Quote Originally Posted by Ian View Post
Forget the +/- Take a look at these tempo stats.

https://www.scacchoops.com/viewhdgam...45554&bView=6#

Duval had a 40% usage rate while having the worst ORTG on the team, he also had the 2nd worst DRTG on the team beating out Jack White by the tiniest of margins. Overall his rating of -7.1 was the worst of any player on either team last night
(I'm repeating myself somewhat - I posted a lot of this on another thread. But I think it's justified since the best objective measures of performance we have available seem to be largely ignored when it comes to the often polarized discussions about Duval.)

I agree with Ian. +/- is not at all a useful measure of a players performance in a single game. If I come into the game for 5 minutes and during that time Trent makes four 3's and Bagley blocks every shot by the opponent who dribbles past me then my +/- is going to great even though I suck.

Luckily we have individual tempo/possession based stats, objective and accurate tools to measure how a player does in a particular game, especially on offense. We get the same # of possessions as our opponents so what we do with each possession matters.

So how did Trevon look objectively speaking? According to Kenpom when Trevon was on the floor he burned through almost half of the teams possessions (44%) and averaged 0.8 pts for each of those possessions. The low OE explanation is shockingly simple - he turned the ball over 4 times and missed 7 of his 9 shots from the field. (No matter how emphatic that dunk was, it was still only 2 points.) That made him by far the least efficient player on the floor, and it wasn't close. Changing a foul call or two wouldn't have changed this fact.

The team as a whole however averaged 1.20 ppp, just behind UNC's 1.26 pp. That means we had a number of very efficient performers partially balancing out Duvals low OE. Bagley averaged 1.27 ppp, Carter 1.28 ppp, Allen 1.04, Trent 1.41, AOC also 1.41, and Bolden an outstanding 1.71 ppp. So except for Allen and Duval all our players were very, very efficient offensively. Problem was that our efficient players were also our low usage player. Trevon's 44% poss use rate was twice as high as our 2nd highest usage player - Bagley at 22%. Rest of the team: Trent used 15% of the possession when he was on the floor, Carter 14%, Allen 17%, AOC 19% and Bolden 11%. So Duval, our least efficient scorer, is burning through possessions at 2 to 4 times the rate of our most efficient scorers.* Hard to win games like that.

*For the technically minded - Yes, there is some confounding between efficiency and usage. A turnover simultaneously decreases the former and increases the latter and that explains a tiny bit of the low eff/high usage association. However taking a lot of shots is the main way players increase their possession usage. That's why some players realize they aren't great shooters so they are very selective about when and where they take their shots. That way they help themselves (maximize their OE's) and their hurt by not taking a bunch of low % shots.

tldr version: In this game Duval combination of very low offensive efficiency and extremely high possession usage was a killer for us. For Duke to have any shot of making a run Duval he has to both raise his OE and lower his poss %. He can do that by limiting turnovers, being much more selective with his drives and shots, and by getting our very high efficiency scorers more involved in the game.