Charting Our Defense: Wake Forest

[tommy]

Those of you guys interested in this charting probably know by now the legend that I use in these tables. If not, or if you haven't seen this before, refer to one of the earlier "Charting our Defense" threads for a full description of what all this means. I just didn't want to continue to post the legend, because it's long, and continue to clog up my post with it.

I also again wanted to let you guys know that defensive charting of a different sort will soon be posted on Airowe's blog, dukehoopblog.com. It will include some formulas conceived by experts to measure things like defensive efficiency, defensive rating, and the like, that are based on a lot of the numbers that I am putting together here on DBR, but will not include other numbers that I'm charting, like staying in front of your man, help, ball denial, etc. Both types of charting have value, in my opinion. One or the other may be more to your liking, or you may also enjoy both.

As for the Wake game, upon re-watching it closely, I have to say, the Deacons were really pretty bad offensively. They just didn't require us to work very hard to defend them. They didn't even try to take us off the dribble very often, they didn't post, their screen/roll game was half-hearted. We didn't have to help out that often because our primary defender was almost always able to handle his own man. Maybe it's a sign of our improving defense, but it seemed to me more like Wake just didn't have the personnel to challenge us defensively. When I was growing up playing ball, the best coaches always told me to "make yourself hard to guard." Meaning move without the ball, post hard, that kind of thing. Wake didn't do that. They were easyto guard.

I'll put it in the separate thread, but our big man hedging was extremely effective, but again, Wake almost never even tried to take advantage of the distortions to our defense that such a strategy permits.

OK here's the first table for Wake:






On floor
Engaged
FG miss (3's)
FG allowed (3's)
Turnover
FT miss
FT make
DPD
Denial +
Denial -
SIF +
SIF-
Help +
Help -
Beat-other


Curry
37
11
11 (2)
2
5.33
0
2
3
2
1
2
1
0
0
1


Rivers
60
7
2 (2)
1.5 (.5)
3.5
0
2
1
3
0
4
0
1
0
2


Dawkins
48
10
5 (3)
2
1
1.5
1.5
0
2
0
2
1
1
1
2


Mason
44
9
3 (2)
1
1.5
.5
2.5
0
0
0
0
3
2
0
0


Thornton
35
9
3 (2)
3 (1)
.833
.5
.5
1
2
0
2
3
0
0
1


Kelly
47
8
3 (1)
2
.833
0
0
2
1
0
0
0
0
0
1


Miles
38
7
4 (2)
.5 (.5)
0
1.5
1.5
0
1
0
2
0
1
1
0


Cook
29
5
0
2
0
3
4
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0


Gbinije
13
1
0
0
0
0
2
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0


Hairston
21
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
2
0
0
0
0
0
0



























I really like what Seth Curry is doing defensively. Forcing 5 turnovers, plus sharing credit 3 ways on a 6th, when he's only on the floor for 37 possessions? That's a ton. He's got his hands on and around the ball a lot, and he's not getting beaten much. One of the two hoops against him was the first shot of the game, where he had a hand in the Wake guy's face and he just hit a tough shot.

OK here's the stop % chart for the Wake game:





Stops
Scores
Stop %


Curry
20
15
57%


Rivers
30
25
55%


Dawkins
20
24
45%


Mason
23
19
55%


Thornton
21
14
60%


Kelly
24
21
53%


Miles
16
19
46%


Cook
14
13
52%


Gbinije
6
7
46%


Hairston
11
9
55%


TEAM
37
34
52%





























Not surprisingly, Seth's numbers here are good too. Ty's are even better. This was one of those games where good things were happening with Thornton out there, even if they don't show up in traditional stats.

Don't know what to make of Miles' number here. To me, it's an anomaly.

