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Wyoming Basketball in Advanced Stats

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wyoav211933

Well-known member
Due to the big break between games, I was looking at our team through advanced stats. Here are some tidbits
-Offensively, we are 26th in the nation in points per game. If we finish the year there, that would be a higher rank than many great Cowboy teams of the past, including the Davis/Bailey teams, the Dembo/Leckner teams, and the Bradley/Garnett teams (and miles ahead of the offensively challanged Nance/Adams teams.) Unfornately we are 249th in points allowed per game.

-Advanced stats love Marcus Williams and really, really love Kenny Foster. Both have very high win shares/40 minutes right now. I mean higher than any season Larry Nance or Marcus Bailey had in Laramie, and about on par with Josh Davis (I don't have win share data prior to 2000). Foster currently leads Williams, and while I suspect Foster will eventually drop below Williams, I think both stand a chance of finishing ahead of the alums I mentioned.

-Advanced stats hate Hunter Thompson. Among regular rotation guys, Thompson has very poor win shares/40 minutes and player efficiency rating. He is ahead of only DuSell and Oden. Eoin Nelson is very very close to catching him.

-I knew our Defense was bad, but I was stunned at how bad. Defensive ratings across the team this year are very similar to the 09-10 Heath Schroyer team that finished 10-21. Also, we don't have a single player on the roster who is better than the average college basketball starter on defense per Defensive BPM. Oden and Williams are just barely under. Unlike Offensive BPM and Total BPM which are actually well respected stats, Defensive BPM sometimes has the reputation of making players look worse on defense than they actually are, but having watched this team play also I don't think it exagerates.

-Because of the drag on defense, we only have 3 players who are higher than the average college basketball started per total BPM: Williams, Foster, and...Drake Jeffries! By total BPM all 3 are in the good starter category, in offensive BPM all three are in the borderline all-conference category.
 
Cool stuff. Thanks for posting.

I'm wondering about Maldonado on offense. How is he rated? His shooting percentages are not that great this year.
 
LanderPoke said:
Cool stuff. Thanks for posting.

I'm wondering about Maldonado on offense. How is he rated? His shooting percentages are not that great this year.
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Sort of inefficient as you could imagine. He is dead last on the team in effective FG % and his offensive rating is low but it isn't all bad for him. For example, he is really really good at getting to the FT line. For a guy with such a high usage rate, his turnover rate is pretty darn low and much better than several of his teammates that have lower usage rates. He also boasts the best Assist rate on the team too (Yes, even ahead of Williams), and is one of our better offensive rebounders. So even though his offensive BPM (which only accounts for box score stats) only has him as right at the average of a college basketball starter, when you look at total offensive win shares, which accounts for everything including stuff not found in box scores Maldonado is actually 2nd on the team behind only Williams.

But another thing about Maldonado is that advanced stats show he is probably our best defensive player. He is pretty middle of the pack on defensive BPM (which again only accounts for box score stats and is not as useful of a stat as offensive BPM or total BPM). But in defensive rating (which I think tells a more complete story when it comes to defense), he is 2nd on the team behind only Oden and first on the team in defensive win shares, thanks to a really good steal rate and defensive rebounding rate. When you add his offensive and defensive win shares to get a total win shares he is practically tied with Williams for the top spot as the most valuable player on the team.
 
Hate to be a wet blanket, but so far, we've only beaten one team with a winning record (Oregon State at 4-3). Even our home loss to what some called a "good" Texas Southern team looks worse as they are currently 2-4.

Conference play will show what this team is really made of, especially opening at Fresno.
 
Wyovanian said:
Hate to be a wet blanket, but so far, we've only beaten one team with a winning record (Oregon State at 4-3). Even our home loss to what some called a "good" Texas Southern team looks worse as they are currently 2-4.

Conference play will show what this team is really made of, especially opening at Fresno.
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You're very right, out strength of schedule so far is one of the lowest we've had, and it's not like previous years had super tough schedules either. But I still think that there is some hope. If you look at total BPM, we three players in the good college basketball starter category and one at average. So we are between the 9-10 win Edwards teams where only 1 player was a good starter and everyone else was worse than average starter/bench player and not quite as good as the 20 win teams at the beginning of Edwards tenure where there were 3 better than good but not quite all-conference starter. That would mean that the team is playing like a 14-16 win team (with a normal length season,see edit below)or a mediocre .500 team, nothing flashy but I think most folks here would take that with a first-year coach who took over a struggling program with a very young and inexperienced team. Our offensive numbers aren't a fluke though, it wouldn't surprise me if Foster shows a small regression and Maldonado an improvement but that's it. If we could elevate our defense to just merely an average college basketball starter level, our total BPM would show we have one all-conference contender, two better than good but not quite all-conference starter, and one good starter. No reason we couldn't win 20 games (again in a normal length season) with that, which puts us at conference tournament dark horse and very likely to get NIT or CBI invite.

