Do Players Improve Under Tubby Smith?

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scher215

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This is a question often talked about on this board with very little statistical back up for either side. I decided I'd provide a little statistical back up.

Admitidley, I assumed players overall did improve, but had no clue what the data would show. This is not a complicated or highly advanced statistical analysis, simply just plugging some stats into Excel and getting some results.

Is it perfect? No way. But it is something.

Feel free to offer any opninions or interpretations you may wish!

Here is a brief summary of what I did.

I started with 2007-2008, Tubby's first season, and gathered the stats of all players that were Fr, So, Jr, not including little used players like Travis Busch, Kevin Payton, and Jonathon Williams.

I then went to 2008-2009. Added the freshman/new players from that year, not including walk-ons or players who would never play. I recorded all of their stats. I did this for each season up to 2009-2010.

Then, I looked at the 2008-2009 stats again and recorded numbers for the players whom it was there last season or most recent full season with Tubby Smith and did that going forward as well.

I did NOT include this season as it is still in progress. Therefore you won't see this years or last years players included as they either don't have a full first season or a full second season to compare to.

Justin Cobbs only played one season so he is not included. The numbers are a little weird for Al and Devoe since they both had half seasons in there. Trevor was not included as he has only played one full season and then got hurt this season. Royce is also not included. Rodney's "final" season is his sophmore year as I didn't count his junior season. Take a look at the picture below and if there are any questions on what I did, please let me know.

Not sure what conclusions you can draw from this, but it is something. All stats (besides %) are per 40 minutes.

Improvement 2011-2012 (2).jpg
 

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Interesting analysis, kudos for doing some work to present this in an understandable and discussable format. It looks like players improved in areas besides FG%, FT%, rebounds, and steals. I think it would be interesting if there was some kind of conference average we could compare this to. There is obviously some improvement expected from experience and more practice time/training, so I would be curious to see how Tubby's players compared to players with other coaches in the conference.
 

bleedsmaroonandgold said:
Interesting analysis, kudos for doing some work to present this in an understandable and discussable format. It looks like players improved in areas besides FG%, FT%, rebounds, and steals. I think it would be interesting if there was some kind of conference average we could compare this to. There is obviously some improvement expected from experience and more practice time/training, so I would be curious to see how Tubby's players compared to players with other coaches in the conference.
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Provided players are not hiding in the line to avoid drills.
 


bleedsmaroonandgold said:
Interesting analysis, kudos for doing some work to present this in an understandable and discussable format. It looks like players improved in areas besides FG%, FT%, rebounds, and steals. I think it would be interesting if there was some kind of conference average we could compare this to. There is obviously some improvement expected from experience and more practice time/training, so I would be curious to see how Tubby's players compared to players with other coaches in the conference.
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I agree with you 110%.

I was wondering while I was doing this how it would compare to other Big10 schools.

One of the main arguments here has been that guys regress by playing for Tubby, which simply isn't true overall. Nor can all improvement of any player be credited to the coach. IMO, regardless of coach guys will improve over their years most of the time if they work hard. Due to, as you said, experience, practice, playing time. I am not trying to say look at what Tubby has/hasn't done. More so just to see what has happened with certain guys over time while being coached by Tubby Smith. My money would say you'd see the same types of changes under Monson as well. Guys just get better over time.

I will be really interested to see it after this year when I can include Rodney's strongest season, one of Ralph's weaker seasons, and Austin, Chip, Mav, etc.

Now that this is started, really wouldn't be a lot of work to keep up going forward.

The one thing I did like seeing was Damian Johnson. He improved the most over his time with Tubby and you could definitley see that on the court.
 


scher215 said:
This is a question often talked about on this board with very little statistical back up for either side. I decided I'd provide a little statistical back up.

Admitidley, I assumed players overall did improve, but had no clue what the data would show. This is not a complicated or highly advanced statistical analysis, simply just plugging some stats into Excel and getting some results.

Is it perfect? No way. But it is something.

Feel free to offer any opninions or interpretations you may wish!

Here is a brief summary of what I did.

I started with 2007-2008, Tubby's first season, and gathered the stats of all players that were Fr, So, Jr, not including little used players like Travis Busch, Kevin Payton, and Jonathon Williams.

I then went to 2008-2009. Added the freshman/new players from that year, not including walk-ons or players who would never play. I recorded all of their stats. I did this for each season up to 2009-2010.

Then, I looked at the 2008-2009 stats again and recorded numbers for the players whom it was there last season or most recent full season with Tubby Smith and did that going forward as well.

I did NOT include this season as it is still in progress. Therefore you won't see this years or last years players included as they either don't have a full first season or a full second season to compare to.

Justin Cobbs only played one season so he is not included. The numbers are a little weird for Al and Devoe since they both had half seasons in there. Trevor was not included as he has only played one full season and then got hurt this season. Royce is also not included. Rodney's "final" season is his sophmore year as I didn't count his junior season. Take a look at the picture below and if there are any questions on what I did, please let me know.

Not sure what conclusions you can draw from this, but it is something. All stats (besides %) are per 40 minutes.

View attachment 1458
Click to expand...

We all love stats, and they can be useful.But you just have to look at the players and ask yourself are they better after playing under him. And if you take away the usual maturity process and natural adjustment from acclmating to college, then for the large
majority of players that have played for Tubby, just don't seem to get better.
 


It's about relative improvement, a player can actually improve throughout his career in absolute statistics but be viewed on a non- statistical basis as regressing because of their relative improvement to others players on their team, players on other teams in the conference or other teams replacement of inferior players with superior ones (new recruits).
Without relative statistics on hand my hypothesis is that we have seen a lower relative statistical improvement than the conference norm, whether due to an individual players not increasing relative to conference foes or the replacement of transfers with inferior talent.
 

