There's an old adage that teams that like to press don't like to be pressed. Yesterday afternoon we observed a more fundamental truism: teams that turn the ball over too much don't like to be pressed. It was pretty obvious to anyone paying attention that Clemson was almost certain to lose to Missouri. Both teams rely primarily on their defensive ability to force turnovers to drive their offensive output, and the Mizzou Tigers simply don't turn the ball over. Yeah, there was a chance our press might cause them problems, but you aren't a top five team at avoiding turnovers for nothing. The advantage was all Missouri going in and they burned us time and time again as we made stupid decisions with the ball. We kept it close with ridiculous, unsustainable 3-point shooting in the first half but when we regressed to the mean in the second half the game was as good as done (felt like the second Maryland game in that respect). Also, if you don't understand the concept of regression to the mean, read this. Its related to baseball but the idea is the same--if the team has a certain "true" level of performance, then given enough time the team will revert to that level regardless of how well they perform over smaller stretches of time. We went 8-11 from 3-point land in the first half, there was no way we were going 16-22 for the game.
I know everyone is down on the players for not playing hard the last ten minutes of the game, but I think there's a reason. Seems to me they new their margin for error was small--they had to keep things even for 40 minutes to try and pull it out at the end because they wouldn't be able to force turnovers or get enough stops in the halfcourt to spark a run (to say nothing of our complete lack of a four-minute offense). Once they were in a hole, they knew they were beaten. Sure, it's not a good reason for not playing hard and it reflects extremely poorly on the coaching staff for their inability to motivate/prepare the team mentally, but there it is.
I've been yelling it as loud as I can from this tiny blog pulpit: turnovers are killing us. This is the worst year for Clemson at turning the ball over since the first season Purnell took over, and it's not even close. There's been a ton of talk around the blogosphere about the lack of an offensive plan for the Tigers and their inability to even execute simple fundamentals. This is undoubtedly true; I won't argue this point. Purnell and his (newly-hired?) assistants need to take a long look at the tapes this offseason to figure out how to improve the halfcourt set. But I would argue that we have an even more fundamental problem: empty possessions from turnover after turnover. Often, we don't even get a chance to setup the halfcourt 'cause Stitt is dribbling the ball off his leg. This is also a more fundamental problem because it isn't going away next season with Stitt as our de facto team leader and ball-handler.
Next season has all of the makings of a bad year for the Tigers, outlined by ClemBen in the post below. We've got a turnover prone "senior leader" point guard blocking and taking playing time from a better player one year his junior (don't even get me started--the last few games of the season should have sealed in everyone's mind that Young is the better player than Stitt now), a lack of an strong inside presence capable of creating a shot, and a guy starting at the two position that would be fighting for playing time at the back end of the bench for a middling SEC team (how many times was Tanner Smith burned off the ball on the perimeter leading to easy points? I give him credit for decent defensive fundamentals, but when he's matched against someone quick and fluid, he's toast). Most of our problems are related to the most fundamental aspects of the game; for example, perimeter players gotta be stronger with the ball and make crisper passes to right part of the player receiving the ball while inside guys need to improve footwork in the post. It's easy to tell Clemson to go out and make up a few nice offensive sets and practice them 1000 times, but we won't get to .500 in the ACC next season without first improving the fundamentals on offense and bringing our turnover count down to a reasonable range.
Showing posts with label basketball review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label basketball review. Show all posts
Saturday, 20 March 2010
Thursday, 4 February 2010
State of Clemson Basketball: 2010 mid-ACC update
With National Signing Day out of the way and Clemson basketball in the middle of a 6 day break, its a good time to reflect on the team's performance halfway through ACC play. Again, the point of these posts is just to try and discern any interesting statistical trends, taking advantage of the statistics over at Kenpom.com.
I don't think it's any secret that Clemson is underperforming this season. The obvious culprit is the offense, which has struggled in just about every imaginable way to put points on the board. The statistics agree with this sentiment pretty strongly. First I'm going to show charts that are slightly different from previous charts I've shown, these track differences in offensive/defensive efficiencies across the last two years:
I don't have the data from midseason 2009, so that point is interpolated by averaging the bookending points. Clearly, we are struggling on offense this year. But what's I really find interesting is the relationship between offense and defense over the past two years. In 2009, the defense steadily declined while the offense steadily improved. This year, the defense has steadily improved while the offense has steadily declined. Last year, the defense fell apart largely because Clemson became too predictable in their pressure defense over the course of a game, allowing teams to routinely break the press and score. Often teams weren't settling for a drive to the basket, either, but were looking for (and making) wide-open threes. This year, Purnell came out with a clear plan to counter the defensive struggles of last year by mixing up pressure looks not just during blocks of possessions but even from individual possession to individual possession. The results have been fantastic and are clearly evident from the forced turnover rates--Clemson's defense ranks 4th in the country in opposition turnovers and 5th in steals. Make no mistake, rate of forced turnovers is driving the defense--our effective FG% defense is a respectable 50th in the country, but that lags well behind the other strong defenses in the ACC.
On the other hand, I imagine Oliver Purnell was not counting on the complete implosion of the offense. I'm not showing the overall efficiency data relative to recent years, but we are currently as bad as we've been since 2006. Let's look at the four factors the offense to try and get some answers:
It looks all four factors have gotten slightly worse across the board. I would wager the fluctuations in FT attempts/FG attempts and offensive rebounding percentage are little more than noise and not much to be concerned about. However, the turnover% and FG% (the two most important factors), while up only slightly, still look troublesome. Here are the component offensive factors:
Now we see something emerge. Our drop in effective FG% appears to be directly related to our struggles from behind the arc since the start of ACC play. Also, our rate of having the ball stolen has gone up slightly, although I doubt that alone explains the increase in turnovers. The other factors don't worry me too much, and unbelievably our FT% has actually gotten better since the start of ACC play (must be that flukish 18-20 UNC performance).
