Project Defensive Scoresheet: (Almost) Cumulative Stats

By Tommy D — While the defensive analysis for each individual game yields interesting, and sometimes surprising insights, it stands to reason that even more meaningful information can be obtained by looking at a larger sample size.  I didn’t start charting our games until Western Michigan, so it’s not like I have the entire season to date.  But I do have 12 games done, through the first UNC game (I missed Penn too, which came right after Western Mich) so let’s take a look at the cumulative chart, then I’ll break down each player’s defensive performance individually. If you’re unsure of what some of these abbreviations and/or terms mean, check out this post.

What’s it all about Alfie?

For starters, there has been much hand-wringing among the Duke faithful this year about our defense.  And you know what?  For good reason.  Not only have we largely failed the eyeball test (save solid efforts against Virginia Tech and Maryland) but the overall numbers are not good.  An average DRating is around 101.  For these 12 games, Duke’s stands at 107.8.  By definition, that’s below average, way below actually, and by Duke’s traditional standards, it’s a lot worse than that.  No way around it.

As a team, the other number that jumps out at me is the 46% field goal shooting that we’re allowing.  Aren’t we used to around 40% or so in a “normal” year?  Also, of all possible offensive rebounds that our opponents could get, they’re grabbing 37% of them.  That’s a lot.

I’m going to leave most of the analysis of individual players’ performance in their individual sections below.  But at this point, it is worth noting that, perhaps surprisingly, the Blue Devil that grades out the best defensively this year so far is Mason Plumlee.  Not Miles, but Mason.  Miles has been terrific in a number of games, especially earlier in the ACC season but has trailed off lately.  (Looking at my crystal ball here:  he’s going to have a MONSTER game defensively at home against Maryland, right???)  But Mason is a full 4 points below the team average, which given the way these metrics work, is very significant, and indicates he is playing much, much better defense than the team as a whole.  A lot of this is due to his outstanding defensive rebounding, as he’s averaging about 6 1/2 per game over these 12 games, and 13.6 per 100 team defensive possessions that he’s on the floor for.  Defensive rebounding is a key component to overall defensive performance, both individually and for the team, for what good does it do to force a missed shot if we give up an offensive rebound and the opponent gets another opportunity?  Mason also leads the team in Stop%, which is the percentage of plays in which he’s involved on which the team gets a stop.

At the other end of the spectrum sits Andre Dawkins.  Dawkins has struggled in a number of areas defensively, and nobody should be surprised that his DRating sits at 114 or that his stop% is a meager 32%.  Giving up baskets, which he does way too frequently, is not offset by either defensive rebounding (1.5 per game, but then again he’s 6’4″ going up against small forwards primarily, but still) or forcing turnovers (about a half a TO per game) so his numbers suffer accordingly.  To be discussed more in his individual section.

So let’s look at each ballplayer on a number of metrics:

Austin Rivers

This is a guy who came in as the #1 perimeter player in his high school class, and many had him as the #1 player overall.  Because of the quality of his offensive game, primarily how good he is with the ball in his hands, and the flashiness of his game, coupled with the affluent background from which he comes, the assumption from just about everybody has been that Austin Rivers was going to be, and is, a poor defensive player, one who tolerates crossing onto the defensive end of the floor only as a means to try to hurry up and get the ball back into his own hands so he can show off some more.

For anyone who has actually watched Duke play this year, that has obviously proven to be pure gobbage.  Austin moves his feet very well, so he is not often beaten into the lane off the dribble.  He fights through screens with determination, and he has quick hands.  He is also the best defensive rebounder of our perimeter guys, by far.  I think this is a kid who knew that he would have a reputation, deserved or not, as an uninterested defender before he stepped onto Duke’s campus, and that meme would be driven home by the lemmings in the media, and he made a decision that he was going to learn how to play defense at Duke.  He chose Duke because he wanted to get better — at least that’s my belief.  And this is the area he knew he had to improve in the most, and he has.

Now, has he lost focus and concentration in off-ball situations more than anyone would prefer?  Yes.  But he has absolutely been a net asset on the defensive end, as evidenced by his 55% stop percentage — best of all the perimeter players on the team.  Here are his numbers, keeping in mind that the lower one’s overall DRating, the better one’s performance has been:

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