Player Efficieny Rating

[thx4leavinjimlynam]

I thought I would bring some analytic data to the board. This is long, but I'll do my best to compress and summarize.

The single best way to evaluate a player's analytic value is Player Efficiency Rating, or PER. The basic definition of PER is: The Player Efficiency Rating (PER) is a statistical measure used to measure the efficiency of a player by taking into consideration all statistics kept by college basketball, and weights the player's production by minutes played per game, and number of team possessions per game.

Here is a link for those interested:
www.sportingcharts.com/articles/nba/ultimate-guide-to-the-player-efficiency-rating-per.aspx

This brings us to the 2014-15 Lions. Here is the link on college-basketball reference to the 2014-15 Lions (PER is a stat under the ADVANCED tab, which is the fourth set of data):
www.sports-reference.com/cbb/schools/loyola-marymount/2015.html

15 is an "average" PER. I went through all 10 WCC teams, and here is the amount of players on each team that played at least 10 minutes per game and had a PER of 15 or more:
Gonzaga 5, BYU 5, SMC 4, Portland 4, Pepp 3, USF 3, USD 3, Pacific 3, SC 2, LMU 2

Our two were Payne (23.8...eighth best in WCC) and Mornar (19.6). In WCC games only, Okonji was 17.8 but I'll focus on the entire season.

So we need more "15-plus" players. If we had 4 or 5, we would be near the top of the standings. Makes sense.

One thing I would like to point out is that of the 34 WCC players with 15-plus PER's, Payne and Mornar had two of the four best increases from the 2013-14 season to 2014-15:
Gerun, POR, 10.4 to 17.5, increase of 68.3%
Mornar, LMU, 12.6 to 19.6, increase of 55.6%
Wintering, POR, 13.6 to 20.3, increase of 49.3%
Payne, LMU, 16.5 to 23.8, increase of 44.2%

So the good news is that two players improved tremendously in Dunlap's first season. Maybe Humphries (12.6), Hayes (10.6) or Siame (9.6) can make similar leaps next season.

Two other things to point out:
USG% is Usage Percentage (also found in the ADVANCED tab). This is defined as "an estimate of the percentage of team plays used by a player while he was on the floor." This shouldn't come as a shock, but Payne's 35.4 USG% not only led the WCC but was third in the entire nation! In layman's terms, only two teams of 351 (East Tennessee State and Marist) relied on a single player on offense more than we did with Payne.

Lastly, at the top of the college-basketball reference link is DRtg, which reflects the defensive rating (points allowed per 100 possessions). We allowed 111.3 points per 100 possessions, which was 345th in the country (out of 351). We all knew our defense was leaky, but this does prove it.

What to make of the data? My take is Dunlap has the ability to get more out of players than most coaches. However, he clearly needs more players, and losing Payne does not appear to be a positive, no matter how it is spun. I do think Dunlap knew he had limitations on defense, which is why he slowed the games down. If he has a better defense, I think he would play more up tempo.

Go Lions!

[LIONS90045]

Some of the "improvement" I attribute to maturing as players. Dunlap may have helped.
Siame may step up next season but according to reports it won't be in a Lions uniform.
I suspect our other improvement "star" Mornar will be the next shoe to drop.
Then we will be able to hear pins drop next season in Gersten.

[husky]

I am just not smart enough to see how this proved 'Dunlap can get more out of his players than most coaches". Whatever improvement Evan may have registered was more likely in spite of Mike rather than because of him. Iv'e heard this Dunlap hype for year now, let'a wait and see if we get some real results. I'll have to grant that, by any and all accounts, he was an excellent Division II coach and clearly had the results to prove it. But as for Division I results, he never seemed to stick on one job long enough to be able to claim much in the way of tangible results. If only he were to turn out half as good as his hype we would be back in the NCAA tournament in 2 years (as one ESPN announcer confidently assured us).

