Player Tyrese Proctor

[2001Dukechamps]

Not saying Proctor was great or everything Duke needed last night. It is obvious, however, that spacing for long stretches was laughably terrible with Young on the court.

Cade Cunningham has to deal with this garbage on a daily basis, in perhaps the worst spacing lineups in basketball, which is why his offensive numbers are widely considered incredible despite being being merely good in a vacuum. Vecenie tweets a ton about him, too. Forcing your players to deal with this, with no apparent reward on defense (Young does not seem to be as good as Rudy Gobert defensively) is simply bad coaching.

Proctor is not on that level and probably never will be, but I can’t expect him to thrive under these conditions. Yes, it would’ve been nice if Proctor had hit one more 3 - Duke likely wins in that scenario - but the one more made 3 in one game in November is complete randomness.

Scheyer and Young put a brick wall in front of him and every other Duke player last night. I also fear that Mitchell is going to be exposed from 3 this season, which makes the spacing problem exponentially worse. Young is what he is. Scheyer can change. If he doesn’t, and if he puts Young in for more than, say, 4 minutes against good teams all season, Duke is cooked and will probably need a different coach to win their next national title.

Yikes, yeah that last tweet definitely adds perspective. Not a good look for Scheyer.

 

[rome8180]

Needs to play better for this offense to achieve its potential. He was literally top 3 in some mocks.

 

[bdotling]

At least his hair was back?

 

[Pantone287]

I know he's young, but it's disappointing how skinny/weak he still looks out there.

I still think he's a very good game manager, in addition to defender - he consistently gets the ball to the right spot, and quickly. The issue is that we need him to be more than that this year, and he just hasn't shown much in the way of advantage creation. I think lack of strength is a challenge - you can get away with not having a super quick first step, but you need to have the strength to keep guys on your hip and finish with some contact. He seems to not be very comfortable with that, and does a lot of jump stopping and pivoting back away from contact instead.

He's going to have to figure out how to occasionally get to the rim and finish at some point if he's going to be an NBA player. Hopefully he gets more aggressive.

 

[deepdarkblue]

Where do I find out more about this "player exertion score"? Is it also known as The TriHard Index?

 

[physicsfactor]

That guide hand on top of the ball kills me every time I see it.

 

[LastHearth]

I thought he played great defense on Walker, and kept Walker from scoring much at all in the first half. Even in the second half when Walker was going off it was against other players.

 

[physicsfactor]

I thought he played great defense on Walker, and kept Walker from scoring much at all in the first half. Even in the second half when Walker was going off it was against other players.

And Walker also hit some shots that were of the “well-defended so tip your cap if he makes that” variety.

 

[aiw]

I know he's young, but it's disappointing how skinny/weak he still looks out there.

I loved how Holly Rowe said he gained 9 pounds, then laughed, and then said he's only 18.

 

[SeanMayTriedToEatMe]

It’s a good sign that no one thinks Proctor has been great this season, because despite how much room for improvement he seems to have, his overall numbers have been much better than last season already.

PER 12.8 last season to 17.4 this season
BPM 3.3 to 7.2
WS/40 .118 to .209
ORtg 109 to 126
DRtg 103 to 96
TS 50.4% to 54.8%
eFG 45.9% to 52.9%
Ast 20.8% to 29.5%
Stl 1.3% to 2.3%
TO 14.7% to 9.5%

The SOS has been relatively weak based on whatever scale sports-reference is using - it’s only 2.29 so far, being dragged down by two horrible opponents, compared with 7.44 at the end of last season. I don’t think SOS accounts for most of the improvement in Proctor’s numbers, though. Optimistically, he should be a 20-25 PER, 9-10 BPM guy by season end.

