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Best coaches at building elite offenses

Eight Legger

Eight Legger

Spider's Club
May 27, 2003
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Sports Illustrated did an interesting statistical analysis of the 90 coaches in top-9 leagues who have been in their current jobs for at least 4 years. It broke things down statistically into 5 categories and then totaled up the scores for each coach, as things related to creating an "elite" offense.

Mooney ranked 52 of 90 and got his highest score in the "in-season usage/optimal development" category. He got his lowest scores in recruiting instant-impact talent and recruiting future talent (not surprisingly). Interesting read. Scroll to the bottom of the link to see the entire list.

http://www.si.com/college-basketbal...es-mike-krzyzewski-roy-williams-john-calipari
 
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Eight Legger said:
Sports Illustrated did an interesting statistical analysis of the 90 coaches in top-9 leagues who have been in their current jobs for at least 4 years. It broke things down statistically into 5 categories and then totaled up the scores for each coach, as things related to creating an "elite" offense.

Mooney ranked 52 of 90 and got his highest score in the "in-season usage/optimal development" category. He got his lowest scores in recruiting instant-impact talent and recruiting future talent (not surprisingly). Interesting read. Scroll to the bottom of the link to see the entire list.

http://www.si.com/college-basketbal...es-mike-krzyzewski-roy-williams-john-calipari
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Given the talent, Chris Mooney is a very good coach. OSC
 
97spiderfan said:
Until college basketball goes to a draft style system of acquiring players, it is also the coach's job to recruit them as well. If he doesn't have the talent, he only has to look in the mirror to place blame.
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Exactly, 97. I know all of us, including you (assuming you are a Spider fan?), must be happy that the recruits appear to be improving. The future looks bright! OSC
 
The article lines up with what I have been saying for a while. Mooney is ranked as ~25th best coach in the coaching aspects of being a head coach (schemes, in-game coaching/adjustments, etc.) but is ranked close to last in terms of recruiting. A few months ago someone asked why we should have a positive outlook on our program's future. I responded by saying Mooney is a good 'coach' coach but has not been good at recruiting. He has been half of what we need to be consistently successful. With what seems like an uptick in recruiting we should be excited for the future, Mooney has improved where he was most flawed and is hopefully becoming the complete coach we need. Hopefully.
 
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As a counterpoint, I would not like to see a list of coaches in aspects of rebounding. Actually I would love to see one that analyzed boxing out, so that it could be submitted into evidence in the coaches office. I really, really feel that if we focused on only one new thing in the offseason to which players were held accountable during practices and games, if boxing out were that one thing we'd get 3 more wins a year. Purely eye-test, no stats to support it.
 
kneepadmckinney said:
As a counterpoint, I would not like to see a list of coaches in aspects of rebounding. Actually I would love to see one that analyzed boxing out, so that it could be submitted into evidence in the coaches office. I really, really feel that if we focused on only one new thing in the offseason to which players were held accountable during practices and games, if boxing out were that one thing we'd get 3 more wins a year. Purely eye-test, no stats to support it.
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As you wish. Here are the defensive rebounding rankings this year for the top 5 coaches on the list:

Coach K: 335th
Brey: 263rd
Roy: 183rd
Thad: 135th
Calipari: 280th

None of these teams are good at defensive rebounding, some are worse than us (269th). Ohio State was the best, but they did not make the NCAAs this year. Yes, rebounding is important. No, it is not as important as it is made out to be on this board relative to other aspects of the game.
 
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fan2011 said:
As you wish. Here are the defensive rebounding rankings this year for the top 5 coaches on the list:

Coach K: 335th
Brey: 263rd
Roy: 183rd
Thad: 135th
Calipari: 280th

None of these teams are good at defensive rebounding, some are worse than us (269th). Ohio State was the best, but they did not make the NCAAs this year. Yes, rebounding is important. No, it is not as important as it is made out to be on this board relative to other aspects of the game.
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I agree about the importance of rebounding...except at the extremes.

If you get zero defensive rebounds in all your games, and your opponents have zero turnovers, then If your opponents shoot greater than zero percent, then I believe you are in trouble.
 
urmite said:
I agree about the importance of rebounding...except at the extremes.

If you get zero defensive rebounds in all your games, and your opponents have zero turnovers, then If your opponents shoot greater than zero percent, then I believe you are in trouble.
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True, but we are generally not in that 'extreme'. Two of the five best coaches on that list had worse defensive rebounding percentages than us this year (with a 3rd coach essentially tied with us). I will reiterate, rebounding more is always better (if all else remains constant) but there are much more important aspects to a successful defense than rebounding. It doesn't matter how good you are at rebounding when your opponent makes all (or most) of their shots...

I think rebounding is one of the most visible aspects of defense, so people tend to glom onto it, but many of the best teams are extremely successful despite being poor defensive rebounding teams (sometimes even worse than ours).
 
