Why UCLA is very lucky to have Kevin Love, part 34,785,900

If any of the following numbers confuse you, it means you probably ought to read this. It's my previous post on the subject. Long story short, I’m using a metric devised by Professor David Berri called Win Score to analyze the LA collegiate basketball teams. If you want to check out my previous post, on USC’s basketball team, go here, please. Thank you. The following post will cover “Your… UCLA BRUINS!” –cue Van Halen’s Right Now-. Anyway. Please, again, keep in mind that all conclusions reached are working within the constraints of the metric used, and should not be considered blanket statements in and of themselves. As to such conclusions, given the design of the statistic in question, nothing was particularly unusual.



Again, let’s just check our metric. 40 Win Score equal approximately one team victory. UCLA have accumulated 805.5 total Win Score to date. 40 from 805.5 is about 20.1, and the Bruins have 18 wins at the time. A little high - in other words, the stat suggests UCLA should actually be doing a little bit better than it actually has (umm... that UCLA should be undefeated PLUS .1 of a game, heh). Interesting. Also interesting - if one used Win Score to set a starting line-up, it would go Collison at point, Shipp at 2-guard, Luc at the 3, Mata at the 4, and Love in the middle. O.J. Mayo would not be in the top 6 (well... don't blame me, according to Win Score he wouldn't, heh). My guess is this is because I feel like Win Score rewards rebounds a bit too highly, and the Bruins as a team rebound extremely well, with Kevin Love leading the way. Speaking of Kevin...

Love is UCLA’s best player by a humongous margin. My apologies to all the other Bruin favorites, but it's true. Much like in Ken Pomeroy's Offensive Rating stat, Kevin Love is one of the 5 best players in the country in Win Score. I was able to check this thanks to the excellent work of Erich Doerr, who showed me some of his numbers he has compiled for the season to date. Thanks a bunch, Erich - that was really helpful. Love is 3rd nationally in Win Score, behind Kenny George of UNC-Asheville, and Michael Beasley of K-State. But... Why?

Well, to start, he scores a large number of points without using very many possessions. He shoots a very high percentage on his 2s, but that's not the only thing he does well. He has brought up his numbers, so that he's a solid 3-point shooter. And he gets to the free throw line with regularity, where he knocks down freebies at an excellent rate for a big man. On top of all this scoring efficiency, he’s one of the best rebounders in the Pac-10, and the country to boot. His other numbers are fairly pedestrian, but he is so excellent around the rim – be it with the ball, or going for a board – that his moderate other values are of less importance. He adds so much value in the things he does well, while not being terrible in the negative categories, that his WS/40 is more than double any of his teammates.

Probably the biggest surprises in this group of stats are the high rankings of Mata-Real and The Prince. Zo and Luc (despite his 3-point follies) are high-percentage shooters that rebound the ball extremely well. If it sounds familiar, it should - nearly all high-value players in Win Score do so. (ed note - There's actually a statistical correction by position to account for the fact that big men usually rebound much better, but I forgot to do so with the USC stats, so we'll be moving forward without it at the moment; if I come back to it later and find that it materially changes the analysis I'll make sure to note it then) Because he's a smart, well-coached player who picks his spots to shoot while going after every rebound Mata-Real scores well in this stat. Furthermore, he's actually one of the better shot-blockers in the Pac-10. Let's correct for playing time, as a theoretical exercise. Assume a linear increase to Zo's stats, relative to his minutes played. Now change the number of minutes Mata-Real plays to the number of minutes Kevin Love has played so far. In that case, Zo would average around 2 blocks a game. That’s around the same level as the much more touted shot-blocking of Taj Gibson.

In comparison to Lorenzo's focus on boards and blocks, Luc's high score shows the value of a well-rounded game. He doesn’t necessarily excel at any one aspect, and in fact has regressed statistically each year he's been at UCLA (more on this in a later post). But he still provides plenty of value to the team in nearly every category. His turnovers are a bit high for a 3/4 on a team with plenty of ball-handlers, but that’s about his only real weakness. Much like Lorenzo's offense, Luc plays defense very intelligently - he avoids fouls, grabs a handful of steals and blocks when he can, and protects the defensive glass.

