(Bump. -- Ed.)


Following up on Ducking Delvon's post on last year's backcourt compared to this year's, I thought it would be useful to compare this year's frontcourt to last year's. I'm not sure where to categorize Dawson and Summers. Both play basically the same position, but they are not the same player. Summers shot lots of 3s, Dawson shoots far fewer of them. Basically for much of last year we had a 2 man frontcourt of Green and Roe, with Nix and Payne subbing in and Summers basically at small forward (Appling at 2 and Lucious coming in for Lucas while he was still here). So I guess there will be some overlap here in that I will include Summers as a front court player. That gives us a front court for last year of Summers, Green, Roe, Sherman, Nix, Payne, and Thornton. This year we have Dawson, Green, Nix, Payne, Thornton, Gauna, and Byrd. I'm using tempo-free stats from all of last year for those players who played last year, vs tempo free stats YTD for this year. The rest follows below the jump.

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With a few games under our belt, the basketball team seems like a typical Izzo-coached bunch in all respects save one - offensive rebounding. Generally, Michigan State is in the top 10 nationally in offensive rebounding percentage. This year, according to Ken Pomeroy, we're a lowly 109th. It's still early, but we are in uncharted territory so far this year, and not in a good way. Some theories to explain this include: the loss of Morgan, who was an excellent rebounder, and Green spending time at the 3, thus pulling him away from the basket and cutting into his rebounding percentage. 

The loss of Morgan could, in theory be made up for by increased minutes for Nix/Sherman and Payne. We don't have statistics from last year for Payne, but so far he is exceeding Morgan's offensive rebounding percentage (which was 9.5 last year) in limited minutes, with a 16 offensive rebounding percentage. Both Sherman (8.4 last year) and Nix (14.7) were good offensive rebounders. Nix surpassed Morgan's offensive rebounding percentage by a substantial margin, while Sherman was a percentage point below Morgan. However, Sherman is grabbing offensive boards at a lower rate than last year - he's dropped from an 8.4 offensive rebounding percentage to 6.1. Nix has played only limited minutes, but has an offensive rebounding percentage of 5  - a third of last year's rate. It looks as though Sherman will be taking most of Morgan's minutes, and if he can return to last year's rate we should almost break even on the exchange. 

Green is performing at almost exactly last year's level on the offensive boards, so having him spend more time on the perimeter doesn't explain the overall team drop off. The main culprit so far seems to be Roe, as he is both playing major minutes and rebounding at a much lower rate than last year. Last year his offensive rebounding percentage was a robust 10.8. This year it's dropped off precipitously to 5.9 - basically 5 percentage points lower. This should be reason for optimism, as Roe has a two year track record as an excellent rebounder on both ends. There's no reason to believe he can't return to form with a little emphasis in that area.

However, the trend for all of our main returning contributors on the offensive boards is negative - Sherman, Nix, and Roe are all rebounding at substantially lower rates than last year, which may be an indication that offensive rebounding isn't being emphasized this year to the same extent as in years past. Another explanation may be our red-hot shooting this year (which hopefully will continue) - maybe our post players have less incentive to go after boards if the shots are falling - this would be the why do all that work if the ball is going to find the bottom of the net explanation. I have a hard time buying that Izzo hasn't been emphasizing offensive rebounding, or that we're shooting at a higher enough rate to de-incentivize offensive rebounding. Hopefully it's just a slump. If we can get Roe and Sherman/Nix back up to last year's levels, we should round back into an excellent offensive rebounding team. Lets hope that happens, because our effectiveness on the offensive glass is a staple of our offensive system. 

I think we've all been pleasantly surprised by the performance of Durrell Summers in this year's NCAA tournament. He has provided more scoring punch in the tournament than any other player on our roster. This comes as a surprise because he had what could only be described, given his undeniable talent, as a somewhat inconsistent regular season. My recollections from last year's tournament were that he made a somewhat similar jump. In order to confirm the accuracy of my recollections, I compiled his two-point shooting percentage, three point shooting percentage, and overall offensive rating for last year's and this year's NCAA tournament games. For comparison, I've also included the same percentages/ratings for the corresponding Big 10 seasons. Without further ado, here are the stats:

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[Bumped.  Whatever Tom Izzo is doing at halftime, he should go ahead and do it before the game starts.  My theory on the phenomenon is in the first two paragraphs after the jump in Sunday's game recap.

