It Starts Here with Defense

 It is almost time for Missouri High School basketball season and there will be a lot of posturing with pre-season polls.  I spent a couple of years working on ways to predict the record for boys' and girls' teams based on returning scoring, returning VPS (Value Play System ratings), and point differential.  

The long and short of it was that the final record for a team at the end of the season was explained by other factors.  Return scoring explained about 7% of the final record, and VPS for returning players explained about 40% of the final record.  The best prediction of the final record boiled down to point differential for the actual season, unfortunately, you don't know the team's point differential until they have played the games.

But what is point differential anyway?  Well, it is points scored minus points given up.  The more points you score or the fewer points you give up, the more likely you are to win games.  But it starts with Defense.  You may not always score but you can find ways to prevent the other team from scoring. 

Why start the season blog talking about Defense?  Because players don't practice defense in the gym in their free time.  They are shooting threes and working on their dunk.  And what do coaches worry the most about?  Defense.  Are their players going to work well together to shut down a team?  Will they recognize the screens and defend properly?  Help defense, also known as help side defense, is a basketball defensive tactic, primarily used within man-to-man defense, in which off-ball defenders will support the on-ball defender to ultimately limit or prevent potential scoring opportunities of the offensive team.  Coaches don't spend a lot of time trying to teach shooting techniques.  Instead, they are focused in the early training to get the defense down because defense wins games.

So I spent a few days working through some old statistics and updating it for this past season.  I am going to start with an analysis of points allowed, then talk in a later blog about point differential and Pythagorean Winning percentage, the best predictor of the team's won-lost record.  

So if you are a stats geek, stay tuned.  If you are not into stats, at least take away the thought that you, as a player, or you, as a parent of a player, should be putting as much emphasis on the defensive end as you put on every shot you take or basket you make.  A steal, a rebound, a block, a deflection, a forced turnover, are just as important as a three-point basket.  Stop the possession and get the ball back.

I analyzed about 150 boys' teams from last year.  I took the top ten or twelve class one, two and three teams, a few more class four teams, and quite a few class five and six teams.  I wasn't just looking for good teams.  I included some teams that weren't very successful too.  There are probably more St. Louis teams in the mix, good and bad.  There may be some better defensive teams that I just didn't look close enough for but I was looking at defensive statistics that correlate with winning.

So who had the best defensive team last year?  It was almost a toss-up between Eureka, Chadwick, and Hartville.  From 2013 to 2018, Chadwick gave up 65 points a game and had a record of 28-117.  In the past three years, Chadwick has given up 48, 42, and 39 points per game and had a record of 66-15 to show for it.  

Hartville has been stingy on defense for years and so has Eureka.  Coach Austin Kirby and his assistant HC Rick Kirby (I have heard they are related) put a lot of emphasis on the big D.  I think Father Rick wakes up at night screaming "Help side!  Help side".  You earn PT by playing the defensive side.  You earn bench time when you don't play well on the defensive side.  Eureka wasn't all that good on the offensive side last year, losing one game 24-15, but they held opponents to 39 points a game which sounds more like a 1923 team statistic rather than a 2023 statistic.  If they had shot more than 28% from three, they might have won 20 plus games but they wouldn't have won 17 without the big D effort. When the ball isn't dropping through the net, the defense will still keep you in the game.

Here are the teams ranked by points allowed, from least to most.  As you go down the list, you see the won-lost records going underwater.  Plain and simple, D wins games and leads to winning records.  If your team did better than 39 points or less per game, let me know and I will add you to the top of the list.

 

So how much of the team's season record is related to points allowed?  About 50% of the record is explained by points allowed.  If you plot points allowed per game vs. winning percentage, it looks like this.  If you give up 55 points a game, you are likely to have a 50% winning percentage.

So, players, you have three weeks to get ready for tryouts.  

You have been doing the fun stuff.... shooting, dribbling, dunking.  

Now's the time to add some footwork and quickness drills.  Basic But Effective Basketball Defense Drills - stack  

Get to work.  

Defense wins games.  And your defense will land you on the team.

Next blogs up.  We will talk about Point differential, Pythagorean Winning percentage, and pre-season team ratings.