I think our offensive troubles since the start of ACC play can be traced primarily to 3-point problems and to a lesser extent, an increase in both forced and unforced turnovers. I've been pretty adamant since the start of the year that our three-point shooting would be fine, but I can't ignore the data any longer--we need more threes to start falling. I didn't anticipate Young's struggles. He's not missing shots, but he's having a hard time getting open looks against the taller ACC competition. Potter has regressed substantially, and while Johnson hasn't been a disaster as a freshman (35%), I was hoping (probably too much) for more. Stitt has improved from around a 30% shooter in his first two years to 35% this year, but his injury has left him out or hobbled through most of ACC play. Tanner Smith has been a catastrophe, shooting below 30% now on just 61 shots. All of this adds up to a markedly below-average three-point shooting team for the ACC.
Meanwhile, on the turnover front, while Stitt has actually marginally improved a couple of percentage points, overall he still sports an ugly turnover rate of 23.1 (meaning he turns the ball over 23.1% of the time he is involved in a possession). This gain has been offset, however, by Young's increase from 16.9 a year ago to 21.9 this year. With our two primary ball-handlers giving the ball back in one out of five personal possessions, Clemson's having a tough time just letting plays develop long enough to get looks at the basket.
There's not much I can see Clemson doing to improve their problems behind the arc. Minor tweaking is probably all Purnell has at his disposal now, something along the lines of 1) letting Johnson shoot as much as possible hoping he develops into a more reliable shot by the end of the season, 2) relegating Tanner Smith to defensive specialist, and 3) figuring out ways of ensuring Andre Young is open at least a few times a game. The turnover problems are even worse. While I believe Andre Young's true turnover rate lies closer to 16.9 than 21.9, he's done little since Stitt's injury to support this. Its a difficult problem to solve midseason.
The most frustrating aspect of these offensive struggles is that we could be better now with a little more emphasis on fundamentals. We have the shooting skills to be better than 64.2% from the line. While our 2P FG% is keeping us afloat, everyone knows from watching the games that we could be even better. And of course, if we could just stop dribbling the ball off our legs, we'd cut a good 5% off our turnover rate. All of these little things would add up to at least a respectable ACC-level offense.
You would think Purnell might turn his attention to these offensive fundamentals. However, watching the team (particularly since Stitt went down) and listening to Purnell's recent statements to the media, its pretty clear Purnell has gone in the opposite direction: he's looking to further improve the defense. I think this also explains the increase in defensive efficiency since the start of ACC play (second chart above).
If true, it's an interesting gambit and I actually kind of like it. The key selling point for me is Stitt's injury. While Young has filled in reasonably well in his absence, without Stitt we almost entirely lose the ability to penetrate on offense. Given Stitt's poor all around play after returning from injury last year, its difficult to count on him being the same player when he finally does return. With that in mind, if our half-court offense is going to essentially consist of Trevor Booker underneath and Grant cleaning up on misses, we might as well focus on defense to keep the other team's points down and try to score some easy points off turnovers.
There's been a lot of chatter around the blogosphere about discontent with Purnell. This puts me in a rather odd position where I feel compelled to defend Oliver Purnell; long-time readers will know we've been critical of Purnell when the situation warrants. I don't feel like this is the time. To me, the first two charts indicate that the program is not necessarily plateauing, we just haven't been able to combine excellent offense and defense at the same time since the end of 2008. Right now, we have room to grow on the offense (even in the remainder of this season) until we get closer to previous seasons. Its tough to fault Purnell for the perfect storm of 1) Booker taking small steps back in productivity both at the FT line and in 2-pt shooting, 2) the failure of Jennings and Johnson to develop into useful players, 3) Andre Young's battle with turnovers, and 4) Stitt's injury. Even with only one or two of these, the offense is good enough to win a couple of the close games we've already lost.
Purnell did a good job of adjusting to our problems in the offseason, I suspect he'll do the same in offense in the coming months, spilling into next season. I can easily see this group of players providing equally efficient offensive and defensive production, even though it is taking longer than any of us would have liked.
I don't think it's any secret that Clemson is underperforming this season. The obvious culprit is the offense, which has struggled in just about every imaginable way to put points on the board. The statistics agree with this sentiment pretty strongly. First I'm going to show charts that are slightly different from previous charts I've shown, these track differences in offensive/defensive efficiencies across the last two years:
I don't have the data from midseason 2009, so that point is interpolated by averaging the bookending points. Clearly, we are struggling on offense this year. But what's I really find interesting is the relationship between offense and defense over the past two years. In 2009, the defense steadily declined while the offense steadily improved. This year, the defense has steadily improved while the offense has steadily declined. Last year, the defense fell apart largely because Clemson became too predictable in their pressure defense over the course of a game, allowing teams to routinely break the press and score. Often teams weren't settling for a drive to the basket, either, but were looking for (and making) wide-open threes. This year, Purnell came out with a clear plan to counter the defensive struggles of last year by mixing up pressure looks not just during blocks of possessions but even from individual possession to individual possession. The results have been fantastic and are clearly evident from the forced turnover rates--Clemson's defense ranks 4th in the country in opposition turnovers and 5th in steals. Make no mistake, rate of forced turnovers is driving the defense--our effective FG% defense is a respectable 50th in the country, but that lags well behind the other strong defenses in the ACC.
On the other hand, I imagine Oliver Purnell was not counting on the complete implosion of the offense. I'm not showing the overall efficiency data relative to recent years, but we are currently as bad as we've been since 2006. Let's look at the four factors the offense to try and get some answers:
It looks all four factors have gotten slightly worse across the board. I would wager the fluctuations in FT attempts/FG attempts and offensive rebounding percentage are little more than noise and not much to be concerned about. However, the turnover% and FG% (the two most important factors), while up only slightly, still look troublesome. Here are the component offensive factors:
Now we see something emerge. Our drop in effective FG% appears to be directly related to our struggles from behind the arc since the start of ACC play. Also, our rate of having the ball stolen has gone up slightly, although I doubt that alone explains the increase in turnovers. The other factors don't worry me too much, and unbelievably our FT% has actually gotten better since the start of ACC play (must be that flukish 18-20 UNC performance).