Also, hockey fans should check out SpartanDan's comprehensive rundown of what need to happen for MSU to make the NCAA Tournament. -KJ]

As we are all aware, this year's MSU team has a tendency to fall behind by big margins in the first half of games and then make a valiant comeback effort in the second half. In the past few games against quality opponents those comeback efforts have fallen just short. I thought it would be interesting to look at our efficiency and our opponents' efficiency by half for every Big 10 game. Statsheet.com provides box score data by half but not tempo free stats by half, so I had to calculate possessions myself in a spreadsheet. This was an educational experience, as when I did the calculation using the common formula suggested by Ken Pomeroy, which is FGA-OR+TO+(.475xFTA), I got disparate possessions for each team, often with differences approaching 4 possessions per half. I asked KJ and John Gasaway how to reconcile discrepancies, and both said to average the estimated possession totals for both teams to get total possessions, so that's what I did. Without further ado, here are the MSU and opponent efficiency averages by half:

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Well, we are now 13 games into the Big 10 season with only 5 remaining. I thought it would be a good time to check back in with where we are in efficiency margin terms. Those of you who read Basketball Prospectus have probably already seen these numbers in John Gasaway's Tuesday Truths column, but here they are on our favorite blog with some perspective on where we were vs where we are now.

Things do not look as rosy for us as they did last we checked in halfway through the conference season, and the culprit, as KJ demonstrated in a recent post, is defense. Our offensive efficiency has remained steady throughout the Big 10 season at about 1.06 points per possession. It was up at 1.08 PPP when first we checked in after 4 Big 10 games, but has dropped to 1.06 by the 25th of January and is still there right now. In contrast to this consistency, our D has been a major disappointment in the past few games. We were in a virtual tie with Wisconsin for the conference lead (we were at .94 PPP and they were at .93 PPP) in defensive efficiency going into the game in Madison. Beginning with that game we posted a series of sub-par defensive performances against Wisconsin, Illinois, and Purdue, and now sport a barely passable .99 defensive efficiency. We really need to pick it up on that side of the ball.

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[Bumped.  Haven't looked at the O'Neil article yet, but the YABB post is full of stupendous blogginess. -KJ]

I found this Dana O'Neil article via the Yet Another Basketball Blog. Both the article and blog post are on coaching trees. We all know that the Heathcote/Izzo tree is pretty impressive but I was unaware that Tom Crean has had four assistants that have gone on to get head coaching gigs. At this rate of growth by the time both Crean and Izzo retire it may be as impressive as the Pitino tree, which is very long.  Also, congratulations to Stan Heath - his USF Bulls beat Georgetown at home Wednesday night. He has USF at .500 in Big East play.

[Bumped.  --LVS.]

Well, we're halfway through the conference season, which is a logical place to take a look at how we're doing tempo-free-wise. We all know how we're doing conference standing-wise. The tempo free stats tell the same story, although by tempo-free measures we're in a closer race than the standings would indicate. I shamelessly plagiarized this data from John Gasaway's Tuesday Truths column, which is a great read if you are interested in how the other major (and "minor") conferences are shaping up. I was calculating these figures myself but since he already went to the trouble I figured there was no reason to do the work myself. Here are the efficiency margin conference standings for the first half of the Big 10 season:

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[Bumped.  Con-T covered the offense.  TheCrestedHelm's got the defense. -KJ]

Dan Hanner at Yet Another Basketball Blog has a companion post to the one KJ linked to a few days ago on coaching offensive tendencies. This one looks at defensive tendencies - whether coaches rely on turnovers, defensive rebounding, forcing tough shots (limiting opponents' effective FG percentage) etc. for limiting their opponents' offense. We're solidly in the "use defensive rebounding to limit the opponent's second chance points" category. Surprisingly Izzo ranks 25th of the 72 coaches ranked on defensive effectiveness. He ranks 7th on offense. Despite the handwringing about turnovers we've been more consistent, and consistently good, on offense than defense over the past 7 years. Bo Ryan, Tubby Smith, and Tom Crean use the same defensive philosophy we do - limit good looks and go for defensive rebounds. Thad Matta relies on turnovers and effective FG defense. Painter, Bill Carmody, and John Beilein also rely primarily on forcing turnovers, although Carmody teams are generally atrocious rebounders which is their downfall defensively. Bruce Webber teams don't stand out as excellent in any one category but do pretty well in everything save FT rate. Ed Dechellis teams just don't play very good D in any area. Lickliter teams force turnovers and play reasonably good effective FG defense, but don't rebound all that well (possibly due to lack of height). 

