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Looking at some Stanford Men's Hoops Advanced Stats


With two pac-12 weekends in the books, I thought I'd take a look at some of the advanced basketball stats that are out there and see if I can find anything of interest.

I'm using sports-reference.com

Quick Explanation of the individual stats I'll reference:

True Shooting % (TS%)- A measure of scoring efficiency which takes into account free throws and 3 pointers. Formula is (.5*total points)/(fg attempts + 0.44 * FT attempts). Guys who with a high FG% and a good FT% can sometimes be over 1.0 in this stat, but for a go-to-scorer, .550 is pretty solid and .600 is outstanding.

Total Rebound %- The percentage of available rebounds a player grabs while on the court. Offensive Rebound % and Defensive Rebound % have similar definitions. Top guys are in the mid 20s for OR% and TR%, with some players in the low 30s for DR%.

Assist %- Estimate of the percentage of teammate field goals a player assists on while on the court. Top pure PGs are often in the 40s.

Steal %- Percentage of opponent possessions ended by a steal by that player while he's on the court. #1 in college hoops is at 7.3%. Anything above 5% is awesome.

Block %- Percentage of opponent 2 point shots the player blocks while on the court. #1 in D1 is at an insane 20%, anything in double digits is quite impressive.

Turnover %- Turnovers per 100 plays the player is involved in. Good ball handlers are in single digits. Anything above 20% is... not good.

Usage %- Estimate of the % of plays "used" by the player while on the floor-- plays that are ended with that player shooting or turning the ball over. A guy in the 30s is a real go to guy when he's in there. Anyone in single digits is basically standing around watching on offense.

Offensive and Defensive Rating- Simple idea-- points produced and allowed per 100 possessions, but for individual players it ends up being a pretty complicated formula to just get a rough estimate of it. High is good for O Rating, low is good for D Rating. Read the book "Basketball on Paper" if you are interested in this.

Player Efficiency Rating (PER)- Catch all metric used by John Hollinger at ESPN. 15 is average.

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Ok, a quick look at each Stanford player, in order of total minutes played so far. I won't discuss all those stats for every player, but instead highlight a few for each.

Chasson Randle- .555 TS%, 16.1 Ast %, 18.9 TO%, 22.2% Usg, 2.5% stl %, 107.0 Offensive Rating, 90.3 Drating, 15.6 PER

Solid season for the freshman. You don't like to see a PG with a TO% higher than his Ast% (and its a low Ast % for a PG to begin with), but that's a very solid TS% for a guard-- he gets to the foul line and scores pretty efficiently.

Aaron Bright- .642 TS%, 3.2% TReb%, 22.4 Ast %, 18.8 TO%, 20.3% Usg%, 120.8 Orating, 94.4 Drating, 18.4 PER

Bright's been really strong this year. The 3 point shot is a very efficient way to score if you are a good shooter, and that's reflected in his excellent TS%. Decent numbers in the Ast/TO categories for a guy that often plays more like a 2 than a 1. D-rating is worse than a lot of Stanford players--not much of an impact on D. Also, that total rebound % is really bad even for a guard (Randle's is the next worst on the team at 6.5%). Not surprising given Bright's size.

Josh Owens- .607 TS%, 13.2 TReb%, 10.4% OReb%, 7.5 Ast %, 12.3 TO%, 1.9 Stl%, 2.0 Blk%, 22.5% usage, 120.5 ORating, 88.2 Drating, 24.6 PER

Full disclosure: Owens is my favorite Stanford player by far. His numbers are great. He's 3rd in the conference in PER behind Oregon State's Devon Collier (who deserves more credit than he gets) and UCLA's Joshua Smith (who's impact is mitigated by his inability to stay on the court more than 20 minutes a game). Owens scores the ball efficiently, leads the team in offensive rebounding and makes an impact on defense (Drating below 90 is very good). I'd quibble somewhat about the defensive rebounding (doesn't always box his man out), and the turnovers, but overall he's been excellent. Get him the ball more!

