tommy
01-25-2012, 01:52 AM
Charting Our Defense: Florida State
This may be the last of these "Charting Our Defense" threads that I start. They're terribly time-consuming, and I sense that interest on the board in these numbers is waning. Which is fine. Not offended at all. Perhaps one reason why it is waning is that the information that can be gained from this type of charting has been gained. It's pretty obvious that Miles Plumlee, over the course of most of the season (though not against FSU, as we shall see) has been our most active and best interior defender. Tyler Thornton, contrary to early season conventional wisdom, is far from a lockdown defender on the perimeter. Neither is Quinn Cook. Seth Curry and Austin Rivers get their quick hands on a lot of balls and move their feet pretty well. Andre Dawkins has been pretty ordinary in most respects, defensively speaking, still missing a lot of assignments as a junior. So maybe we're not likely to gain a lot of new insights by continuing this kind of charting.
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.
So again, for this type of charting, those of you guys interested in it 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.
As for the FSU game, I decided to break the tables down into the first and second halves, to look at just what a Jekyll-and-Hyde performance it was for us defensively. And man, was it. Our first half numbers were some of the best we've seen all year, and our second half numbers were so bad I almost couldn't believe them when I was tallying them up. Everyone knew it was bad as we watched it, but this bad? Wow.
But I have to say, in my play-by-play, or actually frame-by-frame review of the second half, which I did in order to post in the excellent "What's Really Wrong With Our Defense" thread started by Kedsy, the majority of our defensive lapses in the second half were failures of communication, failures to help sufficiently, loss of attention, and those sorts of things, much more so than just being beaten off the dribble, being dominated in the paint physically, getting backdoored, or other more purely physical failings. And frankly, FSU executed well and hit a number of tough shots. So the stop % numbers look bad, as they should, but the individual numbers -- while certainly not good -- don't look as bad as one might anticipate. I did chart a lot of "got beaten - other" and certainly a fair number of those account for the failures to communicate, maintain focus, and the other things I saw in the more detailed play-by-play review.
I'm going to post the cumulative numbers for all the games I've charted in a separate thread if you're interested in those. Also, the DBR software, which is so terrific in many respects, is not being friendly to my including multiple tables in a single post. So I'll break them up into separate posts. Sorry bout that but I've been futzing with it for way too long, trying to get it to accept all the tables in one post, and I can't do it anymore.
OK here's the first table for FSU:
First half (caveat: I couldn't chart the first 5 minutes, as ESPN was wrapping up another game and didn't cut to our game till about the 15 minute mark):
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
23
3
2 (2)
0
0
0
0
2
0
0
1
0
1
0
0
Rivers
26
5
2 (1)
2(1)
0
0
2
1
0
0
1
0
1
0
2
Dawkins
13
4
1 (1)
2
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
2
Mason
19
5
2.5
.5
0
1
1
1
2
2
0
0
0
0
2
Thornton
16
1
0
0
1
0
0
6
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
Kelly
17
5
1
.5
2
0
1
1
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
Miles
18
4
.5
1 (1)
1
0
0
0
3
0
0
1
0
0
1
Cook
3
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
Gbinije
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
Hairston
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
This may be the last of these "Charting Our Defense" threads that I start. They're terribly time-consuming, and I sense that interest on the board in these numbers is waning. Which is fine. Not offended at all. Perhaps one reason why it is waning is that the information that can be gained from this type of charting has been gained. It's pretty obvious that Miles Plumlee, over the course of most of the season (though not against FSU, as we shall see) has been our most active and best interior defender. Tyler Thornton, contrary to early season conventional wisdom, is far from a lockdown defender on the perimeter. Neither is Quinn Cook. Seth Curry and Austin Rivers get their quick hands on a lot of balls and move their feet pretty well. Andre Dawkins has been pretty ordinary in most respects, defensively speaking, still missing a lot of assignments as a junior. So maybe we're not likely to gain a lot of new insights by continuing this kind of charting.
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.
So again, for this type of charting, those of you guys interested in it 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.
As for the FSU game, I decided to break the tables down into the first and second halves, to look at just what a Jekyll-and-Hyde performance it was for us defensively. And man, was it. Our first half numbers were some of the best we've seen all year, and our second half numbers were so bad I almost couldn't believe them when I was tallying them up. Everyone knew it was bad as we watched it, but this bad? Wow.
But I have to say, in my play-by-play, or actually frame-by-frame review of the second half, which I did in order to post in the excellent "What's Really Wrong With Our Defense" thread started by Kedsy, the majority of our defensive lapses in the second half were failures of communication, failures to help sufficiently, loss of attention, and those sorts of things, much more so than just being beaten off the dribble, being dominated in the paint physically, getting backdoored, or other more purely physical failings. And frankly, FSU executed well and hit a number of tough shots. So the stop % numbers look bad, as they should, but the individual numbers -- while certainly not good -- don't look as bad as one might anticipate. I did chart a lot of "got beaten - other" and certainly a fair number of those account for the failures to communicate, maintain focus, and the other things I saw in the more detailed play-by-play review.
I'm going to post the cumulative numbers for all the games I've charted in a separate thread if you're interested in those. Also, the DBR software, which is so terrific in many respects, is not being friendly to my including multiple tables in a single post. So I'll break them up into separate posts. Sorry bout that but I've been futzing with it for way too long, trying to get it to accept all the tables in one post, and I can't do it anymore.
OK here's the first table for FSU:
First half (caveat: I couldn't chart the first 5 minutes, as ESPN was wrapping up another game and didn't cut to our game till about the 15 minute mark):
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
23
3
2 (2)
0
0
0
0
2
0
0
1
0
1
0
0
Rivers
26
5
2 (1)
2(1)
0
0
2
1
0
0
1
0
1
0
2
Dawkins
13
4
1 (1)
2
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
2
Mason
19
5
2.5
.5
0
1
1
1
2
2
0
0
0
0
2
Thornton
16
1
0
0
1
0
0
6
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
Kelly
17
5
1
.5
2
0
1
1
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
Miles
18
4
.5
1 (1)
1
0
0
0
3
0
0
1
0
0
1
Cook
3
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
Gbinije
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
Hairston
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0