Individual Stats (Finally)

With a month and a half left in the season, I finally have individual stats for you to browse. Follow the link for more:

07-08 Individual Stats

The tables are fully sortable, but the sort function is a bit quirky. For some reason, it won’t sort percentages properly, so I may remove the percentage signs in the future to see if that fixes the problem. Everything else seems to be working right, but leave me a comment if you run across something that’s wrong or that you don’t understand. I’ll do my best to explain.

Here are a few notes about individual Bisons so far:

• Matt Hall is no surprise atop many of the individual lists, but I guess I wasn’t totally aware that Trent Morgan has the second-most total usage of offensive possessions. Kevin Brown and Matt Garner have more usage when they’re in the game, but Morgan tops the rest of the list overall.
• Hall is the only GSC player averaging at least 30 points per 40 minutes of play. He averages 22.4 points in 29.2 minutes per game, which is 30.7 per 40 minutes. I guess a combination of lower post-injury stamina and occasional foul trouble are the reasons he’s not playing more in each game.
• Ten GSC players average more than 30 minutes per game, with Trent Morgan being the only Bison on that list.
• Chris Dixon is a pretty good rebounder for a 6’4″ guard (or even a slasher F/G), as his 11.5% rebound rate shows. He’s right there with Matt Hall (11.6%), and a notch below Bynum, Thies, and Kevin Brown. He’s not Ceso Sprewell, but he’s also not always playing around the basket.
• On the other end of the spectrum, Calvin Rayford stays about as far away from the boards as possible.  He’s the only Bison in the league’s bottom 10 in rebound rate.
• Actually, pretty much all of Rayford’s value has come from his three-point shooting, which hasn’t been enough to keep him out of the bottom 10 league-wide in offensive efficiency.  When you’re only shooting 32% from the field (31% from outside), that tends to be the case.  If he were starting and jacking up threes about twice as often, he’d be a shorter, less-obnoxious version of Nate Newell.
• Number Two on the team in True Shooting percentage: Kevin Brown (60.4).  Number Two in Offensive Efficiency: Jesse Bynum (117.2).  Bynum is eighth in total possessions, and Brown is sixth.  Thus, the only Bison with a large positive contribution to team efficiency thus far is Hall.  The team rating is 107.3, while it would be 100.9 without him, for an efficiency contribution of 6.4 points.
• Bisons who need to do a better job handling the ball: Barnett, Trent Morgan, Thies, Howard.  Every other player getting regular time turns it over on less than 1/6 of his possessions.  Hall’s total turnovers are certainly up there, but his turnover rate is a fairly acceptable 13.3.  Seeing Thies’ name at the top of the league leaderboard has become a yearly event.  If he qualified, he’d be #3 on the list right now behind two HSU Reddies.
• Bisons with severe free-throw deficiencies: Dixon, Rayford, Thies, Howard.  Rayford doesn’t go inside at all, but he’s still missed 5 of 7 attempts this year.  Dixon is almost a 40% three-point shooter, but is under 60% at the line.  Thies gets to the line a lot (more than one FTA per FGA), yet he’s shooting a pitiful 35% (10 of 29).  The blame for this deficiency falls squarely on the players for not practicing individually, as they’ve almost surely been shown some strategies on shooting technique.
• Barnett, Brown, and Bynum nearly made the previous list, but they are at least over 60%, and all of them (especially Barnett) at least do a good job drawing fouls.  A 60% free-throw percentage is essentially an offensive rating of 120, assuming two shots per foul, so getting inside to draw fouls is a winning proposition for players who can shoot reasonably well.
• Bisons above the league average in PER (qualifiers only): Hall (27.24, #2 overall), Brown (18.17).  That’s it, but several others are close, and I prefer looking at Offensive Efficiency anyway.  Dixon makes the list when you look at SUPER.

I knew I’d find a way to work Newell into a post, even though he’s only a memory these days.

Looking ahead to 3-0 Arkansas Tech on Thursday:

• Darren Tarver (he of the incredible comeback story) is the team leader in both offensive efficiency and total possessions, and he’s scoring 27.6 points per 40 minutes.
• Terrance Whiters keeps getting better, as his teammates have also improved.  Now that he’s not the #1 option, he’s doing quite well for himself, and he makes the ATU guards as a duo awfully tough to stop.
• On the defensive end of the floor, Whiters and Renard Allen like to wait for errant passes.  They’re 1-2 in the league in steals per 40 minutes.
• Brandon Friedel is the team’s only true outside shooting threat, so the idea here is to not let them drive to the basket.
• Most of the team rebounds pretty well.  Be sure to box out Troy Marcus on the offensive end (12.5%) and Renard Allen (16.1%) and Laithe Massey (24.6%) defensively.  Marcus takes some high-percentage shots off of his teammates’ misses.
• Only OBU defends the three better than Tech, while their interior defense is merely average.

Have fun playing around with the stats, and let me know what other interesting things you find.