Post-game analysis from a Wisconsin Badgers loss to Purdue
The Wisconsin Badgers lost a shoot-out at Purdue on Sunday, coming out on the short end of the 91-80 score in the regular season finale that also closed out the Big ten conference season.
Related Story: Badgers Fall in Season Finale
The Badgers scored 1.19 points/possession, their 5th-best mark on the year. Unfortunately, Purdue scored 1.36 points/possession, which was their 4th best mark of the year.
I think we all have a sense that the Badgers’ offense has improved quite a bit, but is that really true?
Let’s turn to a chart of the Badger offense under Greg Gard (yes, I love charts).
This chart shows the games Gard has coached and how many points the Badgers scored per 100 possessions. Since Gard took over, he has only had one offensive performance that was substantially below the level that Bo Ryan established early in the year.
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And the best-fit line shows that the trend over the course of time is up, although the r-squared is a relatively low, .1121, which means that time explains only about 11% of the change in offensive efficiency under Gard.
Now, that we’ve established that the offense is, indeed, improved, let’s take a look at how that may have happened. I think that the answer is pretty clearly 3-point shooting.
When Gard took over, I took a look at what changes he made, and one of the biggest was to add Alex Illikainen and Jordan Hill to the rotation, while limiting the roles of Charlie Thomas and Khalil Iverson.
Illikainen (33.3%) and Hill (36.2%) each shoot over 33% while Thomas (30.8%) and Iverson (16.7%) shoot well below that, so it’s no surprise that the 3-point shooting has improved.
However, there is more too it than that. The Badgers have four of the top 25 snipers from beyond the arc:
- Bronson Koenig – 42.3% (9th) in conference
- Vitto Brown – 41.7% (11th)
- Zak Showalter – 39.2% (18th)
- Jordan Hill – 36.6% (25th)
That’s some good shooting and it is especially surprising from Brown and Showalter, who shot 0% and 14.3%, respectively, from deep, last season. In fact, Brown didn’t take a single shot outside the line.
But, the improvement isn’t just season-over-season. Koenig, Brown and Showalter have all improved greatly during conference play, which coincides almost exactly with Gard taking over coaching duties.
When we compare shooting during conference play against their overall marks, we see how much they (and another player) have improved. And, this improvement is understated, because the overall numbers include conference play.
- Koenig – 2.2 percentage point improvement
- Showalter – 2.4
- Brown – 4.4
- Hayes – 1.3
Overall, the Badgers are up 1.7 percentage points as a team. The team has also been taking more threes (up 3.4 percentage points, when looking at percentage of total shots).
Just taking these differences in 3-point shooting, the Big Ten Conference Badgers score about 1.3 points/game more than the overall Badger team.
For my more sabermetrically-inclined readers, this is the equivalent of raising a 111.6 Offensive Efficiency (the Badgers’ season efficiency) to 113.7, turning this team from the 46th best offense in the country to the 28th best, which is, interestingly, Michigan’s place in the rankings.
If you take that offensive efficiency and match it with the current defensive efficiency and assume that this is the true talent-level for the team, you can see that this much-improved shooting effectively vaults the Badgers from #26 in the Pomeroy rankings to #21, so, going forward, this team may be a tougher out in the tournament than most expect.
Next: Badgers NCAA Tournament Resume
You may have noticed that I’ve gone far afield from the game, itself. That’s because I can’t find much that is interesting in the data. As you can see in the charts, below, every player was absolutely terrible, defensively, and only Nigel Hayes made a significant, positive impact for the team. I prefer to look forward to tournament time.
The Badgers will look to improve their defense in the upcoming Big Ten Tournament while keeping their offensive attack and three-point shots at their current high level.