Looking at Collison, his stats are still depressed somewhat by that gimpy knee of his, in my opinion. I feel that, playing with the brace - and probably still slightly injured to boot - affected his shooting, passing, and defense very significantly (this, too, will come up again in the next post). I actually decided to go back and get the updated stats from after the Oregon State game, which is why the Sunday game stats are included for the Bruins, but not for the SC post below. I did so because Collison's huge game had a monster impact on his score - pushing him much higher than he had been previously. The benefits of getting healthy, I suppose. Even with his struggles until recently, he’s been excellent at avoiding turnovers, averaging one about every 18 minutes. That’s quite, quite good. He's distributing the ball efficiently, is UCLA's best player at getting a steal, and almost never fouls. As such, he rates highly in Win Score despite not being a great rebounder - and I believe his score will continue to climb. I expect his level of play going forward to be closer to that of this past weekend, knock on wood.

Let's continue on down the list. We already covered Mbah a Moute. Shipp is actually a pretty poor rebounder for somebody with his size and athleticism – he’s outrebounded by every major rotational player except Collison, once you correct for playing time. And Collison’s been playing with a gimpy knee. And Shipp still just BARELY outrebounds Darren. Yeah, the point is, he’s probably the worst rebounder on the team. This hurts his individual value. I stress 'individual,' because the team as a whole doesn’t suffer. The other Bruins range from very good to best-in-the-country in this category, so Shipp doesn't really need to focus on getting boards. But here, we’re just looking at his individual contribution to the team at the moment, and as such must then accept his rebounding ‘deficiencies’ as the major reason for his fairly low Win Score. Fortunately, he doesn’t turn the ball over much, and he’s UCLA’s most prolific scorer after Love, so he pulls his weight in other disciplines.

Westbrook has had turnover issues at times, and gets surprisingly high number of fouls for a perimeter player. My guess is his athleticism is both a blessing and a curse, because he sometimes still tries to do too much, which drags him down a bit. Speaking of foul problems, Aboya gets KILLED by his fouls. He averages less than 7 minutes per foul. In case you couldn't guess, that is really, really, REALLY bad. Plus, his blocks are much lower than I expected - I think almost every time he gets a "block" he gets called for a foul as well. Keefe is even worse, at 6 minutes per foul. Luc is the only major rotational player even close to that amount, at over 10 minutes per foul - all other Bruins are over 15.

Chase and Nikola haven't had the opportunity to add much given their limited playing time, but hopefully later in the season they'll get the chance to show what they can do. And this table certainly won't help those who have defended Mike Roll in the past - in 93 minutes, he's amassed a Win Score of zero. Yikes. At least it's not negative!

Next time, I say some things that are really controversial while comparing this season's UCLA team to last year's Final Four group.

The great, the really great, and the slightly worrisome

I thought I'd chime in with a few observations. Humor me, please.

First, it's great to see Darren Collison getting back to the form we all believed he could, and would, display all season. I was of the opinion that he had never fully healed from his knee injury, and it's only been in the past few games that he's really started to look like the Collison of last season. Much more aggressive in the lane, more willing to push off his knee for those little floaters in the lane, and to elevate on his outside jumpers. Anybody who has played basketball knows how, in truth, shooting form starts not from the arms, but from the legs. Even a tiny tweak can be enough to throw off a player like Darren, whose shooting method is already slightly unorthodox. So major kudos to him for his inspired play this weekend, and I have full confidence that he is beginning to once again trust in his knee. Just a great sign.

Second, Kevin Love. We all knew he was going to be good, but I'm not sure we realized just how good. Depending on your personal view of the importance of possession usage, Kevin Love is either the best, third best, or 19th best offensive player in the country. Slightly confused? I'll try to explain. For those of you not familiar with his work, Ken Pomeroy is THE name in modern (read: moderately sabermetric-style) basketball statistics. In addition to his KenPom.com site, he is one of the head writers for Basketball Prospectus, which is a must-read for unique takes on the game. With regards to his methodology, one stat he uses is ORtg, or 'Offensive Rating,' a stat that addresses the number of points a player produces if he were to use 100 possessions.

