Princeton's 2012-13 shot selection to date.

February 25, 2013 at 3:08 pm
Filed under Basketball, Princeton

Sean Gregory, this one's for you.

Our brief conversation on Friday night after Princeton's win at Columbia wherein you wondered what percentage of Denton Koon's points this season came off of layups like the one above reminded me to ask Brian from Hoya Prospectus to generate 2012-13 shot selection tables for the Tigers.

After the jump you can view individual lines for the entire regular season broken down into five separate columns: Dunks, Layups, Two Point Jumpers, Three Point Jumpers and Free Throws.

There's a separate charts for just Ivy games.

Some interesting numbers. What do you see?

Can't thank Brian enough for doing this.

All games:

Player           Dunks    Layups  2pt J's    3FGs     FTs
Barrett, Will     7/7     15/33     4/21    37/71    32/43  
                         0.455    0.190    0.521    0.744
Hummer, Ian      12/13    84/148   45/93     5/17    74/107 
.                        0.568    0.484    0.294    0.692   
Connolly, Brendan 2/3     29/53     4/11     0/0     21/33  
                         0.547    0.364      -      0.636  
Bray, T.J         0/0     27/42     7/29    32/91    36/48  
.                        0.643    0.241    0.352    0.750   
Wilson, Clay      0/0      4/9      1/6     30/82     3/6   
                         0.444    0.167    0.366    0.500  
Clement, Chris    0/0      2/5      0/4      7/23    11/14  
.                        0.400    0.000    0.304    0.786   
Koon, Denton      7/9     62/98    10/31    15/28    50/63  
                         0.633    0.323    0.536    0.794  
Darrow, Mack      0/0      7/15     1/8     20/53     7/13  
.                        0.467    0.125    0.377    0.538   
Brase, Hans      8/10    29/60     2/14     6/14    30/42  
                         0.483    0.143    0.429    0.714  
Garbade, Bobby    0/0      2/2      0/0      1/4      8/9   
.                        1.000      -      0.250    0.889   
Fabrizius, Brian  0/0      0/0      0/0      0/0      4/4   
.                          -        -        -      1.000  
Elbuluk, Ameer    0/0      0/0      0/1      0/0      0/2   
.                          -      0.000      -      0.000   
Washington, Mike  0/0      0/1      0/1      0/2      0/0  
                         0.000    0.000    0.000      -  
Serwanga, Issac   0/0      0/0      0/1      0/1      0/0   
.                          -      0.000    0.000      -     
Lawrence, Edo     0/0      0/0      0/0      0/0      0/0   
.                          -        -        -        -

Ivy League games:

Player           Dunks    Layups  2pt J's    3FGs     FTs
Barrett, Will     4/4      5/11     3/12    14/28    13/17  
                         0.455    0.250    0.500    0.765
Hummer, Ian       3/3     30/52    23/39     3/6     31/39  
.                        0.577    0.590    0.500    0.795   
Connolly, Brendan 0/0      7/12     1/3      0/0      6/10  
                         0.583    0.333      -      0.600  
Bray, T.J         0/0     13/21     4/13    18/36    14/21  
.                        0.619    0.308    0.500    0.667   
Wilson, Clay      0/0      0/1      1/1      2/6      1/2   
                         0.000    1.000    0.333    0.500  
Clement, Chris    0/0      1/3      0/2      4/4      6/7   
.                        0.333    0.000    1.000    0.857   
Koon, Denton      2/3     31/46     5/13    12/18    24/30  
                         0.674    0.385    0.667    0.800  
Darrow, Mack      0/0      0/3      1/7      9/23     0/3   
.                        0.000    0.143    0.391    0.000   
Brase, Hans       5/7      8/17     1/7      3/7     16/20 
                         0.471    0.143    0.429    0.800  
Garbade, Bobby    0/0      0/0      0/0      1/2      3/4   
.                          -        -      0.500    0.750   
Fabrizius, Brian  0/0      0/0      0/0      0/0      0/0   
.                          -        -        -        -  
Elbuluk, Ameer    0/0      0/0      0/1      0/0      0/2   
.                          -      0.000      -      0.000   
Washington, Mike  0/0      0/1      0/1      0/0      0/0  
                         0.000    0.000      -        -  
Serwanga, Issac   0/0      0/0      0/0      0/0      0/0   
.                          -        -        -        -     
Lawrence, Edo     0/0      0/0      0/0      0/0      0/0   
.                          -        -        -        -

Some info that stands out to these eyes:

1. Ian Hummer is making just under 80% of his free throws in Ivy play. In fact, all five starters are over 76% with the unexpected exception of T.J. Bray.