Edit: Originally I forgot to account for the fact that we aren't playing as many games this year, so we have been playing like 12-13 win team (about 6-7 conference wins), but if we elevate our defensive play to average college basketball starter we could bump that up to 15-16 win team (9-10 conference wins).
 
wyoav211933 said:
Wyovanian said:
Hate to be a wet blanket, but so far, we've only beaten one team with a winning record (Oregon State at 4-3). Even our home loss to what some called a "good" Texas Southern team looks worse as they are currently 2-4.

Conference play will show what this team is really made of, especially opening at Fresno.
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You're very right, out strength of schedule so far is one of the lowest we've had, and it's not like previous years had super tough schedules either. But I still think that there is some hope. If you look at total BPM, we three players in the good college basketball starter category and one at average. So we are between the 9-10 win Edwards teams where only 1 player was a good starter and everyone else was worse than average starter/bench player and not quite as good as the 20 win teams at the beginning of Edwards tenure where there were 3 better than good but not quite all-conference starter. That would mean that the team is playing like a 14-16 win team or a mediocre .500 team, nothing flashy but I think most folks here would take that with a first-year coach who took over a struggling program with a very young and inexperienced team. Our offensive numbers aren't a fluke though, it wouldn't surprise me if Foster shows a small regression and Maldonado an improvement but that's it. If we could elevate our defense to just merely an average college basketball starter level, our total BPM would show we have one all-conference contender, two better than good but not quite all-conference starter, and one good starter. No reason we couldn't win 20 games with that, which puts us at conference tournament dark horse and very likely to get NIT or CBI invite.
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Very interesting stuff! How was the kid that just transferred? He didn’t get a lot of time but the eye test also led me to believe he was one of the weakest links on the team.
 
Drew Lamont just simply didn't get enough playing time to discern a lot of meaning from advanced stats. They actually look good, but are super inflated in some areas. He was actually 3rd on the team in win shares/40 minutes (about Marcus Bailey and Josh Adams level) and first in offensive rating(comically high, better than Steve Nash), but it is very easy for these numbers to get very inflated with little playing time. He is the primary reason why I had to qualify many earlier statements with "among regular rotation players". BPM puts him more back to earth, but he was 4th on the team in offensive and total BPM and about middle of the pack but by no means the worst in defensive BPM. His total BPM put him at between average and good college basketball starter. He was top of the team in true shooting percentage and second in effective field goal percentage behind only Foster. It's hard to say how several of these numbers would land if he played more minutes, but I think it would be safe to say that he was a player that made the most of what little minutes he had. Even with more minutes though, my suspicion is he would probably not be a weak link and it is entirely possible that 1.)He was one of our better shooters and 2.)He may be better than some of the players on the team who were higher in the rotation and getting more minutes. With how crowded our rotation was it would've been very tough for him to get significant playing time and I understand why he would want to transfer.
 
Interesting stats... The defensive numbers confirm what I've been seeing (they are really bad at it). I'll be pleasantly surprised if this squad finishes above .500 in conference play. I expect them to win a few surprise games when they get hot but lose a lot more when the shots aren't falling and the defensive liabilities rear their ugly head.
 
