It also suggests Caffaro… or, rather, when Caffaro is at center, the team actually isn’t a bad rebounding team. Edit - But when Shedrick is at center… they are.
Prosser too (RIP)
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That’s right forgot all about Skip. Good call.
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This may be higher up in the thread. But how on earth are we favored by 5?!?!?!
Interesting stuff, thanks for posting. Even more confounding is the fact that Shedrick is a much better individual rebounder than Papi. A few thoughts:
- I’ve learned with this on/off stuff, you really have to peel back the layers of the onion and see what else is going on in the data. E.g., how often are we playing 2-big vs. one-big? What’s the competition?
- I wonder if it’s at all related to tweaks to the defense when we play Shed v. Papi. I was ranting in the NC St thread about hard hedging Papi / switching Papi on the perimeter, but that type of D seems to be much more common with Shed, no? Anything we do to pressure the perimeter might lead to more ORs, right?
- I think most people would think the Occam’s razor here (given the individual numbers) is just that Papi is better at boxing out, and letting the guards spear. Maybe, and it fits their relative body types. (But I’d be skeptical until I saw video)
Louisville has been meh and trending bad. The KenPom line is 4 and now, there is evidence of a player mutiny (Malik Williams’ said “no comment” to a question about whether the staff has lost the locker room, or something like that. Oh, after an uncomfortably long pause)
I think the majority of DR% has to be because of the shot blocking aspect.
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when you come over to block a shot you are out of position to rebound, and as the biggest player on the floor, you should be the best person to do so.
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after a shot is blocked, whoever grabs it gets a rebound and I believe when a shot is blocked out of bounds, that is a team rebound (this could be 100% wrong). This would lead to more offensive rebounds for our opponents.
But also,
3) Shedrick got absolutely abused by Jesse Edwards in the 2nd half of the Syracuse game. I’m sure that isn’t helping.
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Yeah, #1 is similar to what @MaineWahoo said, and it’s a point well taken (should’ve been in my list). Your #2 makes sense; Kadin’s creating more missed shots! I’ve already blocked out #3!
Tangent off of #2: I wonder if anyone has ever done any “what happens after a blocked shot” analysis. I’ve always considered the tradeoffs to relate to the eventuality where the shot blocker doesn’t block the shot … but after a blocked shot you sometimes get more of those scramble situations that can lead to buckets…
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What’s the UVA and opponent’s shooting % for each circumstance - and turnover rate for each side. Need the whole picture
Interesting nugget regarding shot blocking and rebounding
2 years ago we were #1 in the nation in defensive block % at 16.5%, but we’re still able to be 18th in DR% at 76.7%.
This year we are 9th in block % at 16.2% and 275th in DR% at 69%.
Either the rest of the team was better at rebounding, or our shot blockers did not put themselves in as poor of position, or both. It seems to me like Kadin is still trying to figure out which shots to go after and which shots to play position on. I’m not sure off the top of my head if I’ve noticed an improvement on this over the season, but I hope it is something he develops.
My answer would be two elite rim protectors (meaning less defensive distortion) and a great defensive rebounder at the 3. Brax was a PF moonlighting at the 3. We mostly have a SG (Armaan in height / Kody in weight) playing the 3.
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Yeah, I just looked up 2020 numbers and Jay, Mamadi, and Braxton were all good defensive rebounders and they could be on the floor at the same time. Fun note, Kihei was 4th on the team with a 12.2 DR%.
This year our 3 best defensive rebounders by % are Papi, Kadin, and Gardner who will never see the floor together (super jumbo lineup?!?!?). Igor is 4th so I guess we could go super duper jumbo to get our best rebounders on the floor together….
Eye test tells me that Kadin is out of position and/or overly aggressive on the help - going for the big block at the expense of easy points if it doesn’t work out.
Doesn’t help that we’re undersized everywhere else but Beeks though.
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Yeah, this really doesn’t help. We used to have a size advantage at a bunch of positions unless we were purposefully going small, but not so much these days.
FG% higher with Caffaro, but so is TO Rate.
Efficiency data in conference play:
| Points per 100 Poss | Offense | Defense |
|---|---|---|
| Shedrick at Center | 103.7 | 117.4 |
| Caffaro at Center | 110.0 | 109.3 |
Here’s the rest of the data if you want to look something up: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XiE6K7ruMuh2kVLNXVSwKZHDiq0L8SPsYZhTSmglyIk/edit?usp=sharing
Pulled with bigballr package
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Do you have the data when they both play?
What’s the eFM% look like?
(For you non stat nerds, eFM% = expected face mauling per defensive possession).
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Raw +/- I would think favors Kadin despite all that. Especially if you take out the VT game. In large part because he’s the only rim protector.
Being over aggressive is an issue for Kadin no doubt. But he also just half asses block outs alot. Been pulled multiple times for doing it on free throws. I remember Mike Curtis saying his effort slips when fatigued. I think he just struggles to stay continuous as Bennett would say.
That really sums up the team this year to be honest. There’s no reason they can’t be alot better defensively. What Bennett asks isn’t natural for most players. Learning to play without the mental let up takes time for some.
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Looks like its ACC only play, so the sample size when both are on is really small. But looks like something CTB would like. Our offense is dreadful (significantly worse than either of them alone), but the defense is so impenetrable that its obviously more effective than either of them alone.
There’s like 150-160 minutes of play when each is playing without the other (fairly similar), but only 15 when they’re together so I’d take it with a huge grain of salt. Plus, I have no idea how the data accounts for quality of opponent and I’m pretty sure a good chunk of our “twin towers” lineup was vs Pitt.
There’s also ~25 minutes when neither is on, and we absolutely suck during that time, but I assume its mostly garbage minutes.
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I was wondering, if Kadin could develop a little more offensively and in guarding the Laravia type 4 men, if this would be a more reasonable option going forward. I can definitely see the benefits defensively, but also some issues offensively. It appears to be quite productive so far though. Of all pairs of players to play at least 30 possessions together, they have the highest adjusted efficiency margin according to evanmiya.com.
(Yes, I get that is a small sample size)
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Yeah, its weird. Like, those two do not seem like they’d mesh well, and offensively they definitely don’t. But defensively they are startlingly good. Or maybe they’re mostly playing against terrible offensive opponents.