Scouting report: Oral Roberts Golden Eagles

MRickman84 — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 18:30:31 -0000

Wake Forest Demon Deacons (0-0) vs. Oral Roberts Golden Eagles (0-0)
8 pm, Lawrence Joel Memorial Coliseum
ISP Sports Radio Network

Oral Roberts has perennially been a solid mid-major which hasn't quite been able to break through and win an NCAA Tournament game since they made it to the Regional Final against Kansas in 1974. Despite this, they made three consecutive trips to the Big Dance from 2006-2008 (in both the Mid-Con and Summit conferences), before finishing 16-15 a year ago.

If Oral Roberts (the man, not the school) had his way, God would lead the Golden Eagles to victory every game. But since that hasn't happened (yet?), their leader is head coach Scott Sutton. Does that name sound familiar? It should. Sutton's father is legendary coach and drinker Eddie Sutton. But Scott is quickly creating a legacy of his own.

One would look at ORU's record from a year ago and consider it a down year, but the Golden Eagles finished 14-4 in conference and had a murderer's row of a non-conference schedule, playing North Carolina, Missouri, USC, Tulsa and Creighton. In fact, KenPom actually ranked their non-conference schedule at .819, good for toughest in the country.

This year, Oral Roberts obviously would like to make it back to the Tournament, but they lost their top two scorers, G Robert Jarvis (17.2 ppg) and F Marcus Lewis (13.3 ppg, 7.2 rebounds). They return Dominique Morrison and Kevin Ford, who combined for 19 ppg a year ago.

ORU had a pretty poor 1:1.1 A:TO ratio, and was a mediocre shooting team (44% FG, 67% FT, 31% 3PT). Despite these numbers, Sutton's team was a solid 87th in the KenPom ratings and were the 41st most efficient defense.

They are similar to Wake in that only 22% of their points come from 3 pointers and opponents only scored 23% of points from downtown.

Wake Forest should be able to have a ton of mismatches against ORU, as although they have two players at 6-10, Damien Bell ( ) is a freshman and junior Javier Nasar is a transfer from Northern Oklahoma College-Tonkawa. Both will have an adjustment period, and that could be a tough start against Tony Woods, Chas McFarland and David Weaver. Ford, at 6'9" will probably draw Woods, and that should give Tony some ample scoring and blocking opportunities.

In addition, it looks as though Morrison (6'6") will be matching up against Al-Farouq Aminu, who has a definite height advantage.

Wake could get a bit of a challenge in their first game of the season from the Golden Eagles, but the mismatches and the questions surrounding who will step up for Oral Roberts should ultimately lead to a Demon Deacon victory.

Mizzou-ORU: Be...side the Box Score

Bill C. — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 20:27:05 -0000

I plan on doing a little stat analysis for each Mizzou game, but it's not to the play-by-play level, so we won't be using the "Beyond the Box Score" moniker. Instead, we'll just hang out beside the box score for a bit.

(Here's the official box score.)

Mizzou 92, Oral Roberts 83

	Mizzou	ORU
Points Per Minute	2.30	2.08
Points Per Possession (PPP)	1.29	1.17
Points Per Shot (PPS)	1.42	1.54
2-PT FG%	55.8%	42.5%
3-PT FG%	46.2%	57.1%
FT%	66.7%	78.1%

	Mizzou	ORU
Assists	18	10
Steals	10	6
Turnovers	10	12
(Assists + Steals) / TO	2.80	1.33

	Mizzou	ORU
Expected Offensive Rebounds*	12	12
Offensive Rebounds	13	11
Eq. Rebound Margin	+1	-1

* This is an idea discussed last week. Depending on the number of 2-pointers, 3-pointers, and FTs shot, you can generate a number of expected offensive rebounds and compare that to the actual number.

Mizzou won this game on offense. They forced only 12 turnovers, but 1.29 points per possession is very high. They shot well and passed well, and though Oral Roberts is not a Big 12 caliber team, they're at least a solid mid-major, and 1.29 PPP is high against even that level of team. And as we'll see in the player analysis, I'm giving DeMarre Carroll and Miguel Paul a lot of credit for that offensive efficiency.
ORU's Robert Jarvis scored 34 points on just 18 shots, accounting for a large % of ORU's offensive success. Jarvis aside, the Golden Eagles averaged just 1.36 points per shot (39% FG)...which is still pretty high, but better.
Thanks to Leo Lyons' 8-for-10 performance from the FT line, Mizzou actually approached 70% as a team. Of course, 70% still isn't very good. Mizzou's guards went 6-for-9 from the line...67% isn't great, but it's also a small sample size, so we'll allow it for now.

Player analysis after the jump.

