I do not think it matters where the A/TO ratio comes from, Nor where the leading scorers come from. But what is most important is that the team has 3 guards that that are multi-dimensional to spread the offense. The Needham era proved that a lot and so did the Goode, Todd, Sogadzi, Bell era. We also have to have All MAAC players at the Guard position. VA Stagman, the statement that best applies in your analysis is:
We had 11 seasons where our main PGs (there were some seasons where this duty was shared) had at least a 1.50+ ratio. Eight out of 11 of those seasons produced winning records.
Last Edit: Apr 10, 2020 17:32:53 GMT -5 by JoeStag
Note: There were two seasons that were aberrations and I did not include them above. Those were the seasons where Needham was our PG, but he was also our leading scorer. A team that has a PG who is also a prolific scorer seems to be a different animal. During those two seasons we happened to win 25 and 23 games.
Maybe we should just find another Derek Needham!
Having a point guard that can take a last second shot when he needs to is a very important thing to a team's success. Needham was an interesting player in that he had a very low shooting percentage. I believe Needham is one of only two stags to score 1000 points in their career and not shoot 40% from the floor with the other being Jermaine Clark. In defense of Needham though, he was one of the best big shot makers the Stags ever had, and he made big shot after big shot including many last second shots with the shot clock expiring. I remember one game that was perhaps Needham's worst shooting performance as a stag where he was like 1-12 from the floor. He just couldn't buy a bucket. But with the team down two as the game clock was winding down he hit an impossible fade away three to win the game. When it mattered, I also felt happy to have the ball in Needham's hands. A couple of other factors for needhams poor shooting percentages were that he did not play with a group of high powered offensive players and he therefore drew a lot of defensive attention and had to take a lot of shots. He also shot a lot of threes which contributed to his low shooting percentage. I think if Needham had been paired with a player like Anthony Johnson his entire career he would have put up substantially better numbers.
I agree when your point guard is your leading scoring the assist numbers are much less important. And when your a point guard paired up with a high powered scorer (say Tony George, Joe DeSantis or Tyler Nelson) you are going to have the benefit of a lot of assists you might not otherwise have. So there is a subjective nature to all these numbers based on the team make-up. But they do tell part of a story.
I don't think it was the offense .. it was that the offense had so few players who could score. What offense looks good when you have players who either aren't very good shooters, or can't create a shot?
Plus we really didn't have solid point guard to run things. Aidas was inconsistent and a bit too slow. Benning ended up being relied on more for scoring than distributing the ball (which is interesting because going into the season, I can't imagine anyone predicted that Taj would be looked to for much scoring).
I may be wrong, but it seems that without an above average point guard to run things, it is difficult for any team to be really successful and without scorers it is difficult for an offense to look very good.
I made the statement above based on my gut, but I was curious if it was true or not.
For those of you who like stats (I'm one of those) this site is excellent:
I looked to see if there was a relationship between Assist/Turnover ratio for point guards, and the team's overall winning percentage. My conjecture was that a good point guard (high A/TO ratio) would lead to a better overall team, and conversely the lack of a good point guard would lead to a losing team.
Now obviously a lot of other things come into play. For example, you could have a PG with a high A/TO ratio, but the team doesn't play any defense and loses a lot. So take this with a grain of salt.
I looked at every season since the 2000-01 season (individual turnovers don't appear to have been identified prior to that).
We had 11 seasons where our main PGs (there were some seasons where this duty was shared) had at least a 1.50+ ratio. Eight out of 11 of those seasons produced winning records.
We had seven seasons where the ratio was below 1.50. Only one of those seasons produced a better than .500 record. btw: That was Tyquawn Goode's junior year (19-11). The lineup included Todd, Thomson, Gai, Maxwell and Bell, so there was a pretty strong supporting cast in place.
Note: There were two seasons that were aberrations and I did not include them above. Those were the seasons where Needham was our PG, but he was also our leading scorer. A team that has a PG who is also a prolific scorer seems to be a different animal. During those two seasons we happened to win 25 and 23 games.
Maybe we should just find another Derek Needham!
I doubt he'll remind anyone of Needham, but I was curious as to what Caleb Green assists and turnovers were his last season at Holy Cross. Sports-reference has them as 3.2 assists to 1.7 turnovers. I have no idea how the talent level at Holy Cross that season compares to what we'll be putting on the court next year -- but barring any unforeseen developments, it's easy to be positive about what we might do next season based on what your research shows of how the A/TO ratio of our point guards since the 2001 season have correlated with winning seasons.
