Quitting, or Moving Along?

Tipoff

Let’s talk about Jalen Johnson. He became the talk of college basketball on Monday night when the talented and maybe injured freshman announced that he will not be playing for Duke University anymore this season so that he can be fully healthy for the NBA draft. Duke is, in case you haven’t heard of them, a small private university in North Carolina that has had some success in the sport of college basketball. Johnson got big headlines with the heavyweights of the college basketball media landscape discussing this decision. Ubiquitous twitter personality and t-shirt salesman Jon Rothstein proclaimed Johnson was a quitter. Former University of Washington standout and NBA All-Star Isaiah Thomas (same position, no relation to the other Isaiah Thomas) scolded Johnson. Meanwhile, there was no outcry over Garren Davis. There was no scolding of Michael Steadman. Luke Anderson generated no segments on SportsCenter. For the hundreds of players that have decided to transfer within the season like these three, hardly anyone calls them out on social media.

So far this year, there have been at least 169 players that have entered the transfer portal and are seeking out a new team. Not all are leaving their teams midseason like Garren, Michael, Luke, and Jalen. Some, like former Ivy League Player of the Year Paul Atkinson, were more or less forced to leave when the Ivy League decided to shut down for the year. The Ivy League also makes it difficult for players that graduate to stay for a 5th season with eligibility as they pursue a graduate degree. For the many other transfers, the reason they choose to leave is often obvious. They want a better opportunity. 

When you commit to a team like Duke, you bring a lot of attention upon yourself. Jalen Johnson posted a video to announce his commitment to Duke. He made news for committing to the prestigious program. He, like the other midseason transfers, is looking after his own interests. It’s unfortunate for his former teammates and coaches that those interests do not align with those of the team, mired in an uncharacteristic 8-8 season with little hope of the NCAA Tournament. Duke is a place accustomed to hunting Final Four banners and National Titles. Whatever the underlying reasons for choosing to leave Durham, Johnson is not making an uncommon choice. He may be selfish and a quitter, but he is also doing what he feels is best for himself. He is not alone in that decision.  

Advanced Analytics

Go beyond the traditional counting stats you see in the box score (points, assists, rebounds, fouls, etc.) to understand the stats that are revolutionizing the game.

How do basketball teams win games? They put the ball through the hoop more often than the opponent. Class dismissed, please submit your evaluations before you leave the room.

Still here? Our friend Dean Oliver, author of Basketball on Paper, wanted to quantify how teams went about getting more points than their opponents. In other words, Dean asked what are the ways teams win? To do that, he came up with four factors that contribute to winning and measured them for both offense and defense. The four factors are really eight factors (four for each team), but that is not relevant here. What matters is that you get to see the battle within the game: shooting, turnovers, rebounding, and free throws.

For shooting, Dean uses the effective field goal rate (eFG%), which was covered a couple of weeks ago in this newsletter. In very simple terms, eFG% tracks all shots in a game, including 2- and 3-point shots, to identify which players and teams are most effective at shooting the ball. For turnovers and rebounding, Dean uses the rates, which remove tempo - how fast or slow a team plays the game -  from the equation. A fast-tempo team is going to generate more rebounds, shot attempts, and so on than a slow-tempo team, but that doesn’t mean a slow team is necessarily less efficient at the game; what matters is how many possessions result in a made basket, rebound, turnover, or free throw. For free throws, Dean uses rates again to measure both the frequency and accuracy of free throw rates. This is done by dividing the number of free throws by field goal attempts, a way to determine how many shot attempts are paired with made free throws since free throws negate the field goal attempt in the box score (unless a foul is called on the shot attempt and the basket is made, giving us the “and-1” situation). This allows us to measure, using a single number, teams with a big low-post player that gets a lot of free throw opportunities but misses many of them against teams with many jump shooters that rarely get fouled but are deadly accurate when they do take their shots.

By reviewing the four factors, you can get a sense of what happened - on both offense and defense - to a degree that a simple write-up from the wire services cannot provide. The four factors tell us who won the battles within the game, if a team was more or less evenly matched but had a bad shooting night or completely undone by failing to control the rebounds or coughing up the ball when they had it. You can see the four factors from this box score, provided by Basketball Reference, from the 2019 National Championship game between Texas Tech and Virginia. We know Virginia won in overtime, but you see that throughout the game they had an advantage by winning 3 of the 4 factors, including eFG%, offensive rebound rate (OREB% - the inverse gives you the DREB%), and free throw rate. Without watching the game, we know that the Cavaliers were able to make their shots more often, grab more missed shots, and make more free throws than the Red Raiders, delivering them to victory. These factors overcame a slight edge in the turnover battle, which was low for both teams. 