This year our Big 10 defensive stats look pretty darn good. We looked mediocre in the pre-conference season. I'm not sure what to make of our improvement, but it doesn't seem to be a fluke as we are nearly halfway through the conference season. It doesn't seem to be a function of the Big 10 having a down year offensively - Purdue and Minnesota have had a reverse trend from us - they looked really good on D early in the year but have looked decidedly average since conference play began. If the Big Ten were offensively challenged they should not have experienced the dropoff on D.

Our improvements in conference play are certainly not based on only one factor. We rank first in the conference (including stats from conference games only) in opponent eFG percentage, defensive rebounding percentage, and opponent free throw rate. We're good at preventing opponents good looks, holding them to one and done, and not fouling. The only thing we don't do is force turnovers, but I'm OK with that given our excellence everywhere else. I hope our D come tournament time more closely resembles the performance we've exhibited in the Big 10 so far than the pre-conference season.

[Bumped.  Good stuff.

For all you FanPosters out there, Tableizer is a great way to make your tables look pretty.

Also: We're getting a lot more reader contributions these days.  So a lower percentage of items are getting bumped to the front page.  Be sure to keep an eye out for new reader-submitted content on the right sidebar.  That area can serve as sort of a mini-message board to talk about stuff beyond the first couple posts on the front page.  -KJ]

Ten days ago I posted efficiency margins for all Big Ten teams for conference games only. Now that 10 days have passed, I thought it might be worth another look. So, without further ado, here are your conference-only offensive efficiency, defensive efficiency, and efficiency margin for all Big 10 teams.

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[Bumped.  Miles to go before we sleep, but you've gotta like the way conference play has started. -KJ]

Well, we're not quite a quarter of the way through the Big Ten season yet, but I thought it would be interesting to look at efficiency margins so far. These are from Statsheet.com, so they have not been adjusted for strength of opponent. Below are offensive and defensive efficiencies for every team in the Big Ten along with the resulting efficiency margins. Stats are for conference games only.

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[Bumped.  --LVS.]

It appears that our defense is on the mend. Having ended the pre-conference season outside the top 50 in adjusted defensive efficiency, as of today we have cracked the top 30 on that measure. One constant throughout the lzzo era has been defensive rebounding, and we are pretty good in that area again this year, ranking 46th in the nation. We're also doing a pretty good job of limiting our opponents' effective FG percentage (we rank 53rd), 3 point field goal percentage (we rank 60th), and 2 point field goal percentage (also 60th).

One suprising area where we have been excelling this year, contrary to our MO as a physical team, is in limiting our opponents' free throws. We currently rank 41st in the country in opponents FT attempts per FG attempt. We should perhaps take this statistic with a grain of salt so far, as it may be to some extent a function of who we have played and where. Generally speaking, teams tend to get more foul calls when playing at home, and we've played more home than away games by far this year. To date in the Big Ten season we have played 3 home games vs two away. Furthermore, those two away games were against Northwestern and Iowa. Northwester currently ranks 186th in the nation in drawing fouls, which is pretty mediocre. Iowa is downright horrendous at drawing fouls, ranking an abysmal 315th in the nation.

So far, since Big Ten play began, we are actually fouling less than we did in the pre-conference season. We're currently featuring a FTA/FGA ratio of .24 in Big Ten play, which is significantly less than the .29 season-to-date ratio. Even considering the nature of our opponents, we have been very good at playing sound defense without fouling. If this keeps up through the season we may officially be able to steal the incredible no-foul defense mantle from Wisconsin.  Also encouraging - our improvement on D does not appear to hinge on any one factor - we're performing well above the national average in several areas, indicating that we have a fundamentally sound defense that can beat opponents in any of a number of ways. Lets hope these improvements continue to hold.

One of the major questions coming into the season was how we would replace the production from our graduating seniors, especially Travis Walton and Goran Suton. It was hoped that improvements from Draymond Green and Delvon Roe, plus contributions from Nix/Herzog/Sherman would be enough to make up for the production of Suton. At this point in the season, one of those players, by himself, is more than making up for the loss of Suton, at least on the offensive end. Ladies (if there are any that follow this blog) and Gentlemen, I give you Draymond Green - the new, improved Goran Suton.