Although Andre played pretty well individually on defense (and far better than that offensively, obviously) still the team fared poorly on defense when he was on the floor. I'm watching for when it looks like a guy should be helping from off the ball, when he is failing to deny passes that matter, when he's losing his man, that kind of thing, and there wasn't a whole lot of that from Andre in this game, but still the team struggled on the defensive end with him out there, and unlike Miles, this is not exceptional.

[jv001]

Good job tommy. I knew my eyes were not lying as I watched Andre on defense. I have to say that he is really trying and has improved defensively. I look for him to keep getting better even if it's not by leaps and bounds. But man can he light it up when he's on. GoDuke!

[Kedsy]

OK here's the stop % chart for the Wake game:





Stops
Scores
Stop %


Curry
20
15
57%


Rivers
30
25
55%


Dawkins
20
24
45%


Mason
23
19
55%


Thornton
21
14
60%


Kelly
24
21
53%


Miles
16
19
46%


Cook
14
13
52%


Gbinije
6
7
46%


Hairston
11
9
55%


TEAM
37
34
52%



Not surprisingly, Seth's numbers here are good too. Ty's are even better. This was one of those games where good things were happening with Thornton out there, even if they don't show up in traditional stats.

Don't know what to make of Miles' number here. To me, it's an anomaly.

Although Andre played pretty well individually on defense (and far better than that offensively, obviously) still the team fared poorly on defense when he was on the floor. I'm watching for when it looks like a guy should be helping from off the ball, when he is failing to deny passes that matter, when he's losing his man, that kind of thing, and there wasn't a whole lot of that from Andre in this game, but still the team struggled on the defensive end with him out there, and unlike Miles, this is not exceptional.


Actually, based on your cumulative stop chart through the Clemson game, the team had been above average defensively when Andre was on the floor. Andre's poor number in this game may not have been quite as much of an anomaly as Miles's poor number, but it's still an anomaly. I noticed against Wake that Andre was a lot more active, and that is reflected in your individual numbers, but perhaps his teammates didn't expect that activity and so it took him out of the position he needed to be for the team defense?

I've taken the liberty of accumulating the stop chart through the Wake game. The only outliers seem to be Mason and Michael (who actually improved his stop percentage by being on the floor for 46% stops). I wonder if Michael's number is skewed because he's on the floor during mop up time so often? Except Josh is often on mop up patrol, too, and his number is a percent above the team average.

Once again, thanks Tommy for your hard work on this.


Cumulative stop chart through Clemson (lifted from Tommy's earlier post):




Stops
Scores
Stop %


Curry
136
121
53%


Rivers
136
113
55%


Dawkins
100
86
54%


Mason
116
118
50%


Thornton
82
71
54%


Kelly
117
100
54%


Miles
100
74
57%


Cook
87
75
54%


Gbinije
25
34
42%


Hairston
34
28
55%


TEAM
187
164
53%




Cumulative stop chart through Wake Forest:




Stops
Scores
Stop %


Curry
156
136
53.4%


Rivers
166
138
54.6%


Dawkins
120
110
52.2%


Mason
139
137
50.4%


Thornton
103
85
54.8%


Kelly
141
121
53.8%


Miles
116
93
55.5%


Cook
101
88
53.4%


Gbinije
31
41
43.1%


Hairston
45
37
54.9%


TEAM
224
192
53.8%

[tommy]

Thanks for the assist Kedsy. Appreciate it. I was gonna do the cume #s but it got too late, too tired , so I figured I'd wait till after FSU. I think maybe I'll start a separate thread for them actually.

You're right about Andre. My bad in that one. IIRC, as its not all in front of me at the moment, the numbers suggest that in a number of games he has not played that well individually on D, but the team D has covered for him to a degree. As to Mike, yes he and Josh are both in at garbage time which can skew numbers but I think one difference may be that Josh is getting more non-end game burn than Mike so he has more of a chance to reduce the impact of the ragged endgame stuff.

What about Mason's subpar stop% numbers? He does get beaten off the dribble and is clearly not the help defender that his brother is. Maybe those partially explain it.