Which former Cardinal could help this season's team the most?
If you could put a UofL alum from the past 10 season on this team in place of anyone, who would make the biggest impact?
When you write aboue college basketball and teams aren’t playing college basketball games, you get a little stir-crazy. When I get stir-crazy, I come up with fun ideas for things to write about. I decided to take on a challenging question…if you could swap any Cardinal from the past 10 seasons onto this team in place of any current Cardinal, who would have the most positive impact?
Here are the ground rules I came up with:
I can take any Card from the past 10 seasons and put them in place of any current player who plays at least 15 min per game. That meant I would swap out one of: Carlik Jones, David Johnson, Dre Davis, Samuell Williamson, Jae’lyn Withers, and Quinn Slazinski.
For any former player who played multiple years, I assume you get the stats from their final year at Louisville.
I’ll assume whatever former Card I swap in will play the same amount of time (measured in possessions), but I’ll measure how much they upgrade the offense and defense on a per-possession basis and multiply it times those possessions
I’ll use the following data on offense: points per possession (per Synergy), usage rate (per KenPom), and the points per possession scored by each current UofL player’s teammates when that player is on the court
I’ll use the following data on defense: points allowed per possession (per Synergy), defensive usage rate (per Synergy, equal to possessions where they were the primary defender), and points allowed by UofL when the player is on the floor
Here’s how I calculated the offensive impact of a switch:
I replaced the current Card’s usage rate and points per possession with the former Card’s usage rate and points per possession; for example, instead of Carlik Jones scoring 0.895 pts per possession and 27.2% usage rate, Louisville now gets Donovan Mitchell’s 0.947 pts per possession and 23.4% usage rate
The usage rate for the rest of the team goes down by a corresponding amount; in the example above, it rises from 72.8% to 76.6%. The points per possession for the rest of UofL’s roster are assumed to stay the same when switching Jones out for Mitchell; this season, that’s been 1.061.
After crunching the numbers, swapping Donovan Mitchell in for Carlik Jones improves Louisville by about .02 points per offensive possession. This is because Mitchell scores more effectively than Jones, but also because Mitchell would give up some possessions to the rest of the team and their efficient scoring. Across Jones’ 900 possessions played, the impact would be about 16.5 points.
For defensive impact, it’s similar:
I replaced the current Card’s defensive usage rate and points allowed per possessions with the former’s. These stats are from Synergy and only include possessions where that player was the primary defender. For example, Carlik Jones is credited as the defender on 12.2% of defensive possessions and allows 0.782 points per possession, and Donovan Mitchell was the defender on 14.2% and allowed 0.669 points per possession.
Similar to the offensive impact, the change in usage rate is applied to the rest of the team at their points allowed per possession. With Jones in the game, his teammates have allowed 0.924 points per possession on their possessions.
After crunching those numbers, swapping Donovan Mitchell in for Carlik Jones would make Louisville about .02 points better per defensive possession. This is because Mitchell was a little better defender and defended more possessions, putting less work on the rest of the team and their weaker defense. Across 900 possessions, UofL would allow about 17 fewer points total.
Adding the offensive and defensive impact, swapping Donovan Mitchell in for Carlik Jones would make UofL better by 33.6 points. That’s about 2.4 points per game Jones has played. That’s a good impact, but it’s not the best I found in my analysis.
Current Cards stack up favorably
To keep things relatively simple, I limited my analysis to 11 former standout Cardinals:
Peyton Siva
Gorgui Dieng
Luke Hancock
Russ Smith
Montrezl Harrell
Terry Rozier
Damion Lee
Donovan Mitchell
Deng Adel
Steven Enoch
Jordan Nwora
I tried to have a mix of positions, and only counted swaps for players who reasonably could play the same position. Russ Smith for Jaelyn Withers doesn’t count here!
When I was doing this, I noticed something interesting. Some of the current Cardinals compare very favorably to these recent standouts (in terms of statistics, anyway), and several current Cards are actually preferable to recent Cards at their position. In particular, Jae’lyn Withers and Dre Davis grade out very well in this analysis.
