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| A10 BY THE NUMBERS Recent Articles 02/11/10: 2/11 A10 Postseason Odds Report 01/09/10: 1/9 A10 Postseason Odds Report 01/05/09: The Effect of the Unbalanced Schedule on the 2010 A10 Conference Season 12/30/09: A10 Postseason Odds Report 12/23/09: The Effect of Melquan Bolding's Absence on Duquesne 12/22/09: A10 Postseason Odds Report 12/18/09: A10 Postseason Odds Report 12/11/09: Quantifying the Rebounding Problems of St. Joe's Basketball Links NIT-ology Ken Pomeroy Mid-Majority Yoco Hoops Bracket Board College Hoops Net A10 Forum Storming the Floor College Chalktalk Villanova by the Numbers Valley Ledger March Madness All Season Contact mikebscullin@gmail.com | The Effect of Melquan Bolding's Absence on Duquesne December 23, 2009 by Mike Scullin  A subject of interest as we gear up for the Atlantic 10 Conference season is how to peg the expected performance of Duquesne. Duquesne has been one of the most difficult teams to judge for two reasons: one, they have played a weak schedule, racking up 8 home wins against dreadful teams. Perhaps more importantly, they have been without sophomore guard Melquan Bolding since the first game of the season, who seemed to be quickly moving towards star status as his freshman season progressed.Predictive ratings to this point really dislike Duquesne -- home overtime wins against Arkansas Monticello (NR in Pomeroy Ratings) and Canisius (265), as well as single digit victories over Robert Morris (254) and Radford (213) look nice on the old out of conference record and will ultimately do the RPIs of the rest of the conference good, but models that try to predict how good a team is do not like such results. The numbers are the numbers, and Duquesne without Bolding is struggling mightily on offense. Their 0.928 points per possession adjusted efficiency ranks 277th in Division 1, a far cry from the 1.147 ppp adjusted efficiency (23rd in D1) they sported in 2009 with star guard Aaron Jackson still in the fold. The question at hand, then, is how will they likely perform once Bolding returns from injury? We can make a pretty good estimate of his expected effect on Duquesne's on-court performance. I project Bolding to improve in 2010 by 2.3 points per 100 possessions to an ORtg of 105.0, based mainly on the fact that he seemed to come on strong at the end of 2009. The departure of A10 POY candidate Aaron Jackson, and the responsiblity of using more possessions and playing more minutes will have a negative effect on his offensive performance. However, we will give Bolding the benefit of the doubt here and assume that his Freshman-Sophomore jump cancels these factors out and then some. To give even more of a benefit of the doubt to Bolding, we will assume that his mere presence as a good player on the floor has a positive effect on all Duquesne possessions that he is not statistically involved in (shot attempt, foul drawn, or turnover). We will estimate the indirect Bolding effect at 5 points per 100 possessions, equal to his value above an average player on possessions he directly uses. Defense will be more difficult to quantify. Since Duquesne's defense has already so drastically improved from 2009 (1.045 points per possession allowed, adjusted) to 2010 (0.916 ppp allowed, adjusted) without Bolding in the picture, it is unlikely that he will make it significantly better. It is possible that he will make it worse, but we have nothing but anecdotal evidence to suggest either outcome. We will hold team defense as a constant. Bolding did play in the first game against Nicholls State, so we will eliminate this game's effect from the team efficiency numbers when calculating expected outcomes. We will add the actual results of this game onto the expected efficiency numbers once we're done all the calculations. --
We will start by calculating the most direct effect Bolding's presence will have: his ability to use offensive possessions. We project him to use 18.4% of Duquesne's total possessions, or 142 out of 772.
Duquesne picks up an expected 18.79 points on possessions that Bolding is directly involved in. -- Now we have to factor in the "indirect Bolding effect." Since we project him to play 80% of Duquesne's minutes, Duquesne will receive no boost on 20% of their possessions (154):
-- For the possessions that Bolding does not himself use but is on the floor for, we calculate the expected offensive efficiency by adding 0.05 points per possession to the actual 2010 Duquesne value of 0.918 ppp, giving us 0.968 ppp. The remaining 61.6% of posssessions (476) are accounted for here.
Duquesne picks up an expected 23.80 points on possessions that Bolding is not directly involved in, but is on the floor for. -- Adding it all up:
Factoring in the Nicholls St. game:
Adjusted for schedule:
Adjusted Pythagorean Win %
Don't let the small changes in A10 rank fool you: this is a pretty big difference for one player to make. The net effect is that Bolding's return will likely make them better than about 40 teams that they were not better than without him. To try to quantify how this will affect Duquesne's conference performance, we'll compare the odds of winning each A10 contest with and without Bolding, based on our newly calculated adjusted pythagorean win percentage:
Conclusion: Melquan Bolding's value to Duquesne, in terms of the conference schedule, is the ability to turn a 5 win team into a 6 or 7 win team (assuming he comes back before the conference season begins). His return will certainly help them, but the offense still projects to produce less than a point per possession. If they're going to climb to .500 in conference play, their staunch defense will have to carry them. With the brutal schedule outlined above ahead of them, I don't like their chances of accomplishing this. My prediction: Duquesne finishes on the high side of the 6.44 projection and posts a 7-9 conference record. |