Duke Basketball 2017-2018

[LastHearth]

I really have no way of proving you wrong about this, so I cannot dismiss your point about coaching. It is only from my view that it really seems to be a focus/effort problem. It is perplexing that the last 2 seasons have been such shitty defensive rebounding teams.

I agree with you that it is a focus/effort problem. But I think it needs to be harped on in practice so much that the players can't help but do it in games. And there should be in-game consequences if a player checks out.

And that's a major downside of the revolving door OAD recruiting. You have a perenially thin bench of questionably quality because the good players who can't get into the game transfer and you're left with players who are content getting 5-10 minutes a game. The OAD already are hard to coach when in the back of their mind they always know they are gone in a few month and be guaranteed millions, now they also know the gap between them and the guy off the bench is too large for the coach to realistic bench them if he wants to win.

 

[Topher]

 

[torontoduke]

That 2nd half zone looked pretty robust. For the most part, they had left the middle (15') wide open; it appeared to me that they closed out more effectively on the 2nd half to prevent wide open looks.

 

[SeanMayTriedToEatMe]

Here are the correlations for usage vs. offensive efficiency this season for Grayson Allen and Marvin Bagley:

There must be someone here who knows stats well enough to tell us exactly how meaningless these trends are, based on the r-squared values, sample sizes or whatever else. Bagley's graph is especially random-looking, minus his outlier game at 44% usage (at Pitt). However, it would be nice to see the coaches at least try to determine if this extends to larger sample sizes by experimenting more with it before the NCAA Tournament.

Allen appears to become better, or at least appears to be immune to natural efficiency slippage, when his usage is higher. Bagley is most likely a normal player who becomes worse with higher usage. This is not a fault of Bagley's at all - Allen's weirdness is the story, as usual. When you have a player who is capable of maintaining the same efficiency (or possibly even increasing it), while taking a higher burden from his teammates, that's an incredible asset who should be used more.

Bagley has had 9 games with higher usage than Allen's highest usage game this season. Regardless of whether this data is meaningful at all, that discrepancy doesn't make sense. Out of the 7 games when Allen's usage was under 18%, Allen has had 1 high efficiency performance (Utah Valley) and 6 games at 104 or lower. During Allen's fabled sophomore season, out of 36 games played, he was under 18% usage once.

Again, Bagley isn't necessarily the problem. However, he's at 27% usage and Duval is at 23%, while everyone else is under 23%. Obviously, a lot of Duval's possessions should go to Allen, and the coaches seem to have figured that out after 25 games. After that, there's nowhere else for Allen's possessions to reasonably come from other than from Bagley, and Bagley would likely benefit from it.

 

[DurhamSon]

Coefficient of determination that low means in both cases only about 5-7% of the variance in ORTG game to game can be attributed to usage rate. So kind of grasping at straws. Perhaps regress Grayson's ORTG against Bagley's usage directly?

What is Duval's ORTG again? 85? Klahn mentioned it the other day and I forgot, but it was something awful. Looks like the coaches are at least starting to peel him back from that atrocious usage level.

 

[physicsfactor]

I believe that was in reference to one game. Per kenpom, on the season Duval’s ORtg is 106.4, but that’s inflated by early season numbers vs shit competition. He’s at 100.9 in conference play and 96.8 vs top-100 kenpom teams. His conference only numbers would be good enough for Duke if he would stop turning it over.

 

[burksballer20]

Decreasing turnovers would also decrease his usage. Win-win

 

[DurhamSon]

I believe that was in reference to one game. Per kenpom, on the season Duval’s ORtg is 106.4, but that’s inflated by early season numbers vs shit competition. He’s at 100.9 in conference play and 96.8 vs top-100 kenpom teams. His conference only numbers would be good enough for Duke if he would stop turning it over.

100 ORTG is absolutely not good enough if he's still anywhere near 23% usage or w/e.

Of course we're all wasting our energy on this and we all know it b/c at the end of the day Duke is still putting out the #2 offense in the country and the shortcomings are still defensive in manner just like the last 7 years

 

[SeanMayTriedToEatMe]

Null hypothesis isn't flatline, so maybe that makes Allen's chart more compelling. Baseline is something around -1.5 slope at Allen's usage range, and Allen is at +1.8.

The more convincing part is how consistently terrible Allen has been at low usage this season, since that matches the eye test narratives that he is more passive and disinterested when he's just standing around watching Duval do bad things.

 

[physicsfactor]

But that’s my point, @DurhamSon. His ORtg in conference play is shit because of his turnovers. I said if he could simply eliminate those he would be good enough. .463, .361, .677. Assist rate is 25.7, but TO rate is 25.9!! And like someone else said, his usage wouldn’t be 23% if he cut back turnovers.

 

[SeanMayTriedToEatMe]

How the rest of this season should play out, for maximum enjoyment by Duke fans and maximum salt by the rest of the world: After taking a backseat to freshmen all season to help them develop, like a good senior captain, Allen brings back his title game/sophomore form in March and tears through the NCAA Tournament, finishing it off by tripping a mid-major star player in the closing seconds of a blowout and winking at the camera. This would make this season my favorite ever, no matter what else happens.

How it will actually play out: Luke Maye at the buzzer, repeat champs.

 

[DurhamSon]

But that’s the point. His ORtg in conference play is shit because of his turnovers. I said if he could simply eliminate those he would be good enough. .463, .361, .677. Assist rate is 25.7, but TO rate is 25.9!!

Oh I see what you mean now. God that is just a painful number to look at. I think the worst part is that doesn't even count some of his terrible field goal attempts that might as well be turnovers, like his drives into traffic to put up some terrible layup attempt with improper english that had a zero percent chance of going in from the onset.

 

[physicsfactor]

His first half pass to the VT bench was nice.

