Over The Back? What Over The Back? [Or: Minute-Adjusted Tempo-Free Rebounding Leaders]

[EDIT: I made a mistake in the original description of how to calculate OffReb+. I originally wrote that I multiplied by 70.2, but that’s incorrect. 70.2 is the average total rebounds in a game, for both teams, so I actually multiplied by half that (35.1) when I did the calculations. I just had a senior moment when I wrote it out.  Sorry about the confusion. The reason I noticed in the first place is that Mike Rogers over at The Only Colors has a couple nice posts up that expand on this idea (here and here).  Highly worth checking out.  I noticed his numbers didn’t jive with mine, and that’s how I spotted the error in the text.  So, thanks Mike!]

In case you missed it, Tennessee’s Brian Williams made what ESPN calls a “falling over-the-back buzzer beater” last night against Georgia. Bulldog Chris Barnes did a good job of boxing out, but Williams simply reached over his shoulder and snatched ball. The play reinforced a thought that’s been rolling around in my head: that instead of merely praising players with high offensive rebounding rates (whether measured by raw numbers or by offensive rebounding percentage [OR%]), we ought to be praising those that can do it without fouling. It’s not that the fouls themselves are so detrimental – if a player dials back the physicality enough to prevent the foul, he likely prevents the offensive rebound as well. But racking up fouls on high-risk offensive boards leads to reduced minutes for a player that provides at least some value in the form of rebounds.

Take a look at the current top ten offensive rebounders, by OR%, along with their fouls committed per 40 minutes (FC/40). Over half of these guys would foul out if asked to play play 40 minutes:

Hey, look – Brian Williams!

I thought it would be interesting to look at top ten that takes minutes played into account. This should penalize the foulers, plus it should knock out any small sample size wonders.

Bruce Pearl Before Swine

As I’m sure anybody reading these words must know, Tennessee managed to achieve “fuhreal” status on Saturday, and fritter it away by Tuesday.  It was an impressive about face, as they played like the #1 team in the country at Pittsburgh, then like UC-Irvine at home against Oakland:

A few messages insinuating that the loss showed Bruce Pearl’s true colors flashed across my Twitter feed last night, and it made me wonder if this kind of massive quality swing was really as rare as people were making it out to be.  So I checked.

I found every instance since the 2002-03 season where a team:

1. Won on the road vs. a top 10 opponent (by Pomeroy rating)
2. In their next game, lost to a team ranked 50 or lower

I figured that would catch only very impressive wins.  And I couldn’t really make the loss section much more strict, because Oakland is a pretty decent team (#71 as I write this).  With the above criteria, there were 9 cases from the last 8 and a half years.

And, wow.  A third of them are Bruce Pearl’s Tennessee teams.  So for non-Tennessee teams, the chances of it happening any given year are around a quarter of a percent.  For one of Pearl’s Tennessee teams, the chances are around 50%. Apparently there’s something to the idea that his teams are prone to a big letdown after a huge win.  Of course, the fact they even have 3 road wins over top 10 teams is something to be proud of.  I wish I would have kept track of how many teams didn’t lose their next game after a top-10 road win, so I could account for opportunities.  But at this point I’m not going to go back through again.  My eyes are already bleeding.

Similarity Predictions: Elite 8

Figured I should get these up before the games start this afternoon.

As I mentioned in the KSU-Butler preview, I think the prediction for that game is skewed by the early season numbers.  Butler’s playing better than they were then.  If I look at only games from this calendar year, then the Similarity prediction pretty much agrees with Pomeroy and Vegas.

I should get a Duke-Baylor preview done this afternoon, and get it posted here and at UFR.