Ashlynn Shades Shooting

[Skeets]

It seems to me that this year she is attempting to get her shot off quicker, like Azzi. Seems like the past two years she was more deliberate before shooting. Azzi been shooting fast forever, it’s natural for her, but Ashlynn it appears to be a work in progress.

I haven't noticed that, but it's obvious that more of her shots score when she is open and has sufficient time to set and shoot.

 

[Skeets]

Question, I have zero empirical evidence, but could it be that Ash's shots are coming later in the shot clock because Sarah, Azzi, etc. could not get open? This would make for less than optimum shots. I will certainly keep an eye on this aspect of her shooting in future games.

I have noticed that Ash can occasionally be relatively open and not get the ball because UConn is running the offense through other players. This isn't a criticism because it's working so well.

 

[my2cents]

The first basketball coach I ever had, said "2, when you are moving when shooting, USE the backboard" Great advice.
The pull-ups Shade takes are hard for everyone ( not named Paige). She needs to keep going to the rim and use the back board. She may even get fouled, which she needs to get more foul shots too.

 

[HopJim]

Question, I have zero empirical evidence, but could it be that Ash's shots are coming later in the shot clock because Sarah, Azzi, etc. could not get open? This would make for less than optimum shots. I will certainly keep an eye on this aspect of her shooting in future games.

I have noticed that Ash can occasionally be relatively open and not get the ball because UConn is running the offense through other players. This isn't a criticism because it's working so well.

Agree. Ash is often the last option before the shot clock expires. Nothing wrong - just Sarah and Azzi getting the first looks. She often also gets offensive rebounds and puts shot up against bigger players. Rarely is there a play run for Ash.

 

[victor64]

The first basketball coach I ever had, said "2, when you are moving when shooting, USE the backboard" Great advice.
The pull-ups Shade takes are hard for everyone ( not named Paige). She needs to keep going to the rim and use the back board. She may even get fouled, which she needs to get more foul shots too.

Your coach already knew what your message board username would be? Bright dude! 😉

Sorry to hijack.

 

[NycUcWbbFan]

While we are on the subject of Ash:

PPROD (Points Produced, formula here) remarkably validates Ash’s value to the team.

 

[cferraro04]

No one knew who Ash was in her freshman year so defenses keyed on Paige and Aaliyah. Last year she got more defensive attention so her stats suffered.

This year, she seemed to be trying too hard early in the year although she’s been more selective about her shots in more recent games. I’m guessing her shooting stats will continue to improve as the season progresses

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One thing that jumps out to me from the above is that half of Ashlynn's shots are three-pointers. Of her 49 attempts at the basket, 24 of them were three-pointers.

 

[Gael]

While we are on the subject of Ash:

PPROD (Points Produced, formula here) remarkably validates Ash’s value to the team.

View attachment 116122

I find these briar patches of thorny statistics interesting.

The topic of this thread is Shade's shooting.

Points Produced (PProd) goes beyond shooting to be a more encompassing stat that purports to measure a player's contribution to team points via her own points scored plus her assists and offensive rebounds. But since I posted two even more encompassing player production/efficiency stats for Shade, PER and BPM, it's fair to cogitate on PProd for a few sentences.

First, PProd is highly correlated with minutes played, as might be expected. Players who play fewer minutes don't have the same temporal opportunity to accrue points, assists or offensive rebounds. Shade is third on the team in minutes played and tied for third place in PProd, trivially ahead of Quinonez and Williams, who have gotten far fewer minutes.

Second, as the links to the SRCBB definitions and formulas show, PProd is an input metric to a more final, possession-normalized output metric that SCRBB calls Offensive Rating (ORtg). The SCRBB tables, when sorted for ORtg, show that Shade is 10th on the team in that more sophisticated point production stat.

SRCBB also computes a correlative stat called Defensive Rating (DRtg). Shade is 10th on the team in that metric.

We all can go down whatever Br'er Rabbit statistical holes we prefer. To measure a player's shooting effectiveness from the field, I prefer EFG%. To factor in free throws, I prefer TS%. To evaluate a player's all around contributions and efficiency, I don't have any one preferred composite stat. I tend to look at PER and BPM simply because they are readily available for free.

 

[freshler40]

Ash was needed to score more in year one. There were far fewer other options for scoring then. Her game has not diminished but branched out in years 2 and 3. She is everywhere on the court now, snagging more rebounds both offensive and defensive, more help on defense, assists and leadership. Her game has in no way been diminished, with more great shooters she has shifted her focus to a more complete approach. Not every Husky can launch as many shots as Sarah, Azzi or Blanca.

Seven rebounds in the last game were impressive. She is often our best offensive rebounder. Another non-stat is the number of tie-ups that she is involved in. WOW, what a terror for opponents.

 

[freshler40]

The first basketball coach I ever had, said "2, when you are moving when shooting, USE the backboard" Great advice.
The pull-ups Shade takes are hard for everyone ( not named Paige). She needs to keep going to the rim and use the back board. She may even get fouled, which she needs to get more foul shots too.