The Mixtape

The Field of 68 team puts out lots of great content each week. Let’s take a look at some of the highlights.

• The nation wants to know, how good is Creighton? To answer that question, former Bluejay great Marcus Foster joined the Welcome to the Jay podcast with Jahenns Maniga‪t.‬ Foster played with current Bluejays, including the hot-shooting Mitchell Ballock and Damian Jefferson. Creighton thoroughly defeated Villanova last weekend but does not play again until the end of February. During the down-time, listen to Manigat’s interview with star point guard Marcus Zegarowski.

• Former Louisville point guard Russ Smith was one of the most electrifying players in college basketball. He was as electric off the court as well and got into a number of antics, like the time he sampled the drink of head coach Rick Pitino on a flight. Smith was part of the dynamic backcourt for the Cardinals team that did not lose the NCAA Championship in 2013. According to the NCAA, they are no longer the winners, but none of us remember them losing that game, do we? Smith joined Jeff Greer on the Floyd Street’s Finest podcast to tell a few stories.

• Villanova fans often fawn over the strong culture established by head coach Jay Wright. On the Blueblood on the Mainline podcast with Ross Condon, former Wildcat walk-on Ross Condon breaks down the way Wright goes about instilling that culture in this model program. Condon talks about life as a walk-on as well as the time Scottie Reynolds hit “that shot.” You know the one, right, the one that won the 2009 Elite 8? Yeah you do.

• For the second year in a row, has Florida State established itself as the best team in the ACC? It certainly looks that way after an impressive 81-60 thumping of Virginia on Tuesday night. Rob Dauster & Jeff Goodman discuss what makes FSU so good this year. Be careful, Leonard Hamilton’s squad causes a lot of curse words to fly. It’s a good thing Buzz Williams isn’t in the conference anymore, ‘cause he wouldn’t approve of all this cussin. You do, though, if you click this link.

Weekend Primer

Heading into the weekend, we take a look at the big matchups on the schedule.

The schedule of games on Friday night is slim pickings. In the Mountain West, conference leaders Boise State hosts Utah State for the second half of a back-to-back series.

Things will look a little more interesting on Saturday. In the B1G, Illinois will travel to Minnesota to take on the Gophers. That’s a tough place for visitors to play as the home team has racked up wins over Iowa, Michigan State, Ohio State, Michigan, and Purdue at home. Will the Illini be able to come away unscathed? In the Big East, UConn and star point guard James Bouknight, recently returned from injury and apparently quite healthy, travel to southeastern Pennsylvania to take on Villanova. The Big 12 offers a double-header as Texas Tech visits Allen Fieldhouse to take on Kansas while West Virginia hopes to heat up chilly Texas with hot shooting. For some reason, ESPN keeps featuring Duke in primetime. The Blue Devils host Virginia where head coach Tony Bennett hopes to improve on his 4-11 lifetime record against Coach K.

Sunday starts with a bang with the Michigan-Ohio State matchup. Both teams appeared as potential #1 seeds in the NCAA Tournament top 16 bracket reveal last weekend. In addition to playing for that seed, the two are atop the B1G standings. Will head coach Juwan Howard be able to secure bragging rights over his fellow employee Jim Harbaugh and secure a victory in Columbus?

• Friday: 

  • Utah State vs. Boise State (10:00 p.m. Eastern on FS1)

• Saturday:

  • #5 Illinois vs. Minnesota (TBD)

  • UConn vs. #10 Villanova (1:00 p.m. Eastern on Fox)

  • #15 Texas Tech vs. #23 Kansas (2:00 p.m. Eastern on ESPN)

  • #13 West Virginia vs. #12 Texas (3:00 p.m. Eastern on ABC)

  • #7 Virginia vs. Duke (8:00 p.m. Eastern on ESPN)

• Sunday:

  • #3 Michigan vs. #4 Ohio State (1:00 p.m. Eastern on CBS)