In my breakdown of the Stanford game I decided to look at some offensive and defensive efficiency statistics that came from my stat sheet on the game. This analysis will breakdown “Good Shots” which I defined as: Shots taken within the offense, that are within the goals of the coach and which the defense does not want to give up – I basically view it from the side of the coach of the defense, if he’s upset with the shot then it’s a good shot, and if not it is obviously a bad shot. My numbers won’t match the game statistics because of what are a few small errors on my part (at the half I had one of Stanford’s long 2’s counted as a 3 for example) and the fact that shots taken while being fouled don’t count as a shot attempt, but in this breakdown obviously will.

I also charted defensive breakdowns by player and then factored in their number of minutes to come up with a defensive efficiency ranking for each player. These stats for most of these players are highly skewed towards those guarding Landry Fields, as he was very often able to take advantage of slight mistakes. Often times he made a play and there was no breakdown, or as on his first few shots, he was guarded well (by Sylven Landesberg) only to have the breakdown occur when he wasn’t boxed out. Mustapha Farrakahn got the worst end of this as he only played 11 minutes and guarded Fields almost exclusively.

I defined a breakdown as: A defensive mistake in technique in terms of either fundamentals or responsibilities within the Pack-Line that resulted in a scoring opportunity for the opposing team. More than one player could be given a “breakdown” on a single play, and on poorly played screens often both players played a role in the defensive error – this was most often the case early in the game when Johnny Dawkins ran the player passing the ball off of high back-screens, a tactic UVa hadn’t seen this season and struggled with early.

The players ranked as follows for the percentage of plays they were in the game in which they suffered a defensive breakdown-

1. Farrakhan – 45%

2. Baker – 44%

3. Sene – 30%

4. Sherrill – 22%

5. Scott – 20%

6. Landesberg – 16%

7. Zeglinski – 15%

8. Meyinsse – 12%

9.Jones – 9%

10. Evans didn’t have any breakdowns in his 6 minutes of play, though he was pulled out of the game for chasing guys without the ball out of the Pack-Line, which has become a regular problem for him.

Some of these numbers jump out at me – I’ve already explained why Farrakhan ranks so high, he is one of the better defenders on the team but coming in for only the second-half to guard a play like Landry Fields really caused him problems and he was out of rhythm on both ends.

Just about all of Mike Scott and Sylven Landesberg’s breakdowns occurred while guarding Fields as well, UVa just didn’t have a match-up for a player with that combination of size and speed.

In a new system a lot of those numbers are very good, and the overall defensive performance was very strong. The numbers that really need to improve are those of Baker and Sene, they were noticeably out of position and their score could have been much higher had Stanford looked to attack them more. Dawkins did a good job of forcing Sene to play in space and make decisions within the defense, given his size and early season suspension asking him to move and communicate at that level caused him a lot of difficulty. Baker was a disaster on the defensive end, he struggled guarding the ball, closing out, and especially defending screens – I wouldn’t be surprised to see his minutes decline tonight after the coaches have had a chance to watch the Stanford game again.

The other number that stands out to me is Jeff Jones, I have been very critical of his defense this season, where at times he has seemed lost. Last night he continued to make his biggest mistake – losing gap responsibility on the perimeter (he either under or over helps, leaving either an open driving lane or an open man behind the arc) but he covered for it several times with his athleticism and at other times Stanford didn’t attack him (mostly because he never guarded Fields). On my second watching of the game I do have to say that Jones did a great job defending screens and knowing what part of the court to hold, his on the ball defense was great and if he can just adjust his help technique he’ll increase his value to the team immeasurably. Last night he only had three plays in thirty-four minutes of action that I counted as breakdowns, unfortunately those three breakdowns resulted in three-open threes for Stanford and they hit them all.

Fields success also masked some defensive lapses by players, specifically Mike Scott, at times Scott is a stellar defender and at other times you can tell he is learning a new system. Going beyond that though, he and Calvin Baker are both having tremendous difficulty covering ball-screens, both players have left their teammates in a tough spot by sagging off of the play and over-playing the roll by a significant amount. This isn’t an issue of adjustment in defensive principals as I don’t think any coach would teach a player to just drop that far back on a ball-screen or dribble hand-off. If those players are in the game together tonight watch to see if Cleveland State isolates both of them for a ball-screen play, Stanford never involved both players in that situation at the same time, but at some point a coach will unless they adjust their technique.

Offense-

Obviously when you score 52 points in a game it’s easy to point to the lack of offensive production, I’ll give you a few numbers that aren’t on the stat sheet and then give a few observations on what they meant in the game.

When taking a good shot inside the three-point line UVa shot 69%, when taking a bad shot inside that line they shot 16%. When taking a good three-pointer they shot 23%, when it was a bad one they only hit 16%.

On the other end, when Stanford had good looks from inside the three-point line they shot 63%, when forced to take bad shots they only hit 10%. From outside they hit 63% on good attempts and 33% on bad attempts.

22% of UVa’s shots were considered bad shots, while 33% of Stanford’s attempts fell in that category.

In the second-half both teams drastically reduced their number of poor attempts and in the final 5 minutes, whem UVa lost their lead, 6/8 shots for UVa fell in the good category while 5/6 for Stanford did – the difference was UVa having some breakdowns that led to open lay-ups for Stanford – they converted all 5 of those good shots, while UVa couldn’t hit on the looks they had 3/6 on their good attempts.

Going forward this game showed that this is a Virginia team that needs a deliberate offense designed to give them solid looks every trip down because they have very few players who are able to hit a shot against a good defensive play. Fortunately they hired just the man for the job in Tony Bennett – hopefully once the defensive breakdowns are reduced we’ll see more and more of the Blocker/Mover offense and a more deliberate style than the motion-offense we have seen so far this season. Until then games are going to have to be won on the defensive end, fortunately when this team plays well it is more than capable of doing that against the remaining OOC schedule.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 25th, 2009 at 7:21 pm and is filed under Cvillehoops13, Men's Basketball, Tony Bennett, UVa Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.