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  #71  
Old 11-26-2007, 10:33 PM
Aces McGee Aces McGee is offline
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Default Re: 2007-08 North Carolina Tar Heels Basketball (San Antonio Here We C

[ QUOTE ]
Basketball Prospectus article on Tar Heels' defense

[/ QUOTE ]

Are points-per-possession stats available anywhere on a game-by-game basis?

-McGee
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  #72  
Old 11-26-2007, 10:40 PM
Pudge714 Pudge714 is offline
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Default Re: 2007-08 North Carolina Tar Heels Basketball (San Antonio Here We C

liga,
I was going to post that [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] basketball prospectus
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  #73  
Old 11-27-2007, 04:59 AM
ligastar ligastar is offline
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Default Re: 2007-08 North Carolina Tar Heels Basketball (San Antonio Here We C

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Basketball Prospectus article on Tar Heels' defense

[/ QUOTE ]

Are points-per-possession stats available anywhere on a game-by-game basis?

-McGee

[/ QUOTE ]

Not that I'm aware of. I just looked around on kenpom and didn't see it.
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  #74  
Old 11-27-2007, 05:05 AM
tarheeljks tarheeljks is offline
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Default Re: 2007-08 North Carolina Tar Heels Basketball (San Antonio Here We C

sweet link liga, sending this to all of my duke/unc hating buddies.
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  #75  
Old 11-28-2007, 02:51 PM
ligastar ligastar is offline
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Default Re: 2007-08 North Carolina Tar Heels Basketball (San Antonio Here We C

Tar Heel Blue Ohio St. Preview (Heels favored by 5.5 pts) - ESPN, 9pm

Edit to say: Indications are that Lawson will go tonight.
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  #76  
Old 11-28-2007, 04:23 PM
samsonite2100 samsonite2100 is offline
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Default Re: 2007-08 North Carolina Tar Heels Basketball (San Antonio Here We C

[ QUOTE ]
Tar Heel Blue Ohio St. Preview (Heels favored by 5.5 pts) - ESPN, 9pm

Edit to say: Indications are that Lawson will go tonight.

[/ QUOTE ]

Awesome. I got to sit third row at the S. Carolina St. game--I know it goes w/out saying, but it truly is insane how fast Ty is. Seeing it live and up close is incredible.
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  #77  
Old 11-28-2007, 10:57 PM
capone0 capone0 is offline
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Default Re: 2007-08 North Carolina Tar Heels Basketball (San Antonio Here We C

Gah. F-in luckboxes. I can't stand Frasor starting tonight. Diebler, wtf.
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  #78  
Old 11-29-2007, 01:54 AM
Aces McGee Aces McGee is offline
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Default Re: 2007-08 North Carolina Tar Heels Basketball (San Antonio Here We C

[ QUOTE ]
Basketball Prospectus article on Tar Heels' defense

[/ QUOTE ]

Sorry, all, I gotta come back to this, because it's been bugging me for a couple of years now.

(First, a disclaimer. Or, rather, two disclaimers. One, this post is probably going to be long. Two, I haven't followed any of the Ken Pom discussion on the message boards, so I may very well be making an argument that has been put forth and summarily dismissed. I apologize if that's the case, and Ebenhoe can ban me for rehashing an old argument if there's enough support for it).

While I recognize that SABRmetric-style stats -- like the ones popularized by Ken Pom and the one cited in that Basketball Prospectus article -- have more utility than traditional "per game" stats, it irritates me that they've seemingly taken the place of good old-fashioned observation.

The article asserts that Carolina played the best defense in the ACC last year and probably will again this year. I say "No way!" to both, and not because of any statistic. I don't need statistics to tell me that a team just down Tobacco Road from Chapel Hill is a much better defensive team than the Heels. (I don't use Duke as an example to patronize UNC fans, or because I'm a Blue Devils fan -- I'm not; rather, they're just a team that I've seen a few times this year that plays truly excellent defense).

I can see with my own eyes how Duke rotates on defense, how they defend ball screens extremely well, how their bigger guys like Kyle Singler take excellent angles when they are switched to smaller, quicker players, diverting guards away from the basket and into the teeth of the rest of the defense. It's similarly easy for me to see that these are all things that Carolina doesn't do well.

I don't want to focus too much on this season thus far, because the three times I've seen Carolina (vs. Davidson in
Charlotte, vs. BYU in Vegas, and at Ohio St. tonight in Columbus) they've basically been without Ty Lawson (once because of early foul trouble, twice due to an ankle injury that limited him to two minutes against BYU and kept him out tonight against the Buckeyes, who, incidentally, haven't been able to throw the ball in the ocean in their last two outings). The jury is still very much out on this year's team, although it appears that Roy Williams -- Carolina's notoriously offensive-minded coach -- would agree that his team's defense isn't yet adequate (SI article).