I think our offensive troubles since the start of ACC play can be traced primarily to 3-point problems and to a lesser extent, an increase in both forced and unforced turnovers. I've been pretty adamant since the start of the year that our three-point shooting would be fine, but I can't ignore the data any longer--we need more threes to start falling. I didn't anticipate Young's struggles. He's not missing shots, but he's having a hard time getting open looks against the taller ACC competition. Potter has regressed substantially, and while Johnson hasn't been a disaster as a freshman (35%), I was hoping (probably too much) for more. Stitt has improved from around a 30% shooter in his first two years to 35% this year, but his injury has left him out or hobbled through most of ACC play. Tanner Smith has been a catastrophe, shooting below 30% now on just 61 shots. All of this adds up to a markedly below-average three-point shooting team for the ACC.
Meanwhile, on the turnover front, while Stitt has actually marginally improved a couple of percentage points, overall he still sports an ugly turnover rate of 23.1 (meaning he turns the ball over 23.1% of the time he is involved in a possession). This gain has been offset, however, by Young's increase from 16.9 a year ago to 21.9 this year. With our two primary ball-handlers giving the ball back in one out of five personal possessions, Clemson's having a tough time just letting plays develop long enough to get looks at the basket.
There's not much I can see Clemson doing to improve their problems behind the arc. Minor tweaking is probably all Purnell has at his disposal now, something along the lines of 1) letting Johnson shoot as much as possible hoping he develops into a more reliable shot by the end of the season, 2) relegating Tanner Smith to defensive specialist, and 3) figuring out ways of ensuring Andre Young is open at least a few times a game. The turnover problems are even worse. While I believe Andre Young's true turnover rate lies closer to 16.9 than 21.9, he's done little since Stitt's injury to support this. Its a difficult problem to solve midseason.
The most frustrating aspect of these offensive struggles is that we could be better now with a little more emphasis on fundamentals. We have the shooting skills to be better than 64.2% from the line. While our 2P FG% is keeping us afloat, everyone knows from watching the games that we could be even better. And of course, if we could just stop dribbling the ball off our legs, we'd cut a good 5% off our turnover rate. All of these little things would add up to at least a respectable ACC-level offense.
You would think Purnell might turn his attention to these offensive fundamentals. However, watching the team (particularly since Stitt went down) and listening to Purnell's recent statements to the media, its pretty clear Purnell has gone in the opposite direction: he's looking to further improve the defense. I think this also explains the increase in defensive efficiency since the start of ACC play (second chart above).
If true, it's an interesting gambit and I actually kind of like it. The key selling point for me is Stitt's injury. While Young has filled in reasonably well in his absence, without Stitt we almost entirely lose the ability to penetrate on offense. Given Stitt's poor all around play after returning from injury last year, its difficult to count on him being the same player when he finally does return. With that in mind, if our half-court offense is going to essentially consist of Trevor Booker underneath and Grant cleaning up on misses, we might as well focus on defense to keep the other team's points down and try to score some easy points off turnovers.
There's been a lot of chatter around the blogosphere about discontent with Purnell. This puts me in a rather odd position where I feel compelled to defend Oliver Purnell; long-time readers will know we've been critical of Purnell when the situation warrants. I don't feel like this is the time. To me, the first two charts indicate that the program is not necessarily plateauing, we just haven't been able to combine excellent offense and defense at the same time since the end of 2008. Right now, we have room to grow on the offense (even in the remainder of this season) until we get closer to previous seasons. Its tough to fault Purnell for the perfect storm of 1) Booker taking small steps back in productivity both at the FT line and in 2-pt shooting, 2) the failure of Jennings and Johnson to develop into useful players, 3) Andre Young's battle with turnovers, and 4) Stitt's injury. Even with only one or two of these, the offense is good enough to win a couple of the close games we've already lost.
Purnell did a good job of adjusting to our problems in the offseason, I suspect he'll do the same in offense in the coming months, spilling into next season. I can easily see this group of players providing equally efficient offensive and defensive production, even though it is taking longer than any of us would have liked.
Tuesday, 5 January 2010
Pre-ACC Basketball Season Review
Note: stats in this post include games up to, but not including, the Duke game.
I'll break this up into discussions on defense and offense; talking mostly from a statistical perspective. But first, here's where we stand compared to years past on adjusted offensive and defensive efficiencies which measure scoring efficiency per 100 possessions:
One thing to keep in mind efficiencies is that these numbers are adjusted for strength of the opponent, so in theory the above won't necessarily change even as the competition intensifies in ACC play. In practice, however, there still aren't enough data points to be really confident that significant fluctuations won't occur. There's also the effect of coaching adjustments; last year after the Maryland game Clemson's defensive efficiency started taking a nosedive, for reasons I documented previously.
Defense
Overall the defense looks tough, and has rebounded nicely from the disastrous tail-end of the '09 campaign. What's interesting is how this has happened--some of it is probably sustainable and some isn't (unlike the efficiencies above, these stats aren't necessarily adjusted for strength of opponent. I'll explain more below.) Take a look at the next two charts, one showing the "four factors" and the other showing miscellaneous components:
The four factors are revealing: Clemson's effective field goal percentage defense has rebounded to pre-'09 levels, and they are forcing turnovers at their best clip since 2005/2006. They are also keeping other teams off the offensive glass similar to the level they had 2007 and before. I've talked before about Purnell's seeming willingness to sacrifice offensive boards in the name of challenging the shot, as evidenced by the team consistently posting high block shot rates while giving up high offensive rebound percentages on defense, so this represents a bit of a shift from previous results. I'm a bit skeptical this is sustainable, however, because while Clemson has added some height, they also haven't played any particularly tall teams. Look for this stat to drop as the season goes on, but just keeping it around 200 in the nation could improve the defense slightly. On the other hand, this may be part of a conscientious adjustment by the coaching staff. For the first time in years, Clemson isn't an elite shot-blocking squad (see second chart above). If this is true, the numbers might be sustainable, but it seems to me that the end result won't really help (or hurt) the overall defensive numbers, as the two stats cancel each other out to some degree.
