Coaching

[LaPorteAveApostle]

Call me crazy, but before I criticize--or praise--teenagers playing a game for free, I'd rather look at the grown men who already have degrees who are paid to coach the game.

Today's focus is on the REMATCH.  We just lost by 28 to a team that we beat by 15 last month.  Obviously that's the worst swing in recent memory, but how representative is it?

Take a look at this chart:

Here we have all the in-season rematches Bryce has taken part in.  I've separated them by where they took place, because obviously, home-court advantage (HCA).

Now, Sagarin thinks that HCA is worth around 4 points in MCBB.  Now, whether we get more or less HCA at the ARC...that is a whole other topic.

Bryce has had 22 games that pitted his team against a team they had played earlier in the year (note the 4 '3-peats' in the file, due to playing the last two HL tourneys at home.  These are considered as separate pairs, i.e. Games 1 & 2 and Games 2 & 3)

In the rematches, we have been net-outscored by 21 points, or basically we lose a point a game in the rematch.  This may or may not be statistically significant.  If we'd just lost by 7 yesterday, there would be no difference, for example, so it may just be noise.

Look at the games where we first played at home.  We lose an average of 7.33 ppg on the rematch.  But since we'd expect to lose 8 anyway (4 for our home + 4 for theirs), that's well within the realm of expectation, and even slightly better.

Now, the games played first on the road.  We gain 4.8 ppg on the rematch.  But we'd have expected to GAIN 8 this time, so that's not as great.

The other two, home-then-home, are HL tourney games from 2012.  Remember that Butler game?  Nored crying on the bench?  That was great.  Juuuuuust stop the memories right there.  Mmm.  Yep.  Nothing happened after that, for sure.

Anyway those are good games to look at because the court didn't change.  We were better in one but decidedly not in whatever that other one was.

2011-12 lost 33 points on 4 road rematches, about what you'd expect (8 a game).  And curiously they netted 33 points on 4 road rematches, to break even.  Then of course the tourney.  Oh well.  Negative 8 for the year, but over 10 games, so less than a point a game.

2012-13 actually GAINED 10 points net on four road rematches, which is not what you'd expect at all.  Then they gained another 20 on home rematches.  This is a net gain of 3 points per rematch, quite a bit better than the year before.

Part of the problem in measuring things, however, is that they cannot be done in isolation.  Is it coaching that improved 4 ppg in rematches from 2012 to 2013?  Or was it the players becoming older/better?  Probably a combination of both, since Bryce was going from Year One to Year Two (a huge gain hopefully), and a lot of the players were going from Year 3 to 4.

(All we have this year for several weeks is yesterday's debacle.)

So, finally, let's look at Bryce--his record in rematches, and then the score vs. expectations (that is to say, the margin of victory or loss the first time, recalculated for HCA).

Bryce has lost 3 road rematches that he won the first half of.
He has won 2 road rematches that he lost the first half of.
He has swept them both 4 times.

Bryce has lost 1 home rematch that he won the first half of (Detroit last year...soundofteethgritting.mp4)
He has won 2 home rematches that he'd lost the first half of.
He's swept the other 8 pairs. 

Takeaway: he's never lost twice to the same team in the same year.  He's 4-4 in expectations (beating a team they'd lost to vs. losing to a team they'd beaten).

This would be a good place (heck, there's never a bad time) to mention that he's won 3 straight against Butler, and VU 4 in a row.

Finally, Bryce vs. "the spread", i.e. the 8-ppg expectations of HCA: 10-12
2011-12:  5-6
2012-13: 5-5
This year: 0-1

[valpotx]

LAA, what do you do for a living?  I would guess something relating to Accounting or Finance with all of the statistical analysis you bring to the table

[ARCInsider]

"I noticed you used a lot of big words. Nice. Good for you. It was a little long so I didn't read the whole thing. But who cares, cause I gave you an A."

[LaPorteAveApostle]

LAA, what do you do for a living?

i'm a church musician.  but thank you very much.  i could use some stat pointers, because I didn't have any math after HS.

but i was the bryce drew of nerds at vhs. so.

