Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Eye Candy

I was looking through the box scores (Big East mostly...) last night, and when I paused over the West Virginia-Radford game and later the DePaul-Creighton game, I thought back to a trailer Ken Pomeroy used to include at the end of his blog posts. He called that section "Line o' the Night" (or something to that effect). there were a few individual efforts that really caught my eye...

DePaul's Scoring Machine...
Dar Tucker has been tearing it up this season, and as I noted in an earlier post, that may not always be a good thing. After that post DePaul ran off 3 consecutive wins (versus Liberty, Southern and St. Louis). For those wins Tucker managed to keep his shot% at 30% or (better...) less, even as his eFG% and PPWS were high. All of which suggested he was scoring efficiently within DePaul's offense. Last night Tucker seemed to again lose that internal tug-of-war, even as the Blue Demons were losing to the Blue Jays of Creighton.

MinsPtsFGMFGAPoss%Shot%eFG%PPWS
3632122231.042.961.41.29


Tucker hit 3-8 from the 3, 9-14 from inside the arc. Tucker scored 42.7% of the Demons points. The next three highest scorers, Mac Koshwal (more on him later), Will Walker and Jabari Currie scored a combined 35 points on 13-30 shooting. They had a combined eFG% of 46.7 and a PPWS of 0.95. The Demons will have to provide Tucker better offensive support than that. The DePaul website provided some background/context for Tucker's achievement.

DePaul's Rebounding Machine
In the same Creighton game sophomore center/forward Mac Koshwal, in addition to shooting second high points for the Blue Demons, also managed to pull in 22 rebounds. The AD's official story noted that Koshwal's effort was "...tied for the fifth-best single game effort in DePaul history and he [Koshwal] is one of five Blue Demons to grab 22 or more caroms in a game...". The numbers...

MinsORebsDRebsTRebsOR%DR%
376162218.052.4


An offensive rebounding rate (OR%) of 9.0 is great (Top 500), while the best is 25.0. As for Koshwal's defensive rebounding rate (DR%), the best (season long stats) is 35.0. Koshwal is currently ranked #37 on a season long defensive rebounding rate of 25.0. Tucker and Koshwal would be headliners on a higher ranked Big East team, though their individual numbers would most likely not be as strong.

Last, But Hardly Least...
West Virginia met Radford last night in Morgantown for one of those forgettable mid-major matchups that only happens because the NCAA won't outlaw guarantee games (and some teams consistently sellout their arenas). The game junior guard Alex Ruoff played however is not forgettable. The numbers...

MinsPtsFGMFGAPoss%Shot%eFG%PPWS
3738121922.328.986.81.74


When I calculated Ruoff's ORtg (adjusted points/adjusted possessions) I got the kind of number that causes State Troopers to smack their radar guns once or twice when they get a similarly off the scale reading. In my (or more properly, Alex's) case it was 201.0. That is 50-70 points above a "normal" outrageous performance. Most impressive however may be that Ruoff, a junior who was originally paired with fellow junior Da'Sean Butler as freshman phenoms during John Beilein's last season in Morgantown, but toiled in Joe Alexander's shadow last season, scored well within the Mountaineer system. Note his Poss% and Shot% numbers are consistent with a starter/go-to guy, but far below Dar Tucker's numbers (above). Ruoff has teammates who will step up and have outstanding nights of their own in the days and weeks to come. Can the same be said of Tucker's teammates (Koshwal excepted)?

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