So despite the noticeable improvement in keeping other teams off the offensive glass, I think the real story behind the improved defense relates to the decrease in FG% against and to a lesser extent the increase in forcing turnovers. The second chart shows that the improvement in FG% defense stems primarily from a much better 3-point defense . I felt this was one of the keys going into the season, whether or not Clemson could stop the bleeding from behind the arc. We gave up too many open looks behind the arc after teams broke the press last season, to say nothing of our lax half-court three-point defense. I think this is a real improvement stemming from the different types of pressure Purnell has been throwing at teams, as well as his willingness to mix up the pressure looks throughout the game. This has made teams hesitant to push the ball up quickly, leading to fewer runouts and fewer wide-open looks. We'll see if this continues in ACC play, but for now Purnell and company deserve credit for effectively addressing what was possibly the biggest problem facing the defense coming into the season.
One other interesting stat is the FT% against. Clemson ranks 21st in the country in holding teams to 62.7% from the line. That's remarkable, but obviously sounds like dumb luck. Unless Clemson has managed to install some kind of unobtrusive but remarkably effective device to distract opposing shooters at Littlejohn, there's little likelihood of this continuing. On the other hand, last year Clemson posted the 53rd best FT rate against in the country. I'm still inclined to pass this off as a fluke, but I wonder if there is something else at work here. Are Purnell and staff coaching the players to specifically target poor free throw shooters for fouls? Seems like a pretty smart way to incrementally increase your odds of winning a game. At any rate, as the ACC season starts the free throw shooters should get better, so I don't see Clemson continuing to hold a ridiculous 63% against FT rate. But it will be interesting to see if we end up in the top 60 at the end of the season.
Offense
The offense is where we have struggled so far this season, with the team playing more like 2007 than 2008 or 2009. Terrence Oglesby!! If only we had T.O. to drain those clutch 3-pointers!!! Aaah, the lazy hack sportswriter explanation that will grace many a page printed or electronic before the season's over. Instead of taking the easy way out, let's take a look at the charts:
The problem with the Oglesby observation is that our effective FG% is actually better than recent years and the 3-point shooting is right about where its been lately (thank you Andre Young, and I believe I called that right after finding out about Oglesby). Now it is true that we are shooting the three less often, but I for one am happy to see us look to the inside game more. I think there's room to cut Young loose a little more, and I'd like to see Johnson take more opportunities to find his shot, but for the most part I'm happy to see more shots at the rim from this year's squad.
I think their are two major problems in addition to one minor issues with the offense. First, turnovers are up again from last season. This is a real problem: check out the rate of other teams stealing the ball from us. We just aren't protecting the ball, and teams are taking advantage. The second problem is our atrocious FT shooting, which has now officially sunk to 2008 levels and keeps getting worse as Trevor Booker continues his swoon at the line. The minor issue worth keeping an eye on is the small drop in offensive rebounding. At this point I'm not terribly concerned--we're still #30 in the country (and the drop could be related to our drop in overall 3-point shots), but since we have depended so much on this facet of the game in the past its worth keeping an eye on.
Other
The last thing I want to draw attention to is that we haven't been tested by excellent defensive teams. Last year this was really our Achilles heel, we got bludgeoned by tall teams with excellent defenses in the Wake Forest and Florida State mode. (They rank #1 and #2 in overall effective height this year, by the way). We have added some height this year, but its still just slightly above the national average (which will rate out as below the ACC average):
It will be interesting to see how we handle the big ACC teams this year.
Right now, Kenpom.com has us pegged at 9 conference wins. I think that's about right, with 10 not being out of the question. I had much higher hopes coming into the season, but I qualified that by stating we needed freshmen to step up into regular, productive roles. Its still possible for this to happen, but it's asking a lot for unproductive freshmen to see playing time, much less improvement, while playing in one of the two best conferences in the country.
I'll break this up into discussions on defense and offense; talking mostly from a statistical perspective. But first, here's where we stand compared to years past on adjusted offensive and defensive efficiencies which measure scoring efficiency per 100 possessions:
One thing to keep in mind efficiencies is that these numbers are adjusted for strength of the opponent, so in theory the above won't necessarily change even as the competition intensifies in ACC play. In practice, however, there still aren't enough data points to be really confident that significant fluctuations won't occur. There's also the effect of coaching adjustments; last year after the Maryland game Clemson's defensive efficiency started taking a nosedive, for reasons I documented previously.
Defense
Overall the defense looks tough, and has rebounded nicely from the disastrous tail-end of the '09 campaign. What's interesting is how this has happened--some of it is probably sustainable and some isn't (unlike the efficiencies above, these stats aren't necessarily adjusted for strength of opponent. I'll explain more below.) Take a look at the next two charts, one showing the "four factors" and the other showing miscellaneous components:
The four factors are revealing: Clemson's effective field goal percentage defense has rebounded to pre-'09 levels, and they are forcing turnovers at their best clip since 2005/2006. They are also keeping other teams off the offensive glass similar to the level they had 2007 and before. I've talked before about Purnell's seeming willingness to sacrifice offensive boards in the name of challenging the shot, as evidenced by the team consistently posting high block shot rates while giving up high offensive rebound percentages on defense, so this represents a bit of a shift from previous results. I'm a bit skeptical this is sustainable, however, because while Clemson has added some height, they also haven't played any particularly tall teams. Look for this stat to drop as the season goes on, but just keeping it around 200 in the nation could improve the defense slightly. On the other hand, this may be part of a conscientious adjustment by the coaching staff. For the first time in years, Clemson isn't an elite shot-blocking squad (see second chart above). If this is true, the numbers might be sustainable, but it seems to me that the end result won't really help (or hurt) the overall defensive numbers, as the two stats cancel each other out to some degree.
