Updated Plus/Minus (thru Lasalle)

Hey folks, updated plus-minus stats are posted below. The first list is the total plus minus stats per minute for the season thus far, thru 11 games (for most players). (Note that Anderson has only played in 6 games and Drummond has been out with a stress fracture in his ankle since the Temple game and will be out another 4-6 weeks, so he has only played in 8 games). The second list only takes into account the last 6 games (games since the Orlando tourney), which kind of gives you a feel for how guys are playing lately. Going forward, I will continue to update this every 6 games and since the Big East schedule now has 18 games, that will work out rather nicely to account for 1/3 of the conference season per update. If you don't understand any of this, scroll down to the "Five Game Team Assessment" post which explains how this works. (Or if you don't feel like reading that, just know the higher the better).

Season
Anderson, 0.85 (6 games)
Grant, 0.40
Fisher, 0.38
Reynolds, 0.34
Clark, 0.33
Cunningham, 0.31
Pena, 0.25
Stokes, 0.24
Redding, 0.21
Drummond, 0.18 (8 games)

Last 6 games
Anderson, 1.11 (3 games)
Pena, 0.53
Fisher, 0.44
Reynolds, 0.43
Stokes, 0.39
Cunningham, 0.38
Grant, 0.38
Clark, 0.29 (5 games)
Redding, 0.19
Drummond, 0.17 (3 games)

It should be noted that Anderson has only played 47 minutes all season - by contrast, Reynolds has played 374...so Anderson's plus/minus numbers are based on a very small sample size and the overall number will likely decrease with more minutes. That said, the kid has made a very positive impact in the limited opportunities that he's had and with Drummond out, expect him to get more opportunities as guys like Clark and Pena slide into the frontcourt opening up minutes for Anderson at the small forward position.

Anyway, aside from Anderson the first set of data shows that we are best when the lineup of Grant, Reynolds, Fisher, Clark and Cunningham are on the floor together. Not surprisingly, this is often the lineup that is on the floor during crunch time, late in games. Expect to see more of that 3-guard trio as Grant and Fisher continue to grasp the defensive intensity that Jay wants, with Redding losing a few minutes as a result. The data is not flawless, but it also shows that despite the apparent impact that Drum is having on the boards, his overall impact isn't as impressive. I was as surprised by this as anyone cause he looks tremendous when you watch him on TV. But, it may be that while he's grabbing 12 boards out there, he's also giving up enough points defensively to nearly cancel out his postive impact. On the contrary, a guy like Cunningham may grab 7 boards, but play better D and have a better overall impact.

While the 2nd set of data should be expected to have higher numbers all around due to the level of competition, it re-inforces that the top guys in the rotation are consistently playing well. But more importantly, it also shows that some of the younger guys who struggled a bit early, are coming into their own of late. Antonio Pena, for example, has gone from an average -0.59 per minute (yes that NEGATIVE is correct) in his first 3 games, to a 0.53 over his last 6 games. In other words, at the very beginning of the year, every 2 minutes that Pena played was costing us 1 point in the game and now every 2 minutes that he plays is gaining us a point in the game. This is good news, considering Pena will be seeing a lot more playing time while Drummond is out. Similarly, our McDonald's All-American Corey Stokes, while still not having found his deadly 3-point stroke (seems to be rushing his shot), is settling in and doing other things well enough lately to have a very positive (0.39) impact when he is on the floor.

Overall, entering much tougher competition in Big East play, these numbers will likely decrease somewhat as the scoring margins will naturally decrease, but as the young guys gain experience and the team gels this should become a very deep team without much dropoff from the starting 5 to the first few guys off the bench.