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Update: I’m an idiot and had messed up the off/40 column. It’s been fixed now so the numbers have changed a pretty significant amount. Sorry.

Thanks to a little research about how to utilize plus/minus statistics, Greg Simms and I are going to refine the plus/minus data a little bit. I was exchanging e-mails with Josh (of The Big Ten Geeks) and he referred me to The Hoya Prospectus, a Georgetown blog that is also tracking +/- data. The Prospectus takes the +/- concept one step further, taking into account the margin while a player is on the court and while the player is off the court to combine them into a “net” amount which is also called a Roland rating in the NBA.

So for example, Stu Douglass posted an “on” score (formerly the plus/minus number) of +13 versus Indiana however while he was off the court Michigan outscored Indiana by 11, giving him an “off” score of 11. His final Roland Rating is calculated by subtracting the off score from the on score which gives us a Roland Rating of 2.  DeShawn Sims posted an on score of 27 and an off score of –3 giving him a Roland Rating of +30. Etc. Etc.

The idea behind the Roland rating is to gauge of how valuable a player is to the team. In this case it tends to make it clear how big of a drop off you are dealing with when a player goes to the bench.

Here are the Roland ratings for Michigan players within conference play (and UConn):

• This sort of ratings system does guys like Manny Harris and DeShawn Sims a lot of justice. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that has watched Michigan play because they essentially carry the team.
• Stu Douglass has just been brutal by this scale. He has struggled in conference play and even yesterday he posted by far the worst numbers on the team.
• Laval Lucas-Perry has decent numbers but they are about what I’d expect. Definitely not great but he has been a part of many Michigan runs versus Indiana, Penn State, and Connecticut.
• Vogrich, Gibson, and Wright’s poor numbers emphasize just how bad the bench has been. There is a significant drop off from Harris, Novak, and Sims to their backups.
• Darius Morris has an impressive +10 total and he seems to post positive numbers even when it seems like he is playing poorly.
• Looking at these ratings, they really seem to make more sense than the original plus/minus scores but I’d love to hear your thoughts. They certainly aren’t a perfect measure but they are at least interesting.
• Indiana and Connecticut game-by-game numbers after the jump

Continue reading ‘Plus/Minus Goes Roland’

In order to try to compile a more relative collection of plus/minus data, we are going to start keeping totals for Michigan’s Big Ten season. This should give a more normalized total and not have to account for the difference between playing cupcakes and playing good teams.

Here are the totals through 4 games:

Some thoughts:

• Greg Simms, who has been compiling the numbers, made a very good point about the points scored/allowed per 40 minutes numbers. If the game is being played at a slower tempo, the numbers are obviously going to be lower and not because of good defense or bad offense but just the slower tempo. The obvious solution is to start tracking the number of possessions that a player plays per game but at this point that would be a dramatic increase in workload so just keep it in mind.
• It appears Laval Lucas-Perry might be a target of this “tempo bias” because his offensive and defensive numbers appear to be lower than most. Ignoring tempo, it doesn’t surprise me to see lower offensive numbers for Laval because the offense appears to sputter when he’s in the game however I have never considered LLP one of the better defenders on the team.
• Darius Morris posted the highest offensive total and has played very well since the -12 that he put up at Indiana.  You can see the improvement despite his struggles with turnovers. I think he gives this team more than Laval Lucas-Perry at this point, the key is just being able to knock down shots.
• No surprise that DeShawn Sims has the best total. He is played very well and carried Michigan to their victories. The drop off from his defensive numbers to Zack Gibson’s is appalling, even if Gibson has only played 18 minutes.
• Zack Novak has played the most minutes, 144/160, through 4 games so theoretically it would be the toughest to differentiate between his numbers and the team’s numbers (+6 through four games) but he still managed to post a net of 14 points.

Game-by-game plus/minus breakdowns after the jump. As always, because these stats are mostly experimental, I’d love to hear feedback, thoughts, and criticism in the comments.

Continue reading ‘Big Ten Plus/Minus: @IU, OSU, @PSU, NW’

Utah Statistics:

Updated Totals (Starting with Old Spice)

Notes:

It was obviously a painful day and the last Utah run really destroyed Michigan’s plus/minus numbers. Harris, Akunne, Sims, Douglass, and Morris were on the court when the game slipped away. Morris played with the backups to the end which explains why his numbers look to be the worst.  Guys like Lucas-Perry, Wright, and Cronin look a little better because they all played so few minutes.

Here is some more updated plus/minus data thanks to commenter gpsimms. We began tallying the data during the Old Spice Classic so seasonal totals don’t include Northern Michigan or Houston Baptist.

Updated Totals

Bullets:

• Zack Gibson has posted the highest plus/minus total in less than half as many minutes as the six people behind him. Tough to say that he doesn’t warrant more playing time, as the team seems to go on a run whenever he is in the game.
• Laval Lucas-Perry has been one of the only players to shoot the three pretty well this year so his offensive numbers make sense, however his defensive totals are a bit disappointing.
• DeShawn Sims is the most disappointing on this list with is -8 total. He needs to continue to step his game up, hopefully yesterday was a big step in the right direction.
• Stu Douglass appears to be one of the better defenders on the team. I think this started to become clear at the end of last year but he has posted the best defensive numbers of any guard on the roster.

Game-by-game stats for Boston College and Arkansas Pine Bluff along with notes after the jump.

Continue reading ‘Plus/Minus Updates: BC & Ark-PB’

I experimented with plus/minus data last year in an attempt to go a little more in-depth with the analysis around here. The numbers appeared to be a little too abstract to do much with but they are set to make their triumphant return, at least for right now.

Frequent reader and commenter, gpsimms, volunteered to attempt to track plus/minus data. Here is the data he came up with and some bulleted analysis after the jump. (Note: I know minutes are a little off but they should be close)

Columns explained: Minutes played, net points while on the court (scored minus allowed), points scored per 40, points allowed per 40, net per 40, normalized (net/sqrt(minutes)). Column headers are clickable to sort.

Continue reading ‘Old Spice Classic: Plus Minus Data’