So despite the noticeable improvement in keeping other teams off the offensive glass, I think the real story behind the improved defense relates to the decrease in FG% against and to a lesser extent the increase in forcing turnovers. The second chart shows that the improvement in FG% defense stems primarily from a much better 3-point defense . I felt this was one of the keys going into the season, whether or not Clemson could stop the bleeding from behind the arc. We gave up too many open looks behind the arc after teams broke the press last season, to say nothing of our lax half-court three-point defense. I think this is a real improvement stemming from the different types of pressure Purnell has been throwing at teams, as well as his willingness to mix up the pressure looks throughout the game. This has made teams hesitant to push the ball up quickly, leading to fewer runouts and fewer wide-open looks. We'll see if this continues in ACC play, but for now Purnell and company deserve credit for effectively addressing what was possibly the biggest problem facing the defense coming into the season.
One other interesting stat is the FT% against. Clemson ranks 21st in the country in holding teams to 62.7% from the line. That's remarkable, but obviously sounds like dumb luck. Unless Clemson has managed to install some kind of unobtrusive but remarkably effective device to distract opposing shooters at Littlejohn, there's little likelihood of this continuing. On the other hand, last year Clemson posted the 53rd best FT rate against in the country. I'm still inclined to pass this off as a fluke, but I wonder if there is something else at work here. Are Purnell and staff coaching the players to specifically target poor free throw shooters for fouls? Seems like a pretty smart way to incrementally increase your odds of winning a game. At any rate, as the ACC season starts the free throw shooters should get better, so I don't see Clemson continuing to hold a ridiculous 63% against FT rate. But it will be interesting to see if we end up in the top 60 at the end of the season.
Offense
The offense is where we have struggled so far this season, with the team playing more like 2007 than 2008 or 2009. Terrence Oglesby!! If only we had T.O. to drain those clutch 3-pointers!!! Aaah, the lazy hack sportswriter explanation that will grace many a page printed or electronic before the season's over. Instead of taking the easy way out, let's take a look at the charts:
The problem with the Oglesby observation is that our effective FG% is actually better than recent years and the 3-point shooting is right about where its been lately (thank you Andre Young, and I believe I called that right after finding out about Oglesby). Now it is true that we are shooting the three less often, but I for one am happy to see us look to the inside game more. I think there's room to cut Young loose a little more, and I'd like to see Johnson take more opportunities to find his shot, but for the most part I'm happy to see more shots at the rim from this year's squad.
I think their are two major problems in addition to one minor issues with the offense. First, turnovers are up again from last season. This is a real problem: check out the rate of other teams stealing the ball from us. We just aren't protecting the ball, and teams are taking advantage. The second problem is our atrocious FT shooting, which has now officially sunk to 2008 levels and keeps getting worse as Trevor Booker continues his swoon at the line. The minor issue worth keeping an eye on is the small drop in offensive rebounding. At this point I'm not terribly concerned--we're still #30 in the country (and the drop could be related to our drop in overall 3-point shots), but since we have depended so much on this facet of the game in the past its worth keeping an eye on.
Other
The last thing I want to draw attention to is that we haven't been tested by excellent defensive teams. Last year this was really our Achilles heel, we got bludgeoned by tall teams with excellent defenses in the Wake Forest and Florida State mode. (They rank #1 and #2 in overall effective height this year, by the way). We have added some height this year, but its still just slightly above the national average (which will rate out as below the ACC average):
It will be interesting to see how we handle the big ACC teams this year.
Right now, Kenpom.com has us pegged at 9 conference wins. I think that's about right, with 10 not being out of the question. I had much higher hopes coming into the season, but I qualified that by stating we needed freshmen to step up into regular, productive roles. Its still possible for this to happen, but it's asking a lot for unproductive freshmen to see playing time, much less improvement, while playing in one of the two best conferences in the country.
Wednesday, 25 March 2009
STATE OF CLEMSON BASKETBALL: 2008-2009 end-of-season update
Again, with these posts I'm mostly interested in trying to discern any statistical trends in Clemson's play, and see if they are trending in the right or wrong way.
In the ACC season midseason update, I showed this chart plotting the division I rank of Clemson's adjusted offense and defense efficiencies as calculated at KenPom.com:
Aaah, the good old days when things were looking really good. Defense efficiency was more or less holding steady in the top 30, and you can't be unhappy with the offensive efficiency trend. Unfortunately, here's what the same plot looks like now at (post-)season's end:
I think there are two ways of interpreting these charts: 1) the first chart was a result of an extended statistical fluctuation that overvalued Clemson's defense, and the second chart is actually a closer approximation of Clemson's true talent level for the season. 2) Something happened midway through the ACC season, whether it be team chemistry-related or the league suddenly discovering how to break Clemson's defensive scheme, causing Clemson to play dramatically worse on defense the remainder of the season.
I tend to favor the latter interpretation for several reasons: 1) twenty-two games is probably enough data to give you a pretty good measure of the team's talent level, 2) I think there are obvious adjustments the rest of league made that we've pointed out on the blog before, and 3) subjectively I think we can all agree that Clemson just played like a different team in the second half of the ACC season, putting forth a much "sloppier" effort over the last 8 games and the postseason.
At any rate, to dig a little deeper into the defensive decline, I plotted some of the component defensive statistics over the years since Purnell has taken the helm. First, how the defense fared against the four factors of opposing offenses. The four factors (effective FG%, turnover%, offensive rebounding%, and FT attempts) were determined by Dean Oliver as the most important factors in predicting basketball success:
Right away we can can see where Oliver Purnell's defenses have made their mark: forcing turnovers. Clemson has consistently been amongst the best in division I at forcing turnovers since Purnell took over. The other difference between 2008 and 2009 that jumps out at me is the slight rise in effective FG% against rank. At first glance it might not seem like much, but what this chart fails to capture is the relative importance of each factor. As it turns out, FG% is by far the most important factor, generally twice as important in determining success as the turnover% and also about twice as important as offensive rebounding% and FT attempts combined. In other words, a rise in FG% against is twice or four times as bad as comparable increases in the other factors.