I strongly urge Coach Dunlap groupies to hack into the Lion's website and purge his post game interview from last Saturday. I don't think exposure like that will have strong recruits waiting in line to sigh up.

[slblions08]

Thanks for showing us the analytics. I did not know that college basketball had a reference page as well. I love baseball reference.

It confirms a lot. It shows that Evan was easily our best player, with Mornar our second best. It shows that Siame may have been one of our worst players given the amount of minutes he played. Losing him might not be a big blow, other than for his potential. It also proves what I thought about Chase Flint. He was definitely a hindrance to the team whose value was in having a live body to fill our backcourt. That turnover percentage was high. Of course, Simon's was even higher so that's saying something. Petr Herman was essentially a 0. Humphries is around a league average player, which is good, we need more of those.

You know, with Evan gone we lose a lot. But if we're building an analytics team (I don't think that has been tried in college ball but it would be interesting) losing Chase actually helps us in that regard. So would sending Herman back to Spain. Even replacing Siame with someone more efficient would be helpful.

Analytics may not be good to draw conclusions from in college because year to year there is a lot of growth and maturity due to aging, adjustment physical changes and attrition. The college guys aren't going to be who they are by the end of their careers just based on those factors that have less to do with a particular coach. Some guys realize they aren't going to be NBA superstars so they decide to be good college players and focus on one asset like shooting, defense or rebounding and quit shooting like MJ.

Every year players make big noticeable leaps that often have to do with playing time. It's similar to today's nba, with players who are developing between the rookie contract and the restricted free agency point in their careers which occurs between the ages of...guess what 23 and 25 (which would be the normal time rookies become star veterans under the old 3-4 year of college system)

Also, having basically the worst defense in the nation isn't good. I thought D was his calling card? I just hope he can recruit players that will buy into whatever defensive system he will have in place.

[thx4leavinjimlynam]

My first Analytics post focused on Evan Payne and the 2014-15 squad. Recently there has been a lot of chatter regarding Max Good on the board. I think almost everyone agreed that Good (and his staff) could recruit, but the question was: Did the players improve? I decided to run some numbers.

PER on sports-reference.com starts in 2009-2010 (Good's first full year). Remember, PER is pure data…and it reflects minutes played per 100 possessions, so style of play is neutral. I only listed the scholarship players, and if a player played less than 10 minutes per game in a season, the PER is notated with an asterisk (*). Remember, "15.0" is an average player.

09-10 10-11 11-12 12-13 13-14 14-15
Teel 21.8 19.0
Viney 21.6 20.7 22.4
Young 17.7
DuBois 15.2 12.6 11.4
Hamilton 17.9 13.4 13.5 15.1
Kalipinde 13.3
Armstead 11.3 11.3 16.5
Davis 12.5 13.9
Osborne 10.8 16.1* 14.5 13.9 15.8
Diedrichs 8.4 9.7 15.1*
Garibay 14.0 11.5 11.0
Sweezy -2.9*
Lawson -10.2* 15.9* 17.2
Ireland 14.1 20.1 22.1 21.2
Egbeyemi 11.2 7.9 16.1 11.3 13.2
Okonji 14.9 12.4 12.9 13.9
Blackwell 16.9 14.9 8.2
English 7.6* 0.8
Mornar 11.1 12.6 19.6
Stover 10.4 11.0
Flint 10.5 11.2 10.1
Adams -21.0*
Levin 15.1
Payne 16.5 23.8
Dickinson 18.8
Jackson 5.7
Humphries 12.6
Hayes 10.6
Spiers 5.2*
Wyatt 0.8*
Krajcovic 8.2
Siame 9.5
Herman 3.3

-Sweezy and Diedrichs were Tention recruits…Diedrichs slightly improved under Good

-Kalipinde, Adams, Dickinson and Jackson were all 1-and-done (Kalipinde and Dickinson had good first years)

-Young was at 17.7 as a sophomore and, for the record, had PER's of 17.9 and 21.3 his two years at Kansas