Excellent advice........as her pull up jumper is often short of the rim, but wouldn't metrics show this by now?

 

[my2cents]

I find these briar patches of thorny statistics interesting.

The topic of this thread is Shade's shooting.

Points Produced (PProd) goes beyond shooting to be a more encompassing stat that purports to measure a player's contribution to team points via her own points scored plus her assists and offensive rebounds. But since I posted two even more encompassing player production/efficiency stats for Shade, PER and BPM, it's fair to cogitate on PProd for a few sentences.

First, PProd is highly correlated with minutes played, as might be expected. Players who play fewer minutes don't have the same temporal opportunity to accrue points, assists or offensive rebounds. Shade is third on the team in minutes played and tied for third place in PProd, trivially ahead of Quinonez and Williams, who have gotten far fewer minutes.

Second, as the links to the SRCBB definitions and formulas show, PProd is an input metric to a more final, possession-normalized output metric that SCRBB calls Offensive Rating (ORtg). The SCRBB tables, when sorted for ORtg, show that Shade is 10th on the team in that more sophisticated point production stat.

SRCBB also computes a correlative stat called Defensive Rating (DRtg). Shade is 10th on the team in that metric.

We all can go down whatever Br'er Rabbit statistical holes we prefer. To measure a player's shooting effectiveness from the field, I prefer EFG%. To factor in free throws, I prefer TS%. To evaluate a player's all around contributions and efficiency, I don't have any one preferred composite stat. I tend to look at PER and BPM simply because they are readily available for free.

The Bone Yard needs to be separated into two parts. Part One for elementary thinkers like me, and Advanced for people like you. ( And I have a BS in Math too!)

 

[Gael]

The Bone Yard needs to be separated into two parts. Part One for elementary thinkers like me, and Advanced for people like you. ( And I have a BS in Math too!)

It really only takes a few hours to become conceptually familiar with the more common so-called advanced stats. I'd never focused on PProd until @NycUcWbbFan helpfully posted about it above.

I expect Shade to be a starter for the rest of the season. However, as to the narrow issue of this topic—her shooting—it has been unimpressive this season, relative both to her teammates and to her prior self, whether one's eyeballs look (unemotionally) at games or stats. But shooting isn't everything, and it usually can be improved.

 

[Bone Dog]

The Bone Yard needs to be separated into two parts. Part One for elementary thinkers like me, and Advanced for people like you. ( And I have a BS in Math too!)

I know what you mean. I just taught a quantum theory class last semester and I still need to focus much harder than I’m used to if I want to follow some discussions.

 

[hoophuskee]

i dont understand PProd. Anyone can easily lookup Usage Factor % and True Shooting % and have some idea provided usage is near one player vs another.

 

[Dogdude]

I know what you mean. I just taught a quantum theory class last semester and I still need to focus much harder than I’m used to if I want to follow some discussions.

Ha! Engineering background (structural) and I'm not a slave to statistics either. I like numbers, don't get me wrong, but sports mean something different to some of us. For me, it's moments, like the one time I saw Harmon Killebrew hit a ball so hard, it stayed about 10 feet off the ground for it's entire length of travel and left the park in under a second, or so it seemed. In golf, a friend and i were goofing around as young players who didn't really want to be there (parents, go figure) when Julius Boros played through, and gave us each a five minute lesson. I don't care what his stats were, he's my favorite. As for Ash, when she hit a couple of dagger threes, causing Dawn to perform her now-viral expletive, that pretty much did it. She can rise to the occasion, and in between those moments, it's non-stop effort. Clearly there's a disconnect when she gets all those minutes yet has these stats that show she supposedly doesn't deserve them.

 

[Skeets]

It really only takes a few hours to become conceptually familiar with the more common so-called advanced stats. I'd never focused on PProd until @NycUcWbbFan helpfully posted about it above.

I expect Shade to be a starter for the rest of the season. However, as to the narrow issue of this topic—her shooting—it has been unimpressive this season, relative both to her teammates and to her prior self, whether one's eyeballs look (unemotionally) at games or stats. But shooting isn't everything, and it usually can be improved.

See my previous post. "advanced stats" do not tell the story of what is actually going on with Ash on the court. Nothing beats "advanced eyeballs". I take any stat with a grain of salt.

 

[Bone Dog]

As for Ash, when she hit a couple of dagger threes, causing Dawn to perform her now-viral expletive, that pretty much did it. She can rise to the occasion, and in between those moments, it's non-stop effort. Clearly there's a disconnect when she gets all those minutes yet has these stats that show she supposedly doesn't deserve them.

You remind me of the “pine tar incident” and George Brett, Goose Gossage and Billy Martin. Some folks are simply built for clutch moments, and Brett was one of them. That moment when Ash hit a corner 3 against SC after the whole team had been cold for much of the first half was one of these and Dawn knew it. She even commented on it less profanely after the game, as if it were a harbinger of what was to come once the rest of the team found the range.