Looking deeper still, we can break the first two factors down a little more by looking at 3-point and 2-point FG% against, as well as steal% and block% against:
Here we again see some Oliver Purnell staples: steal% ranking in the top ten in division I and block% typically ranking in the top twenty or so. We can also possibly see a little more of the problem, the sudden jump in 3-point% against increased rapidly. This may have been negated somewhat by the drop in 2-point% against, but again, the 3-point% would probably have to be weighted as more important. Now, its true that the 2007-08 team was superhuman at guarding against the three, so we could have expected some regression coming into this year based on previous performances. But this is clearly the worst 3-point% against since Purnell took the helm.
One last chart to look at, this one breaks down how teams scored their points against Clemson into the percentage of points from the 3-point, the 2-point, and the FT shot:
Here we see the total percentage of points coming from 3-point shots taking a larger chunk of the points we gave up over the course of the year. This doesn't mean that we gave up more points, it just means that teams appear to have been looking more to the three point shot to put points on the board against our defense.
While none of the above three charts are particularly convincing on their own, I think they all add up to a pretty strong argument that Clemson's defensive struggles were directly related to a much poorer 3-point shooting defense. While this is worrying, it takes more than one point to indicate a trend. Definitely something to watch for next year, however, because over the course of an entire season that kind of 3-point defense could land us back in the NIT.
In the ACC season midseason update, I showed this chart plotting the division I rank of Clemson's adjusted offense and defense efficiencies as calculated at KenPom.com:
Aaah, the good old days when things were looking really good. Defense efficiency was more or less holding steady in the top 30, and you can't be unhappy with the offensive efficiency trend. Unfortunately, here's what the same plot looks like now at (post-)season's end:
I think there are two ways of interpreting these charts: 1) the first chart was a result of an extended statistical fluctuation that overvalued Clemson's defense, and the second chart is actually a closer approximation of Clemson's true talent level for the season. 2) Something happened midway through the ACC season, whether it be team chemistry-related or the league suddenly discovering how to break Clemson's defensive scheme, causing Clemson to play dramatically worse on defense the remainder of the season.
I tend to favor the latter interpretation for several reasons: 1) twenty-two games is probably enough data to give you a pretty good measure of the team's talent level, 2) I think there are obvious adjustments the rest of league made that we've pointed out on the blog before, and 3) subjectively I think we can all agree that Clemson just played like a different team in the second half of the ACC season, putting forth a much "sloppier" effort over the last 8 games and the postseason.
At any rate, to dig a little deeper into the defensive decline, I plotted some of the component defensive statistics over the years since Purnell has taken the helm. First, how the defense fared against the four factors of opposing offenses. The four factors (effective FG%, turnover%, offensive rebounding%, and FT attempts) were determined by Dean Oliver as the most important factors in predicting basketball success:
Right away we can can see where Oliver Purnell's defenses have made their mark: forcing turnovers. Clemson has consistently been amongst the best in division I at forcing turnovers since Purnell took over. The other difference between 2008 and 2009 that jumps out at me is the slight rise in effective FG% against rank. At first glance it might not seem like much, but what this chart fails to capture is the relative importance of each factor. As it turns out, FG% is by far the most important factor, generally twice as important in determining success as the turnover% and also about twice as important as offensive rebounding% and FT attempts combined. In other words, a rise in FG% against is twice or four times as bad as comparable increases in the other factors.
Looking deeper still, we can break the first two factors down a little more by looking at 3-point and 2-point FG% against, as well as steal% and block% against:
Here we again see some Oliver Purnell staples: steal% ranking in the top ten in division I and block% typically ranking in the top twenty or so. We can also possibly see a little more of the problem, the sudden jump in 3-point% against increased rapidly. This may have been negated somewhat by the drop in 2-point% against, but again, the 3-point% would probably have to be weighted as more important. Now, its true that the 2007-08 team was superhuman at guarding against the three, so we could have expected some regression coming into this year based on previous performances. But this is clearly the worst 3-point% against since Purnell took the helm.
One last chart to look at, this one breaks down how teams scored their points against Clemson into the percentage of points from the 3-point, the 2-point, and the FT shot:
Here we see the total percentage of points coming from 3-point shots taking a larger chunk of the points we gave up over the course of the year. This doesn't mean that we gave up more points, it just means that teams appear to have been looking more to the three point shot to put points on the board against our defense.
While none of the above three charts are particularly convincing on their own, I think they all add up to a pretty strong argument that Clemson's defensive struggles were directly related to a much poorer 3-point shooting defense. While this is worrying, it takes more than one point to indicate a trend. Definitely something to watch for next year, however, because over the course of an entire season that kind of 3-point defense could land us back in the NIT.
Tuesday, 10 March 2009
Clemson and late season collapses
I'll review the team from a stats-based perspective after the NCAA tourney wraps up, but I wanted to get this out as a more emotional response to the end of the regular season and a way to head off some of the possible talk about slow finishing...
Another basketball season is coming to a close, and unfortunately the way things have unfolded may remind Clemson fans of recent seasons: good start followed by a slow finish. Since there was talk a scant two weeks ago about contending for an ACC title and now we have managed to miss the first-round bye, I think its totally understandable to make the connection to the "traditional" late-season collapses of yesteryear. Without making any statistical arguments, I think there are clear differences between Clemson 2009 and Clemson 2005-2007, which are the years people typically point to as evidence of our late season problems.
