On G-Man, Ken Pomeroy and George Jones
Nothing warms the cockles of my heart better on a frigid winter’s night than a plate of spaghetti and meatballs, a goblet of red wine and a good game of ACC basketball. Last night, I enjoyed all three.
The food and spirits as it turned out, were better than the hoops, though N.C. State did make a gallant show of it before succumbing at Duke. Late in the first half color man Mike Gminski made a comment that caught my ear. He was noting that Duke is playing defense extremely well this season, well enough to lead the ACC with a scoring defense of 60.6 points a game despite its uptempo style of play that creates/invites a lot of possessions. I appreciated that the G-man qualified the statistic, which I have always found to be next-to-useless. Of course Washington State is going to give up fewer points than a Wake Forest or North Carolina. The Cougars run clock before they shoot, thus tamping down number of possessions. The Deacons and Tar Heels prefer to get it and go, as we saw in Joel Coliseum a week and a half ago.
So G-man’s point was well-taken, to a point. But where he dribbled off his foot was when he said the Blue Devils have the best defense in the conference, no doubt. The Blue Devils do have a great defense, and it may be the best in the conference. I just doubt the part about there being no doubt.
A far better indicator of defensive efficiency is field-goal percentage defense. It’s not perfect because teams that press to create turnovers are prone to give up more easy transition baskets than the one that builds a wall to protect the basket. But it’s a far sight better than the lame scoring defense. Coach Dino Gaudio of Wake Forest has all season been referencing Ken Pomeroy’s raw defensive efficiency, which does take into account a team’s number of possessions.
Going into tonight’s game with Virginia Tech, Wake Forest leads the ACC and is ranked No. 2 in the nation (behind Purdue) with a field-goal percentage defense of 36.2. The argument that the number should be adjusted because of schedule doesn’t hold up as well as did a couple of weeks ago, before the Deacons held BYU to 40 percent, UNC to 35 percent, BC to 37 percent and Clemson to 34 percent. Those four teams made a combined 105 field goals on 288 attempts—for 36 percent.
Duke ranks No. 5 in the ACC and No. 45 in the nation with a field-goal percentage defense of 39.5. In the Pomeroy ratings Wake ranks No. 2 in raw defensive efficiency and No. 4 in adjusted defensive efficiency. Duke ranks No. 7 and No. 3 respectively.
None of this is to disparage Mike Gminski, whom I like. I saw him recently at Joel Coliseum and started singing:
“G-men, T-men, revenuers too,
Searching for the place where he made his brew.
They were looking trying to book him
But my pappy kept on cooking
Whoosh. . . white lightning.’‘
Hailing as he does from Monroe, Connecticut, G-man knew nothing about George Jones. But I won’t hold that against him, nor will I pile on some stray comment he made in the flush of the moment. The instructive part of all this is that we’ve just had a discussion on best defenses in the ACC and Wake Forest—the same Wake Forest that up until a year ago couldn’t guard a comic book rack with the help of the secret service—is in it.
Now that’s Change You Can Believe In.