After chiming in on Doug's thread I was wondering about the current point guard situation. How much will having slightly improved point guard play help Illinois chances next year? How much did the status quo of Tate and Lewis actually hurt them this year?
Before I start, win shares will make up the statistics of this post. Win shares take into account the proportion of minutes played by a player and their contribution to the team's performance. This is good because if a player doesn't play a lot of minutes, they won't have many win shares, while they could still have good efficiency numbers. Additionally, a team performing badly means a player on a bad team is essentially automatically considered bad by the win share metric when compared to players on other, better performing teams, which I think is valuable.
Illinois didn't win much, so its players will have relatively lower win shares. However, I will also provide these stats as a proportion of the team's overall win shares to get a picture of their contribution to the team relative to everyone else on the team, and we'll compare that to other Big Ten teams.'
Note: Win shares have nothing to do with the amount of games a team actually won, but rather is based off of the offensive/defensive production of the players (taking pace into account for offense) and comparing it to NCAA averages. In the end, win share statistics added up across a team generally bring you very close to the team's actual number of wins and losses, with an error margin low enough to make the statistic valuable and relevant.
Takeaways:
TLDR: Illinois had by far the worst point guard play in the conference this year in terms of offensive winshare contribution. Even bad Big Ten teams massively outperformed Illinois at the point guard position, making you wonder just how f***ing terrible and inept Groce and our point guard recruiting has been. This massive hole in the lineup was not just causing Illinois to play 4v5 offensively most of the year, but was also at a key position of leadership on the floor and at the position responsible for initiating offense. You want a hole in your lineup to be anywhere but point guard. Almost anything will be an improvement to Tate and Lewis, and should lead to a big improvement in Illinois's offensive numbers.
Before I start, win shares will make up the statistics of this post. Win shares take into account the proportion of minutes played by a player and their contribution to the team's performance. This is good because if a player doesn't play a lot of minutes, they won't have many win shares, while they could still have good efficiency numbers. Additionally, a team performing badly means a player on a bad team is essentially automatically considered bad by the win share metric when compared to players on other, better performing teams, which I think is valuable.
Illinois didn't win much, so its players will have relatively lower win shares. However, I will also provide these stats as a proportion of the team's overall win shares to get a picture of their contribution to the team relative to everyone else on the team, and we'll compare that to other Big Ten teams.'
Note: Win shares have nothing to do with the amount of games a team actually won, but rather is based off of the offensive/defensive production of the players (taking pace into account for offense) and comparing it to NCAA averages. In the end, win share statistics added up across a team generally bring you very close to the team's actual number of wins and losses, with an error margin low enough to make the statistic valuable and relevant.
- Lewis and Tate combined for 0.3 offensive win shares (OWS), lower than any single starting point guard in the Big Ten.
- For reference: Glynn Watson (NEB - FR) had 0.8 OWS. PJ Thompson (PUR - SO) had 2.1 WS. Corey Sanders (RUT - FR) had 0.8 OWS. Nate Mason (MINN - SO) had 1.4 OWS. Shep Garner (PSU - SO) had 2.0 OWS. Derrick Walton (UM - JR) had an OWS of 2.1. Jaquan Lyle (tOSU - FR) had an OWS of 0.7. Yogi Ferrell (IU - SR) had an OWS of 4.5. Finally, Anthony Clemmons (IOWA - SR) had an OWS of 1.2.
- Lewis and Tate combined posted a 3.4% contribution to Illinois's entire OWS. (0.3/8.7)
- PJ Thompson (PUR)'s contribution to Purdue's total OWS was 14%. (2.1/15)
- Glynn Watson (NEB)'s contribution to Nebraska's total OWS was 7.5%. (0.8/10.6). The funny thing is Glynn Watson really wasn't even that good -- he shot 27% from three and 39% overall yet was far more impactful on both ends of the floor than Illinois's point guard duo.
