By ADAM HERMANN
Philahoops Staff
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OFFENSE
(The offensive graph contains three components. Along the x-axis runs Scoring Efficiency, which measures how efficiently each player scored their respective points. Along the y-axis runs the percentage of their team’s points each player scored. And the size of the player’s bubble represents the number of minutes played. A perfect game would land a player in the upper right section of the graph.)
If you frequent these analysis pieces, you might notice something new: we have two graphs today. The one on the left looks familiar. It’s the offensive graph of Drexel’s offensive players versus Rutgers, and everything is as it should be. The one on the right — the yellow one — is new. It’s an offensive graph for the entire season.
Four games deep seemed like an acceptable time to introduce season-long analytics. This will be a good point of analysis as we progress because we can now compare players’ single-game performances to their season-long averages in a simplified visual manner.
SEASON ANALYSIS TO DATE
We’re going to step away from the typical shape of this article and talk about this team’s offense to date.
Looking at the season graph on the right, the center of the visual might look cluttered and unorganized. Drexel’s offense, however, has looked anything but. They still run an oft-frustrating handoff offensive scheme, but the Dragons’ scorers are executing with more-than-serviceable efficiency.
And the true beauty of Drexel’s offense, its depth, is shining bright. The reason that graph is so cluttered in the middle is because the Dragons’ scorers are playing balanced basketball. Frantz Massenat owned the first game versus UCLA. Chris Fouch owned the second and third games. Tavon Allen owned the win over Rutgers. Damion Lee has contributed an uneven but consistent 15 points each night.
Having four scorers who all score 18 percent or more of your points with 40 percent or better efficiency? That’s fantastic for a mid-major squad like Drexel. The efficiency needs improvement, but just having four different players contribute nearly 20 percent of your team’s offense — with the ability, on any given night, to explode for 30 percent — is a brilliant safety net.
If this trend continues, Drexel is an NCAA Tournament team. And a scary one.
Oh, and…
TAVON ALLEN IS OFFICIALLY ON FIRE
After Monday’s victory over Elon, I heavily praised Tavon Allen‘s performance and advocated for more playing time. I even asked Drexel head coach Bruiser Flint about his playing time. On Tuesday, Allen saw more playing time and capitalized in a big way.
As we can see in the offensive graph above, he struck a perfect balance between scoring efficiency (49%) and percentage of points scored (30%). He stood out from the pack with nine points in 75 seconds, and he stands out from the pack in the graph.
Allen is the reason the Dragons are going to Madison Square Garden, and if he keeps it up, Arizona will have to watch out on Wednesday.
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DEFENSE
(The defensive graph consists of two parts. Along the x-axis runs the percentage of the team’s minutes played, the dependent variable. Along the y-axis runs points allowed against, which shows how many points each player’s lineups allowed when they themselves were on the court. A perfect game would land a player in the bottom right section of the graph.)
SEASON ANALYSIS TO DATE
There isn’t too much surprising about the defensive trends in the season-long graph on the right. There seems to be a line of best fit forming among the players, an easily traceable line from Major Canady’s four minutes and seven points allowed per game to Frantz Massenat’s 35 minutes and 58 points allowed per game.
There are, however, a few anomalies:
MORE TAVON ALLEN? MORE TAVON ALLEN.
An intriguing shift versus the norm is Tavon Allen’s slight location underneath the line of best fit. It’s hard to make it out exactly, but his 1.61 points allowed per minute is third on the team, and just 0.01 behind Chris Fouch for second. Allen’s defense has been a much-maligned facet of his game since his arrival last season as a fixture in Bruiser Flint’s offense. But there has been a significant uptick in the sophomore’s defense, and the graph isn’t the only one picking up on this. His head coach noticed, too.
“I hate to say it to him because he will get big-headed, but he is actually trying to play defense, which is not his strong suit,” Flint said after the Dragons’ win over Rutgers Tuesday.
Flint is sharp, and he’s picking up on an encouraging trend. Allen’s game is operating at a different level this year in all facets.
RUFFIN CONTINUES TO BRUISE
Unsurprisingly, Dartaye Ruffin continues to excel as the Dragons’ best defender. When he’s on the floor, teams score just 1.48 points per minute. Statistically speaking, if Ruffin could play all 40 minutes each night, the Dragons would allow 7.1 points fewer than their current 66.3 points allowed per game.
Seven points can be the difference between a win and a loss, so making sure that his premier big man stays in the game as often as possible is something Flint needs to make sure he watches in the coming months.
Ruffin was the Dragons’ best defensive player among players who saw more than 20 minutes of game time versus the Scarlet Knights. It was an extremely encouraging 38 minutes from the senior forward; after Ruffin’s superb-but-sparse appearance versus Elon, I feared he might take a step back in terms of aggression level in order to avoid foul trouble. But he snagged seven defensive rebounds, held Kadeem Jack to four points below his season average, and stayed on the floor despite picking up four fouls.
This is a guard-oriented team, but Ruffin plays a key role in its success, and his presence on the floor for most of the game is vital.
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EFFECTIVE LINEUPS
(The only lineups that count towards the analysis are the ones run for a minute or longer; in theory, these are the ones the coaches truly want to run as units rather than short-term coaching strategies because of fouling or defensive sets at the ends of games.)
This first effective lineup table is for the Rutgers game. This is a different-looking table versus the Elon and Illinois State tables. The first two had eight and nine different lineups, respectively, while this one features just five effective lineups, or lineups that saw more than a minute of play time.
The lack of Chris Fouch, who saw just 19 minutes because of foul trouble, seemed like it would be a problem when he hit the bench less than three minutes into the game. But as we saw above, Tavon Allen stepped up in a big way, and as a result Allen is featured in the two most used lineups of the game.
Of course, the most effective of these five was the fourth-most used, featuring both Fouch and Allen, as well as Frantz Massenat, Dartaye Ruffin, and Rodney Williams. This lineup outscored the Scarlet Knights 14-8 in its 5:59 of play, and it’s a lineup I expect to see a lot of this Wednesday versus Arizona.
This effective lineup table, in keeping with this post’s theme, is for the entire season to date. The Dragons have used 16 different lineups for more than one minute at a time through four games. Eleven have seen two minutes or more of action. Only six have seen more than five minutes of action, and only four have seen double-digit minutes. Those top four lineups only use seven different players.
The takeaway from all that? The Drexel Dragons know their best players, and their best players are their starters and Tavon Allen.
The most used, and most effective, lineup that Bruiser Flint has employed is — surprise — the starting lineup of Massenat, Fouch, Lee, Abif, and Ruffin. Just 1:13 behind that lineup — and the highest-scoring lineup of the season so far — is the starting lineup with Tavon Allen subbed in for Damion Lee. The defense suffers but the offense thrives when this lineup is on the floor.
My personal favorite lineup is that of Ruffin, Massenat, Fouch, Allen, and Rodney Williams, which has gone 20-11 in nearly nine minutes of action. He’s still developing, but Williams’ offensive upside is definitely there, and he needs to see more playing time with playmakers like Massenat, Fouch, and Allen. When defenses key in on the guard play on lineups like these, the floor will open up for Williams to use his powerful post moves.
Williams is the future of Drexel’s big men, and if he can find an offensive game as the season continues it’ll be a boon both for postseason play and for the next three years of Drexel basketball.
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