I am fond of stats within limits. They can reveal what’s really happening on the court, but only imperfectly unless the data set is large enough to control for the relevant variables. Geno clearly uses stats assiduously, as we’ve heard, but he also sees a lot more in person across hundreds of hours of practice and from a privileged perspective on the sideline during games. And he has commented on how difficult it is for him to take Ash out of games because of what he sees. And it sounds like he sees pretty much exactly what you see.

By the way, @NycUcWbbFan ’s rotation analysis project has been percolating all season long and is becoming an impressive data set for +/- cohort stats. It is really worth looking at very closely. It shows us quite a bit about which lineups work best together and shows it with increasing precision as the data set grows. But it is also a window into what Geno is up to, how he’s using a mix-and-match method to design this season’s juggernaut. It’s a little bit like looking over Geno’s shoulder as he builds his team. In short, it begins to sketch in what Geno seems to mean when he says it’s really difficult to take Ash off the floor. This is something other stats rarely show so clearly.

 

[NycUcWbbFan]

i dont understand PProd. Anyone can easily lookup Usage Factor % and True Shooting % and have some idea provided usage is near one player vs another.

The way to read some Boxscore Advanced Stats formulas can be illustrated by reading some of the more basic ones here: Advanced Basketball Statistics Formula Sheet | From The Rumble Seat

The Advanced Stats in the Formula Sheet above can be (easily) directly calculated using Play-By-Play info.

• The reason why these Boxscore Advanced Stats are expressed the way they are is because they are estimates using Boxscore Info only, by limitation and by practicality;
• By limitation, sports counting infrastructures are not about to be improved just to more accurately calculate Advanced Stats;
• By practicality, because it’s easier to calculate Advanced Stats for earlier years this way.

So to read a seemingly overwrought Boxscore formula like PProd is to identify component quantities that could have been counted using Play-By-Play info and get comfortable with how they are being estimated using Box Score information.

• PProd allocates &1 every PTS to players with FGM/FT’s, AST, and ORB;
• This would have been very easy with Play-By-Play Info;
• The Boxscore (Ruth Goldberg) estimation can get a bit garbled — for example, how does one distinguish between ORBs with PTS and ORBs without PTS, PTS with extra FTs and missed FGMs with FTs, etc.
• In any case, PProd’s creator is Dean Oliver whose work in analytics is respected;
• PProd totals comes close to PTS totals, so that’s reassuring;
• Some head scratching results come when PProd is used to come up with Individual OffRtg; end of bench players (say Gandy and Ayanna) have rather high Individual OffRtg (akin to dividing by close to zero).

&1 One algorithm quirk is that PProd does not allocate PTS produced by defense (i.e. STLs and TOVs).

These allocations showcase the relative importance of the various PTS productions. Geno and CD tend to concentrate on “beautiful basketball” and defense in the earlier part of the season; and ORB, FTs and more defense in the latter part of the season (what the team must do when shots are not falling).

 

[Jalan2121]

She is a joy to watch and hustles like KK. Now about her shooting . Agree with the release point texts. Also she isn’t comfortable shooting when the defense is near ( not on top of) her. The ability to relax under pressure, relax when in the air shooting is a fine tuning skill to be worked on. It is more mental than physical.

 

[DefenseBB]

My advice to anyone perusing this bizarre thread…is her 2 point shooting percentage lower? Yes, is is a major concern to us competing for a national title? ABSOLUTELY NOT. Talk about nitpicking…

 

[RoadWarrior]

@DavidinNaples provided an interesting stat regarding Ashlynn in another thread. He relayed that Ash has played 434 minutes this season but has been to the free-throw line only 9 times. I have observed that Ashlynn's first attempt is often a "3-point shot" on one of the first UCONN possessions. If it goes in, she seems to get off to a hotter start. If the shot misses, it often leads to a series of misses, or she becomes a more reluctant shooter for the rest of the first half. I realize that you take what the defense gives you, but I would love to see her first shot be a mid-range shot or a drive to the basket.

I recall KLS attacking the basket, per Geno, when her three-pointer was not falling to get into a rhythm, then going back to the three-ball. Azzi is driving the lane more this year, and Blanca does it continuously. I would love to see Ash do the same.

 

[Gael]

I just taught a quantum theory class last semester and I still need to focus much harder than I’m used to if I want to follow some discussions.

Quantum theory? I genuflect!

No discipline more exemplifies Wigner's observation as to how mathematics is "unreasonably effective" in describing real world phenomena than quantum theory (QM and QFT).

From Heisenberg's matrix mechanics . . . to Schrodinger's wave equations . . . to Born's squaring of amplitudes to compute ubiquitous probabilities . . . to Dirac's reconciliation of Heisenberg and Schrodinger by mathematical transformation theory using bra-ket notation . . . to Von Neuman's mathematization of QM foundations with vectorized Hilbert spaces and von Neumann algebras . . . to Feynman's path integrals and renormalizations . . .

. . . Nothing is more a "SHUT UP AND CALCULATE" discipline (thank you, Mermin) than quantum theory—which, however, provides virtually no ontological insight into what is actually going on in the real world baskeball court of the universe.

And you are balking at a small handful of basketball stats!!!

(Sorry, a failed physics major here, who left all almost all his math in the local college bar 60 years ago.)