Changing with the Times
The Czar's 15th season of games here in cyberspace launches Thursday with the 2021-22 season opener. As with anything over a long period of time, it takes on a life of its own and evolves. Last year brought a ton more video and that's not going away. While I'm hopeful that we'll be able to spend much more time in the gym this season, video expands the amount of teams and games that can be seen. That's all for the better.
Video is a beautiful thing as you can go back and rewind to see replays and/or to get accurate stats amongst other things. All sports have seen analytics explode over recent years. Its also no secret that I enjoy the number crunching. So its a very natural area for me to dive into in this forum. I've taken a stab at some of those stats with 3 different Four Factors studies over the years. The next progression, with the help of video, was writing up Four Factors data on a game by game basis that you saw last season.
Therefore, its only fitting in this milestone season 15 that there's another evolution. This year I've taken that stats package and put it in the weight room for the entire offseason. So after all of that number crunching, the time is now.
I now present ...Czar Insights!
Visual Game Summary
Czar Insights is my new and expanded visual game summary. I had 2 main ideas when putting this together. The first idea is to be visual. Too often stats are just listing a bunch of numbers and it can hard to see context and relationships between data. I've attempted to put data that can be compared right next to each other for that reason. Color coding and graphs make it easier to draw those conclusions while still showing the meaningful numbers. Many of the display ideas are incorporated from college and/or NBA locations.
The second idea was to be concise. The balance between displaying too much and too little is always difficult to determine. I tried to keep this in a 1 page like format for simpler viewing. At the same time, I wanted to display as much as possible without there being so much clutter that it took away from the analysis. I think this draws that balance of having everything displayed be valuable but yet easy to find and use.
Yes there are no new fancy stats like DARKO or RAPTOR here. I did this for a couple of D3 games this month and you can find all the same data online. But that isn't the point. The idea is to supplement the basic box score with deeper insights in a concise and consolidated visual format for the high school level. I
don't know of any other high school writing that provides this level of
stats detail or a visual. Look for this on most of the games I write about this season. This will give a deeper and easier view into the different team factors that played into the outcome of the game. For reference, I've included the Czar Insights for each the class AAAA state quarterfinals from the 2020-21 season. Click on the images below to see a bigger picture. Let's breakdown each of the 6 sections displayed.
Breakdown
Section 1: Four Factors
This is the standard Four Factors data that I tracked last season. The visual has been updated from the chart used last season. If you're not already familiar with the Four Factors, you can read this. Team colors and showing the actual value are used for easier viewing.
Section 2: More Factors
Most shooting values I use are in terms of Effective Field Goal Percentage. That shows the impact of 3s. But there's a place for old fashioned Field Goal Percentage so I show that first. The difference between EFG% and FG% is that EFG% gives extra credit for 3s since a make is worth more. Neither takes into account free throws TS% is True Shooting Percentage which does take into account free throws. This is a newer wave shooting metric.
AST% is the percentage of made shots that were assisted. This can be an indicator of ball movement which can lead to better shots and therefore a high shooting percentage.
STL% is the percentage of possessions where the team got a steal. Note this differs from TO% in the Four Factors because not every turnover is a steal. Steals are the turnovers that lead to easy points though.
Section 3: Scoring Summary
This section tracks some commonly used breakdowns of scoring. Unlike the first 2 sections which are all percentages, this section and the next section are all raw totals.
2nd Chance is 2nd chance points. These are points that come after an offensive rebound. These are especially demoralizing points. A low number here but a high ORB% shows a lack of conversion of these opportunities.
Pts Off TO is Points Off Turnovers. These are points that come on the possession after an opponents turnover. It doesn't necessarily have to be a live ball turnover or a turnover that turned directly into points. Ex: Team throws the ball out of bounds, set play on the other end for a bucket. Those count as points off turnover. I'm not a fan of that definition but that's how its used so I'll use it here for consistency
Pts in Paint is Points in the Paint. These are baskets that are scored in the Paint area as defined by the shot chart (see below). This means it doesn't include the entire paint like the normal stat does. I refuse to count floaters from just inside the FT line as points in the paint. By definition, it also doesn't count any free throws taken if you're fouled on a shot in the paint. Theory says more points in the paint leads to more wins, but NBA math has actually shown this to not be true.
Bench Points. These are the points scored by any player who didn't start the game. Can be an indicator of a team having better depth than their opponent.
A good example of meaning in this section is the Maple Grove vs Champlin Park game. Champlin Park winning Points off Turnovers and 2nd Chance points helped keep them close despite shooting 3-30 from the 3 point line.