To counter that, I would note that the BEST coaches on that list coach very good teams, and since their offenses are SO good, they can afford some let-up on the defensive rebounding side. It would be interesting, too, to see their offensive rebounding numbers. Unless you are a truly phenomenal shooting team and you create a ton of steals and/or block a ton of shots, you need to rebound well on at least one side of the ball to be consistently successful, it would seem.
 
kneepadmckinney said:
As a counterpoint, I would not like to see a list of coaches in aspects of rebounding. Actually I would love to see one that analyzed boxing out, so that it could be submitted into evidence in the coaches office. I really, really feel that if we focused on only one new thing in the offseason to which players were held accountable during practices and games, if boxing out were that one thing we'd get 3 more wins a year. Purely eye-test, no stats to support it.
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We haven't boxed out in 11 years. Totally dependent on the luck of the bounce.
 
how does what CM does, recruiting,etc. compare with all the other programs/coaches, in our league
 
Fan-- I don't dispute anything you say. I just think boxing out is something totally within our control and that has no effect whatsoever on how we perform any other part of our defense. If we boxed out better, I think we would win more.

Mooney often references our "scheme" when talking about rebounding deficiencies, but my understanding of the matchup zone is that someone is always supposed to be guarding someone, it's just they may switch guys throughout the defensive possession. So there is no reason that when a shot goes up, they shouldn't be able to look for a man to put their ass on instead of immediately looking at the ball or rim and drifting aimlessly towards the front of the rim. If we are going to play small and fast next year--and our roster is kind of dictating that--we will need to box out to negate height differences.
 
WebSpinner said:
how does what CM does, recruiting,etc. compare with all the other programs/coaches, in our league
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Did you read the article? All of the A10 coaches are in the table, there for comparison. I will be nice and post the results here:

Overall Score:
VCU (using Shaka's numbers which include his year at Texas, Wade isn't on the list)
Dayton
Richmond
Saint Bonaventure
Saint Joseph's
Duquesne
URI
George Washington
La Salle
UMass
Saint Louis

Recruiting (instant impact + future impact):
VCU (they have a huge advantage here, much higher than everbody else in the conference)
Dayton
URI
La Salle
UMass
Duquesne
Saint Louis
George Washington
Richmond (bottom of the totem pole here, hopefully moving up)
Saint Joseph's
Saint Bonaventure

Player Development:
Dayton
VCU
URI
Richmond (that is right we do develop our players!)
La Salle
Duquesne
Saint Joseph's
Saint Bonaventure
UMass
George Washington
Saint Louis

In-game Coaching:
Richmond (Mooney takes the cake here, clearly separated from the rest of the conference)
VCU
Dayton
Duquesne
UMass
George Washington
Saint Joseph's
Saint Bonaventure
La Salle
Saint Louis
URI

Important note, these are ranks for offensive coaching and don't include ranks for coaches new to the top conferences (no Wade, McKillop, Paulsen or Neubauer). For the defensive side of the game I would suggest that the recruiting rankings and player development rankings should be the same or at least pretty similar. However, the in-game coaching aspect could be very different. For example, Hurley should score very highly for his defensive coaching ability, but his offense has always struggled so he ranks at the bottom here. Similarly, Duquesne always has a very good offense, but their defense is consistently bad. I would suspect they would rank much lower for defensive in-game coaching.
 
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Fan you are selling, but I am not buying. Stats have their place, but sometimes you just gotta go with what you actually see on the court and the results it yields.
 
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KE Spider said:
Fan you are selling, but I am not buying. Stats have their place, but sometimes you just gotta go with what you actually see on the court and the results it yields.
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Hah, I didn't write the article or make the list, just posting the info on the board for those too lazy to read the article Eight Legger posted. I would actually read the article before you dismiss it for going against your preconceived notions. Their rankings of Mooney completely reflect his performance here over the past 11 years, they are not contradicting reality or the eye test at all. If you still have a problem with it take it up with Dan Hanner and Luke Winn. On a side note, are stats only useful when they reinforce your perceptions? If you believe so I understand why you would think stats are useless.
 
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Fan, I admit I did not read the article as I am just dropping by the board tonight, but you seem to buy into it. How well you play defense is not that important, if you do not get defensive rebounds. Give any team 2 or 3 shots every time down the floor and you will get burned. It is painful to recall how often we have seen this in recent years.

I am a numbers guy and on any cost benefit analysis, I can give you the outcome you want. My point was, you can make stats say what you want by selecting some and ignoring others regardless of whose stats they are. The proof is in the pudding - what happens on the court that translates to wins.
 
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I don't think fan2011 is trying to make these "stats" say anything. They are rankings after all. I do find it interesting that folks here are so willing to dismiss this kind of stuff. It points to a clear datapoint I think we all realize, our coach us a poor recruiter. If you want to fix the problem, the answer may not be throw the baby out with the bath water. If we want to 86 CM because he can't recruit and never will, then that's a different argument.
 
