Duke Opens Season in Rout

Duke opened up the regular season, and NC Central's Division 1 tenure, with a 121-56 rout of the Eagles from across town. Duke had its most dominating offensive performance yet, as the Devils shot 16 for 28 from behind the arc (compared to a combined 14 for 55 in the exhibitions). There's little to be critical of on the whole. It's an early season game and the team will improve, as should all the individual players. Zoubek showed a fair ability to defend, and certainly dominated the boards (30.3% ORB rate, and 31.3% DRB rate), but was uncomfortable offensively and still showed a penchant for turning the ball over. The team as a whole had a few too many turnovers, especially considering earlier exhibition play. I think, however, the turnovers weren't as destructive as they were last year. Here are the individual ratings and usage, and team stats for the game.

Player		Eff.		Usage
Kyle Singler		139.5		23.2%
Lance Thomas		192.3		9.8%
Greg Paulus		153.8		11.9%
Gerald Henderson		162.8		18.9%
DeMarcus Nelson		83.1		24.4%
Nolan Smith		148.8		24.1%
Martynas Pocius		143.6		26.8%
Taylor King		147.7		25.3%
Jon Scheyer		198.8		14.5%
Jordan Davidson		102.2		11.7%
Brian Zoubek		109.8		25.6%
Team Stats		Duke		Opp.
eFG%		68.12%		40.00%
TO%		21.63%		31.82%
ORB %		57.58%		25.00%
FT Rate		39.13%		20.00%
Tempo		83.20
Offensive Efficiency		145.43
Defensive Efficiency		67.31
3-Point FG %		57.14%		33.33%
2-Point FG%		56.10%		35.71%
Free Throw %		84.38%		66.67%
Block %		21.95%		7.14%
Steal %		12.24%		12.02%
3PA/FGA		40.58%		30.00%
A/FGM		69.23%		61.90%

• With two exceptions, these numbers are pretty consistent with the overall flavor of Duke's play in the two exhibition games. First, we actually were hitting 3s. We weren't just hitting 3s, though, we were a scorching 16 for 28. This really allowed us to have a tremendous offensive night, effectively shooting over 68%. Second, we turned it over more than we did in the exhibitions, and a lot of these turnovers were bonehead plays (and a couple question mark offensive fouls) that (we hope) will go away as the season goes on. Central played the best offensive game of the 3 against Duke so far, mostly because they managed to hit some tough shots in the 2nd half, as well as a result of Duke not properly swarming with their zone out on the perimeter. All in all it's not terribly easy to be critical of an effort that kept a team from even scoring 3/4ths of a point each time down the floor.
• One thing of note is the team ORB rate and the opposition ORB rate from the first few games and comparing them with our effort in other exhibition games in the past, and comparing them to other exhibitions played by top ACC teams, is that Duke has dominated the boards more this season in these games than UNC did in either of their exhibition wins, or State did in their game against Barton (or Duke did against Shaw and Central last year). I mean, again, it's hard to draw lasting conclusions from these performances, but you have to like the effort given by Duke players given how many Duke fans were concerned over rebounding (not I, however).
• On the subject of the Smith/Paulus debate, I want to take no sides. Both players bring strengths. Combined, tonight, they dished out 8 assists and had only 3 turnovers. Notably, 6 other players (Singler, Henderson, Pocius, King, Scheyer, Zoubek) each had 2 assists or more (Scheyer had 6). As can be seen above, tonight almost 70% of our field goals made were assisted. Compare this to last year's game against Central where a little over 48% of our baskets were assisted.
  
• Duke has once again played a game over 80 possessions. Last year we only played 8 games over 70 possessions and lost 5 of them. It's getting so hard to compare last year's team to this year's at this point, because they look almost nothing alike in spite of having most of the same players.
  

One thing I'm trying to do this year is to find real defensive ratings, individual stop percentages and defensive-usage rates. Essentially these are the reverse of offensive ratings/efficiency, floor percentage (another stat I will likely start reporting more later in the season as the competition level increases - essentially a metric to show how often a player scores when he tries to score), and usage rate. The stats to derive these numbers are largely un-kept (forced turnovers, forced misses, defensive field goals made, defensive free throws made, forced free throw misses, etc), and so until this year, I've only been able to use DeanO's estimated defensive rating formula to derive an estimated stop percentage and an estimated rating (these estimated numbers assume a 20% defensive possession usage rate across the board). Starting with this Central game, I've decided to keep these stats myself. Here's my first attempt at comparing real and estimated ratings and stop percentage. These numbers, I think, will become very useful later in the season when assessing the defensive contributions of our players. They are, of course, imperfect since they don't take into account any sort of defensive play that does not result in the change of possession - nor do they take into account the quality of the player an individual is defending (obviously if Zoubek is guarding Hansbrough, his individual rating for a game will likely be in the toilet as compared to if we're playing Central, as you're about to see). Even so, they are useful numbers when usually Duke fans have had to rely on only steal rate, block rate, defensive rebounding rate, and (possibly) rate of slapping the floor to determine defensive contribution.

