Parsing The WAC: Here's a take that confounds 'truths' in basketball

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Here's a take that confounds 'truths' in basketball

The following is from the men's basketball coach at Cal Tech (southern California). He offers some statistics that seem to belie -- at least to a degree -- the 'givens' necessary to be a winning basketball team.

Oliver "Doc" Eslinger
April 2, 2009

What happens when you coach a team that finished first in its conference in free throw percentage, field goal percentage, field goal percentage defense, and rebounding defense?

You get fired. At least, in Kentucky you do...and if the school colors are blue and white...

Go here for the remainder.

1 comment:

Patrick H said...: I think the writer's focus on traditional stats leads him astray. What most hurt Kentucky IMHO is turnovers where they turned the ball over on 23.8% of their possessions and ranked 316th in the nation and 2nd to last in the SEC. Kentucky's rebounding percentages were just average using tempo free stats but that turnover percent is terrible.

Factor that in and Kentucky's Offensive Efficiency drops to 106th nationally. Efficiency isn't just making a high percentage of your shots. It's how many points per possessions you can score. Very high turnover rate with mediocre offensive rebounding will offset good shooting.

But I think Gillespie is a good coach and would have been successful given time. He just doesn't have the social skills necessary to coach at Kentucky.; April 13, 2009 at 8:48 AM

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02/12/09 10:58 AM: In the WAC, defense is king: "Kevin McCarthy has an insightful look at team defense in the WAC over at Parsing the WAC, and conference results so far are playing out his prediction: the team that gets the most stops, gets the most wins...Taking a game-by-game look at the Vandals’ conference season proves Kevin’s point. In all four of Idaho’s WAC wins, the team held opponents under .400 shooting."

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02/06/09 10:26 PM: High praise for incoming hoops recruits..."Ran across some nice nuggets of info on the Parsing the WAC blog, which I must say is a very active and informative one. Kevin McCarthy talks Fresno State quite a bit in it, which is cool with me...So let’s get to the point...McCarthy talked ’Dogs recruiting with Carl Foster, who’s been around a few of the soon-to-be Fresno State players, and he had some pretty impressive things to say."

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11/01/08: LOUISIANA TECH UPDATE: "Kevin McCarthy over at Parsing the WAC, an excellent source of WAC basketball news, was contacted by somebody familiar with the recent departure of four Louisiana Tech basketball players (which we touched on last week). For those who don't know, Drew Washington, Dwayne Lathan, Orrim Tims and Brandon Mims were dismissed after meeting with coach Kerry Rupp two weeks ago. Lathan said he was blindsided by the decision. McCarthy’s source, who remained anonymous, said there was more to the story than met the eye."