Nerd stats: Pac-12 benches

[absinthe]

JG and Adam look at what bench strength means to your team winning:

http://pachoops.com/2014/03/how-deep-is-your-love-the-bench-misnomer/

Pretty interesting conclusion, especially given what seems be the consensus on here.

 

[Darth Snow]

Good post. Sadly, our bench minutes went up in January.

 

[Buffnik]

Good post. Sadly, our bench minutes went up in January.

Injuries suck.

1. CU loses best player and starting PG to injury.
2. CU loses starting PF to injury for a period of time and he hasn't been right since coming back.
3. CU loses 6th SG/SF to injury and he's only now starting to work his way back in.

Tad's expectation was that he'd have the following right now:

PG - Mayor
SG - Ski
SF - XJ
PF - Wes
C - Jelly

And then a short bench with minutes determined by who showed reliability, matchups, and who had a hot hand in a given game. When 40% of your starting lineup changes and you lose your main bench guy (Fletch), it conversely leads to a longer bench since even the starting 5 are inconsistent and it's a scramble to find the right mix every night.

 

[CVilleBuff]

Hey, I've been in the depth can be vastly overrated camp all along. Pay attention to this article, folks. I'd love to hear Krzyzewski's true thoughts on depth...

 

[Buffnik]

Hey, I've been in the depth can be vastly overrated camp all along. Pay attention to this article, folks. I'd love to hear Krzyzewski's true thoughts on depth...

Case in point: how the 3rd and 4th guys off the Miami Heat bench perform in the playoffs will not be what determines whether they win another championship.

The idea is to not have anyone who sucks. You want guys who can burn a few minutes when called upon.

Very rarely is a team able to mix in a 9 or 10 man rotation when it matters. I'd love to see that at CU to go along with an up-and-down style (3/4 court pressing and lots of transition basketball to overwhelm teams at altitude that rely on a 7-man rotation), but we need to get to the point where we have 7 reliable guys first before I can even think of living that dream.

 

[pachoops]

JG and I have continued to look and discuss this stuff. Take peak at what we perceive to be the bottom three coaches in the conference:

Bone: 30.1%, 25%, 25%
Robinson: 29, 26, 39
Dawkins: 35, 27. 20

Without diving too deep, that's some of the more significant variance in bench usage (ASU is crazy, too). The most interesting, however, is Dawkins. He's had essentially the same roster for the past 3 seasons and has progressively used less of it with essentially identical results.

 

[CVilleBuff]

Case in point: how the 3rd and 4th guys off the Miami Heat bench perform in the playoffs will not be what determines whether they win another championship.

The idea is to not have anyone who sucks. You want guys who can burn a few minutes when called upon.

Very rarely is a team able to mix in a 9 or 10 man rotation when it matters. I'd love to see that at CU to go along with an up-and-down style (3/4 court pressing and lots of transition basketball to overwhelm teams at altitude that rely on a 7-man rotation), but we need to get to the point where we have 7 reliable guys first before I can even think of living that dream.

Virginia (who struggled to manage their depth and find a fit until January) goes noticeably thinner in big games. For instance, where they had been playing 9 or 10 guys, they basically dropped it to 7 against Syracuse. I hardly think that's a rare example, either, just the most recent off the top of my head. It's great to have some guys you can throw into the fire when foul trouble, etc. arises, but keeping it simple and having a cohesive unit is often going to produce far better basketball than the chaos too much depth can bring if you aren't careful.

 

[CVilleBuff]

JG and I have continued to look and discuss this stuff. Take peak at what we perceive to be the bottom three coaches in the conference:

Bone: 30.1%, 25%, 25%
Robinson: 29, 26, 39
Dawkins: 35, 27. 20

Without diving too deep, that's some of the more significant variance in bench usage (ASU is crazy, too). The most interesting, however, is Dawkins. He's had essentially the same roster for the past 3 seasons and has progressively used less of it with essentially identical results.

I'd argue it's no coincidence keeping it simpler is a big reason Stanford will Dance this year.

 

[jgisland]

Injuries suck.

1. CU loses best player and starting PG to injury.
2. CU loses starting PF to injury for a period of time and he hasn't been right since coming back.
3. CU loses 6th SG/SF to injury and he's only now starting to work his way back in.

Tad's expectation was that he'd have the following right now:

PG - Mayor
SG - Ski
SF - XJ
PF - Wes
C - Jelly

And then a short bench with minutes determined by who showed reliability, matchups, and who had a hot hand in a given game. When 40% of your starting lineup changes and you lose your main bench guy (Fletch), it conversely leads to a longer bench since even the starting 5 are inconsistent and it's a scramble to find the right mix every night.

Researching Stanford today I was looking up Dan Hanner's preseason rankings and he wrote this on CU.

Colorado is a high-risk team because outside the Buffaloes' top four players, the team is going to rely heavily on freshmen, and they're going to miss Andre Roberson's defense. But if things click, Colorado's upside is very high.

Pretty much sums it up, when Diwnddie and the highest rated frosh go down it magnifies that risk.

 

[pachoops]

I'd argue it's no coincidence keeping it simpler is a big reason Stanford will Dance this year.

I see what you're saying, but they have nearly the same results year over year. Dawkins' best season - 2012 NIT Champs - was that 35% bench usage season. WTF?

 

[jgisland]

Hey, I've been in the depth can be vastly overrated camp all along. Pay attention to this article, folks. I'd love to hear Krzyzewski's true thoughts on depth...

I'll be the first to admit that I thought that the depth this year for CU would have made a difference (I'm sure you can search around here and I've said as much before) - I thought it'd open up CU to be able to press, open up to some more gambling pressure D, but even before Dinwiddie and Fletch went down Tad wasn't employing these tactics regularly.

The team I follow the closest outside of CU and the Pac is Iowa. Probably the deepest team in the country, they're often lauded for their depth and ability to go 9 or 10 deep. And as the season has gone on there have been times when it has helped, but there have also been games when McCaffery is throwing out lineups left and right looking for the right combo.

When I started researching some of this my eyes were a little shocked at what I found, but I've definitely fallen into the camp where if you're playing 8, 9 or 10 guys you're often grasping to find what works rather than going with what you know does.