Anyway, at KenPom.com, he lists the top players in the country in Offensive Rating - in other words, the best in the country at producing points for their teams. Kevin Love is the #1-ranked offensive player in the country, measuring players who use 24% of their team's offensive possessions and up (in other words, star players). He's a small distance in front of UNC's own Psycho T. The two are a fairly sizable distance in front of every other player on that list. If you'd like to peruse the full list (really quite interesting) you can find it here. The first list on that page is players who use more than 28% of their team's possessions. See Mayo, OJ, who is below the league average efficiency of 101 despite using 30% of his team's offensive opportunities - K-Love is at almost 130. Love, despite his extremely high efficiency, barely misses that 28% 'superstar' watermark, using 27.3%. If he clears the 28% usage mark, he'll be leading that list as well, and by a very significant margin. A team of 5 Kevin Loves would outscore the current top 'superstar'-usage player by over 12 points in an average UCLA game.

--One note: the list linked above was updated last Sunday the 20th, and the new one has not come out as of the writing of this post. I'll update this with the new listings once it does if necessary, but I can't imagine Love's scores doing anything but rising given his dominance this past weekend.

(The formula for this value, ORtg, is quite complex. It's possible to actually derive the full formula for free online with a lot of digging, but since its progenitor, Dean Oliver, released a book on that subject I'll avoid posting it here. Suffice to say that it basically assigns a point value to each assist, 2- or 3-point basket, and offensive rebound, then adjusts it for how many possesions the player uses to get those stats, and multiplies by a hundred... I think. I could be remembering slightly wrong, to be honest. Anyway, if you're really interested, go buy Oliver's Basketball on Paper -- HIGHLY recommended and sadly underrated by the casual basketball saber community. Or get The Wages of Wins -- much more famous book by David Berri. Alternatively, leave me a comment or shoot me a message/email and I'll send you some links - the stuff's actually a really interesting point of discussion if you ask me. Anyway, tangent over, sorry.)

As to the slightly worrisome - UCLA is shooting too many 3s. I know you don't want to hear it, but somebody has to say it. The Bruins are loosing FAR too many outside shots, and they're lucky that the addition of Love means that he's able to go and get plenty of their misses, as one of the best offensive rebounders in the country. UCLA is 2nd to last in 3-point shooting percentage in the Pac-10, only ahead of woeful Oregon State. As a team, the Beavers are shooting under 28% from 3 -- that's like an entire team of Mbah a Moutes launching 18 3s a game (shows how they were hitting rather lucky tonight against UCLA). No offense Luc, but yikes. But, the Bruins are right in the middle of the Pac in 3-point attempts, even throwing them up more often than UofA and UW, teams generally considered much more run-and-gun than the Bruins. And teams that are much more accurate from there than UCLA, as well.

This past game against OSU was a perfect example. The team went 3-15 from the field against the Beavers. And somewhat ironically, the only player who had a good shooting night from outside was Darren at 2-3. I say somewhat ironic, given that he spent much of the evening beating his defender off the dribble and getting to the line (14-14 on free throws is just awesome, btw). The rest of the team was a combined 1-12, despite the fact that the team was 24/39 from the floor on 2-point baskets. The point being, that unless somebody gets hot (see Shipp during the Bay-area road trip), it's generally not worth it for the team to chuck up a bunch of outside shots, given how effective Love, and the team as a whole, can be from inside the arc.

Anyway, time to get ready for "The Standard" next week. Very solid road trip, and here's hoping the Bruins come out fired up to start a new winning streak at Pauley.

Thoughts on the weeks, past and present

So, a major ten days or so for the Bruin athletic programs. While the basketball team allowed an unranked USC Trojan team to come into Pauley and earn the upset, the football team has seen a series of hirings. Let's cover those briefly. I'd like to note, in the next day or two I'm hoping to get up a big analysis of UCLA's major coaching decisions. So.

Football

UCLA's main coaching battery is now complete. New lower-level staffers Reggie Moore (WR), Bob Palcic (OL) and Mike Linn (S&C) will join new Offensive Coordinator Norm Chow and new Head Coach Rick Neuheisal. DeWayne Walker stays on as Defensive Coordinator, along with his assistants Todd Howard (DL) and Chuck Bullough (LB) - the only other coach from the old staff who is still potentially going to be rehired is former WR coach Eric Scott. Scott quickly earned a reputation as being a great recruiter, but troubles with the police during the previous offseason led to past transgressions being brought to light.

