ORtg, DRtg - Do These Numbers Tell Us Anything About the Upcoming Season?

[What Would Jesus Do?]

ORtg and DRtg make my head hurt, but I keep seeing them so I guess they must have value. Maybe someone here can explain them. There are formulae for calculating them, of course - but that's the part that makes my head hurt.

On sports-reference.com they define them this way. Which seems pretty straight-forward.

ORtg = estimated points produced per 100 possessions (higher is better)
DRtg = estimated points allowed per 100 possessions (lower is better)

So that got me wondering how our new guys compare on these measures with the folks they are replacing. Numbers below are for last season.

Player	ORtg	DRtg
Caleb Love	100.4	104.2
RJ Davis	116.5	102.9
Cormac Ryan	107.3	110.6
Pete Nance	108.2	101.9
Jae'Lyn Withers	95.3	111.1
Leaky Black	112.8	99.5
Harrison Ingram	107.4	102.1
Puff Johnson	113.3	103.0
Paxson Wojcik	113.9	98.5
D'Marco Dunn	109.6	105.1
Tyler Nickel	122.9	106.1
Justin McCoy	125.0	101.1
Dontrez Styles	92.7	105.4

 

[imajericho]

According to that Withers is terrible and Ryan can't defend.

Withers played for an all time bad UL team though.

 

[What Would Jesus Do?]

According to that Withers is terrible and Ryan can't defend.

Withers played for an all time bad UL team though.

Yep. Whereas Wojcik looks pretty good. But played in a weak league, so who knows how that translates.

If you think of Cormac as Caleb's replacement, he's better on offense but worse on D.

 

[DaveChapelle]

Are these numbers strictly from last season, or are they career numbers?

Bc last season Withers was playing out of position at SG/SF bc Louisville only had like one guard on their roster. Keep in mind his best statistical season at Louisville was the year he played Center.

Ryan was playing for a coach who quit trying and on a team that quit too. He did far too much ball handling and shooting off the dribble. That's not his game. He is best as a catch-and-shoot guy.


We need to put these guys in a position to be successful. For Withers, he does two things well. He's good at catch-and-shoot 3s and defensive rebounding. He had a lot of unforced turnovers when he tried to dribble or create with the ball. So we need to play him exclusively at the 4 and 5 spots, ideally coming off the bench, and limit what we ask from him as a ball handler and a defender. Ryan is an OK secondary ball handler, a great catch-and-shoot guy, and a pesky defender against guys around his size. We need to stop him from shooting off the dribble, and limit the amount of time he plays out of position matched up against taller more athletic small forwards.




If we can add another true small forward or comboforward to the roster it would be a big help. Then we would be less likely to see Withers having to play any minutes at SF, and we could limit Ryan's minutes at SF too.

 

[What Would Jesus Do?]

Are these numbers strictly from last season, or are they career numbers?

Bc last season Withers was playing out of position at SG/SF bc Louisville only had like one guard on their roster. Keep in mind his best statistical season at Louisville was the year he played Center.

Ryan was playing for a coach who quit trying and on a team that quit too. He did far too much ball handling and shooting off the dribble. That's not his game. He is best as a catch-and-shoot guy.


We need to put these guys in a position to be successful. For Withers, he does two things well. He's good at catch-and-shoot 3s and defensive rebounding. He had a lot of unforced turnovers when he tried to dribble or create with the ball. So we need to play him exclusively at the 4 and 5 spots, ideally coming off the bench, and limit what we ask from him as a ball handler and a defender. Ryan is an OK secondary ball handler, a great catch-and-shoot guy, and a pesky defender against guys around his size. We need to stop him from shooting off the dribble, and limit the amount of time he plays out of position matched up against taller more athletic small forwards.




If we can add another true small forward or comboforward to the roster it would be a big help. Then we would be less likely to see Withers having to play any minutes at SF, and we could limit Ryan's minutes at SF too.

Until we know what we have with Washington and High, I'm more worried about the post, but otherwise I agree with your points.

At the risk of offending some of our superstitious posters, we can play the "what if <fill in the blank> gets injured or has a bad year...?" game.