First of all, let me preface this by saying that if you had told me at the start of the season we would have gone into WF for the last game of the season looking for our 10th conference win, I would have taken it every time. At the start of the season we all knew this team would take a step down from previous years, probably most prominently in our defense. The most optimistic pundits/projections pegged us as matching 2008, the more realistic had us around .500 in the conference, looking at an 8/9 seed of death for the NCAA tourney. And while I don't think the term "rebuilding year" can really apply to college sports, I was certainly willing to endure a down year after the steady improvement of the last four, and with all signs pointing to a great 2010. At any rate, despite my constant pleas for adjustment as the season wound down, I think the results this year point to an absolutely tremendous year-long effort from the coaching staff.
So what makes this year different from 2005-2007? In those years we struggled immediately upon entering ACC play, and it was evident that even if the coaching was there for Clemson, the talent level on a lot of the nights just couldn't hold up. I don't think that's the case for 2009. We have talent comparable to most teams in the ACC on this team, but the problem lies in team construction. We just have too many significant, exploitable flaws. And the flaws were identified, the rest of the ACC took notice and there wasn't much we could do to adjust. I would point to two turning points this season--the first Wake game and the Maryland game.
The first Wake game showed the rest of the conference how to defend Clemson. They suffocated our perimeter with incredible height all night long, altering shots from behind the arc and keeping passes out of the post. This neutralized Booker underneath, and took away our 3-point weapons outside, the two weapons the offense runs on. Not every team could mimic Wake's success without their height (think Virginia, Maryland, and even Duke), but I think from that point on we saw every team from trying to apply intense pressure around the perimeter, even overplaying because we weren't too keen on driving to the hoop or taking open jumpers.
The Maryland game gave the rest of the conference the book on how to beat our defense. Gary Williams and Maryland attacked the press relentlessly and put up run-outs all night long on our full-court press. Other teams (VT, for example) had similarly run with Clemson, but Maryland did something different...after breaking the press, they had players spotting up for open threes and also had the ballhandler pulling up for easy jumpers. This really took away one of the strength's of Clemson's press--their ability to get back to the hoop and block shots even when a team thought they had a clean layup. Maryland turned the tables by opening up the floor. Luckily for Clemson, Maryland is an absolutely horrible shooting team, and we ran away after some untimely Maryland turnovers and some Maryland fatigue in the second half. But this strategy was employed effectively by other teams in the waning games of the season, I would pin the VT loss squarely on the open threes Clemson kept giving up to sharp-shooters Vasallo and Delaney.
This year's team rode an excellent game plan to a great start for the first ~21/22 games of the season. But give ACC coaches some credit, they watched the tapes and smelled the blood--eventually constructing a game plan that attacks Clemson's makeup, not something you can easily adjust to. The WF game might offer some glimmers of hope for a postseason run, but no matter how things finish and despite our late season swoon, I don't see how we can view this season as anything but a success for the program. Nothing extraordinary, perhaps, but a solid season for a program seriously lacking a history of solid seasons.
Another basketball season is coming to a close, and unfortunately the way things have unfolded may remind Clemson fans of recent seasons: good start followed by a slow finish. Since there was talk a scant two weeks ago about contending for an ACC title and now we have managed to miss the first-round bye, I think its totally understandable to make the connection to the "traditional" late-season collapses of yesteryear. Without making any statistical arguments, I think there are clear differences between Clemson 2009 and Clemson 2005-2007, which are the years people typically point to as evidence of our late season problems.
First of all, let me preface this by saying that if you had told me at the start of the season we would have gone into WF for the last game of the season looking for our 10th conference win, I would have taken it every time. At the start of the season we all knew this team would take a step down from previous years, probably most prominently in our defense. The most optimistic pundits/projections pegged us as matching 2008, the more realistic had us around .500 in the conference, looking at an 8/9 seed of death for the NCAA tourney. And while I don't think the term "rebuilding year" can really apply to college sports, I was certainly willing to endure a down year after the steady improvement of the last four, and with all signs pointing to a great 2010. At any rate, despite my constant pleas for adjustment as the season wound down, I think the results this year point to an absolutely tremendous year-long effort from the coaching staff.
So what makes this year different from 2005-2007? In those years we struggled immediately upon entering ACC play, and it was evident that even if the coaching was there for Clemson, the talent level on a lot of the nights just couldn't hold up. I don't think that's the case for 2009. We have talent comparable to most teams in the ACC on this team, but the problem lies in team construction. We just have too many significant, exploitable flaws. And the flaws were identified, the rest of the ACC took notice and there wasn't much we could do to adjust. I would point to two turning points this season--the first Wake game and the Maryland game.
The first Wake game showed the rest of the conference how to defend Clemson. They suffocated our perimeter with incredible height all night long, altering shots from behind the arc and keeping passes out of the post. This neutralized Booker underneath, and took away our 3-point weapons outside, the two weapons the offense runs on. Not every team could mimic Wake's success without their height (think Virginia, Maryland, and even Duke), but I think from that point on we saw every team from trying to apply intense pressure around the perimeter, even overplaying because we weren't too keen on driving to the hoop or taking open jumpers.
The Maryland game gave the rest of the conference the book on how to beat our defense. Gary Williams and Maryland attacked the press relentlessly and put up run-outs all night long on our full-court press. Other teams (VT, for example) had similarly run with Clemson, but Maryland did something different...after breaking the press, they had players spotting up for open threes and also had the ballhandler pulling up for easy jumpers. This really took away one of the strength's of Clemson's press--their ability to get back to the hoop and block shots even when a team thought they had a clean layup. Maryland turned the tables by opening up the floor. Luckily for Clemson, Maryland is an absolutely horrible shooting team, and we ran away after some untimely Maryland turnovers and some Maryland fatigue in the second half. But this strategy was employed effectively by other teams in the waning games of the season, I would pin the VT loss squarely on the open threes Clemson kept giving up to sharp-shooters Vasallo and Delaney.
This year's team rode an excellent game plan to a great start for the first ~21/22 games of the season. But give ACC coaches some credit, they watched the tapes and smelled the blood--eventually constructing a game plan that attacks Clemson's makeup, not something you can easily adjust to. The WF game might offer some glimmers of hope for a postseason run, but no matter how things finish and despite our late season swoon, I don't see how we can view this season as anything but a success for the program. Nothing extraordinary, perhaps, but a solid season for a program seriously lacking a history of solid seasons.