-That leaves 17 scholarship players that played at least two seasons during Good's final five years…10 improved from their first year to final year (Viney, Armstead, Davis, Osborne, Lawson, Ireland, Egbeyemi, Mornar, Stover, Flint)…7 did not improve (Teel, DuBois, Hamilton, Garibay, Okonji, Blackwell, English)

-under Good, 3 players improved more than 40% from one season to the next: Armstead 46.0% from junior to senior year, and Ireland 42.6% from freshman to sophomore year, and Egbeyemi 103.8% from sophomore to junior year (Lawson only played 6 minutes his -10.2 year so I am not including that)

-4 of the 5 "Good returning players" improved in their first season under Dunlap, with two of those improving more that 40%: Mornar 55.6% and Payne 44.2%

-Payne's 23.8 PER this past season was the best by an LMU player in the six seasons of existing data

-Good had only five of his scholarship players post PER's under 10.0 in his five seasons of data (Egbeyemi's sophomore year, Blackwell's third year, both of English's years, and freshman years for Adams and Jackson)…Sweezy and Diedrichs were Tention recruits

-Dunlap, in one season, has already matched Good's total of five scholarship players posting PER's under 10 (Spiers, Wyatt, Krajcovic, Siame and Herman)

-Siame was a Good recruit, but still, of the 6 Dunlap recruits that played (Haney redshirted), only Humphries and Hayes posted PER's ABOVE 10

To summarize:
-the data shows four of Dunlap's recruits were under 10 PER, and it is rare for one of those players to improve (Egbeyemi being the exception)

-when given talent, Dunlap "coached them up" and improved their efficiency…can Dunlap dramatically improve the play of Spiers, Wyatt, Krajcovic, Siame and Herman? Doubtful they will all improve…our realistic hope is that 2 of 5 can step up…and we need Haney and Tutu to be really good from the beginning.

-Humphries was Dunlap's best first year guy (12.6 PER)…Good had 8 players have a higher PER in their first year (Dickinson, Levin, Payne, Blackwell, Okonji, Ireland, Garibay, and Kalipinde) Bayno had one in 2009-2010 (Viney) and we do not have data for Bayno's other five guys from 2008-09 (Teel, Young, DuBois, Armstead, Hamilton)

-Data shows Good's recruits made a quicker impact, but Dunlap generated impressive leaps in production…maybe we should have kept Max and his staff to recruit and Dunlap and his staff to teach!!!

Go Lions!

[LIONS90045]

Thx - wow that's lot of data to digest. Thanks for your efforts.
My head is swimming a bit from all the data but one conclusion I found is that we just lost our best player in recent years Evan Payne per your metric.

[ALioninWinter]

Nice bit of research. I'm not sold on analytics as "the answer" but it does provide interesting insight.

I think this data does show that, for the most part, Good did not improve his players a lot. Anthony had a big leap from freshman to sophomore year, but then leveled out (at a high level). LaRon had a nice boost his senior year. Alex improved. Most everyone else was fairly level or dropped.

Regarding this year just passed, I'm not sure how much credit goes to CMD or to other reasons. Evan had significantly improved numbers but last year AI carried the load. This year, without AI, Evan pretty much had to do it. I personally think we saw a little more patience in Evan's game, and at least some of that is probably due to CMD. But we saw Evan being held back a lot as well. Might his numbers been even higher under slightly different circumstances?

Money had a big improvement, but he also spent his off-season with a very active European season. How much of his improvement is due to CMD? And how much to his work in Europe?

Deji, Chase and Godwin were all pretty much the same. Everyone else was new -- and none of them showed much. David is the only one close. I'm not convinced the analytics support the assertion that CMD can develop players ... at least not in one year.

It's going to be interesting to see what he can do in Year 2. As Lynam says, it's not too often that players scoring under 10 turn out to be valuable contributors in future years. I sure hope CMD has some rabbits in his recruiting hat.