Anthony Brown- .449 TS%, 8.5 Ast %, 15.9 TO%, 1.9 Stl %, 0.3 Blk %, 21.9 Usg %, 93.1 orating, 90.2 drating, 11.0 PER

Brown's not been able to build on his strong Freshman campaign. He's not shot the ball well, doesn't often get to the foul line, doesn't make plays for teammates and doesn't block shots despite his length and athleticism. He does get his share of steals and is not a poor defender, but what he does on that end hasn't made up for him being one of the least efficient players for Stanford on offense.

Josh Heustis- .487 TS%, 10.1 Oreb%, 18.6 Dreb%, 14.4 TReb%, 8.1 Ast%, 11.2 TO%, 1.6 Stl %, 3.9 Blk %, 14.9 Usg %, 110.7 orating, 86.8 drating, 16.1 PER

Interesting numbers for Huestis. He's Stanford's 2nd best offensive rebounder (behind Owens) and 2nd best defensive rebounder (behind Powell), but leads Stanford in total rebound %. Good defender as well, as we've seen. On offense, he's not been very effective-- the low usage indicates he's not involved in a lot of plays, and the TS% shows he's not been very efficient when he looks to score. I don't think having him out on the perimeter on offense, as he often is, is very smart.

Jarrett Mann- .471 TS%, 10.6 TReb %, 16.2 Ast %, 28.0 TO%, 16.4 Usg %, 2.5 Stl %, 91.9 orating, 88.7 drating, 10.6 PER

Dawkins loves Mann for his defense. At least one assumes so, because he's not good on offense at all. That turnover % is a really high number, not at all good for a guard. The scoring efficiency numbers aren't good either. He does rebound quite well for a guard, but despite that and the defense, Stanford could really use a better 3rd guard.

Dwight Powell- .465 TS%, 20.2 DReb %, 6.2 Oreb%, 10.8 Ast %, 29.5 TO%, 2.2 Stl %, 3.6 Blk %, 21.6 Usg %, 80.6 Orating, 84.6 Drating, 9.7 PER

The numbers don't lie. Either Powell isn't 100% or he's having a real Sophomore slump. The turnover % jumps out at you as does the offensive rating-- when he's in the game he's using a little over a 5th of the possessions- and nobody on the team has been less efficient with those possessions. Powell has excellent defensive rebounding numbers, but interestingly not very good offensive rebounding stats. His defense has seemed fine, but until he can get his offense back to where it was last year, he's not helping the team.

Andrew Zimmerman- .496 TS%, 7.0 TReb%, 13.9 Ast%, 16.2 TO%, 2.0 Stl %, 2.4 Blk%, 13.9 Usg%, 107.6 Orating, 91.3 Drating, 11.9 PER

Zimmerman passes well for a big man and contributes pretty well on defense, but he's an awful rebounder for a big man and hasn't scored the ball very efficiently this year.

John Gage- .655 TS%, 8.2 TReb%, 6.0 Ast%, 2.8 Stl%, 0.7 Blk %, 10.9 TO%, 21.5 Usg%, 127.8 Orating, 88.8 Drating, 22.7 PER

Early in the season I said I didn't think Gage should play much at all. I'd like to fully retract that. Gage's shooting has been terrific to the point where nobody on the team has been more efficient. The rebounding and shotblocking numbers are really bad for a big man, which likely explains Dawkins' hesitance to play Gage, but I think he's earned increased playing time, particularly on a team that struggles to score.

Jack Trotter- .585 TS%, 13.4 TReb%, 4.1 Blk%, 18.6 Usg %, 119.2 orating, 86.6 drating, 19.8 PER

I've always liked Trotter as a player. He scores efficiently (doesn't try to do more than he can), plays solid defense, blocks some shots. I don't understand why he gets less playing time than Zimmerman.

That's all I'll do here. Only Gabriel Harris has played over 100 minutes among the others and he's now out for the season. With Stefan Nastic, suffice it to say that his numbers in limited minutes are not good. His TO% is 35.3-- he turns it over on over a third of his touches. At 4.6%, he's got the top block % on the team, but I don't think his defense is good enough to merit any pt until he can cut down on the turnovers.

A few quick notes on team stats:

kenpom.com ranks Stanford as the 39th best team overall (2nd in the p12 behind Cal), the 91st best offense and the 19th best defense. There are 66.4 possessions in an average Stanford game (per team), the 203rd most in the country, meaning Stanford plays a slightly lower than average pace for D1.

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