Yea I gotta go with Kedsy on this one...give me Craft, the dude is by far the best on ball defender in the country and makes opposing guards miserable, he has that leadership value, tenacity and heart plus the ability to back it up.
All those clamoring for this athletic wing forget that we have one who didn't get minutes this year...I don't think Mike grasped the offense well and looked lost at time, no way IMO was it talent, in the few minutes he got he showed all those abilities people are saying we need sooo badly, that nasty put back against Penn, his base line cut for the dunk against BC, he actually slashed to the basketball quite well whether it be to crash the boards or just open up lanes for passers...he shot 55% from the field and 40% from 3....I'll always be in the camp that says him and Cook should've played more being that they'll be big parts of what we're building towards.
Those asking for a big guy...Mason was a man down low and had a hell of a year, he had some up and downs but was definitely solid for us...more than held his own against Sully and Thomas Robinson...and he became pretty serviceable at the FT stripe towards the end of the season...
I don't know why you would say that most of our season stats are sort of poor. We were very good, but not great, in essentially every offensive category. We shot 37.1% from 3, 51% from 2, turned the ball over on only 17.6% of our possessions, rebounded 35% of our misses, and got to the line extremely well (free throw rate (FTA/FGA) of 45.1%). The only two things we didn't really do well was make free throws once we got to the line (just 70.1%) and generate baskets off of assists (48.4%, although this doesn't have a strong correlation with offensive production). Before March, we had only one game where we scored less than 1 point per possession (Ohio State) and on the season had more games above 1.15 (12) than 1.05 or below (10). We unfortunately finished with a four-game stretch of some of our worst offensive performances of the season - against UNC (3rd worst), VT (6th worst), FSU (worst), and Lehigh (8th worst).
Last edited by pfrduke; 03-26-2012 at 02:23 PM.
Just be you. You is enough. - K, 4/5/10, 0:13.8 to play, 60-59 Duke.
You're all jealous hypocrites. - Titus on Laettner
You see those guys? Animals. They're animals. - SIU Coach Chris Lowery, on Duke
Pomeroy. We were top 5 most of the year. Going into the ACC tournament we were ranked 4th nationally. Obviously playing without Ryan Kelly hurt our offensive efficiency and we are currently 11th nationally.
I'm assuming that Kedsy is using Pomeroy's efficiency ratings for his statement. According to Pomeroy, we were among the top 5 most efficient offenses in the country until the final couple of weeks (beginning probably with the VT game at home). Even with the bad stretch run, we were the #11 most efficient offense in the country.
Offensive performance can be looked at as, essentially, how efficiently do you score points (i.e., in a given possession, how many points are you likely to score). There are essentially four ways a possession can end - a made field goal, a missed shot (FG or FT) with a defensive rebound, a turnover, or a made free throw. The better you are at ending possessions with points, the higher you'll rank. This season, we ended possessions, on average, by scoring 1.12 points - 13th in the country.* Prior to the slide in March, we ranked even higher. Even so, a top 13 offense is very good.
Of course, there are a variety of different ways to avoid possessions ending, which is how different looking offenses can result in similar productivity. Mirroring the four ways a possession ends, there are essentially four factors by which you can increase efficiency - shooting (converting field goal attempts into points), offensive rebounding (extending possessions for multiple chances to score), avoiding turnovers (more possessions ending with shots rather than turnovers), and getting to the line. Those four factors control how effective your offense is. You'll note, as an aside, that assists are not included here. Kentucky, the 2nd best offense in the country, had an atrocious A/FG performance (as did we). UC-Irvine, which got assists on nearly 64% of their baskets, had a terrible offense.
It's very rare that teams are good at all four of these - Missouri, for example, had the most efficient offense in the land, and it was driven entirely by shooting well (they were the best shooting team in the country) and avoiding turnovers (3rd best in the country). They were a poor offensive rebounding team and only middling at getting to the line. UNC, which finished pretty much where we did on efficiency, shot poorly (142nd in the country), but made up for it with killer offensive rebounding (10th best in the country). We finished no lower than 68th (which means we were in the top 20% in the country) in all of the four factors - 39th in shooting, 38th in avoiding turnovers, 68th in offensive rebounding, and 13th in getting to the line. Being that highly rated across the board is rare - of the teams that had more efficient offenses than we did, only Kentucky finished in the top 100 in every category. We didn't really excel in one particular thing (other than getting to the line, where, as you note, we didn't convert as often as we would have liked), but we weren't weak in one particular thing either - it was relatively hard to turn us over, relatively hard to make us miss, and relatively hard to keep us off the glass.
As to the numbers you point out, raw fg% is less informative than effective field goal% (where we finished 39th), because the latter gives credit for the extra point from the 3. Our raw turnover numbers look worse because we play at a higher pace than most teams. I'm not sure why our raw offensive rebounds are so low (maybe attributable to good shooting), but we gathered 35% of available offensive rebounds, which is pretty good. Again, we didn't do anything great, but we were very effective across the board, which led to our scoring more frequently every time we had the ball than the vast majority of teams.
*this is often defined as a "rating" (specifically, an offensive efficiency "rating") but it's really just a narrative stat that has no subjectivity involved - we had 2362 possessions on the season, and scored 2642 points. Pomeroy "adjusts" this raw number for strength of schedule - per that adjustment, he concludes that our efficiency would have been higher had we played an "average" schedule, and we rank 11th, rather than 13th, in adjusted efficiency.
Just be you. You is enough. - K, 4/5/10, 0:13.8 to play, 60-59 Duke.
You're all jealous hypocrites. - Titus on Laettner
You see those guys? Animals. They're animals. - SIU Coach Chris Lowery, on Duke
Check out Rasheed, Shabazz, Amile and others in the Powerade Jam Fest right now on ESPN2....
Thanks for the reply. I have often looked at eFG% with respect to individual players but never at the team as a whole. Kinda silly in hindsightn
I have to admit that I'm more than a little surprised that our o-rebounding rate was so high. Not that I think the Plumlees are bad rebounders (just the opposite in fact), but 35% seems crazy high.
Oriakhi officially released from scholly, has been in contact with UK and UNC but will not be considering Duke...word floating around twitter
Source:
Kevin Duffy @KevinRDuffy
#UConn's Alex Oriakhi has officially been released from scholarship, school spokesperson says
Kevin Duffy @KevinRDuffy
Kentucky and North Carolina among schools to contact Oriakhi since release, source says. Oriakhi will not consider Duke
https://twitter.com/#!/KevinRDuffy
Duke isn't interested. He's obviously got some baggage.