Monday, February 08, 2010
Running the Numbers on Wake
The best quotation I’ve heard concerning statistics is how they can be used like a drunkard uses a lamp post—for support rather than illumination.
Luckily for the drunk, the post provides support whether the lamp is on or not.
It takes a long time to turn the lamp on the best statistics I know of to evaluate the play of a college basketball team—conference-statistics only. Only now, careening into the second week of February, have the teams played enough games to give us a decent sampling.
But now that the Deacons have played nine ACC games, let’s assess what they do well and what they don’t. To facilitate your evaluation, I’ve linked the conference-only stats from the ACC website ACC Stats
What the Deacons don’t do well is shoot free throws or 3-pointers. Nor do they handle the ball well. Wake, as you can see, is tied for 10th with a free-throw percentage of .656, ranks seventh with a 3-point percentage of .322 but 11th with only 3.2 3-pointers made a game, and ranks last with 10.4 assists and is tied for 11th with an assist-turnover ratio of 0.7. The poor assist-turnovers ratio is particularly telling. Given that senior point guard Ish Smith is tied for third with an assist-turnover ratio of 2.0, obviously the others getting big minutes struggle in that area.
What has kept the Deacons right in the thick of the ACC has been their defense and their rebounding. They rank second behind Maryland with a field-goal percentage defense of .388 and first with 40.3 rebounds a game. I’m a bit surprised their 3-point percentage defense is seventh at .315. Last year they led the league in that category. And their rebounding performance is not quite as impressive when that of the other team is taken into account. In rebounding margin, the rank fourth at plus-1.8. Fourth obviously is not bad, but they trail North Carolina, Duke and Florida State by a considerable margin.
This is not a pretty team. Teams that miss a bunch of shots and turn the ball over rarely look good, at least not until the game is over.
But defense and rebounding statistics reveal effort. And it’s hard to argue that any team in the ACC has given more effort so far this season than Wake Forest.