- Corey Sanders (RUT)'s contribution to Rutgers total OWS was 36.4%. (0.8/2.2) - This goes to show you that Rutgers was epically terrible at other positions on the floor, and probably had the worst performance at those positions in the conference. To no one's surprise, they finished last in the conference.
- Nate Mason (MINN)'s contribution to Minnesota's total OWS was 29.2% (1.4/4.8) - Same issues as Rutgers. Minnesota/Rutgers fans could probably make this same thread about other positions on the floor holding them back as I am here about Illinois and their point guards.
- Shep Garner (PSU)'s contribution to PSU's total OWS was 34% (2.0/5.9). Same story. He was their best player by far. A specific example with a PSU player is that Isaiah Washington (FR) played 12.6 minutes per game for PSU this season and ended up with an OWS of -0.4. This is an example of a terrible offensive player getting way too many minutes and hurting his team while he's on the floor. For reference sake, Alex Austin played 9.8 minutes per game for Illinois and posted an OWS of 0.1 and our fanbase was irate. Imagine how PSU fans must have felt with that kid on the floor. Washington has 0.5 TWS lower than Alex Austin. Put that into perspective: If PSU was playing Austin instead of Washington, statistics give them a good chance of winning another conference game and finishing 8-10 vs. 7-11.
- Derrick Walton (UM)'s contribution to UM's total OWS was 14.4% (2.1/14.6).
- Jaquan Lyle (tOSU)'s contribution to tOSU's total OWS was 8.8% (0.7/8). Lyle's impact was actually much greater on the defensive end of the floor, where he posted 14% of his team's defensive win shares.
- Yogi Ferrell (IU)'s contribution to Indiana's total OWS was 25.4% (4.5/17.7).
- Anthony Clemmons (IOWA)'s contribution to Iowa's total OWS was 9.2% (1.2/13).
Takeaways:
- First, many lower-half teams in the B10 actually had really good lead guards, but were terrible everywhere else. This is true for PSU, Minnesota, Rutgers, and Northwestern. It's essentially worthless to compare Illinois with those teams, because Illinois had the reverse problem: good on the wings (average bigs), but terrible at point guard. However, this does still show you how truly pathetic our point guard recruiting had become if literally every dumpster tier Big Ten team could field a point guard that more than doubled the offensive contribution of Illinois's point guard tandem.
- With win shares, you cannot simply put someone such as Derrick Walton and his 2.1 OWS onto Illinois and say Illinois would have won 1.8 more games (2.1-0.3). This is why the proportion is important in order to get a picture of how much the point guards were actually contributing offensively. Illinois playing with better point guards likely would have increased the offensive efficiencies of its other players as well, leading to more win shares for everyone.
- I think the best comparison for Illinois is to Iowa -- Iowa had two other stud offensive players and a point guard whose job it was to get them the ball and make threes. Clemmons didn't shoot the ball anywhere near as well this year as he had in previous years, and yet just being literally an average player in terms of winshares (he is right at 0.1 TWS/40 minutes, which is supposedly an "average player") still gave him twice the TWS impact of Illinois's two point guards combined.
- Looking to next year, if Lucas can post at minimum Glynn Watson-level numbers, Illinois is going to improve quite a bit from that alone. Illinois mirrors Nebraska in tons of statistics (including conf Wins and Losses) yet had much worse balance in their lineups due to the point guard situation. The hope is that having a competent point guard could help other players on the floor execute better.
TLDR: Illinois had by far the worst point guard play in the conference this year in terms of offensive winshare contribution. Even bad Big Ten teams massively outperformed Illinois at the point guard position, making you wonder just how f***ing terrible and inept Groce and our point guard recruiting has been. This massive hole in the lineup was not just causing Illinois to play 4v5 offensively most of the year, but was also at a key position of leadership on the floor and at the position responsible for initiating offense. You want a hole in your lineup to be anywhere but point guard. Almost anything will be an improvement to Tate and Lewis, and should lead to a big improvement in Illinois's offensive numbers.
