork is just a middle of the pack player with Kipper and Aaron playing less minutes and contributing more points, better field goal percentage and more rebounds for Kipper and Aaron only 4 behind Alstork. All I am saying is that Kipper and Aaron should be playing more than Alstork. If Alstrok is so indispensable, then let him play the point or something more often. His assist to turnover ratio is good and he may be worth more there anyway.
I am just tired of watching these mid-major guys come in to Illinois when they finish at a weaker school and fade when the schedule gets tough. It feels like a few years in a row now. The only difference is that this year we have a mid-major guy who hasn't even done all that well against the non-conference teams either.
Is there a place to go to find a +/- chart for each game? I am wasting too much time trying to find one.
When will Aaron Jordan and Kipper Nichols be in the starting rotation????? They have been major contributors the whole season and the team does better when they are on the floor. Its time for Alstork to take a back seat. He is mid major talent and is playing like it.
Deflections, charges taken, forced TOs would definitely be a good additions. I'd also include blocks. You'd want to make sure you're not weighting things toward guards or forwards too much.
This is just my opinion (I'm no Bill James), but I wouldn't include subjective measures in a metric. IMO, objective measurements + subjective insights from watching games = good analysis.