Monday, 9 February 2009
STATE OF CLEMSON BASKETBALL: 2008-2009 ACC season midpoint update
Well, 8 games into the conference schedule and 21 games into the season, we're just starting to accumulate enough data to make some reliable observations about how the team is faring this year. I'm mostly interested in comparing this year to previous years, to try and identify any encouraging or discouraging trends. I am hoping to do this maybe three times a year, at the start of the ACC season, at the midpoint, and then at the end of the postseason. I thought I would start this time by looking at general offense and defense trends since the start of the Purnell era, to give a kind of baseline for future discussions. This post is based on the stats provided at Ken Pomeroy's site, if you haven't headed over there to check it out I really recommend it. I tend to lose several hours of the day when I visit...
Before looking at the offense and defense, the first comment I want to make is that the strength of schedule is shaping up to be weaker this year than the last two years, particularly the non-conference schedule. This might be different from what you've heard elsewhere, but I think people are underestimating the near-complete collapse of the SEC has a major basketball conference. After being up near the top of the rankings for several seasons, the SEC sucked in 2008, ranking last in overall conference efficiency among the major conferences. This year, it’s barely fending off the Mountain West for sixth place. It’s pretty sad when your best teams match up results-wise with the perennial first round 8/9 game-losing BYU cougars. So while in the past a victory over Alabama or USuCk might have been impressive, this year it means very little. But who am I kidding? If the coots are ever threatening to take a division, you know your conference has serious problems. Maybe Purnell will consider diversifying the competition a little in the coming seasons, but really these kinds of years will happen even with the best of intentions.
Now let’s take at offensive and defensive efficiency: stats that are adjusted for opponent strength. This way we don’t need to worry yet about the weaker 2009 schedule.
The first year Purnell arrived our defense was 43rd best in the country, and hasn’t dropped below the top thirty since. Over the same time, the offense has gotten progressively better. I think this confirms the tag always placed on Purnell: defense-first coach. Personally, I think we should apply a different tag to Purnell: extremely intelligent coach. I think he saw that to some degree lack of innate defensive talent can be overcome with raw athleticism, hustle, and good defensive schemes. This is not as nearly as true for offense, where lack of natural talent is more difficult to hide. Being the extremely smart coach, Purnell recognized that a strong defense is easier to build from the ground up than a strong offense, so he brings in athletic guys that can run the floor and listen to the coaches. As the program gets some recognition, he can then bring in athletic guys with more natural talent on the offensive end. Clemben is more of the recruiting guru, but from what I understand we can have high expectations this trend will continue with next year’s crew.
Next stat—one everyone has watched in horror for the past several years: FT percentage.
I think finally this year, after years and years of hearing about how improved we were going to be, we have finally actually improved. There’s still time for a late-season collapse, but it looks like the improvements by Booker, Grant, and to a lesser extent Sykes have more than offset regressions from Stitt and Oglesby. Again, though, I think this emphasizes Purnell’s defense first strategy to building a program, and while I’ve been as frustrated as the next guy, if the percentage rises another 3-4%, next year we’re looking at an average FT shooting team. Never thought I’d say it.
Last stat, just to drive home the point from the last couple of posts: average effective height. Unfortunately, the numbers are only calculated back to 2007.
Before looking at the offense and defense, the first comment I want to make is that the strength of schedule is shaping up to be weaker this year than the last two years, particularly the non-conference schedule. This might be different from what you've heard elsewhere, but I think people are underestimating the near-complete collapse of the SEC has a major basketball conference. After being up near the top of the rankings for several seasons, the SEC sucked in 2008, ranking last in overall conference efficiency among the major conferences. This year, it’s barely fending off the Mountain West for sixth place. It’s pretty sad when your best teams match up results-wise with the perennial first round 8/9 game-losing BYU cougars. So while in the past a victory over Alabama or USuCk might have been impressive, this year it means very little. But who am I kidding? If the coots are ever threatening to take a division, you know your conference has serious problems. Maybe Purnell will consider diversifying the competition a little in the coming seasons, but really these kinds of years will happen even with the best of intentions.
Now let’s take at offensive and defensive efficiency: stats that are adjusted for opponent strength. This way we don’t need to worry yet about the weaker 2009 schedule.
The first year Purnell arrived our defense was 43rd best in the country, and hasn’t dropped below the top thirty since. Over the same time, the offense has gotten progressively better. I think this confirms the tag always placed on Purnell: defense-first coach. Personally, I think we should apply a different tag to Purnell: extremely intelligent coach. I think he saw that to some degree lack of innate defensive talent can be overcome with raw athleticism, hustle, and good defensive schemes. This is not as nearly as true for offense, where lack of natural talent is more difficult to hide. Being the extremely smart coach, Purnell recognized that a strong defense is easier to build from the ground up than a strong offense, so he brings in athletic guys that can run the floor and listen to the coaches. As the program gets some recognition, he can then bring in athletic guys with more natural talent on the offensive end. Clemben is more of the recruiting guru, but from what I understand we can have high expectations this trend will continue with next year’s crew.
Next stat—one everyone has watched in horror for the past several years: FT percentage.
I think finally this year, after years and years of hearing about how improved we were going to be, we have finally actually improved. There’s still time for a late-season collapse, but it looks like the improvements by Booker, Grant, and to a lesser extent Sykes have more than offset regressions from Stitt and Oglesby. Again, though, I think this emphasizes Purnell’s defense first strategy to building a program, and while I’ve been as frustrated as the next guy, if the percentage rises another 3-4%, next year we’re looking at an average FT shooting team. Never thought I’d say it.
Last stat, just to drive home the point from the last couple of posts: average effective height. Unfortunately, the numbers are only calculated back to 2007.
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