Originally Posted by
Kedsy
Great stuff, Tommy. I'd been most interested in the cumulative stop chart, but it seems half the team is within 1% of the team average. And two more guys are 2% above average (Austin and Josh). Mason is 3% below average. Miles 4% above average, and Michael is a whopping 6% below average.
Does it mean anything? Well, for starters, you've been touting Miles as our best defensive player, and these numbers bear that out. I'm surprised at Mason's low stop percentage but I'm not sure what to make of it. And Michael's subpar number is attention-grabbing. For someone we were hoping would carve out a niche as a plus defender, the numbers seem to support the idea that he's just not ready yet as a freshman. Combine his low stop percentage with his somewhat raw offense, and it's easy to see why Coach K hasn't been playing Michael very much lately (well, that and his recent cold).
As far as the other cumulative table, there's a lot of information, some of it conflicting, so it's difficult to draw firm conclusions. It would seem that Seth and Austin are playing decent defense, Andre is a mixed bag, and Tyler and Quinn are having trouble staying in front of their man. One thought that occurred to me is perhaps we're closer to decent perimeter defense than I thought. If we can contain the opposing point, we might be OK, because everything else seems to work. Not sure how we can get there, though. As some of us have hypothesized, maybe we should consider putting Austin on the point on D, although if we try that we can't have him teamed with two shortish guys (i.e., Seth, Tyler, Quinn -- only one of them can play when Austin guards the opposing point). Also, despite his numbers, I still believe Michael can be effective in short bursts guarding the opposing PG, although I doubt he gets more than 5 minutes a game going forward.
We did seem to exhibit more defensive energy against Clemson. Hopefully this trend will continue, because the more time marches on, the less likely we are to solve our defensive problems in a satisfactory manner.
Thanks again, Tommy, for your hard work.