Recap: Duke at North Carolina

February 8, 2006

Duke 87 - North Carolina 83

PSAN-Related Player Ratings for Game

Explanation of PSAN-related Ratings

PSAN = Determines Player of the Game (does not account for quality of opponent or playing time)
cPSAN = Accounts for quality of opponent but not playing time
cPSAN = Accounts for quality of opponent and playing time

Player Performance Analysis:

I can just hear the skepticism bubbling about the ratings above.  Redick wasn't the player of the game??  Let me explain.

If you only look at tangible contributions ... that is, the point values associated with 2FG, 3FG, o-reb, ast, etc., then Redick made the biggest contribution.  However, the tangible contributions in this game added up to about a 23-point advantage for Duke.  Similarly, adding up the tangibles for UNC resulted in an advantage of 23 points for UNC!  What is going on?  Well, defense isn't captured in boxscore stats except for steals and blocks.  And as you can imagine, there is a LOT that goes into playing defense.  That means, there needs to be an adjustment for these intangibles.  In Duke's case, the adjustment needs to bring down their stats by about 19 points (because their tangibles added up to 19 more than the actual margin of the game).  In UNC's case, even more is deducted for intangibles, because they were on the losing end of the 4-point game.

Intangibles are divided according to playing time.  McRoberts did an excellent job of getting tangibles, and because he only played about half the game, his downward adjustment for the intangibles did not lower his rating nearly as much as Redick, who played almost the entire game.

So, it makes sense that Redick was not player of the game from a statistical standpoint, because he had an awful long time to make his contributions, and other than the scoring and 4 steals, he didn't a whole lot.

When you account for the fact that Duke was playing a good opponent though, Redick's contributions were the best.  In effect, it's like saying that Duke didn't win by 4 ... it won by more because UNC is a very good team.  It's equivalent to Duke beating an average team by almost 18 points.  So, in this analysis, Redick gets more points for having played most of the game than McRoberts does.  However, once you account for playing time, again McRoberts was the more efficient player.

On UNC's side, Hansbrough had the most contributions when you account for the fact that Duke is such a strong team.  But adjusting that for playing time still puts him behind a few other players in the cPSAN70 ratings.  In terms of "Player of the Game" for this game, without adjusting for Duke's strength or playing time ... Noel was the best player this game for the Tarheels.

It takes some time to understand the system, but in the end, you can use it to really glean some valuable information.

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