2. On the other hand, Mack Darrow hasn't made a free throw in conference?!

3. All five starters boast ridiculous 42.9%-66.7% marksmanship from three against fellow Ancient Eight squads.

4. Chris Clement was 2/15 in non-conference action from three point range, then 4-4 come the Ivy.

5. Remember, Denton Koon was 1-3 from behind the arc last season.

6. Refresh my memory: When did Brian Fabrizius try and dunk?

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Stuart Schulman said,

February 25, 2013 @ 6:43 pm

* The .507 3FG% in Ivy play has been fantastic. But if the Tigers need to rely on staying hot from downtown to win the last 5 games, that could be dangerous.

* That said, when guys like Garbade, Clement and Hummer and Koon (who before Ivy play was 2-for-9) can triple the opposition into submission, it's a beautiful thing. If on 1/1/13 you had Clay Wilson being ninth on the team in Ivy 3FG% 9 games in, nobody would have believed you.

* 7 missed dunks?!?

Stuart Schulman said,

February 25, 2013 @ 6:46 pm

Off topic but I don't know where else to put it: If the season ended today, you could make the case for the All-Ivy first team being Hummer, Saunders, Koon, Chamers and Cornell's Miller. Four underclassmen and Hummer. That's insane. Thoughts?

Jon Solomon said,

February 25, 2013 @ 8:26 pm

I do worry about another poor-shooting second half like 1-6 at Harvard but that's not an over-reliance on the three and it really was other things (like missed layups and second chances) that did Princeton in there.

Missed dunks I remember off the top of my head:

-Koon breakaway at Columbia.
-Hummer breakaway vs. Fordham.
-Brase dunk follow try of a miss...at Harvard?
-Connolly blocked going up with two hands...at Buffalo?

Steven Postrel said,

February 25, 2013 @ 10:11 pm

One thing that really jumps out is that the cliche "lost art of the midrange game" applies to Princeton in spades (with the exception of Hummer). In the case of the Tigers, though, that art was lost long ago as the aim was always to get either a layup or a three.

Douglas Davis seemed to me to add a lot to the offense with his ability to hit those mid-range possession-savers. Hummer can do the same thing. Maybe one way to think about exceptional offensive players in Princeton's system is to note how good they are at hitting mid-range jumpers on top of the other things they are asked to do. I'm not sure if the 2-pt jumper category includes runners or floaters, but I'd put those shots in the same out-of-system class as mid-range jumpers.

Stuart Schulman said,

February 25, 2013 @ 10:30 pm

Craig Robinson also had a great mid-range game. In an era with no 3-point shot the Tigers saw an awful lot of zone and he was able to hit that 10-footer with 3 defenders in his face

Jon Solomon said,

February 25, 2013 @ 10:41 pm

I believe the decision between defining a shot as a "layup" or a "two point jumper" when it comes to certain runners/floaters comes down to the mind of the official scorer at the venue.

Sean Gregory said,

February 25, 2013 @ 11:21 pm

Thanks Jon! Really interesting numbers ... just looking at league games for a second, Denton's "layup percentage" - which I'm defining as percentage of a player's field goals that are layups or dunks, as per my own made up statistical fantasyland - is pretty high, 66% (know a more accurate reading of this is points off of layups, which would lower the percentage for Denton cause of the number of threes he has hit. That's just too much arithmetic at this hour). Confirms my suspicion, I think, and still think that might be one of the higher numbers in the land for a guard.

Though didn't realize Brase was that high too, 76%. Though wonder if Brase's number of made field goals - 17 in 9 league games, or 1.89 made field goals per game -- are enough for him to qualify as team leader in layup percentage. Via the statistical rules I'm making up, I'm going to say no.

What's amazing -- and to me anyway, fun -- about Denton's number is that it's not like the old days, where so many of these layups were on backdoors and such. He's gets so many by being sneaky on the baseline and just having an amazing instinct for being around the basket. Does it seem like he gets a few garbage hoops here and there too? Quite the nose for points. He might be the oddest off-guard - in a totally good way - in the land. Odd in how he gets his points - we just don't think of off-guards as players who do the things Denton does.

The other thing about these numbers - 34 dunks!!! yeesh . . .think we had a dunk a year back in 95-98.

Jon Solomon said,

February 25, 2013 @ 11:27 pm

Last year Koon was 59/89 on layups and dunks.

The huge difference is that he was 6/29 on two point jumpers/threes.

He was also just 58.3% on free throws.

Jon

Jon Solomon said,

February 25, 2013 @ 11:37 pm

UPDATE:

Due to lousy play-by-play for the game at Lafayette, some of the All Games lines were off slightly here and there initially.

For example, Will Barrett was shorted two made threes.

Brian was kind enough to revise these numbers and I've made all the necessary changes.

Thus, no Brian Fabrizius dunk attempt anymore...

Jon

Steven Postrel said,

February 26, 2013 @ 6:36 pm

Sean: What's the difference between being "sneaky on the baseline" and "going backdoor along the baseline?" Do you mean that Denton just lurks next to the lane without moving and waits for his defender to leave him?

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