Looking at Duke's Turnovers and Quinn Cook

[tommy]

Mods, feel free to move this to the Louisville thread, but because it's dealing with a specific topic, I thought maybe it could merit its own.

I thought one of the most impressive aspects of Duke's performance against Louisville, and in particular Quinn Cook's performance, was the ballhandling and how poised we were against their pressure. The best part of it was how few live-ball turnovers we had, especially the fact that Quinn Cook, in 34 minutes as the primary ballhandler, had a grand total of zero live ball turnovers.

Here were Duke's turnovers in this game:

13:15 Mason was stripped while going up underneath. Live ball, led to a Siva layup.
12:44 Quinn, after making an excellent spinning move to penetrate into the lane, threw a pass right in between Mason and Josh. Either could've caught it, but neither really went for it, and the pass headed out of bounds. This is the play on which Siva dove for it and Mason then dove right on top of him and the two of them were in a heap in front of the bench. Not live ball.
12:12 This turnover got attributed to Quinn, but it shouldn't have been. Josh inbounded from under their basket against pressure. The pass was intended for Seth, but the UL player tipped it away and in fact tipped it directly onto Quinn's sneaker. It bounced hard off his foot and out of bounds. Not a live ball and in no way Quinn's fault.
6:09 Rasheed drives, gets caught in the air, tries to throw a cross-court pass, but the pass is intercepted by Siva. It's a live ball turnover, although Siva then immediately threw a pass that Quinn intercepted in the frontcourt, leading to a scoring opportunity for us.
5:59 That scoring opportunity was under the hoop for Mason, but he got his shot blocked. I don't know why the play-by-play counted this as a turnover by Mason.
5:09 Quinn called for charge while penetrating. Not a live ball turnover.
3:28 Rasheed traveled on the baseline. Not a live ball.
1:57 Ryan called for charge on a drive. Not a live ball.

2nd half:

17:00 Rasheed stripped by Smith -- live ball -- led to and-1 layup by Siva the other way.
11:28 Mason traveled. Brought the ball down, semi-stripped, traveled. Not live ball.
10:15 Quinn called for push-off on in-bounds play. Not live ball.
4:41 Seth on the drive, Smith stripped him from behind -- live ball --- UL gets a run-out but we stole it back on their break.
4:08 Thornton called for push-off on in-bounds play. Not live ball.

That's it. No turnovers at all in the last, crucial 4 minutes. 4 live-ball turnovers the whole game -- 2 by Rasheed and one each by Mason and Seth. None by the point guard. Pretty impressive.

[uh_no]

I think it would be interesting to see, but I would guess most of our turnovers throughout the years are not live ball turnovers. Without a frame of reference, its hard to know whether this is actually really good, or just status quo.

That said, I think your'e downplaying the significance of a dead-ball turnover. While obviously live ball turnovers have a chance of initiating a fast break, I don't think we can smile simply because none of our turnovers were of that type. A turnover indicates the end of a possession without a shot....we didn't even take a chance at scoring (counting a rebound as the start of a new possession)....fewer possessions that end in shots means fewer points over a large number of possessions.

I think it makes more sense to separate the turnovers on fouls/not fouls rather than dead/live, since that seems to point to highlight the cause of the turnover rather than whether it happened to bounce out of bounds rather than into the hands of an opponent. Further, many live ball turnovers aren't conducive to fast breaks, making them effectively the same as dead ball turnovers.

At a high level, I think intuition would corroborate your findings, that we take care of the ball better, but i'm not sure that the numbers alone allow us to draw any conclusions. At least in my opinion, a turnover is a turnover. I don't think we should downplay it because the bad pass flew out of bounds rather than getting intercepted, or that the lost dribble ended with the dribbler fouling the opponent rather than the opponent running for a fast break. Both indicate the same lack of care for the ball, though some end up dead and some end up live.

[licc85]

Mods, feel free to move this to the Louisville thread, but because it's dealing with a specific topic, I thought maybe it could merit its own.

I thought one of the most impressive aspects of Duke's performance against Louisville, and in particular Quinn Cook's performance, was the ballhandling and how poised we were against their pressure. The best part of it was how few live-ball turnovers we had, especially the fact that Quinn Cook, in 34 minutes as the primary ballhandler, had a grand total of zero live ball turnovers.