I feel pretty good at every position except the post. We might be fine at center, too, but both Washington and High are still question marks. And even if they are pretty good this year, they aren't Armando.

If Withers or Ingram get hurt, we can go small. I don't want to go small, but we have the players to do that and still be pretty good.

We have good options in the back court if Cadeau or RJ get injured. Again, we won't be as good, but we'll still be a decent team.

It's true we almost beat Virginia without Armando last season. But Washington had a brilliant first half. When he couldn't keep it up in the 2nd half, we faded.

It's hard to imagine us being very good without Armando this season, whereas we could still compete well, I think, if we lost any other player.

 

[tarheel0910]

Hard to make a straight forward comparison, because most of these guys played in other conferences and played in a different system, with different players. Some players can adjust to all of those changes and some can't. A coach needs to also be able to use them the best way they can be used. A lot of question marks for this team.

 

[ChiShankCity]

I would need to find lineup data before I took too much stock into individual offensive and defensive ratings. I think we have a chance to be one of those teams that are pretty efficient offensively, but pretty average to bad defensively.

 

[TPFKAPFS]

First I obviously have no idea what those numbers mean but I totally disagree that we will be at best average on D! The problem is they attempt to be objective but end up being quite subjective! Ryan and Withers appear to be lesser defenders than they really are because many of their teammates played it poorly! Leaky's numbers would be even better if he wasn't constantly covering for a mate who sometimes lost focus on F!

 

[ChiShankCity]

First I obviously have no idea what those numbers mean but I totally disagree that we will be at best average on D! The problem is they attempt to be objective but end up being quite subjective! Ryan and Withers appear to be lesser defenders than they really are because many of their teammates played it poorly! Leaky's numbers would be even better if he wasn't constantly covering for a mate who sometimes lost focus on F!

A lack of a true rim defender may hurt us. Bacot isn’t really a rim defender. Also, if he has to play 32+ minutes per game and Washington isn’t solid, then Bacot will probably have to protect his fouls.

I don’t think RJ or Ingram are “guard your yard” type players either.

But, if we’re a lot better offensively, that should naturally help our defense so maybe my expectations should be higher. Need to see it though.

 

[Ozheelfan]

I plan to ignore all numbers, projections and prognostications…. I’ll turn on to watch the games and if it’s good I’ll keep watching… if it’s a complete f*#k up like last year I’ll turn off and give my kids some attention.

 

[What Would Jesus Do?]

I plan to ignore all numbers, projections and prognostications…. I’ll turn on to watch the games and if it’s good I’ll keep watching… if it’s a complete f*#k up like last year I’ll turn off and give my kids some attention.

Priorities!

 

[TPFKAPFS]

Absolutely no reason to expect Bacot to be our only 5. One of Washington, High, or Withers will develop into a quality backup. We have already seen: Washington show promise as a quality 5 for one special half; High show up and play pretty well against grown men; and Withers play 5 against ACC comp! If two of them step up, our Big rotation between 4 & 5 will be a serious plus! Our team has the capacity to be an order of magnitude better on O and to play at a much quicker pace. Added to our quality depth, this is a formula for our O to really subsidize the D! RJ suffers from one thing he can't fix, size. He has gotten better each year at the intangibles of D and I expect another jump. Ingram has all the tools to be a good defender and simply needs the motivation and system to cover his slightly heavy feet!

 

[DSouthr]

First, these rating numbers mean nothing to me because the situations they all played in are just so different. How a guy like Ingram for example will play this coming season for us is not going to be reflected in numbers he earned last season playing with completely different team mates in a completely different approach. Ingram will go for example, most likely anyway, from 2nd option on a bad Stanford team to 4th or 5th option for us next season among our starters, meaning cleaner looks than he had last season.

Players are different stages of development than they were last season, all should be able to bring at least something more than they did last season via individual development, maybe a guy like Withers breaks out, maybe Jalen breaks out, they could be major game changers that based on last season you may not expect.

As they say in the stock world, past earning do not reflect future results... I can think we are primed to be very very good this season and I do but it is speculation. Did any of us believe UNC was not going to even be in the last NCAAT after starting the season pre-season #1 in he nation and bringing back 4 of the 5 starters that played in the natty game the season before?