Another game for Wilcher watching from the end of the bench, and this.....

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I just read he signed a NIL Deal with Addidas at Overtime Elite!!!!🤔🤔 Any thoughts???

Discussion
After losing 3 of their last 5 games, the Heels returned to face Virginia Tech, a team that is dangerous in their place, but not so great on the road. The Heels came away with a 15 point win mainly on offensive play.

UNC scored an outstanding 1.10 points per possession mainly due to a combination of good shooting all around and taking care of the ball. UNC turned if over on 10% of their possessions, which ranks as the 115th best performance in the last 1016 games. It was the 4th time this season the team has scored at least 1.10 points per possession.

UNC rebounded the ball well, getting a 5-possession advantage over the Hokies.

Defensively it was not a good day. Virginia Tech ended the game with 0.99 points per possession and just 7% Loss of Ball. It was the 28th lowest %LOB by an opponent in the last 1016 games, and the problem of not forcing turnovers continues to keep this team from greatness. This was a blowout with good defensive pressure, and we just aren't seeing it from this team.

Next up is at Virginia. This is a team that is holding teams to a nation-low 0.806 points per possession. Only Iowa St., Merrimack, Rutgers, Saint Mary's, McNeese, and Houston are playing better defense. As well, UVA only averages 141.7 possessions per game, the slowest in the nation by almost 4 possessions per game.

UNC is averaging 0.978 points per possession, so even splitting the difference between its average and UVA opponents' averages, we should expect to see UNC score 0.8965 points per possession, at UVA's tempo, resulting in 64 UNC points. That will be a culture shock to this team, so they have to focus on defense this week.

UVA doesn't rebound the ball well, and that will likely be a key statistic to watch in this game.

...and what an unholy crock of crap that was.

There were some otherwise interesting notes to comment on amid the crap, so I'll start there:

- JWash played REALLY well when Mando got a phantom second foul, which was especially noteworthy given Cuse's... um "physical" play. I thought he could've helped us in the second half too.

- We had to overcome self-inflicted setbacks. First, there were spells of too much dribbling in Zone-O, and in the first half Ingram reverted to the bad habit of dribbling in transition into a post-up that resulted in a turnover. He did correct that in the second by giving the rock up to EC and the better result ensued.

- second, we just CANNOT afford to miss those gimme shots vs their Zone. We missed EASY teardrops in the paint --- Eliot, Ryan, Seth, Ingram all short-armed easy ones, and Mando blew some finishes at the rim, and Lordy at the wide-open 3s.

- On the positive front, I had no issue with effort. Great hustle plays by Ingram and Ryan, but geez Cormac, take care of the damn rock.

- the wrinkle of putting EC at the chaser dealing outta the pivot was a brilliant way to negate their length advantage in their Zone, and was a thing of beauty. Just wish we could've knocked down more of the wide-open looks it created.

- They shot out of their friggin minds, and not easy shots for the most part --- OK, that happens, but that banked heave was just crap of the sort that affected the game

Speaking of crap:
- When you see Jamie Luckie show up at a Carolina game, it's gonna be a bad night, and it was catching onto the whole damn crew. Moment: early second half in transition, their guy hits EC with a damned karate thrust to the nose with no play on the ball whatsoever, and not even a damned review??? The zebras flat lost control of the game and it fueled the mayhem where Cuse fouled at will while we can't sniff the bonus. Speaking of moments, a game-changer in a 2 point game, we get a stop with perfect defense, ready to get in transition and Luckie friggin INVENTS a call on Cadeau that wasn't even nearly a foul anywhere but in his wildest imagination. How that lazy incompetent f*** is still allowed to waddle up and down college courts is beyond me.


Anyway, I knew Cuse would be salty after what we did to them in Chapel Hill, but everything had to go their way even at home to have a chance, and unfortunately much of that was out of our control. Nonetheless, gotta suck it up and play well enough the rest of the way to not let those factors influence games...

I acquired all of the Division I team data since 2002, and from that we can observe trends and data relationships in the data. This is a multipart series exploring some of the most interesting facets of that data.

Wrapping up the discussion of field goal shooting, we'll tackle Effective Field Goal Percentage (eFG%). This stat weighs 3-point shooting so that the value of the shot is considered in the percentage. The calculation for this stat is:

eFG% = (FGM + (0.5 * 3FGM)) / FGA

FGMs and FGAs includes 3-pointers, but we add in 50% more for the 3FGM's since that is how they are scored. The problem with this equation is that it is possible to get a result higher than 100%. Nevertheless, it still is more popular these days than overall field goal percentage in measuring a team's potency from shooting.



The graph shows the national average in grey, the average for NCAA Tournament teams in green, and UNC's average in blue.

From this we see that national eFG% has essentially hovered in the 50% range for the past 23 seasons, with a slight elevation in 2016. The standard deviation is 3 percentage points, so we see a wide variation among college basketball in this stat.

When we look at tournament teams, we see a much more erratic pattern, just as we saw with 3-point shooting in Part 4. Tournament teams did not follow the national average very closely at all up to 2015. It appears, though, that tournament teams have settled into having eFG percentages that are roughly 2.0 percentage points higher than the national average.

UNC's eFG% history has been erratic, mainly from its erratic 3-point shooting history. The current team, at 51.5%, appears to be exceeding the national average (51.0%) by two hairs, but likely trails the anticipated tournament level by probably 1.5 percentage points.

How useful is Effective Field Goal Percentage? It correlates with Winning Percentage more than most stats. On a scale of 0.0 to 1.0, it has a 0.602 correlation factor. Given its attempt to properly include 3-point shooting, however, eFG actually has a lower correlation with Winning Percentage than plain old Field Goal Percentage. FG% is the king of all commonly discussed stats with a factor of 0.625. The reason eFG% is worse is that is that 3-point shooting percentage has a correlation factor of only 0.421. The extra weight of this mediocre stat is leading to unwarranted emphasis of eFG% in the basketball world. Stick with plain old FG%.

Next up: Free Throw Percentage

We have a big THI contingent here today. Jacob, Trey, Bryant and I are on press row, and Kevin shooting.