But let's go back to last year, and to something the Basketball Prospectus article touches on:

"As seen above, I think part of that is simply due to the way they look while they play. Another part, of course, is
the speed at which they play. Roy Williams' teams, whether in Chapel Hill or in Lawrence, have always played fast. It's tougher to spot a good defensive team that plays fast, just as it's tougher to spot a bad defensive team that goes slow."

The Tar Heels do, indeed, play fast. And against many opponents, that is all the defense they need. Having played a little basketball myself (admittedly at the low high school and AAU level) and watched quite a bit more, I am very familiar with the negative effect that playing fast has on team's that aren't used to it. Suddenly in a hurry, teams get caught up in the tempo of the game, rushing shots
and making poor passes.

Where this strategy falls short -- and where I believe Ken Pom's stats are ultimately deceiving because they don't seem to take this into account -- is when Carolina (or any team whose main defensive weapon is pace) comes up against an opponent that plays at that pace itself, or an opponent with solid, experienced guards, or an opponent that plays fast and has solid, experienced guards. In those cases, the opposition's ballhandlers don't rush their shots and don't make bad decisions, because they're comfortable with the pace of the game.

This would go a long way to explaining many of Carolina's losses last year to teams with lesser offensive talent: Maryland, thanks to their athletic bigs and inability to score in the halfcourt, preferred a fast-paced game last year; Virginia Tech, to whom North Carolina lost twice, boasted a poised and experienced backcourt in seniors Jamon Gordon and Zabian Dowdell (Let's remember that Illinois, a team widely considered to be very sound defensively but that played at a relatively slow pace last year, had Tech completely flummoxed in last year's NCAA Tournament before a late run gave the Hokies the narrow first-round victory); and Gonzaga, which beat Carolina at Madison Square Garden in last year's Preseason NIT semifinals, had a deep, experienced backcourt that liked to get up and down the court as much as the Heels did.

My point is not that Carolina's defense isn't good enough to win games -- a lot of games -- in the ACC. I'm not saying they're like VMI, whose defensive strategy is seemingly to allow the opposition to make a two in order to get the ball back to shoot a three. The Heels have now, always have had, and always will have the size and athleticism to get by without being sound defensively just by playing fast. It's enough to beat the Georgia Techs and Wake Forests and Florida States all winter long, and put up good defensive numbers in doing so.

My point is that not all teams are like Tech and Wake and FSU, and that Carolina struggled against certain kinds of teams last year and will probably continue to this year unless something changes. There are teams that are comfortable playing at that pace, and if I had to choose a team to go up against them, I'd rather take one that has defensive qualities which I can point to and say "That's what makes them a good defensive team." Whenever someone tries to tell me that Carolina is very good defensively, they show me statistics. Those statistics are not going to beat Memphis in March. Sound defense will, and I haven't seen it from Carolina.

-McGee
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  #79  
Old 11-29-2007, 03:31 AM
tarheeljks tarheeljks is offline
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Default Re: 2007-08 North Carolina Tar Heels Basketball (San Antonio Here We C

aces: i'm not really following you. yes unc had matchup problems against certain squads-- this does not preclude them from being a a good defensive team. regardless of a team's style of play or make up there will always be another team that poses a match up problem. your anecdotal evidence regarding defensive rotation is a perfect example of exactly what this article means to disprove-- you don't have to play a slow, grinding game to defend well. citing two defensive lapses hardly discredits this article and it seems like your examples are missing the point of the article. more importantly note that 4 of the games unc lost last year (va tech, ga tech, nc state, and maryland) were on the road, where pomus concedes that the heels were much weaker defensively.

obv i'm biased here but offering up a handful of examples of poor defensive performances is pretty lol. the points per possession stat captures the essence of defense, . carolina's struggles last year were a function of streaky jumpshooting and youth much more so than defensive issues (though the youth was likely a factor in the disparity in home vs road play).

basically it sounds like you have said is "i don't care what this guy's numbers say, they don't look like a good defensive team to me." that's fine but support that w/something other than "i just don't agree."

edit: also, i'm interested to hear what you think this stat is missing regarding defensive performance. the only thing i can think of is something like adjustments based on opponent strength; something like the dova rankings in football.
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  #80  
Old 11-29-2007, 03:50 AM
Aces McGee Aces McGee is offline
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Default Re: 2007-08 North Carolina Tar Heels Basketball (San Antonio Here We C

Hey man,

I gotta go to bed. And, unfortunately, I've picked a bad time to start this, as I'll probably be unavailable to properly discuss it tomorrow as well. But I will come back to it, because I think you haven't grasped what I'm trying to say -- which could easily be my fault -- and I think it's an interesting conversation, not just as it pertains to Carolina, but to these kinds of statistics in general. Maybe someone will pick up my case in the interim.

-McGee
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