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tardevil
11-30-2015, 01:05 PM
I know it's early in the season, but something really stands out to me in the individual ACC statistics: freethrow attempts.

After 6 games, "Cat" Barber (NCSU) has been averaging 12.5 attempts per game (and making 11.0 of them for 88%). The next closest is Devin Thomas (WFU) at 8.5, Zach LeDay (VT) at 7.7, and Grayson Allen at 7.0.

Barber is averaging 21.0 points per game -- 52.4% of them from freethrows (!).

Looking at the top 25 individuals in the ACC (by FT attempts/game), the range of FTs as a percentage of their PPG is 17.8% to 52.4%. Of course, that includes some folks who are not significant contributors to their team.

If you report only those who made at least 4 FT/game, then here is the breakdown.



Name

Team

FTM as % of PPG

PPG

PPG Rank



Anthony Barber
N.C. State
52.38
21.0
2


Chris Clarke
Virginia Tech
36.52
11.5



Marcus Georges-Hunt
Georgia Tech
33.99
15.3



Seth Allen
Virginia Tech
33.59
12.8



Zach Auguste
Notre Dame
32.61
13.8



Zach LeDay
Virginia Tech
30.00
19.0
6


Devin Thomas
Wake Forest
29.94
17.7
10


Grayson Allen
Duke
28.32
22.6
1


Dwayne Bacon
Florida St.
20.39
20.6
3



To get geeky on you, performing a t-test on the likelihood of an individual having a value of the FTM as a % of PPG among all 25 members of the sample results in Barber, Clarke, Georges-Hunt, and S. Allen (VT) all being significantly different than the rest (p<0.01), with Barber clocking in at p<4.65x10-13 (!).

Looking at Barber's game stats, he has attempted 22, 12, 14, 11, 12, and 4 FT in each of his six games. Even tossing the high (22 against Wintrhop) and low (4 against William & Mary), he's still averaging 12.25 attempts per game.

Is he just that good of a player at drawing fouls? Is it his quickness (as a "Cat", perhaps)? Or what?

(On the other hand, the likelihood of the bottom 10 of these 25 individuals having very low FT made as a percentage of their PPG are all p<0.01, too, with Eli Carter (BC) clocking in at p<5.79x10-7)

[If someone has access to all player stats for the ACC in an easily readable format, I'd love to do some more analyses.]

ricks68
11-30-2015, 01:33 PM
I know it's early in the season, but something really stands out to me in the individual ACC statistics: freethrow attempts.

After 6 games, "Cat" Barber (NCSU) has been averaging 12.5 attempts per game (and making 11.0 of them for 88%). The next closest is Devin Thomas (WFU) at 8.5, Zach LeDay (VT) at 7.7, and Grayson Allen at 7.0.

Barber is averaging 21.0 points per game -- 52.4% of them from freethrows (!).

Looking at the top 25 individuals in the ACC (by FT attempts/game), the range of FTs as a percentage of their PPG is 17.8% to 52.4%. Of course, that includes some folks who are not significant contributors to their team.

If you report only those who made at least 4 FT/game, then here is the breakdown.



Name

Team

FTM as % of PPG

PPG

PPG Rank



Anthony Barber
N.C. State
52.38
21.0
2


Chris Clarke
Virginia Tech
36.52
11.5



Marcus Georges-Hunt
Georgia Tech
33.99
15.3



Seth Allen
Virginia Tech
33.59
12.8



Zach Auguste
Notre Dame
32.61
13.8



Zach LeDay
Virginia Tech
30.00
19.0
6


Devin Thomas
Wake Forest
29.94
17.7
10


Grayson Allen
Duke
28.32
22.6
1


Dwayne Bacon
Florida St.
20.39
20.6
3



To get geeky on you, performing a t-test on the likelihood of an individual having a value of the FTM as a % of PPG among all 25 members of the sample results in Barber, Clarke, Georges-Hunt, and S. Allen (VT) all being significantly different than the rest (p<0.01), with Barber clocking in at p<4.65x10-13 (!).

Looking at Barber's game stats, he has attempted 22, 12, 14, 11, 12, and 4 FT in each of his six games. Even tossing the high (22 against Wintrhop) and low (4 against William & Mary), he's still averaging 12.25 attempts per game.

Is he just that good of a player at drawing fouls? Is it his quickness (as a "Cat", perhaps)? Or what?

(On the other hand, the likelihood of the bottom 10 of these 25 individuals having very low FT made as a percentage of their PPG are all p<0.01, too, with Eli Carter (BC) clocking in at p<5.79x10-7)

[If someone has access to all player stats for the ACC in an easily readable format, I'd love to do some more analyses.]

