A Preliminary Statistical Analysis of the 2007-08 Duke Men’s Basketball Team

A few months ago a super smart friend of mine named James put together a table analyzing the individual contributions from players on the 2006-07 Duke Men’s Basketball Team. The table, which is based on an accepted metric (created by The Wages of Wins), analyzes the “efficiency” of individuals on a team by assigning each player a Win Score. Five games into the 2007-08 season, I thought it was about time to see what the numbers say. Before we get into the analysis, let's go over a few terms:

Win Score = Points + Rebounds + Steals + ½Assists + ½Blocked Shots – Field Goal Attempts – Turnovers - ½Free Throw Attempts - ½Personal Fouls

Win Score per Minute (a more accurate tool to compare players who have a significant disparity in minutes played) = Win Score/Min (duh)

PAWS (Position Adjusted Win Score) is used to compare a player to an average player at the position.

Average Win Score/minute values for each position

Center: 0.225
Power Forward: 0.215
Small Forward: 0.152
Shooting Guard: 0.132
Point Guard: 0.128

PAWS (Position Adjusted Win Score) = Win Score – (Average Win Score at Position Played * Minutes Played)

PAWS/min = Win Score per minute –Average Win Score at Position Played

If you’d like to read more about last year’s team, you can follow this link to our analysis article. After watching Duke win the Maui Invitational, I was interested to see how the numbers would look on our newly constructed team. I got in touch with James, and he was able to put together a table from the first five games of the season:

2007-08 Duke Men's Basketball Preliminary Statistical Analysis

What do all these numbers mean? Thanks to James, we have some answers. Here we go :

1. Across the board, Win Score/min averages are way up. The numbers will probably fall back to earth when we begin ACC play, but they are very encouraging. Last year's top player was Josh McRoberts with a WS/min of .262. Zoubek, Pocius, Singler, King, and Scheyer are all besting that in the current campaign.

2. Kyle Singler is the star of the team so far. He's shooting 60% from the floor and 90% from the line, and he's also hitting the boards well. His turnovers are a bit high, but that's probably because he handles the ball so much. It looks like Duke’s found someone to replace Josh inside.

3. Brian Zoubek's numbers are particularly excellent, too. He's averaging 15 rebounds per 40 minutes, which is better than Shelden's old rate. He's shooting .611. Most importantly, he has cut his turnover rate in half, from an atrocious 6.30 per 40 minutes to a nice 2.94. He has decreased his fouls per 40 from 7.65 to 6.30, but that's still too high, considering he's only allowed 5 fouls per game (anyone remember the Blue-White Scrimmage?). Hopefully he can stay on the court more since he's Duke’s only player above 6'8.

4. Marty Pocius! Win Score has hated him ever since he set foot on campus because his defense, rebounding, passing...well, pretty much everything about him is bad. I'll chalk his current lofty position up to small sample size, but we'll see.

5. Jon Scheyer is shooting 50% this year (as opposed to 40% last year), and that makes a huge difference for him. He has also improved his rebounding-per-40 from 4 to 7, which makes him above average for a guard.

6. Gerald Henderson was promising last season, but he had room to improve across the board. So far, he's done that. FG%: +11%. 3FG%: +39%. REB: +19%.Fouls: -6%. Turnovers: -24%. Blocks: +225%. Are you as excited as I am about him?

7. Greg Paulus's AST/TO ratio has jumped from 1.2:1 to 2.3:1, and he has also doubled his steals rate. However, he isn't shooting any better, and he still rebounds poorly, so while he is now above average for a point guard, he's still only the 8th best player on the team.

8. Lance Thomas is also playing more efficiently than he did last year. It's remarkable that he's only committed 4 turnovers in 112 minutes. There's still a big hole in his game, however: besides Greg Paulus, he's the worst rebounder on the team, and he's standing under the basket all the time.

9. DeMarcus is his same old productive self. He gets a little better at everything each year. His team-leading 34 boards are particularly impressive: can he teach something to Lance?

10. Nolan Smith has started poorly. He's shooting .375, and he has only collected 2 rebounds in 72 minutes of play, giving him a handy average of 0.4 rpg. Taylor King, however, has done well for himself, particularly because he rebounds well and has a low turnover rate.