Post by nashvillestag on Apr 12, 2020 8:59:49 GMT -5
Whether it is because of great point guard play or team play in general, assist to turnover ratio is quite often a good indicator of how well a given team has performed in any particular year. And in regard to that thought, if you go back and look at the last nine years of Stag play (Sydney + one year of Jay), the statistics kind of back that up. Of course in general the five over .500 years have hardly been spectacular, but nevertheless the mark in those years was 14.5 assists compared to 13.6 TOs. Compare that to the four losing seasons (all horrible losing ones BTW) where the mark was 10.8/13.9. Always there are other factors of course, but nevertheless I think these numbers are telling. I do know one thing however, and that is that in almost all cases, in order to have a good team you MUST have good PG play. And in that regard my hope is that Caleb Green will make a big difference in how well the squad functions. I think he will.
In the May edition of Basketball Times, John Akers compiled fifteen way too early preseason top 25 rankings for next season. In the others receiving votes section, there's a number next to each team indicating how many votes they received in this compilation. Richmond came in as the 30th ranked team in this compilation, by virtue of its 13 votes.
A tweet indicating why expectations are high for Richmond next season:
The D1 Docket Retweeted John O'Connor @rtdjohnoconnor Spiders hoops schedule shaping up. Just added home and home with Northern Iowa, which will visit UR this season. Also, Spiders at Kentucky, at Vandy, at Colorado State, at Charleston. ODU at Richmond. All five UR starters back from 24-7 team.
Hopefully, Richmond's loaded roster will benefit us and Wojcik will turn out to be a great addition for us when he becomes eligible.
A former Stag will be on the 29th ranked team in this compilation since there's where Oklahoma State is listed and Ferron Flavors has transferred there.
A school in the top 25 with a Fairfield connection is Rutgers, where Jay Young was a coach when we hired him. Rutgers is ranked 23rd in this compilation of way too early rankings.
Alot of waivers came back positive in the last week or so. Jeff Goodman listed Woj as one that is still pending about a month ago. I wonder when we will hear back. Would be a huge lift to the offense to have him. I could even expect him to start based on his production freshman year when he got minutes at Richmond.
ππππ‘ ππ«π’π¬π₯ππ« and πππ€π ππ¨π£ππ’π€ have been declared immediately eligible by the NCAA as a part of today's blanket waiver for Division I transfers.
Crisler, Wojcik Granted Eligibility With NCAA Blanket Waiver
Fairfield University student-athletes Zach Crisler and Jake Wojcik were declared eligible for the 2020-21 basketball season after the NCAA Division I Council approved a blanket waiver request providing relief for four-year college transfer student-athletes currently serving a transfer year of residence during the 2020-21 academic year.
With the NCAA decision to apply a blanket waiver, both student-athletes will become eligible for the remainder of the 2020-21 season. The Fairfield University men's basketball team has played six games and started conference play in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) last weekend, splitting a pair of games with Iona College. The Stags will continue their MAAC schedule this weekend with two games at Niagara University.
Crisler came to Fairfield after spending a season at Rice University where he started seven of his 23 appearances. He made his collegiate debut against the University of Arkansas before scoring his first points against Penn one game later. He scored in eight straight games in January which resulted in 4.3 points per game including a season-high 11 points at North Texas. The forward finished the season with a 2.4 scoring and a 1.7 rebounding average Before playing at Rice, Crisler excelled on the hardwood at LaSalle College High School.
Wojcik joined Fairfield after spending his first two seasons at the University of Richmond where he appeared in 64 games. In his first season at Richmond, the guard started 33 games which was the second most by a freshman in school history. He placed fifth on the team in scoring with 7.7 points per game and fourth in rebounding with 3.5 rebounds every forty minutes. He showed his long-range shooting ability with 65 three pointers in 2018-19, shooting 36.3 percent from long range. As a sophomore, he appeared in all 31 games and averaged 3.3 points per game. Wojcik led the team in free throw shooting with his .905 percentage, netting 19 of 21 attempts during the year. Wojcik enjoyed success at the scholastic as a member of the Bellarmine College Prep basketball team.