Well, you certainly chose the right board to post on.

ricks

Troublemaker
11-30-2015, 01:35 PM
Thanks for the stats/analysis, tardevil.

Yep. Cat indeed is cat-quick, and it looks like this veteran is using that quickness to his advantage to draw fouls this season in which most games will be called tightly.

Other factors contributing to his high FTAs:

* He's the only good ball-handler on his team, so he handles the ball A LOT.
* Because he's the only good ball-handler, he averages 39 minutes per game!
* This is non-conference season, and he gets to play a lot of cupcakes who definitely can't guard him without fouling.

His FTAs are sure to lower a bit when he hits conference season.

gus
11-30-2015, 02:04 PM
I think this is more a function of Barber's terrible shooting (~34%), and the fact that a high percentage of his shots come from 2 (he's 0 for 7 from 3). I don't have the inclination to break down everyone's stats, but comparing to Grayson: If Grayson shot as poorly as Barber, ceteris paribus he'd be getting ~50% of his points from the line too.

CDu
11-30-2015, 02:39 PM
Thanks for the stats/analysis, tardevil.

Yep. Cat indeed is cat-quick, and it looks like this veteran is using that quickness to his advantage to draw fouls this season in which most games will be called tightly.

Other factors contributing to his high FTAs:

* He's the only good ball-handler on his team, so he handles the ball A LOT.
* Because he's the only good ball-handler, he averages 39 minutes per game!
* This is non-conference season, and he gets to play a lot of cupcakes who definitely can't guard him without fouling.

His FTAs are sure to lower a bit when he hits conference season.

This sums it up pretty well, but I will add a couple of nuances/clarifications:
1. A large part of his game is driving to the rim, which draws more fouls.
2. Because he is the only ballhandler, and plays the whole game, AND has played cupcakes, he's usually the one getting fouled when the team reaches the bonus later in the half.
3. Because of the new emphasis on perimeter physicality, teams are getting to the bonus even quicker than usual (especially against the cupcakes).

Like you, I expect his FT rate to drop once he hits conference play and faces better teams who are more familiar with him. But he's still going to shoot a lot of FTs for the reasons you've outlined.

Listen to Quants
11-30-2015, 02:44 PM
I'd guess the data are not normally distributed. If so, a t-test requirement is not met. If you are just looking to prove that some players have a higher percent of their scoring via FT than others, a 'split the data then look at rank order correlation between the splits (nonparametric testing)' would do that. I'd be pretty willing to believe the hypothesis without much more than the inter-ocular test.

Li_Duke
11-30-2015, 03:09 PM
A t-test assumes that the underlying distribution is normal, but for FTM as a % of PPG, I'm pretty sure that is not the case (for one, the variable lies in [0,1], but a normally distributed variable lies in (negative infinity,infinity)). You could obtain a non-parametric pvalue by using the pool of players from recent seasons instead.

Nevertheless, 52.4% is very high. If we look at the 2014-15 NBA season for comparison, the top guy at scoring from the line, James Harden, was at 32%. Very few players topped 30%. Among NBA players, I think of guys like Corey Maggette as possibly having an outrageous percentage, but his career is "just" 34.9%.

Perhaps this statistic requires more than a few games to stabilize. He's only played 6 games; his last 2 years, the rate was 25.6 and 25.9 respectively. Definitely something to keep an eye on.

PS. I see listen to quants beat me to the statistics remark. :)

Duke79UNLV77
11-30-2015, 03:36 PM
My memory may be slightly off, but I think Hansbrough only made 10 shots from the field his entire senior year but averaged 30 free throw attempts per game.

gus
12-29-2015, 04:34 PM
revisiting this after ~12 games...

(sorry, not good at tables)


Name Team Before Now
Anthony Barber N.C. State 52.38 38.75
Chris Clarke Virginia Tech 36.52 32.76
Marcus G-Hunt Georgia Tech 33.99 37.87
Seth Allen Virginia Tech 33.59 28.07
Zach Auguste Notre Dame 32.61 21.52
Zach LeDay Virginia Tech 30.00 29.61
Devin Thomas Wake Forest 29.94 31.15
Grayson Allen Duke 28.32 26.89
Dwayne Bacon Florida St. 20.39 19.58


Cat Barber's points from FTs, while still highest on this list, is now in line with the other players. Of note, his shooting percentage is also higher: currently 38.7%, up from 34%, and 28.6% from three (as opposed to zero).