In fact, swapping out any of the former bigs on the list above for Withers would actually make Louisville worse, using this methodology! While that’s a stretch, there’s a reason for it. Withers is the most efficienct scorer for Louisville of any current or former Cardinal in this analysis, scoring 1.128 points per possession. The rest of Louisville’s team also scores well when he’s in, putting up 1.010 points per possession. Anyone you replace Withers with is scoring to score less effectively, and none of the other bigs scored as efficiently as Louisville’s team does alongside Withers. This means that other Louisville bigs with higher usage rates aren’t going to help Louisville on offense.
Dre Davis has a similar impact on the defensive side of the ball. He allows only 0.725 points per possession when he is the primary defender, a rate only surpassed by 3 of the former non-bigs (Mitchell, Rozier, Hancock). Davis is a very active defender, with Synergy crediting him as the defender on 17.4% of his possessions on the court; no ex-Card is higher than 15.4%. So, anyone else you swap in for Davis is going to guard fewer possessions, even if they are good on defense. That means more possessions guarded by the rest of Louisville’s team. They happen to actually be pretty bad on defense alongside Davis, allowing 1.02 points per possession. So, swapping Davis for any ex-Card means the rest of Louisville’s team this season would take on more defensive possessions, which usually means more points given up.
A double surprise at the top
Before doing this analysis, I assumed the biggest benefit would be swapping out Samuell Williamson for a better scorer (maybe Jordan Nwora or Donovan Mitchell) or swapping out Quinn Slazinski for a better scorer/defender (maybe Montrezl Harrell or Gorgui Dieng). But when I looked at the data, those weren’t the weak spots in UofL’s lineup.
The weakest spot, according to points per possession data from Synergy, is David Johnson. He has the 2nd lowest points scored per possession among the 6 current Cards I looked at, ahead of only Davis, and the worst defensive points per possession by far. Now, I don’t think David Johnson is a bad player at all; I think he’ll be a lottery pick and will be a very good NBA player. Synergy data isn’t perfect, either; the defensive data in particular suffers from sample bias. Defenders don’t get credit for stopping a player from even trying to score, for example, in the same way a shutdown cornerback in football doesn’t get interceptions. Also, a player who routinely takes on the best scorer on the other team will get penalized. However, the data is pretty negative on David Johnson.
Swapping David Johnson for most of the former Cardinal guards I listed would be a net positive, but one option is far and away the best choice statistically. This player actually has the highest points per possession of any former Card in my analysis and the lowest points allowed per possession: Luke Hancock.
During the 2014 season Luke Hancock scored 1.027 points per possession, and used 23.5% of the possessions when he wason the court. Damion Lee is the only other guard or wing player in my analysis to score over 1 point per possession, and David Johnson scores just 0.844. The rest of UofL’s team scores 1.00 points per possession alongside Johnson, so by the numbers he’s hurting UofL when he’s the primary scorer.
On defense, Luke Hancock allowed a miniscule 0.519 points per possession and was the defender on 12.2% of possessions when he was on the court. That’s a pretty solid defensive usage rate, because a lot of plays just don’t have a primary defender; think wide-open threes, some fast break layups/dunks, etc. David Johnson has been more active, guarding on 16% of possessions, but allows 0.951 points per possession. The rest of Louisville’s team allows about 0.944 points per possession with Johnson in, so he’s not the only issue, but swapping in a better defender would be a big help…even in fewer possessions.
Crunching the numbers above and applying them to David Johnson’s 887 possessions played, I came up with a 37.3 point improvement on offense and 47.2 point improvement on defense if Louisville could swap in Luke Hancock for David Johnson. That’s a whopping 84.5 points total, or about 5.6 points per game!
A few other notable potential swaps:
Hancock for Williamson would be a 2.4 points per game improvement
Hancock for Jones would be a 4.5 points per game improvement (2nd highest)
Donovan Mitchell for Johnson would be a 3.8 points per game improvement (3rd highest)
Russ Smith for Johnson would be only a 2.3 points per game improvement, as Smith wasn’t wildly efficient on offense (0.966 points per possession)
None of the bigs I looked at are much of an improvement over current UofL bigs, as Withers is excellent offensively and Slazinski has surprisingly good defensive metrics per Synergy
Coming into this, I expected very different results than I actually got. I take that with a grain of salt, as there are some pretty severe limits to this type of analysis. I’m using pretty limited data, but it does tell a story about which players were efficienct and active on both ends of the court, and who helped make their teammates more effective as well. Now, if only we could get Luke Hancock another year of eligibility….