Interestingly, the name that caused the biggest shockwaves upon announcement was not that of the new head coach, but that of the new OC, Chow. Chow's hiring (following his serendipitous-for-UCLA firing by the Tennessee Titans) was in many ways a direct shot across the bow of USC's football program. That program - which had done much the same to the Bruins after a fashion with the hiring of ex-Bruin great Ken Norton, Jr. - first reached its current height with Chow masterminding its potent offenses. Perhaps the player who benefited the most from Chow's tutelage was Carson Palmer. A highly-touted recruit who struggled early in his career, Palmer blossomed into the eventual Heisman Trophy winner his senior year (and his 2nd under Chow). Now the Bruins hope a similar, if more speedy, transition follows with Ben Olson under center. The similarities are there - Olson's struggles at UCLA have been well-documented, despite his high recruiting ranking out of high school, and the fact that he possesses all the physical tools of a prototypical NFL QB.

Neuheisal's hiring has come and gone with much less controversy than I initially expected, so I'll let it pass for the most part in this space (though a numerical analysis is forthcoming - this post is more philosophical in nature). "Slick Rick" has, though, managed to hang on to well-regarded DC Walker, as well as the coup of hiring Chow for his OC, so it's very hard to argue that he has not started his tenure in a fascinating, and extremely positive, fashion. Walker, too, has seemingly been returned to the Bruins with a minimum of controversy despite the public nature of his courtship by other institutions, most notably the University of Washington (similarities abound). Palcic, Linn, and Moore are all generally-respected coaches at their positions as far as I can tell, though I don't know much about Linn.

The key over the next couple weeks will, of course, be for this coaching staff to hang on to the highly-ranked recruiting class currently indicating they'll be coming to Westwood next season. Given that UCLA loses a lot of senior talent, they'll need all the help they can get with the brutal upcoming schedule.

Basketball

Much more brief. Loss to USC = bad. Don't do it again, please. A road trip to the Oregon schools is next, beginning with the Ducks on Thursday. After a big win over Stanford at home on the 13th, the Ducks dropped both their games at UW and WSU this past week. Oregon is significantly more difficult to beat at home than on the road - see UCLA's first loss of the season last year, when they fell to the Ducks in a close game at McArthur. If the Bruins manage to handle the Ducks on Thursday, even with the home-loss to USC, they at least maintain a clear separation between themselves and every team in the conference except the Cougars. Oregon State just fired its coach - anything less than a relatively easy victory would be a major red flag.

Yawn, yawn, yawn... uh oh... phew.

Big, big thanks to the folks at Bruins Nation for adding me to their blogroll. Hopefully, I'll be able to add valuable information both here and over there for the forseeable future. Anyway, enough with the ass-kissing, ON TO THE SPORTS!

Washington State visisted Pauley Pavilion today, and as they have for the past few seasons, they managed to make things interesting. Oddly-enough, today's game ties the largest margin of victory for a UCLA/WSU game in Pauley Pavilion since 2003, when the Bruins beat the Cougars 86-71. They would lose at home the following year, but that margin of victory was also 7. In the years since then, WSU has lost to UCLA by 3, 2, and 3 points. The Cougs always find a way to keep it close in the house that John built, and they did so inspectacular fashion today.

For more fun errata, a nearly-identical game was played between the Bruins and Cougars at Pauley two seasons ago. However, Derrick Low was not involved. Exactly 2 years ago today, Josh Akognon (now with Cal State Fullerton) hit six of eight 3 points attempts, scoring all of his 25 points in the second half. For comparison, today Low went 6-9 from deep, with 24 points all in the second half. The Bruins absolutely suffocated WSU in the first half, allowing only 17 points in jumping to a 31-17 lead at the break. In today's game, UCLA had a 13-point lead at the half, allowing only 22 points to the Cougars. With 3:30 left in the 2006 game, UCLA was up 11. But Akognon kept hitting on his 3s, and UCLA escaped with a 2-point win after a missed WSU lay-up at the buzzer. With 1:45 left in today's game, the Bruins were ahead by 15 points. However, Low and his teammates made 7 straight 3-point baskets, coming to within 3. But clutch free throws by Darren Collison and Kevin Love put the game back out of reach, keeping the Bruins atop the Pac-10 for another week.