Section 4: Hustle Board
The intent of this section is to help measure some of the intangibles that don't appear in a basic box score. There are 4 basic stats here. Steals, Blocks and Deflections are self-explanatory. Charges is the number of charges taken. This chart stacks them all together to better show the cumulative effect. See Wayzata's dominance of Duluth East in this area.
Section 5: Game Flow
When did it all go sideways? That question gets answered here. This chart is actually 2 charts in 1. It combines 2 of the game flows that I've seen presented online. The chart legend shows the Points Per Possession (PPP) metric for each team. PPP is a great overview metric for offensive efficiency as turnovers, free throws and field goal percentage all impact that value. 1 point per possession is an easy number to remember as a general benchmark for good or bad. It also applies to defensive efficiency as a low opponent PPP often shows quality defense.
The 1st chart is the line graph. This shows the total points at that number of possessions into the game. There are also vertical comments that are added in for pointing out specific points on the clock in the game such as halftime. This is a very basic chart showing the progression of a team scoring over the course of the game.
The 2nd chart is the filled-in areas along the horizontal axis at the 0 points marker. I like to call it the Momentum Tracker. Basically its a map of what the lead was at each point in the game. This chart maps difference in the score per possession from the perspective of the winning team. That way the winning team value always appears on top at the end of the game. I think its a tremendous visual for showing the momentum swings in a game and exactly when they happened. Yes, that data can be gleaned from the line graph, but I feel it really stands out here and was therefore useful to include. A big slope in that section demonstrates a big run.
The Duluth East vs Wayzata game demonstrates this very well. Duluth East had an 11 point lead at possession 29 so you see a large downward red area. After that, at possessions 40 to 45 you see the graph has flipped to a 8 point Wayzata lead and a large blue area. That shift was a 23-4 Wayzata run. That was after having only 1 lead of 2 points in the 1st half as shown just before possession 15. You also see that by the upper lines crossing over and separating. See also the end of the CDH vs Rosemount game where Rosemount lost a late lead.
Section 6: Shot Chart
Its no secret that I'm huge believer in shooting being the main factor in winning. Coaches use shot charts as their way of viewing shot data. Therefore having this section was mandatory. The upper half of the court is for home team. The bottom half of the court is for the away team. This shot chart is broken down into 13 bubbles for each team. That includes 10 shot regions, free throws and 2 more bubbles to summarize. Here's how the 10 shot regions are defined. 5 of them are for 3 point shots and the other 5 are for 2 point shots.
- Corner 3s (left and right): These are 3s taken below the 2nd FT marker.
- Wing 3s (left and right): These are 3s taken above the 2nd FT marker and outside the NBA lane lines.
- Top 3s: These are 3s taken from between the NBA lane lines.
- Baseline 2s (left and right): These are 2s taken from outside the NBA lane lines and below the 2nd FT marker.
- Wing 2s (left and right): These are 2s taken from the wedge shaped area defined by the 3 point line, line above the 2nd marker and divided in half by the mid-line.
- Paint 2s: These are 2s taken inside the NBA lane lines and below the 2nd FT marker.
Each of the 11 individual shot bubbles is generally located in the spot on the court that it describes. Then there are the 2 summary bubbles at halfcourt for each team. These bubbles combine the values for all of the 2s and 3s taken. Idea behind this format is to not only distinguish between 2s and 3s but also to be able to split out 2s that are high-quality via attacking the rim vs the dreaded by analytics midrange 2. On this chart, that would be the paint 2s vs all other 2s. It also provides the detail and visual of where exactly where a team was making shots from.
Inside each bubble, there's the following data.
- EFG%: The Effective Field Goal Percentage on the shots taken from that region.
- %ATT: The percentage of the total shots that were taken from that region.
- AST%: The percentage of made field goals from that region that were assisted.
- BLK%: The percentage of shots taken from that region that were blocked.
The bubbles are color coded based on the EFG% for shots in that area. This allows a quick glance to see where a team shot the ball well from and where they didn't. The standard thresholds are set to <40% for Red (bad, stop that), >=50% for Green (good, keep doing that) and Yellow for inbetween (be careful). If a team didn't take a shot from a particular region the bubble is removed from the display. You'll see that on the Shakopee shot chart where they didn't take a midrange 2.
A couple of slight color threshold modifications for the chart. Free Throws use 60% and 70%. Paint shots use 50% and 60%. The 2 point overall bubble uses the paint values to help generate what the overall EFG color threshold for that bubble should be. So that's why you may see overall 2 point shots over 50% but not colored green because most of those shots were in the paint.
So there it is, click on any of the images below to expand it. I hope it adds value to what is presented for each game. Any feedback you have is welcome.
Czar Insights for 2021 Class AAAA State Quarterfinals