 

[dukeberto]

finishing it off by tripping a mid-major star player in the closing seconds of a blowout and winking at the camera

Ethan Wragge style? I'm all for it.

 

[dukeberto]

I was only able to watch the last quarter of the game live, but then re-watched the first half after knowing the result. *Warning - all eye-test fake analysis forthcoming*

My main takeaway, as I was focused mainly on Duval since he is the source of a lot of my anger at this team, is that he was at least more involved with his teammates. Any discussion I've had with other bball fans has centered around how Duval doesn't really seem to be a part of the "team." Much like Rivers and Gbinije, he seems to be an outsider from the squad. Last night he looked a bit different - more engaged in the team concept as opposed to what Team Duval is doing. Maybe it was just a one-game thing. Maybe it's a turning point. But I think Allen being the main distributor takes some of the spotlight away from Duval and somehow that makes him less cocky? More willing to play within the team concept? I don't know - it's weird and I realize I'm rambling, but it was just something that I noticed.

Obviously, it's easier to enjoy yourself and "play like a team" when you are beating the brakes off your opponent, but it seemed like Duval was less concerned with hero ball than he has been in the past. And to a similar extent, so was Grayson. No forced mid-range jumpers. Not trying to do everything himself. Played pretty calm and collected. This team could either win it all or flame out in the first round - I'm just here to enjoy the ride.

O/U on how long we actually move to zone full-time before K reverts back to ineffective M2M overplay? 2.5 games.

 

[childress22]

I'm not worried about off-the-court stuff with Duval. To me, he always seems engaged on the bench; he's done some great celebratory moves on White's 3-pointer a few games ago and a couple of other plays. If anything, Bagley and Carter are even more subdued, not that I'm insinuating they don't care. In the DBP Valentine's video, the guys handing out the cupcakes are the senior captain, three seldom used reserves (Besser, JRob, and Vrank), and Duval. The locker room tweet at UNC was a bad look, but outside of that, the only way he seems to hurt team chemistry is by too frequently making poor choices passing and shooting.

 

[SeanMayTriedToEatMe]

This Duke team is the 3rd best in Duke Kenpom history in 3pt%, only slightly behind 2014. 2013 is way out in front, mainly carried by Seth Curry's high volume 44%.

I'd say "shoot more 3s" but this Duke team also happens to be 2nd best in Duke Kenpom history in 2pt%, only behind 2002, which featured 5 starters so good at making 2s that Jay Williams was the worst among them.

Combine great 3pt and 2pt accuracy with the #1 offensive rebounding in Duke Kenpom history, and of course, this is by far the best offense in Duke Kenpom history by adjusted efficiency.

Looking at it from this perspective, it does seem silly to worry about the whole dynamic surrounding Duval/Bagley/Allen offensively, since the offense is close to hitting a realistic ceiling as is. The only realistic room for improvement seems to be in FTs (both getting to the line more and being better at making them) and turnovers. These factors are heavily decisionmaking/scheme-dependent (as opposed to talent-dependent), which means they should be improved fairly easily, which in turn means it's not a waste of time to try to improve them.

The turnover rate actually isn't that bad relative to all Duke teams. 17.0% is Duke's worst turnover rate since 2012, but on an absolute scale, it's not terrible. 2015, with great passers and high IQ in the backcourt, was not much better, at 16.3%. With how great Duke's offense is overall, each turnover basically subtracts >1 point against even the best defense, and the cost of each turnover is magnified. Less Duval running the offense and more Allen running the offense should cut this down naturally. Allen's ACC-only turnover rate is 16.9% this season. Duval's is 25.9%.

The FT% and FT rate are a little more difficult to improve, but still very much doable. This team has the worst FT% in Duke Kenpom history and by far the lowest FT rate. This may seem like it's fine, since maybe a poor FT shooting team should try to get to the line less, but no, the answer to bad FT shooting is not to take fewer FTs. This is the biggest area for Duke's offense to improve.

At 69.6% from the line, Duke as a team would be expected to score 1.4 points per possession in the double bonus and for any shooting foul, against any defense in the country, which is much better than what the offense would do on an average non-FT possession against a decent defense. They need to get to the line more, and they should be doing it with their best FT shooters. Which player is best suited to provide this boost? Of course it's Allen. And of course Bagley and Duval are the biggest drains on Duke from the line.

More Allen in general, more Allen drives in particular, less Duval in general, less Bagley iso/post-up clogging the paint, more Bagley rim-running to hunt rebounds and putbacks when Allen gets into the paint. This helps everyone involved - it exposes Duval's weaknesses less for NBA scouts, it makes Bagley more appealing as a modern day NBA 4/5, it potentially puts Allen back on the NBA radar, it helps the coaches win more games.

Carter and Trent should probably just keep doing what they're doing. Maybe run more plays to get Trent open from 3.

The good news is, the coaches seem to be coming around to all of this. The bad news is, it has been happening most recently with Bagley completely off the court due to injury (or "injury"), so we can't be sure it will continue once Bagley is back.

 

[CMon85]

I hope I'm wrong but I don't think we can win a title unless Duval improves and regains the PG spot or if we mainly play zone. Like I said, that's my opinion and I hope I'm wrong but I don't see this team making the FF as a zone team with Allen as it's PG.

Obviously if Duval keeps playing like this then we def can't use him as the main PG because he's an idiot.

 

[rome8180]

I don't see the slow pace or having Duval out there as a sort of neutered extra player being permanent solutions. As for the defense, I think some sort of zone/man/press combination could maybe work. But history seems to be against zone teams winning titles.

 

[rhfarmer]

SM--stats prove offense better with Allen initiating more of the offense.

CMON-- IMO we can't win playing statistically better basketball.