Well another National Letter of Intent day has come and gone. We’ve made our snap reactions on 17 years olds who we’ve never watched play, we’ve successfully ignored the moralists telling us how it’s a disgrace that we give these kids so much attention at such a young age and we’ve talked ourselves into the fact that the previously mentioned 17 year olds will fit our system perfectly. Now its time to turn our attention back to the hardwood.
Welcome back to Pitt by Numbers; the tempo-free statistical post that spent the last month and a half blaming itself for the Tennessee loss.
Lets talk about points per weighted shot. To put it simply, this stat measures how many points a player takes per field goal attempt (PPWS = Points/(FGA + .0475FTA)). I also included field goal rate which measures the percentage of offensive possessions a player plays that involve him taking a shot from the field.
(Note: My original chart had more categories but wouldn’t fit in the post horizontally. You probably need to maximize your browser to view everything that I was able to fit.)
| Player | Points | FGAs | FTAs | PPWS | % Shots | |
| Gibbs | 347 | 264 | 62 | 1.182484239 | 26.5 | |
| Wanamaker | 275 | 189 | 107 | 1.146669446 | 20.6 | |
| Brown | 253 | 180 | 73 | 1.178525678 | 21 | |
| Robinson | 150 | 121 | 51 | 1.032880014 | 19.7 | |
| McGhee | 157 | 108 | 73 | 1.100403014 | 15.6 | |
| Woodall | 147 | 114 | 58 | 1.038502296 | 17.6 | |
| Taylor | 135 | 85 | 41 | 1.292175162 | 17.4 | |
| Zanna | 86 | 59 | 36 | 1.130091984 | 15.1 | |
| Patterson | 56 | 59 | 13 | 0.859225163 | 15.9 | |
| Moore | 78 | 58 | 15 | 1.197696737 | 27.6 |
Much has been made about Pitt’s nation leading offensive efficiency and with good reason, the Panthers have done an unbelievable job at putting points on the board while controlling the tempo of the game. Most seem to attribute this mainly to Pitt’s phenomenal offensive rebounding ability coupled with the Panther’s team-wide ability to find the open man and these two factors are undeniably important.
But there is also something to be said for simply making sure that the best shooters are taking the lion’s share of the shots. Gibbs, Wannamaker and Brown are shooting more often than any of the other regulars and for good reason. They’re probably the three best shooters.
This graph is a solid statistical illustration of how good Jamie Dixon is at his job because with the possible exception of JJ Moore, nobody is shooting more frequently than they should be. It’s also a credit to the team for buying into the greater good since it appears everyone is self-aware enough to know their limitations and simply do what is asked of them.
Here some other quick thoughts on these numbers:
1) Gilbert Brown really doesn’t attack the rim enough. I know this isn‘t breaking news but its good to know the numbers back up what we‘ve been watching. His .41:1 FTA to FGA is below the team average of .425:1 and just above the national average of .38:1. There is no excuse for Brown to be shooting less than one free throw for every two field goal attempts.
2) I have no idea what to make of Dante Taylor’s shooting numbers. It’s obvious that McGee starts over Taylor for defensive purposes but I didn’t expect there to be a large gap between Taylor and McGee’s numbers here. When I saw Taylor’s PPWS my first thought was “that’s what happens when you don’t have a post move and get all your points on dunks that happen all too infrequently” but his FG frequency dispels that myth a bit. The only thing that makes sense is that Dante had some mammoth games against cupcakes early in the year that skew his numbers but even that doesn’t seem like enough to make Taylor’s numbers what they are. Could we possibly be underrating Taylor’s offensive abilities?
3) JJ Moore and Lamar Patterson have been in direct competition for playing time all year and JJ Moore shooting the ball in over 27% of his offensive possessions could provide some insight as to why he hasn’t seen meaningful minutes in a long time (Even if Moore was making shots at a decent rate). But if Lamar Patterson doesn’t start making more buckets it wouldn’t be surprising to see Moore get some of those minutes back.
I know when I posted the first Pitt by Numbers back in December I said it would be a regular thing, this time I mean it. Unfortunately it’s hard to come up with too many opinions on this team other than “Pitt is really good” so if you have any topics you would like me to explore in future posts please leave them in the comments section for me and I’ll see what I can do with them.
Until next time…Hail to Pitt.