I was at that game in '06 - that's when Farmar and Mata slammed into each other and Mata fractured his knee. Despite the (rather ridiculous) injury issues, UCLA would go on to play in the National Title game that season, losing to Florida for the first of two consecutive Gator national titles. Hopefully, this year's team can have the same sort of success (though maybe a 'w' on that last game in addition to all the rest, heh).

Brief analyses on THIS year's game:

Kevin Love was simply awesome. Quietly awesome, but awesome. Interestingly enough, it never felt like he was totally taking over the game (see Bryant, Kobe). But almost every time UCLA needed a bucket or a stop, he was banking in a shot or snatching away a potential WSU offensive board. He showed range (two 3-balls), as well as a nifty new turnaround fallaway 12-foot jumper that he hasn't really used to date.

Not in the box-score: how well UCLA prevented WSU from getting second chances. Though the final tally reads UCLA 52 shots, WSU 50, that's generally inaccurate. During the Cougars' last-minute flurry, UCLA was generally shooting foul-shots. The Bruins had about 10 more shot attempts than the Cougs up until those last few minutes. Given how both teams pride themselves on execution, being able to shot the ball an extra 10 times was vital in UCLA's win, especially given how absurdly hot Low and his teammates got at the end of the game.

Westbrook had another great game - 6-9 from the floor, 4 rebounds 4 assists, and absolutely abused Derrick Low multiple times with his crossover. However, he's getting a little careless with the ball. He has 10 turnovers in his last 2 games (5 apiece), after having only 7 turnovers in the previous FIVE games (just 1 for the entire Bay Area sweep). Granted, Wazzou's defense is very good. But UW's isn't all that great, and Stanford isn't exactly a poor defensive team. Russell is producing at an extremely high level, I'm just noting that - after a marked improvement in the TO department - he might be backsliding a tad.

Luc is really an enigma. At times he looks like the best guy on the floor. But when he settles for jumpers, it really throws UCLA's offense off. He was really the only Bruin that didn't shoot the ball very well. He's best at slashing, though WSU's defense really played off him to prevent that. This opened driving lanes for Darren and Russ, granted. And Luc also contributed with a pair of steals, 5 boards, and great defense on Cowgill and Weaver. But if he's shooting lots of jumpers, the offensive flow gets muddled.

Lastly, to give you an idea of how good UCLA's free throw shooting has been of late: UCLA shot 17-21 from the line today... and that made their team free throw percentage since the Texas game go DOWN. Including the UT game, UCLA had been 109-129 (84.5%). Today, they shot 81%. On the season, they're at 74% as a team, fairly good, and trending upwards. It's nice to be able to knock down free throws - even when you're ahead by 15 with a minute and a half left, you never know...

State of the Program - Basketball

So. Back again – once more, hopefully for longer than a couple days. Life intervenes. Let’s see if this’ll stick this time. Plenty has happened since I last posted, so let’s try and get up to speed from the point I left off (end of October).

Let’s start with the good news. And, where UCLA basketball is concerned, there’s plenty of news indeed, most of it good. The Bruins are the top-ranked team in college basketball, at least as far as the coaches are concerned, ahead of the North Carolina Tar Heels. UCLA remains #2 in the AP poll, behind UNC.

Though the Bruins have put in a number of victories against sub-par competition, they have a pair of solid non-conference wins already. Both came during the CBE Classic, held in Kansas City. In the CBE semi-final, the Bruins struggled in the first half before jumping to a 20-point lead in an eventual 12-point victory over a good Maryland team from the ACC. Following that, UCLA somehow managed a come-from-behind nailbiter against top-15 opponent Michigan State in the CBE finals.

All this success has come despite the absence of preseason All-American point guard Darren Collison, and 3-point specialist Michael Roll (not to mention sophomore forward James Keefe). The injury toll continues to rise, with F/C Alfred Aboya going down due to a fractured orbital bone during UCLA’s win over Yale. However, relief appears on the horizon. In addition to having the junior forward cleared to potentially play as soon as tonight’s game against George Washington, Collison appears to be nearing a return. Roll’s return date is still uncertain, though likely in the near future, while Keefe will be out until at least the start of conference play, if not longer.

