So there's a discussion about our center lineups out here online. Here's some data for context, courtesy of Hoop-Explorer. SMALL SAMPLE SIZE ALERT. This is descriptive data (what has happened so far), not predictive data (what will surely continue happening). This data is filtered to remove garbage time and is luck adjusted, which regresses some 3pt shooting for and against towards the mean and a couple other small things.
Overall lineups by who is playing center against top 200 competition over the full season:
Analysis:
Big East conference play only by who is playing center:
Analysis
Overall lineups by who is playing center against top 200 competition over the full season:
Analysis:
- Clingan lineups have had the best defense and overall net rating, but the offense has been best with Samson.
- Clingan lineups gave up the fewest shots at the rim (other than Singare's small sample), and had by far the best rim protection and opponent FG% numbers.
- Surprisingly, Samson lineups have better offensive rebounding numbers (surprising because Clingan is so good at that). But Samson lineups have the worst defensive rebounding numbers.
- Karaban lineups have had a pretty high turnover rate, likely showing the lack of practice with the lineups with him at center (and probably some defensive matchup strength impact). However, that 81.8% 2pt rim% shows the advantage of spacing and drawing all the opponents out of the paint; it's an outrageous %. The low assist rate shows these lineups have had more ISO scoring, whether driving to the paint or forcing up off the dribble 3s. The driving has led to drawing a bunch of fouls, which is great.
- Karaban lineups have been a defensive weakness, as expected. 60% of the shots given up have been at the rim, which is not generally how you want the allocation to go and most of it has come from forcing a lot less midrange jumpers. Opponents are 4x more likely to take a midrange shot with Clingan in the game at center than Karaban. Rebounding has been surprisingly fine in the Karaban lineups, though.
Big East conference play only by who is playing center:
Analysis
- Ironically, Karaban's sample size is actually larger here, because he's only played center against Big East teams and Depaul is ranked worse than 200 so was filtered out of the previous chart. Our small ball lineup wrecked DePaul, so both his offense and defense numbers look better. But also, DePaul on our home court is DePaul on our home court...
- The team with Clingan at the head was off to a dominant start in Big East play, but the sample size is obviously extremely small. As mentioned above, all these sample sizes are small so keep that in in the front of your mind.
- Samson lineups are close to even when comparing raw offense and defense per 100, which reflects something more like a .500 Big East team with him as the center. He's a good backup, but leaves something to be desired as a starter so far, especially on defense. He just has not been elite or even really "very good" in any defensive area so far in Big East play, and we're fouling way too much with him in there.