Here were Duke's turnovers in this game:

13:15 Mason was stripped while going up underneath. Live ball, led to a Siva layup.
12:44 Quinn, after making an excellent spinning move to penetrate into the lane, threw a pass right in between Mason and Josh. Either could've caught it, but neither really went for it, and the pass headed out of bounds. This is the play on which Siva dove for it and Mason then dove right on top of him and the two of them were in a heap in front of the bench. Not live ball.
12:12 This turnover got attributed to Quinn, but it shouldn't have been. Josh inbounded from under their basket against pressure. The pass was intended for Seth, but the UL player tipped it away and in fact tipped it directly onto Quinn's sneaker. It bounced hard off his foot and out of bounds. Not a live ball and in no way Quinn's fault.
6:09 Rasheed drives, gets caught in the air, tries to throw a cross-court pass, but the pass is intercepted by Siva. It's a live ball turnover, although Siva then immediately threw a pass that Quinn intercepted in the frontcourt, leading to a scoring opportunity for us.
5:59 That scoring opportunity was under the hoop for Mason, but he got his shot blocked. I don't know why the play-by-play counted this as a turnover by Mason.
5:09 Quinn called for charge while penetrating. Not a live ball turnover.
3:28 Rasheed traveled on the baseline. Not a live ball.
1:57 Ryan called for charge on a drive. Not a live ball.

2nd half:

17:00 Rasheed stripped by Smith -- live ball -- led to and-1 layup by Siva the other way.
11:28 Mason traveled. Brought the ball down, semi-stripped, traveled. Not live ball.
10:15 Quinn called for push-off on in-bounds play. Not live ball.
4:41 Seth on the drive, Smith stripped him from behind -- live ball --- UL gets a run-out but we stole it back on their break.
4:08 Thornton called for push-off on in-bounds play. Not live ball.

That's it. No turnovers at all in the last, crucial 4 minutes. 4 live-ball turnovers the whole game -- 2 by Rasheed and one each by Mason and Seth. None by the point guard. Pretty impressive.

Great post, tommy. I also was really impressed, not just by our lack of bad turnovers, but also just the way we were moving the ball around so effortlessly. There was hardly ever a moment where we just ran an iso for someone (a la Austin Rivers), where everyone else just stood around watching. Player movement and ball movement in our offense is a beautiful thing to watch, especially because everyone is so unselfish and tries to make the right basketball play each time, locating the open man and attacking aggressively. This team is a lot of fun to watch.

[timmy c]

I think it would be interesting to see, but I would guess most of our turnovers throughout the years are not live ball turnovers. Without a frame of reference, its hard to know whether this is actually really good, or just status quo.

That said, I think your'e downplaying the significance of a dead-ball turnover. While obviously live ball turnovers have a chance of initiating a fast break, I don't think we can smile simply because none of our turnovers were of that type. A turnover indicates the end of a possession without a shot....we didn't even take a chance at scoring (counting a rebound as the start of a new possession)....fewer possessions that end in shots means fewer points over a large number of possessions.

I think it makes more sense to separate the turnovers on fouls/not fouls rather than dead/live, since that seems to point to highlight the cause of the turnover rather than whether it happened to bounce out of bounds rather than into the hands of an opponent. Further, many live ball turnovers aren't conducive to fast breaks, making them effectively the same as dead ball turnovers.

At a high level, I think intuition would corroborate your findings, that we take care of the ball better, but i'm not sure that the numbers alone allow us to draw any conclusions. At least in my opinion, a turnover is a turnover. I don't think we should downplay it because the bad pass flew out of bounds rather than getting intercepted, or that the lost dribble ended with the dribbler fouling the opponent rather than the opponent running for a fast break. Both indicate the same lack of care for the ball, though some end up dead and some end up live.

I think you might be missing the point of this thread.

I don’t think Tommy is devaluing dead ball turnovers in general. Instead he’s looking at how Duke (and Quinn in particular) did against Louisville, the number one defense according to Kenpom. (pretty darn good!)

Louisville is the 3rd best team in the nation at turning teams over and the 9th ranked team in steals. The live ball turnovers (steals) allow Louisville to compensate for its otherwise pedestrian offense. Two players, Smith (#30) and Siva (#62,) are some of the top players in steal percentage in the country. Turnovers to these backcourt players are particularly egregious because the often do lead to lay-ups for the opposing team.

In the last 4 minutes the game was essentially a one possession game. A live ball turnover that led to a Louisville basket could have been a 4-point swing in the score. This isn’t a just big deal, this is a huge deal. Instead of giving up points, Quinn scored 11 points of his points in the last 7:46 and had no turnovers during that timeframe. Remember he was playing in his third game in three days, including 39 minutes against VCU’s havoc defense the night before. Impressive!

Oh_no, in general, I agree that all turnovers should be valued in similar fashion, but against UofL a live ball turnover to speedy Siva or Smith is a disaster.

Tommy, thanks for taking the time to compile this data. It would be interesting to look at the turnovers/steals against VCU. VCU is the 19th ranked defense in the country, 10th in steals.