RS3 and Iverson. No sane person can honestly say they improved. Based on frosh potential, people on this board were predicting 1st team Big 10 by their Jr years. I thought they would be very good. Did not happen.
 



beavergopher said:
RS3 and Iverson. No sane person can honestly say they improved. Based on frosh potential, people on this board were predicting 1st team Big 10 by their Jr years. I thought they would be very good. Did not happen.
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Just because they aren't as good as people thought they would be doesn't mean they didn't improve.
 

Yeah, its tough to really know as there hasn't been a lot of seniors that had played under Tubby for several years.
- Westbrook and Johnson certainly improved throughout their careers
- Hoffarber improved in areas besides shooting. He played out of position as a senior
- Hard to really know about Nolen because he didn't play a lot his last two year.
- Sampson has not seen a lot of improvement
- There's no doubt Williams has improved a lot this year. You would think he would take it a step further next year.
 

goldengophers said:
It's about relative improvement, a player can actually improve throughout his career in absolute statistics but be viewed on a non- statistical basis as regressing because of their relative improvement to others players on their team, players on other teams in the conference or other teams replacement of inferior players with superior ones (new recruits).
Without relative statistics on hand my hypothesis is that we have seen a lower relative statistical improvement than the conference norm, whether due to an individual players not increasing relative to conference foes or the replacement of transfers with inferior talent.
Click to expand...

While the stats don't show relative improvement, I would say that as other teams improve their talent you assume competition also improves making an increase in numbers mean more.

However, it is difficult to compare competition through 4 years of a guys career or even through different parts of individual seasons.
 

I did quantify that statement with "sane." Tubby worshipers are exempt.
 





beavergopher said:
I did quantify that statement with "sane." Tubby worshipers are exempt.
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What qualifies as improvement to you then if not an improvement in statistics?

I think if we included Ralph's season this year he has not improved, but overall, if it isn't statistics what determines it? Is it just the expert eye test?
 

I like the attempt to compare all of this information. You must've had President's Day off. My opinion is that sabermetrics still do not outweigh the eye test, although they are nice to look at if you just can't decide. Perhaps you've actually come up with the formula for Moneyball of college hoops!
 

PavedWithGold said:
I like the attempt to compare all of this information. You must've had President's Day off. My opinion is that sabermetrics still do not outweigh the eye test, although they are nice to look at if you just can't decide. Perhaps you've actually come up with the formula for Moneyball of college hoops!
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The eye test is subjective though. Stats are not.

scher
Where did you get the stats from? I wanted to do something similar to this but I am getting slightly different numbers than you. I might have just made a slight mistake though.
 

zambam said:
The eye test is subjective though. Stats are not.
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True. But stats are not the end all be all. Statistically Julian Welch is one of the very best free throw shooters in the B1G. Do you want the ball inbounded to him at the end of the game with a lead?
 

PavedWithGold said:
True. But stats are not the end all be all. Statistically Julian Welch is one of the very best free throw shooters in the B1G. Do you want the ball inbounded to him at the end of the game with a lead?
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My point is there is no completely objective way to accurately determine improvement. There are many who say Ralph didn't improve from his Freshman year until now. I would say that he has. There is no way to tell who is right or wrong unless someone has every single game recorded from the past 4 years and we go back an look through them to see if Ralph is doing the same things exactly the same way and this still isn't completely accurate because the other players have improved as well.
 


zambam said:
The eye test is subjective though. Stats are not.

scher
Where did you get the stats from? I wanted to do something similar to this but I am getting slightly different numbers than you. I might have just made a slight mistake though.
Click to expand...
Gotta have both. Without the eye test (which is after all, why we watch the games) GopherHole would be administrating this forum on Excel...yawn.
 

Ridiculous stats. Ralph Sampson improved from his freshman year in 3 pt shooting from 0% to 19%? Points, rebounds, blocks and assists all depend on playing time. You can play more and not be better and obviously your stats will go up.
 

minngg said:
Ridiculous stats. Ralph Sampson improved from his freshman year in 3 pt shooting from 0% to 19%? Points, rebounds, blocks and assists all depend on playing time. You can play more and not be better and obviously your stats will go up.
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scher215 used stats per 40 minutes, not per game.
 

zambam said:
scher215 used stats per 40 minutes, not per game.
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Stats per minute is better but some players played very few minutes early in their career. I wish he would have posted minutes played. If you don't play nearly as many minutes the stats are not credible. I would say the stats look accurate for someone like DJ but wrong for players like Bostick and Rodney.
 

minngg said:
Stats per minute is better but some players played very few minutes early in their career. I wish he would have posted minutes played. If you don't play nearly as many minutes the stats are not credible. I would say the stats look accurate for someone like DJ but wrong for players like Bostick and Rodney.
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Alright, I'm doing one similar to this so I'll put that in as well.
Is there any other stat people think I should include that scher didn't?
 

minngg said:
Ridiculous stats. Ralph Sampson improved from his freshman year in 3 pt shooting from 0% to 19%? Points, rebounds, blocks and assists all depend on playing time. You can play more and not be better and obviously your stats will go up.
Click to expand...

Players may have improved over the years but minngg's posts haven't.
 

zambam said:
Just because they aren't as good as people thought they would be doesn't mean they didn't improve.
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In one of the other threads about this I compared their per 40 min stats and they both regressed. 7 ppg in 20 minutes isn't equal to 7 ppg in 28 minutes.
 


Another pathetic let's blame Tubby for the world falling apart thread.
 

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