Headed in the Wrong Direction?
Wednesday, January 27 2010 by Ben
There's been reason to jubilate over the recent success of the Wahoos.
As I've argued to friends and bloggers, the reason for Virginia's success was primarily a function of their offensive firepower. With Landesberg creating in the lane, Scott in the post, and a bevy of three point shooters, the offense was humming. It reached its zenith against Georgia Tech - a top 15 defensive squad - where Virginia scored 121 points per 100 possessions (PPP).
I'd argue that the offense has really come in three stages: the "figuring it out", "on fire", and where we are right now. Below, I've plotted Virginia's offensive efficiency for each game and three stages become evident.
The initial stage is a messy affair; the offense vacillated between downright pitiful (South Florida) to awesome (Rider). Sometimes these swings would occur on consecutive nights (Stanford and Cleveland St.). A lot of these growing pains can be chalked up to the players getting used to a new coach and offense. Plus, it takes time for a coach to figure out how to use his players most efficiently.
However, by the Auburn game - a close road loss - the offense was clicking and topped 109 PPP for nine consecutive opponents. Virginia averaged 115 PPP during this time, which would be a top ten mark this season according to the Pomeroy stats.
The offense has really tapered off since the GT high point, with lackluster outings against UNCW and Wake (79 PPP, ouch). Why?
I can think of three lines of reasoning to explain it:
- It hasn't. There are game-to-game volatilities to consider here. Perhaps the Wake game was an aberration and the UNCW game wasn't that far off the offensive pace. If Landesberg happens to hit that little floater before picking up his second foul of the first half, maybe we'd have a different story today. Also, I always hate it when coaches pull the go-to-guy so early just because he has two fouls. In my mind, the first half is equally as important as the second. Landesberg is smart. He can play with two fouls.
- Opponents are catching up. Teams finally have enough tape to scout the team and cover our three point shooters.
- The offensive efficiency exhibited in the eight game streak is unsustainable in the long run. When good ACC defenses play well, UVa won't be scoring so well. I'm sort of dubious about this claim. I think with Landesberg and Scott on the bench; it holds, but otherwise it doesn't. Virginia has exploited a few top defenses already, who's to say that it won't map to other ACC teams?
In truth, it's probably a combination of all three. We'll know more after the Virginia Tech game.
3 comment(s) and 2 trackback(s)
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Looking forward to seeing your chart after these last two games. Should be interesting.
Ben, are we going to get an update on this? I'm with Tim on this.
You'd think so. I'm not sold just yet. After a lackluster performance against VT (although, my hunch is that, were I to crunch the stats, Virginia would have averaged well over 110 PPP at the 4:58 mark of the second half of that game. They were terrible
Great post Ben, very interesting. I am on board with your first line of reasoning. With Landesberg out for a third of the game, our offensive efficiency of course will plummet. Mike Scott's foul troubles also didn't help.
"Landesberg is smart. He can play with two fouls." I want to believe this, but he picked up a third foul within the first two minutes of the second half too, if I'm not mistaken. Ouch.