2008-2009 Season

Wisconsin Plus/Minus

Note: There were two errors in the lineup data. They were with lineups: L-LP-H-N-G and D-LP-H-N-S. Just a sloppy mistake, thanks to GoBlue for pointing it out.

I added points allowed, points scored, per 40, points allowed per 40, and points scored per 40, and normal (+/- divided by square root of minutes) to the tables. These are all pretty self explanatory and they are an attempt to correct for the number of minutes played as well as find out whether contributions are coming on offense or defense. The cells are color coded green to red, and also sortable (click the column headings). If you are looking for more traditional post game thoughts, they are here.

Wisconsin Game Individual +/-:

Name All. Sc. +/- Min Per40 All./40 Sc./40 Normal
Lee 12 22 10 15 26.67 32.00 58.67 2.58
Gibson 15 22 7 14 20.00 42.86 62.86 1.87
Puls 0 0 0 0 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
Wright 0 0 0 0 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
Shepherd 7 6 -1 4 -10.00 70.00 60.00 -0.50
Douglass 38 34 -4 20 -8.00 76.00 68.00 -0.89
Merritt 22 15 -7 11 -25.45 80.00 54.55 -2.11
Lucas-Perry 55 46 -9 30 -12.00 73.33 61.33 -1.64
Grady 25 16 -9 11 -32.73 90.91 58.18 -2.71
Novak 66 51 -15 33 -18.18 80.00 61.82 -2.61
Sims 58 43 -15 29 -20.69 80.00 59.31 -2.79
Harris 67 50 -17 33 -20.61 81.21 60.61 -2.96

Total Individual +/- (NCCU & Wisconsin):

Name All. Sc. +/- Min Per40 All./40 Sc./40 Normal
Douglass 61 77 16 37 17.30 65.95 83.24 2.63
Novak 72 88 16 48 13.33 60.00 73.33 2.31
Lee 19 26 7 19 14.74 40.00 54.74 1.61
Grady 61 70 9 38 9.47 64.21 73.68 1.46
Sims 109 115 6 63 3.81 69.21 73.02 0.76
Harris 117 123 6 69 3.48 67.83 71.30 0.72
Puls 2 2 0 1 0.00 80.00 80.00 0.00
Gibson 40 39 -1 28 -1.43 57.14 55.71 -0.19
Wright 6 5 -1 3 -13.33 80.00 66.67 -0.58
Shepherd 31 27 -4 17 -9.41 72.94 63.53 -0.97
Merritt 43 34 -5 24 -8.33 71.67 56.67 -1.02
Lucas-Perry 89 80 -9 53 -6.79 67.17 60.38 -1.24

Some thoughts…..

Lee and Gibson were the only ones to post positive +/- totals against Wisconsin and they both played around 15 minutes.

Lee played better than I thought and he did a good job running the offense but where he really shined appears to be defense. CJ had the fewest points allowed per 40 minutes of anyone on the team and it wasn’t close. The offense was only mediocre when CJ was on the floor 58.67 points scored per 40 minutes but that was still better than Merritt and Grady. Speaking of Dave and Kelvin, the reason neither of them played much is pretty clear — they were getting abused on defense and posted very high “points allowed per 40” numbers.

Gibson posted a surprising +7 against Wisconsin and even more surprisingly it was because of his defensive numbers. Gibson’s high numbers point to a couple things. First, it really helped to have his size in there even though he is pretty soft and not a good rebounder. Second, DeShawn Sims was getting abused on defense and wasn’t assertive on offense. Watching the tape there were numerous times that Jon Leuer or Joe Krabbenhoft would blow by DeShawn and get in the lane for an easy shot or dish to a wide open player. DeShawn was the weakest link on defense yesterday in my opinion.

It’s hard to take that much from guys like Novak, Sims, and Harris who all played around 30 minutes because their numbers fall in line with the total of the game for the most part. The people with positive +/- numbers after two games are Douglass, Lee, Novak, and Grady. 2 games still is too small of a sample size to distinguish much in my opinion.

It’s also becoming clear that Stu Douglass being in the game is good for the offense. He has the highest “points scored per 40 minutes” of anyone on the team by a wide margin. Ignore Puls’ numbers because he only played a minute and Stu is around 10 points per 40 minutes higher than anyone else on the team. Stu’s numbers aren’t bad on defense and I think both his and Zack’s numbers continue to look good because they are smooth at running the offense.

Defense

Michigan only played the 1-3-1 zone on 11 possessions and they played man (and the trapping press late in the game) for 49. Wisconsin scored 14 points in the 11 possessions they played 1-3-1 and scored on 6/11 (54%) possessions for 1.27 points per possession. The Badgers averaged 1.20 points per possession against the man to man and scored on 28 out of 49 (57%) possessions.

Those numbers don’t really say much because they are really pretty close but I still think I would have liked to see a little more 1-3-1 to at least change it up. Wisconsin got some really easy baskets on the 1-3-1 but it wasn’t like we were shutting them down in the man-to-man.

Lineups

Wisconsin Line Up +/-:

Lineup Mins All. Scr. +/- Per40 A/40 S/40 Normal
G-LP-L-Sh.-G 2 2 6 4 80.00 40.00 120.00 2.828427
L-D-H-G-S 3 0 4 4 53.33 0.00 53.33 2.309401
G-LP-L-N-G 0.5 0 1 1 80.00 0.00 80.00 1.414214
L-LP-H-N-G 2 2 3 1 20.00 40.00 60.00 0.707107
D-LP-H-N-S 6 13 13 0 0.00 86.67 86.67 0
G-LP-L-N-S 0.5 0 0 0 0.00 0.00 0.00 0
L-LP-H-N-S 4 4 4 0 0.00 40.00 40.00 0
M-LP-L-N-G 2 2 2 0 0.00 40.00 40.00 0
M-LP-L-N-S 1 2 2 0 0.00 80.00 80.00 0
D-LP-H-N-G 4 7 6 -1 -10.00 70.00 60.00 -0.5
G-LP-H-N-G 1 2 0 -2 -80.00 80.00 0.00 -2
G-LP-H-Sh.-S 2 5 0 -5 -100.00 100.00 0.00 -3.53553
G-LP-H-N-S 5 16 9 -7 -56.00 128.00 72.00 -3.1305
M-D-H-N-S 7 18 11 -7 -40.00 102.86 62.86 -2.64575

Michigan played 14 different lineups on Wednesday and a lot of them we hadn’t seen yet this year. Only 2 lineups that we saw in the Wisconsin game were ones that we also saw in the North Carolina Central game (G-LP-H-N-S and G-LP-H-N-G). These two repeat lineups were pretty successful against NCCU (+11 combined) but against Wisconsin they were -9 combined. I didn’t include a total table because these were the only two lineups that were seen in both games.

The best defensive lineups all had CJ Lee at point guard or small forward and all of the lineups that posted negative plus minus numbers didn’t have CJ Lee. There were only 4 groups that “won” their time on the court and they didn’t play very much time.

I’m not really sure what more to take from these numbers because we saw so many different line ups. I think that in itself is frustrating because I would have liked to see a more established rotation going into the Big Ten season. It will be interesting to see whether CJ will continue to play more minutes or Douglass will see more time at point guard or whether those were just products of Wisconsin’s style of play. When so few lineups play together more than once I think it’s hard to establish much continuity.

I’d love to hear more suggestions about this data and any conclusions you guys might take from it. Happy New Year to everyone and hopefully the 2009 side of the Big Ten season will be a bit more friendly to Michigan starting this Sunday.

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