Vandy v. Southern Indiana - Plus/Minuses

Please explain the calculation.

Last night was fun once we got going, but man was it awful to start. Bad execution from both teams, bad officiating.

I think we (I) got a reality check on the freshmen.

*Odom still looked good (despite being hilariously lanky and awkward), even better than his solid game last time. You can tell he’ll big a big help right away.

*Fuller had a rough one, especially matched up against their really fast little guard. That might be something to keep an eye on, how well Fuller performs when he doesn’t have a speed advantage. In the meantime, it only reestablished just how much we need Brad to really do well at the point.

*Henderson kind of showed why he apparently is headed for a red-shirt. It might have been nice to see him out with some of the starters (you know, because the coach needs to justify his decisions to us, haha). But you could see that maybe his offensive game isn’t solid enough yet to make up for the fact that he needs more bulk and seasoning on defense. Still you could see the promise, but that only makes a RS make more sense. You can certainly see how valuable he could be once he bulks up and gets some experience, and that only makes it more advisable to save that eligibility.

I was not especially pumped with the foul situation with Fes and Steve early on (yeah, the refs sucked, but that happens, got to make it work anyway). But I was impressed with Steve playing 24 minutes (including the last 9 minutes of the 1st half playing with 2 fouls) and ended with only 3 fouls. Not to mention his second foul was a totally bogus moving screen call.

I like seeing Steve play, and play well with him and Fes in foul trouble, but if we are going to RS Henderson, I would have loved to see us try out the team that would be out there if both Fes and Steve are in trouble.

The defense was good, though we shouldn’t overstate it, because as tough as we were, there were long stretches of awful awful execution by USI. But we certainly did our part to make it tough on them.

My favorite part though was watching the bench, esp. Fes and Steve go nuts when Duffy hit is 3 or when Meriweather had the drive to the basket and the dish to Siakam for the layup. It certainly makes it more enjoyable when the guys on our team seem like legitimately good guys who you like to root for (cough, Tennessee).

Big Jim – this is a traditional plus/minus statistic, wherein the numbers represent the score differential while each individual player was on the court. So, Festus Ezeli starts the game and comes out at the 15:00 mark with Vanderbilt leading by 4, he then has a plus/minus of +4. He then comes in at the 11:00 mark with Vanderbilt leading by 1, and is taken back out at the 6 minute mark with Vanderbilt leading by 3, his plus/minus is now +6. It gives you a sense, over the course of the season, that Festus is having a marked positive impact on our success (i.e., the higher the number the better). Folks tend to like this, because it includes all aspects of one’s impact on a game … whereas a traditional box score is somewhat limited (e.g., tilted towards offensive numbers).

The second chart adjusts this on a per-40 basis. So, while Taylor has a higher plus/minus than Festus (24 vs. +16) against USI, Festus actually had a more positive impact on a per-minute basis (or per-40), as represented by their per-40 numbers (32 vs. +53).

So, we can glean from this that, in the pre-season … if Festus is on the court, we are dominating our opponents. This makes sense, because he is the scariest mothra in the entire SEC, and eats wild grizzly bears (raw and alive) for sport during the offseason.

“Festus Ezeli – he’s a bigger man than you.”

As for my interpretation of the numbers … there is only one thing on there that REALLY jumps out. And not in a good way. I’m at a little bit of a loss to explain Andre Walker’s low numbers, since I think most of us agree that our offense flows better with him on the court, and he is also a very solid defender. I expect him to trend back towards the average as the season gets underway, and will perhaps be one of our more consistent performers – especially against tougher teams, where we’ll need his calming presence on the court.

We shall see.

Oh … and …

Fear the Fezz.