Defensive stats, comparison between recruiting numbers and current production, how well our player’s #’s forecast if they might be drafted, “clutch” stats and home and away spreads for different players.
2) Taylor possibly out today and then there is this breaking story .. Moore might well see minutes today
link to pittsburghlive.com
3) Future consideration: McGhee, Wanny and Brown graduating but 5 incoming frosh (Berch, Bond, J Johnson, D Johnson, Gilbert) which means two people have to be shown the door
That’s f***ed up news about Patterson. He was playing well. I can’t imagine they’d revoke his scholarship for a $30 tab at House of Pasta though. He committed to Pitt as a junior in high school. But yeah, probably means more Zanna and maybe some JJ today.
I expect Taylor to be more than ready to take the reins from mcGhee as staring center next year. Yes, he is not as strong and not as good a post defender (but getting better), but he brings other things to the table that McGhee doesn’t. Further, Berch is supposedly an even better defender than offensive player, so the Taylor-Berch frontcourt next year may be a good one.
a) Taylor is running the court a lot more often than McGhee which I guess is possible or
b)They run more offense for Dante when he is in which when eyeballing it doesn’t seem like a possibility
I think I need to watch Dante more closely and try to figure this out.
In somewhat related news, this interesting new stat. FT+
link to collegehoopsjournal.com
As you can see, several very good teams rank very poorly in terms of FT+. This shows FT+ is not necessarily a red flag. Teams like Pittsburgh, Washington and Kansas rank poorly in FT+ because of their combination of poor free-throw shooting (none shoots better than 67 percent) and efficient offenses. For these teams, the opportunity cost of a trip to the free-throw line is fairly high: They do not convert especially well from the stripe, but they do score efficiently from the floor.
It’s an interesting stat and topic. It’s probably not perfect, but for such a nebulous area, it’s a good start.
I’m wondering if he has included FT+ as a variable in his model to see if it’s a better predictor than FT rate. Dunno.
At the same time, people have to recognize that this only tells part of the story. Defense also matters. And so do assists.
I get tired of the Patterson versus Moore debate (I see them as complementary players, with different strengths) in large part because too many people only focus on points scored. Moore is a great shooter, but his defense is highly suspect. (At one of the home games, I noticed Zanna repeatedly signalling to Moore that he was in the wrong place, and Zanna’s not exactly a defensive stallwart.) Patterson’s not a great shooter, but he appears to defend well and to fit into the team flow.
Pwmcdupitt, are you really advocating we throw Patterson out because he made a dumb (but minor) mistake?
I think that the Moore vs Patterson debate is unavoidable since they play the same position and are in direct competition for minutes. Even though they have very different skill sets as the numbers help show they can’t be “complementary” unless they’re on the court at the same time which sure as hell won’t be this season. I disagree with you on Moore’s defensive abilities, I thought he was great against UConn defensively but Patterson does have more experience and probably has more of Dixon’s trust. That said, don’t think that Patterson brings enough to the table in other facets of the game for him to keep shooting this poorly and have it not be a problem.
JJ has played the 3 when he was in. I think Patterson is a good high post passer, like Nas, and has the capability to cover the wing as well. I think he’s in there for that reason and to run plays. For JJ Moore to see time, he will have to either replace Gilbert, or Gil moves to 4, or JJ plays the 2 and Wannamaker or Gil plays 3.
As for Moore versus Patterson, I definitely see the upside to Moore’s game. Patterson just has had longer to play in Dixon’s system (as a rsf) than Moore, so it’s not surprising he has a better sense of the flow. My hope is that they will both contribute substantially to Pitt’s performance in the future (although I also agree that there’s not really enough playing time for both this year).
Unfortionately, defense is hard to quantify and I want to stick to writing through a quantitative lense since at the end of the day my qualitative analysis is no better than 20 other people who comment here but I will be exploring other topics than scoring as the season goes along.
According to Dean Oliver (Pomeroy’s guru), the general ranking of the importance of the four factors in how they contribute to overall scoring efficiency is (out of a total of 22 importance points):
Shooting percentage (10)
Turnovers per possession (5-6)
Offensive rebounding percentage (4-5)
Getting to the foul line (2-3)
Defense enters into it in how well a team limits their opponents’ achievement of the four factors.
More:
link to rawbw.com
PS. What is goofy to me is the headings Pomeroy uses, Offense (which in my mind should be termed “Team”) and Defense (which should be termed “Opponents”)