[wh]

Call me crazy, but before I criticize--or praise--teenagers playing a game for free, I'd rather look at the grown men who already have degrees who are paid to coach the game.

Today's focus is on the REMATCH.  We just lost by 28 to a team that we beat by 15 last month.  Obviously that's the worst swing in recent memory, but how representative is it?

Take a look at this chart:

Here we have all the in-season rematches Bryce has taken part in.  I've separated them by where they took place, because obviously, home-court advantage (HCA).

Now, Sagarin thinks that HCA is worth around 4 points in MCBB.  Now, whether we get more or less HCA at the ARC...that is a whole other topic.

Bryce has had 22 games that pitted his team against a team they had played earlier in the year (note the 4 '3-peats' in the file, due to playing the last two HL tourneys at home.  These are considered as separate pairs, i.e. Games 1 & 2 and Games 2 & 3)

In the rematches, we have been net-outscored by 21 points, or basically we lose a point a game in the rematch.  This may or may not be statistically significant.  If we'd just lost by 7 yesterday, there would be no difference, for example, so it may just be noise.

Look at the games where we first played at home.  We lose an average of 7.33 ppg on the rematch.  But since we'd expect to lose 8 anyway (4 for our home + 4 for theirs), that's well within the realm of expectation, and even slightly better.

Now, the games played first on the road.  We gain 4.8 ppg on the rematch.  But we'd have expected to GAIN 8 this time, so that's not as great.

The other two, home-then-home, are HL tourney games from 2012.  Remember that Butler game?  Nored crying on the bench?  That was great.  Juuuuuust stop the memories right there.  Mmm.  Yep.  Nothing happened after that, for sure.

Anyway those are good games to look at because the court didn't change.  We were better in one but decidedly not in whatever that other one was.

2011-12 lost 33 points on 4 road rematches, about what you'd expect (8 a game).  And curiously they netted 33 points on 4 road rematches, to break even.  Then of course the tourney.  Oh well.  Negative 8 for the year, but over 10 games, so less than a point a game.

2012-13 actually GAINED 10 points net on four road rematches, which is not what you'd expect at all.  Then they gained another 20 on home rematches.  This is a net gain of 3 points per rematch, quite a bit better than the year before.

Part of the problem in measuring things, however, is that they cannot be done in isolation.  Is it coaching that improved 4 ppg in rematches from 2012 to 2013?  Or was it the players becoming older/better?  Probably a combination of both, since Bryce was going from Year One to Year Two (a huge gain hopefully), and a lot of the players were going from Year 3 to 4.

(All we have this year for several weeks is yesterday's debacle.)

So, finally, let's look at Bryce--his record in rematches, and then the score vs. expectations (that is to say, the margin of victory or loss the first time, recalculated for HCA).

Bryce has lost 3 road rematches that he won the first half of.
He has won 2 road rematches that he lost the first half of.
He has swept them both 4 times.

Bryce has lost 1 home rematch that he won the first half of (Detroit last year...soundofteethgritting.mp4)
He has won 2 home rematches that he'd lost the first half of.
He's swept the other 8 pairs. 

Takeaway: he's never lost twice to the same team in the same year.  He's 4-4 in expectations (beating a team they'd lost to vs. losing to a team they'd beaten).

This would be a good place (heck, there's never a bad time) to mention that he's won 3 straight against Butler, and VU 4 in a row.

Finally, Bryce vs. "the spread", i.e. the 8-ppg expectations of HCA: 10-12
2011-12:  5-6
2012-13: 5-5
This year: 0-1

Not trying to sound critical, LAA, but is there a concluding point of view in here somewhere?

[LaPorteAveApostle]

No, that's a valid point, for although there are takeaways in there it's not readily apparent.  You could boil it down to he's maybe better than we think.  you guys.

I went in thinking (after yesterday) that maybe adjustments were an issue.  I don't think they necessarily are, if it took a blowout loss for us to be averaging 1 point worse in rematches.  It'll be something to keep an eye on.

Obviously a lot is on players, but as far as Bryce's record, in 20 situations with multiple games with the same team, is good.