I've compared tempo free stats from Suton's senior season with Green's production so far this year using Statsheet.com. They are pretty comparable in terms of minutes played, so these stats are not influenced by Green excelling in limited minutes. In every offensive category save 3 point shooting percentage, Green is even with or ahead of Suton, and he is holding his own on the defensive end as well. Green has a higher offensive rating (9.7 points higher), slightly higher usage rate,  a higher effective FG percentage (6.9 points higher) and is pretty much even on the offensive boards, although Suton does edge him there. He also has a significantly higher assist rate than Suton and a slightly lower turnover rate. Green also shoots slightly more free throws per 40 possessions so he is getting to the line as often as Suton did. Basically, as a sophmore Green is already outperforming Suton's senior year as far as offensive stats go. I looked at conference only stats - which obviously should be taken with a grain of salt for Green as he has only played 3 conference games this year - and these trends pretty much all hold if we restrict the analysis to conference games.

Defense is harder to measure statistically. My impressions of Green so far this year is that he generally plays good D and is not slacking off on that end of the court. We could undoubtedly use Suton's height, and I don't see Green as being capable of slowing down a guy like Cole Aldrich the way Suton did in last year's tournament. Basically for D, we have stats on steals, blocks, and rebounds. Green's defensive rebounding percentage is slightly higher than Suton's was last year. His block percentage is also higher, which is surprising considering that he is at a significant height disadvantage. Looking at all games - conference and non conference - Green has higher block and steal percentages and a slight edge in defensive rebounding. If we restrict the analysis to conference games, Suton has a slight lead in steal and defensive rebounding but Green's block percentage is higher. Statistically, they seem to be fairly equal on defense. Although the stats call this a wash my gut instincts tell me that Green is not equal to the Suton of last year on the defensive end - he just doesn't have the savvy to play at that level yet, but if his effort doesn't flag he should get there eventually. He is more than holding his own so far on the offensive end, so a strong argument could be made that the overall effect of replacing Suton's minutes with him is pretty much a draw. Not bad for a guy who came in a little over a year ago underheight and overweight.

(Bumped.  I wondered how teams similar to MSU's effective height perform defensively, read below for more info.  Although I wonder how much better State would be defensively on the inside with JaJuan Johnson defending the post - Pete)

In an earlier fanpost I surmised that MSU might struggle on defense due to a lack of effective height on the interior. Well, Ken Pomeroy has posted effective height statistics for the entire division 1 basketball universe on his web site, and now that the statistic is available I thought it would be interesting to look at how MSU stacks up against the rest of the league in terms of both effective height and defensive efficiency.

Ken Pomeroy's effective height statistic is based on the hypothesis that height is important, especially on defense, and that height at the power forward and center positions is more important than height elsewhere. Basically, he surmises that you can get away with a lack of height at the guard positions and still be OK, but a lack of height at center and power forward will, more often than not, result in problems at the defensive end. Ken Pomeroy's article on effective height is here for anyone interested. His analysis looked at the 2008 pre-conference season and found a correlation of .42 between effective height and defensive efficiency. Clearly defensive efficiency does not tell the whole story defensively, but on average it is a significant part of the equation.

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[Bumped.  Defense! Defense!  -KJ]

Prescript: I started this post a week ago, and in the meantime The Geeks have beaten me to it. The cause of the delay is my inability to figure out how to post excel charts despite literally hours of trying and some advice from KJ. So I decided to post the info as a table instead, which has less visual impact but will have to do.

I thought it would be interesting to look at trends in where the MSU Basketball team has ranked in terms of offensive and defensive efficiency. Mr. Gasaway and our own KJ are the main insprirers of this post, but it was John Gasaway, in his Big Ten Wonk days, who first noticed a couple of years ago that the conventional wisdom regarding our basketball team was generally wrong. Probably because our first era of truly elite sustained success was the Flintstone era around the turn of the millenium, MSU has generally has the reputation of a hard nosed defensive team that is sometimes, but not always, offensively challenged and is prone to winning ugly. I believe it was in the 2006 season that Mr. Gasaway noticed that the CW was completely wrong - we had an efficient offense but our D was mediocre.

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[Bumped.  Noticed this myself last night; TCH beat me to the punch.  Interesting given the concerns about Green/Roe's height as our two top interior players. -KJ]

It's ridiculously early to be drawing any conclusions on the men's basketball team but I was just perusing our team-wide tempo free stats and Kenpom.com and we are currently 13th in the nation in block percentage. Izzo-coached teams are generally not shot-blocking teams - our tendency in the past has been to play good position D to force tough shots and then box out to get rebounds. This year we seem to have added a shot blocking dimension, and it will be interesting to see whether our rebounding percentages suffer as a result, or if we can do both at a high level (in which case we should be very effective on D).

Also, we're defending the 3 very well - opponents are only making 25% of their 3s against us. Plus the turnovers are under control. All good trends. Hope they continue.