And if there have been plenty of injuries, the silver lining is the increased minutes for many of UCLA’s younger talent, which could pay off handsomely down the road. The heavy workload and on-court success for top freshman recruit Kevin Love comes as no surprise, but several other UCLA reserves have received key minutes. Notably, sophomore point guard Russell Westbrook has offered solid minutes in replacing Collison, averaging over 12 points and 6 assists a game thus far.

The Bruins face a key test this week, with Texas, the #8 team in both polls, coming to Pauley on Sunday. Ken Pomeroy’s excellent writing has moved over to Basketball Prospectus, but his statistical wizardry can still be found at KenPom.com. And according to his tempo-free stats, Texas has been the most effective offensive team in the country so far, scoring over 1.3 points per possession (the Bruins score a little less than 1.1). Texas's Effective FG% is over 65% - for comparison, the Bruins are at 50%. A brief explanation of the stat can be found here. The Longhorns will be an excellent test for UCLA’s now-trademark defensive intensity, and should the Bruins prevail in that contest they will almost certainly enter conference play undefeated. And even with a loss, UCLA will begin the Pac-10 season as a heavy favorite, challenged only by Washington State. Because all the other major conference contenders suffered surprising upsets in the early going, the Pac-10 seems weaker than initially advertised. The UCLA Bruins, however, do not.

Roundball is upon us!

So this week the Coaches Poll came out for college basketball. The UCLA Bruins are ranked #2, a bare 5 points behind the North Carolina Tar Heels(739 to 734). The Bruins actually received more 1st-place votes than UNC (12 to 10), yet ended up behind them in the poll. Directly after UCLA, with 8 first place votes and 731 total poll points, are the Memphis Tigers. Following this top three, the coaches clearly believe a significant divide exists, as 4th-place Kansas received the only #1 vote not given to UCLA, UNC, or Memphis. After drops of 5 and 3 points going from 1-2 and 2-3, there is a 62 point fall-off to KU, and another 44 point drop to 5th-ranked Georgetown.

UCLA hopes that the arrival of much-touted freshman big Kevin Love can offset the loss of talented swingman Arron Afflalo, who was picked in the first round of the NBA Draft by the Detroit Pistons after leaving school a year early. As the Bruins return pretty much every impact player from last year's Final Four team other than Afflalo, the trade-off from small to big will hopefully allow the Bruins to continue playing at the same high level they have attained the past two seasons. But it won't be easy...

The Pac-10, at least if this particular preseason poll is to be believed, is by far the toughest conference in the country. 6 of the top 25 teams are found in the Pac, with Washington State (10), Oregon (13), Arizona (17), USC (18), and Stanford (21) all expected to be among the best in the nation alongside the Bruins. Among the traditional power conferences, the Big East has 5 teams named (out of 16 total teams), while the ACC has 3 (out of 12 total). The SEC, home of reigning champions Florida, has 3 teams as well, but interestingly, the Gators are not one of them. Furthermore, with the Pac-10's unusual true round-robin system, the Bruins will be forced to face each of the difficult opponents within the conference twice this year.

That having been said, UCLA's out-of-conference games are moderately tough at best. Davidson, Maryland, Texas, and a potential game against Michigan State in the CBE Classic's 'championship' game are probably the only real potential road blocks. The remaining games are, for the most part, a fairly fattening creampuff schedule with a heavy emphasis on home games as well. Aside from the CBE and the "neutral site" (read: Anaheim) Davidson game, UCLA only goes on the road once, to meet Michigan (I am so sick of John Beilein, he's like Billy Donovan but without the slick hair or immense amount of talent on the bench). Even so, if the Pac-10 ends up being even remotely close to as tough as it is predicted to be, the Bruins will have their hands full for the majority of the conference schedule anyway.

But as long as Kevin Love can avoid getting kicked during practice (Hat Tip: BBR), UCLA seems poised for another successful season with the potential for a deep tournament run.

One can only hope.