Player		Est. D-Rat		Real D-Rat		Est. Stop%		Real Stop%		%Dposs
Kyle Singler		69.05		60.34		64.61%		67.93%		20.52%
Lance Thomas		63.54		62.16		77.44%		54.82%		25.35%
Greg Paulus		76.38		63.75		47.55%		50.82%		22.03%
Gerald Henderson		53.25		57.90		101.39%		78.46%		20.95%
DeMarcus Nelson		60.84		56.21		83.72%		80.06%		23.84%
Nolan Smith		86.35		68.59		24.36%		15.67%		6.27%
Martynas Pocius		71.82		63.35		58.17%		56.72%		17.78%
Taylor King		71.38		63.07		59.19%		56.34%		19.37%
Jon Scheyer		62.73		63.58		79.32%		60.77%		14.08%
Jordan Davidson		86.71		67.99		23.51%		12.17%		2.82%
Brian Zoubek		57.16		46.30		92.29%		91.37%		36.01%

The numbers do tend to correlate fairly well. A note on methodology: when I record these stats, I'm looking at how the possession ends. If an opposing player takes a shot, I look to see who is defending him at the time. In a zone it's challenging, because it's often a multiple man effort (as it is when a player penetrates closer to the basket). In those cases, I give fractions of a forced miss or fractions of a defensive field goal made (only in halves though - to the two most involved players). It's unfair to a player who plays good defense and has a player make shots over him (that actually happened to Zoubek twice tonight), sure, but it uses the same philosophy as when a player takes an off-balanced, ugly shot and it goes in. Forced turnovers are essentially turnovers that don't go in the books as a steal. A steal is scored when a player takes possession of the ball from the other team and keeps it in play, whereas a forced turnover is mostly drawing an offensive foul, knocking the ball off the offensive player, forcing a travel or a 5 second violation - that sort of thing. Finally I look for free throws. When a player fouls an opposing player and puts him on the line, he'll get DFTM (defensive free throws made) and FFTA (forced free throw attempts) on whether the player makes them or not. It's not entirely fair to the defensive player because he has no say in whether the shooter makes his foul shots, but it follows the same philosophy as forced misses where a player plays solid D, and the shooter hits the shot anyway. Otherwise I just use the block and steal figures scored officially.

• It's hard to not be pretty happy with Zoubek's defensive effort tonight. As can be seen, he was involved in a plurality of defensive possessions and did so admirably in general. One obvious criticism is that he fouled out. I, personally, am not terribly concerned about this, because 2 or maybe 3 of those fouls looked very questionable, and every big man fouls out at some point in time. Zoubek last year actually had a much smaller rate of fouling per opposing possessions played than Lance did (about on par with Shelden Williams freshman season). Still, on occasion he has a tendency to shoot his arms out towards his man instead of sticking them straight up. The fact that Zoubek cannot jump means little when he is essentially a 10 foot wall of meat when he sticks his arms straight up. He'll alter a lot of shots just be existing.
• At this stage I'm not terribly sure what I can glean from defensive usage rate. For instance, Paulus had a 22% defensive usage rate tonight, whereas Smith had only about 6.3%. What can we attribute this difference to, since both would be guarding the same man almost certainly? If you look at Zoubek, it's pretty clear that his huge involvement in the defense, as well as Lance's (2nd highest) is because they play low on D and will often be involved in more plays as a result of the nature of help defense. But what about with Smith and Paulus? I suppose on one hand, you could use this as evidence that the opposing team attacks Paulus more than Smith - perhaps they perceive Smith as a better defender? But even so, Paulus did his job admirably, having an individual defensive rating under the team's, while forcing 1.5 missed shots and 2 turnovers as well as logging 1 steal. One individual game will probably not really give us any insight - most of it is probably just chance. Over the long run, I expect Smith and Paulus' usage rates to even out, though it wouldn't surprise me if Paulus' was slightly higher since he is often perceived as a defensive liability.

In other college basketball news:

• UNC played their second exhibition tonight against Lenoir-Rhyne, a charming college in western North Carolina. The final was 107-52, but the Heels once again looked slightly out of sorts, turning the ball over 20 times in an 81-82 possession game. If the Heels play sloppy against Davidson, they might find themselves in a game.
• #2 UCLA and #10 Washington State opened their seasons against cupcakes Portland State and Eastern Washington respectively, and scored a combined 137 points in 130 possessions (16 more than Duke did in our opener - the Pac-10 will surely be a brisk and exciting league this season!).
  
• The Bruins scored 69 points in about 69 possessions, a surprisingly low efficiency for the #2 team in the country, caused mostly by an abundance of turnovers. This is not terribly shocking as Darren Collison is out still for a few weeks. Kevin Love impressed in his debut, scoring 22 points and grabbing 15 rebounds (but only 2 offensively) in 28 minutes.
• Michael Beasley shot 12 for 20 and scored 32 points in his college debut. That seems less important to note than his 12 offensive and 12 defensive rebounds (yes, 24 rebounds in his college debut). In spite of his alarmingly good performance, Kansas State managed to only score 94 points in 88 possessions against Sacramento State. The young Michael Beasley contributed his part, by turning the ball over 8 times. Still, this should be an exciting year in Manhattan.
• Top 25 in action tomorrow: Georgetown, Marquette, Oregon, USC, Pitt, and Stanford. I am really interested to see if OJ Mayo can take more than 40 shots in a game this season.
  

I doubt all my entries will be this long, but since it is more or less the first day of the season, it's a pretty exciting time. It's always good to start off the season with a 65 point win too.