My Biggest Worry

With De Sousa coming in and Preston likely back soon the ostensible biggest concern about this years team is ameliorated...right? No. The depth is the frontcourt was a huge concern but in my mind there is one concern that trumps it. That is who is going to run the team when Devonte' is on the bench. I regularly publish the +/- and i hope you all understand the various numbers. One number on the table below jumps off the page. The delta (last column) is an interesting number. It measures how much drop-off (positive number) or uplift (negative number) there is when a player goes to the bench. Look at Devonte's delta. It is 1.003 for the season. That means that the drop-off when Devonte' goes to the bench is 1 point per minute. On a well-balanced deep team you would like to see this number definitely below o.5 and more like 0.3 for every player. When you have a player that has no effective backup, you will see a big drop-off when he goes to the bench. That is the case with Devonte'. The team does not perform well when Devonte' is on the bench. So can he play 40 minutes per game. Not likely. Even if he plays 35 minutes per game that means there is a 5 point hole you will have to dig out of the rest of the game. Last season Mason had the highest delta (DUH!!) His delta was 0.32. A delta of 1 is rare and alarming.

While I have the season table here let me go over some other numbers. The other three columns I usually look at are the KU-Pts/Min, Opp Pts/Min and the (+/-)/Min. The KU Pts/Min is how effectively KU scores when that person is in the game. You can see there is an incredible balance on this team. Devonte' actually leads but only by about 5%. That is pretty nice balance. The opponent points per minute is how well the other team scores with that player in the game. You can see it also is fairly nicely balanced but Graham, Garrett and Azubuike are the clear leaders with Svi just behind. There is some serious separation with Newman and Lightfoot. The team is less effective defensively with Newman and Lightfoot on the floor. The overall +/_ per minute is the scoring differential when that person is on the floor. Once again, Graham leads the way and by quite a bit. His +/- is 10% better than Azubuike and Svi. anf Dok and Svi are 10% above Garrett and Newman. Surprisingly, Vick and Lighfoot trail by a ton in +/-. That somewhat defies my thoughts on Vick. You can make an argument from subjective observation he is the third most important player behind Devonte' and Dok. This low +/- for Vick shows up in the delta which indicates the team is better when he is on the bench to the tune of 0.7 points per minute. Recall, +/- is a completely team statistic so if there is validity to these numbers it is that the team dynamic is better with Garrett than with Vick. But it also may be the rotations Self uses and the fact that Vick and Devonte' tend to be on the court less together.

But my most important message is that the numbers seem to strongly indicate that when Devonte' goes to the bench this team plays much more poorly. Much!!

Great observations...lots of work in that data.

Thank you!