MrTbone said:
I don't think fan2011 is trying to make these "stats" say anything. They are rankings after all. I do find it interesting that folks here are so willing to dismiss this kind of stuff. It points to a clear datapoint I think we all realize, our coach us a poor recruiter. If you want to fix the problem, the answer may not be throw the baby out with the bath water. If we want to 86 CM because he can't recruit and never will, then that's a different argument.
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I don't understand what makes Mooney a highly ranked in game coach. He had one offensive set and one defensive set which his team couldn't play. He never made any significant changes in a game that i noticed. He refused to let his bench play in blowouts. he played seniors seemingly because they were seniors, etc. etc. i would love to hear what great qualities he exhibited. I haven't seen any in the three years that I have been watching the team.
 
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bongturk said:
I don't understand what makes Mooney a highly ranked in game coach. He had one offensive set and one defensive set which his team couldn't play. He never made any significant changes in a game that i noticed. He refused to let his bench play in blowouts. he played seniors seemingly because they were seniors, etc. etc. i would love to hear what great qualities he exhibited. I haven't seen any in the three years that I have been watching the team.
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Our teams tend to preform better than expected to based on our recruits, sometimes drastically so. Simple as that.
 
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SpiderGuy said:
Which years does your premise apply to?
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Not my premise, read the damn article. Bongturk asked how Mooney could be ranked so highly as a coach, and I gave a brief description of what the article looked at to rank the coaches.

According to the article Mooney ranks highest in the A10, and ~25th out of all coaches in the top 9 conferences, at what the article refers to as "In-Season Development and Optimal Deployment." They define this as "Having players exceed their projected performance (based on past stats and recruiting rankings) on a year-to-year basis, and structuring an offense so that the best players take the most shots." The article looks at each coach over the past 4 to 10 years depending on how long they have been coaching.
 
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SpiderGuy said:
You answered Bongturk in the affirmative, and I simply followed up? You don't want to answer the question...that's fine. I agree with Bongturk's post.
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I updated my post for those who don't feel like reading the article.
 
First of all, being a great recruiter will yield a better team, and generally better statistical results in most categories. Not sure how they determined in-game coaching (vs player development), but I would contend that CM is way overrated on his in-game coaching in this article/ranking. I would also contend that Mark Few should probably rank higher than he does. Also noticed no mention of Bob McKillop in this article.
 
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keefusb said:
First of all, being a great recruiter will yield a better team, and generally better statistical results in most categories. Not sure how they determined in-game coaching, but I would contend that CM is way overrated on his in-game coaching in this article/ranking. I would also contend that Mark Few should probably rank higher than he does. Also noticed no mention of Bob McKillop in this article.
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Read the damn article, everything you say is confirmed by their analysis. Recruiting is a more important factor for performance than coaching. Mark Few is ranked higher than Mooney in all categories. McKillop has not coached in a top 9 conference for 4 years so he was not included in the analysis, but he would probably be above Mooney in the 'coaching' category.

The analysis is very simple. We are regularly the worst team in the A10 in terms of recruits, however we never are close to the bottom in terms of performance. That discrepancy is why Mooney is ranked high for coaching and low for recruiting. Mooney gets more out of less than the other coaches in our conference, and so he is labeled as a good coach, poor recruiter.
 
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fan2011 said:
Everything you say is confirmed by their analysis. Recruiting is a more important factor on performance than coaching. Mark Few is ranked higher than Mooney in all categories. McKillop has not coached in a top 9 conference for 4 years so he was not included in the analysis, but he would probably be above Mooney in the 'coaching' category.

The analysis is very simple. We are regularly the worst team in the A10 in terms of recruits, however we never are close to the bottom in terms of performance. That discrepancy is why Mooney is ranked high for coaching and low for recruiting.
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The combining of in-game coaching and player development is a flaw in this survey/ranking, in my opinion. CM may do a good job of player development according to the formula, but his in-game coaching is nothing to write home about and I think most of our posters would agree.

Given his W-L record and NCAA streak alone, I would have to rank Mark Few above many of these coaches who were ranked higher overall as offensive geniuses. Clearly overall wins and consecutive NCAA appearances not given a heavy weighting in the calculations. My grammar was not good in my previous comment, I was comparing Few to everyone else, not specifically to CM.

As for all the McKillop worshipers here, I see he is left off the list because of lack of time in a major conference, and many of McKillop's wins were against weak SoCo cupcakes for so many years. If it had not been for Curry, no one would know or care who BM is. He is deservedly left off this list.
 
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If you go back and look at the quotes, I like how 2011 went back and edited his post to include "Read the damn article", gives it a nice additional emphasis.
 
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Well, it is kind of aggravating to post information here that is insightful,or at least interesting, and then have it questioned or poo-poo'd by people who don't bother to read it. I appreciate that fan2011 is contributing something informative even if it doesn't jive with people's "eye test."
 
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Love 2011's posts. The posts are both analytical and insightful. Keep up the good work. Thank you. OSC
 
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