Player	EqPts*	EqPts/Min	Line
Leo Lyons	22.73	0.81	26 Pts, 8-for-10 FTs, 8 Reb, 4 OffReb
DeMarre Carroll	21.64	0.72	16 Pts, 8 Reb, 4 Ast, 2 Stl
Miguel Paul	12.92	0.68	9 Pts, 5 Ast, 1 Stl
Matt Lawrence	10.43	0.40	8 Pts, 2 Ast, 2 Reb
Zaire Taylor	7.94	0.38	11 Pts, 3-for-6 FGs, 3 Reb, 2 Stl
Kim English	5.76	0.58	4 Pts, 2-for-3 FGs, 2 Ast
Marcus Denmon	4.67	0.27	2 Pts 1-for-2 FGs, 2 Reb, 2 Stl
Keith Ramsey	2.02	0.22	4 Pts, 1 Stl, 1 Blk
Justin Safford	1.87	0.23	5 Pts, 2-for-3 FGs, 3 Reb, 4 PF
Laurence Bowers	1.25	0.25	1 Reb, 1 Blk
J.T. Tiller	-0.47	-0.02	7 Pts, 3 Reb, 3 TO, 4 PF
Steve Moore	DNP
Michael Anderson Jr.	DNP
Jarrett Sutton	DNP

EqPts = a take-off of the Net Equivalent Points idea discussed last week. Taking points, assists, rebounds (offensive & defensive), steals, blocks, turnovers and fouls into account, the team's points are re-distributed to figure out who had the biggest impact on the game itself, instead of just how many balls a player put through a basket. I can go into detail on the formula if anybody asks, but for now just know that that was the intent.

Best game yet from Miguel Paul, who managed 5 assists and a steal in just 19 minutes. Zaire Taylor played well, but Paul played better.
Four assists from DeMarre Carroll. Nice. DeMarre and Leo switched roles, as Leo took the shots and DeMarre found the open man.
I order these by EqPts scored. In theory, you'd like to see the EqPts/Min figure go from highest-to-lowest on this list as well, as that would suggest that Mike Anderson played the best performers the most. That said, Anderson did a pretty good job here. The only area that could have been better was at SF, where Matt Lawrence's 26 minutes were probably a bit much, and Kim English's 10 minutes were not quite enough.
JT Tiller's 3 turnovers and 4 fouls put him in the negative. He wasn't needed much yesterday, so instead of saying he had a bad game, we'll say he was saving himself for more important occasions.
At some point, we need to just start considering Safford, Ramsey and Bowers all one player. What was that one player's (Jaureth Bamford) line? 22 minutes, 9 points on 5 shots, 5 rebounds (1 offensive), 1 assist, 1 steal, 2 blocks. Not bad. Oh yeah, and 5 fouls.

Season to Date

Player	EqPts/Gm	EqPts/Min	Line
DeMarre Carroll	20.39	0.72	19.5 PPG, 7.5 RPG, 2.7 APG
Leo Lyons	16.81	0.69	18.7 PPG, 6.7 RPG, 1.56 PPS
Zaire Taylor	8.81	0.33	5.0 PPG, 3.8 RPG, 3.8 APG
J.T. Tiller	8.34	0.37	8.0 PPG, 2.8 APG, 2.5 SPG
Marcus Denmon	6.97	0.40	5.5 PPG, 2.8 RPG, 2.0 APG
Matt Lawrence	6.28	0.31	8.3 PPG, 2.2 RPG, 39.5% FG
Miguel Paul	6.08	0.39	6.2 PPG, 2.3 APG, 0.15 APM
Keith Ramsey	3.78	0.36	4.2 PPG, 2.8 RPG, 1.5 OffRPG
Justin Safford	3.02	0.25	4.0 PPG, 2.8 RPG, 2.8 FoulsPG
Kim English	2.90	0.24	5.0 PPG, 1.5 RPG
Laurence Bowers	1.95	0.24	1.3 PPG, 2.8 RPG
Jarrett Sutton	1.77	0.59	3.0 PPG, 1 Point Per Minute!
Michael Anderson Jr.	1.08	0.20	1.0 PPG, 1 Coach's son
Steve Moore	-0.34	-0.07	1.7 PPG, 0.7 RPG, 0.3 BPG

Clearly we need to play Jarrett Sutton more...at 20 minutes per game, he'd average 20 points, right? Ri...right? That's how stats work, right?
Sutton's greatness aside, the minutes distribution is pretty strong. I do think Paul will slowly overtake Taylor for PT...don't really care who starts, but Paul will start getting more and more of the key minutes.
I also like how Marcus Denmon continues to figure out ways to contribute despite his shot not falling. He only took two shots against ORU but still contributed. He and English should continue to overtake Matt Lawrence as well...at least in games where Lawrence's shot isn't falling.
Jaureth Bamford: 28.0 MPG, 9.0 PPG, 7.5 RPG, 2.5 APG, 1.0 BPG, 0.7 SPG. Not bad at all.

I'm cranking through this quickly, so if I need to explain something in the stats, just ask in comments...

SB Nation - Robert Jarvis

Scouting report: Oral Roberts Golden Eagles

Mizzou-ORU: Be...side the Box Score

Mizzou 92, Oral Roberts 83

Season to Date