307bball said:
Interesting stats... The defensive numbers confirm what I've been seeing (they are really bad at it). I'll be pleasantly surprised if this squad finishes above .500 in conference play. I expect them to win a few surprise games when they get hot but lose a lot more when the shots aren't falling and the defensive liabilities rear their ugly head.
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As they have played so far, over .500 in conference would be a feat. But I at least think that we stand a better chance at mid-season improvement since our Achilles's heel is defense as opposed to lack of offensive playmaking or shooting like previous years. It's really hard to gain new-found offensive playmaking ability in season and even harder to fix poor shooting mechanics mid-season. Defense can frequently be improved with effort, familiarity with your teammates, conditioning, and some fresh legs. I don't think this crew will ever be a defensive powerhouse, but I do think that we weren't playing to our full potential on that end either. Linder admitted, and you could see it on the court too, that we were getting tired both physically and mentally after those last couple of games before the break and I think it's good that many of them were able to leave Laramie for a spell. We also had a lot of relatively inexperienced faces thrown into the fire so to speak learning what the speed of the game is at this level. Couple that with some stretches where we had a lot of games in a short time with little break and even experienced clubs will suffer a little bit on defense. Maldonado for example, while still appearing to be our best defender statistically speaking, is still putting up a career low in defensive BPM. Even though he isn't the worst perpetrator on the defensive end, I know he can play better D. Marble has shown a very staggering drop in defensive BPM too. Last year, his defensive BPM was best on the team and in the good college basketball starter category on defense. So far this year he is near the bottom of team and in the back end college bench player category (again this is only about defense, he is not in that category on offense). It's like an entirely different player. We have no prior season data on Oden and Williams, but the stats give me hope that they could potentially be good on defense too. That's a lot of what ifs I realize and some of the guys (like Foster and Thompson) may never be great defenders and will just have to make it up on the offensive side of the game, but I guess I just think that maybe we aren't that far off of being a great team.
 
A lot has changed since I started this post, and it hasn't been very pretty. I think the main narrative has been that big guys who can score and rebound have been killing us in our games vs Fresno State and Boise State. Expect that story to come up again and again when we play San Diego State, Colorado State, and Utah State. But as bad as that has been, advanced stats haven't really shown that we are all that much worse on defense then we were in the non-conference schedule. As long as we can our offense can put up over 80 points a game like we were averaging before January, I think we will still be ok. The problem though is that since conference play started our offense has been averaging less than 70 points. Williams has still played well, and Marble has stepped up his game too, but virtually everyone else has regressed on offense the Maldonado bounceback I was predicting hasn't come. Advanced stats had always predicted that were going to lose more games when conference games started, but they were predicting margin of those losses to be in the single digits not by 20+ points. I had previously mentioned that we were playing like a 12-13 win team, but now it looks more like a 10-11 win team and that's just assuming that we are just in an offensive funk and not a new normal. If it is our new baseline, then advanced stats show that this team is no better than any of Edwards or Shroyer's worst teams.
 
wyoav211933 said:
A lot has changed since I started this post, and it hasn't been very pretty. I think the main narrative has been that big guys who can score and rebound have been killing us in our games vs Fresno State and Boise State. Expect that story to come up again and again when we play San Diego State, Colorado State, and Utah State. But as bad as that has been, advanced stats haven't really shown that we are all that much worse on defense then we were in the non-conference schedule. As long as we can our offense can put up over 80 points a game like we were averaging before January, I think we will still be ok. The problem though is that since conference play started our offense has been averaging less than 70 points. Williams has still played well, and Marble has stepped up his game too, but virtually everyone else has regressed on offense the Maldonado bounceback I was predicting hasn't come. Advanced stats had always predicted that were going to lose more games when conference games started, but they were predicting margin of those losses to be in the single digits not by 20+ points. I had previously mentioned that we were playing like a 12-13 win team, but now it looks more like a 10-11 win team and that's just assuming that we are just in an offensive funk and not a new normal. If it is our new baseline, then advanced stats show that this team is no better than any of Edwards or Shroyer's worst teams.
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Offensive inversely proportional to the opponents D. If Boise is that good defensively then we should see uptick in offense with playing other teams. Might make it closer
 
While the numbers predicted that we should have probably swept Air Force, I am relieved that we are starting to score again and pick up a win. It was nice to see some scoring from multiple players again. Williams and Maldonado (and I will throw in Marble too) are players that I think will be able to get some points no matter what, but I think that it's safe to say that none of them are consistently explosive scorers and I think we are just simply better when the scoring load is spread out more. For example, we have never lost a game yet when EITHER Foster or Jeffries scores in double figures. I also think that a special shout out to DuSell is in order. I don't know if he will put up 19 points in a game again this year, but there are some neat things that I am seeing that couldn't have happened with just one good game. Since conference play started he is tied for second on the team in total win shares, behind only Marble, tied with Williams and Thompson, and ahead of Maldonado. Considering that win shares is a kind of counting stat where the players with the most minutes tend to fare better and not an efficiency stat, the fact that he is ranked so high while coming off the bench is no small feat.

Up next is Nevada. They do have a couple of big post players that I do worry about how we will defend as always, but neither is what I would consider central to their offense. There best two players, by a large margin really, are their guards. So even though I suspect we will still be underdogs, at least come into the matchup playing strength vs strength. Hopefully we can at least get a split, because after that is a long stretch against really good teams that I don't think we match up well against.
 
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