--In teams he's played 3 times, he's swept 3 times (Butler 2012, WSU & GB last year) and gone 2-1 in the other (Detroit 2012 grr).  That's 11-1.

--In teams he's played twice, he's swept 6 times, split 8 times, and never been swept.  That's 20-8.

That's pretty good.  That's 31-9 against teams that know him and his team.  Over 75%.

As Bo would say, that's pretty good when you can line up and they know what's coming and you still run them over anyway.

[LaPorteAveApostle]

Another aspect of coaching is the SECOND HALF ADJUSTMENT(S).

Often-heralded, always-mysterious--it's hard to fathom, but what is measurable is 1st half vs. 2nd half performance. Lately, doesn't it seem like we don't shoot ourselves in the first-half foot? No, because  we blow that mutha OFF.  Is there a pattern to this, at least in the Bryce Era (BE)?  Or do the really bad starts stand out too much because they're so, well, bad?

Since this is lengthy, I'll break it into 3 parts.  Looking only at D1 games because obviously.

PART the FIRST:  2011-2012 (20-12)

If there was a "we start slow" meme, it didn't start this year.   Only 3 of 32 games were we trailing by as much as 10 or more at the half.  (For the purposes of this analysis, I define "slow start" as "losing by 10 or more".  Why?  Because how often have you caught yourself saying or thinking "if we could just cut it to single digits by halftime, we'd have 'em right where we want them!"?  ...OK, pretty often, lately.)

One of those 3 games was at home (UIC), where we turned a 10-pt deficit into a 9-pt win!  2 of those games were on the road, and we lost them both.  Interestingly though, one we "won" the 2nd half (IUPUI) and just kept on losing in the other (YSU).  No pattern there.

6 times we were blowing them out at the half (all wins).  11 games were close leads (7-4) and 12 were close trails (interestingly enough, 6-6).

However, this team didn't seem to have a 1st half problem as much as a 2nd half problem.  We "won" 17 first halves, "losing" 15; we split the 32 2nd halves.  And scoring, on the year: we were +34 for 1st halves, and -25 for 2nd. 

Side note: a lucky year?  Witness:
--Not too bad to be 8 games over .500 for the year when you're just 9 pts in regulation over break-even--plus +11 in 2 OTs).
--We played 64 halves of D1 basketball; we "won" 33 of them and "lost" 31 (plus 2 OT wins).  Somehow that shook out to 20-12.  That's pretty good.  Bill James would think us a bit of an outlier...

Or did we have a 2nd half problem?  We blew no lead of 4 or more.  We did end up winning 6 of the 12 games we were losing at halftime, including overcoming deficits of -10 (UIC above) and -9 (Detroit). 

Perhaps the problem was the old home-road dichotomy?   After all, we only overcame one deficit of more than 3 points (Milwaukee) all year on the road.  We were only trailing 3 times at home at half; we came back to win all of them.  On the road, however, we trailed 12 times, only winning 3 of these.

BOTTOM LINE:
--2011-12 didn't have a "slow-start" problem (only 3 first-half deficits of 10+).  There was, in fact, a bit of a "slow-finish" problem.  (6 second-half deficits of 10+, "highlighted" by -29 @ OSU, -20 @ WSU, and of course that -23 vs. Detroit in the tourney. -15 to Miami in the NIT.)

There might be a temptation to chalk this up to "other coach making adjustments", but you could also say that "the other coach didn't have them as ready to play".  It's hard to say.  After all, we did end up 20-12, with half the games we were losing ending up as wins.  Without half of those, we're 15-15--or even less, because we don't make the conference championship game because we're not hosting.  As for the one we did host, well, that was the biggest halftime lead we blew all year (3 pts).  So, totally over THAT.  You too?

FUN FACTS: 
--over none of the 64 halves were the two teams tied.  That, I would imagine, is hard to do.
--What is it with Green Bay?  Whether home or away, we lost each 2nd half by precisely 10.

[LaPorteAveApostle]

Takeaway: he's never lost twice to the same team in the same year.