His major area for improvement still, besides becoming closer to a 40% 3pt shooter than the 32% from last season, is penetrating more, collapsing defenses more, and drawing more fouls. He’s spending too much time standing on the perimeter, while Duke needs him to break down defenses like a top 10 pick PG is supposed to do. His 60% 3pt Rate (up from last season) and 20% FT Rate (down from last season) bear this out. His FT Rate as a huge college PG who shot 90%+ from the line last season would ideally be closer to 40%.

All of the guards are probably deferring to Filipowski (30% usage) and Mitchell (27% usage) too much. As good as they’ve been, the offense will probably be more systemically reliable for March if Duke has four guards who all operate with space and have the opportunity to break down defenses. There should be more possessions where the bigs are on the perimeter, unless Filipowski and Mitchell are really going to be 33% and 14% from 3 all season. In that case, there’s not much Scheyer can do to space the floor. Opposing defenses will gladly accept 0.99 or 0.42 expected points from Duke every possession.

 

[StopThePumpFakesShav]

I was actually just coming here to post about his 30 percent asst rate to 10 percent TO rate. That 10 percent is prob not sustainable but it’s a great sign. If he can keep it under 15 and the shooting starts to improve, he’s gonna be one of the top few point guards in the country. Add in the defense and youre looking at one of the most valuable players in the country.

I tend to think the KPOY and similar metrics are a bit tilted toward Bigs. It would be good to see something that accounts for the greater importance of guards to the game.

 

[rome8180]

One thing I've noticed is that his scoring is more effective when he's off-ball. He's a great cutter. He and Ryan have had several beautiful give-and-gos already this year. He's also good at those sharp changes of direction where he pops off a screen out to the 3pt line.

Taking his man one-on-one off the dribble is not quite as effective. His handle is probably good enough for that, but he lacks the strength to handle contact in the lane, and he's not super fast.

 

[childress22]

There should be more possessions where the bigs are on the perimeter, unless Filipowski and Mitchell are really going to be 33% and 14% from 3 all season. In that case, there’s not much Scheyer can do to space the floor. Opposing defenses will gladly accept 0.99 or 0.42 expected points from Duke every possession.

I don't think the solution is 5-out as much as it is 4 around 1 with a lot of PNR and off ball screens for the other guards.

The expected value on getting Flip or Mark a close touch is pretty good in terms of 2s and FTs. They're both getting to the line and kiling there.

Top row here is Flip, 4th row is Mark.

 

[SeanMayTriedToEatMe]

Yeah the problem is they’re both on the court and neither of them are effective away from the rim. So it’s going to be 2-in and nowhere to drive for the guards unless at least one of them figures out college 3s this season. They will likely need an alternate plan to giving bigs 57% usage inside and counting on them to make 90% FT for all of March, with 3 excellent guards sharing the other 43% of possessions.

 

[rome8180]

This may sound silly, but I think the plan should probably just be for them to make threes. Everything else they provide is too valuable to steer away from them. Flip's usage could stand to come down and we need to push the pace more, but that's about it.

Duke was somehow able to have a top 15 offense in the last month of the season last year despite playing Mitchell, Flip, and Lively together and without having the shooting of Jared McCain. This should be able to work even if Flip and Mitchell are merely average from three (33%-36%).

 

[rome8180]

Now if you told me we ended up starting Foster over Roach by year's end, I would understand how and why that happened.

 

[childress22]

Flip's better than Mitchell 20 feet from the basket, I think. He's a better ball-handler, passer, and outside shooter. As long as Flip can shoot in the 30s and not the 20s (and he's at 33% now), that's good enough to make his man guard him out there. Mitchell can do Aaron Gordon stuff.

 

[SeanMayTriedToEatMe]

Assuming that’s the end of his Duke career, I’ll definitely be rooting for him in the NBA. He tried to be a good player, wasn’t successful most of the time. Didn’t quit on the team.

 

[Inveigle]

We better hope Proctor suffered a slight ankle sprain because Duke goes as Tyrese Proctor goes.

 

[SeanMayTriedToEatMe]

Just gotta squeak out a bunch of one-possession wins and try to steal an at-large bid.