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Reviewing Maryland's Maui Trip: Rebounding and Landon Milbourne

Got bored today, so I decided to crunch some numbers, because they usually make more sense than my half-baked opinions. I'll get to the headline after the jump, but for now, it's time for points!

So, are you ready for some win/loss number comparisons? The red represents what players put up in the wins, and the blue is what players put up in the losses:

Ppg_medium

Obviously, Greivis Vasquez is what should stick out the most to you here - in losses, he both took more shots and scored a lot more points. Don't, however, confuse the causes and effects here: because Maryland was losing for most of the contest for both games, Greivis tried to carry the team on his back and therefore got more points. Maryland didn't necessarily lose because Greivis put up points, though I suppose you can take that any way you see it. I won't argue you that Greivis has played awfully no matter what.

Numbers don't help a lot when analyzing Greivis Vasquez's play, especially right now. It looks like he does bad, but Maryland wins because he plays under control. Maryland does bad, it looks like he does good, but they really just start giving him the ball and telling him to score. Maryland could definitely use a second option against actual, legit competition.

I wouldn't read too much into the drops of others, though, because Maryland scored significantly less in their losses than in their wins. Sadly, I'm not going through and normalizing these values - I'm not that bored. The only two I'd really pay attention to would be Vaz's, obviously, and Adrian Bowie, who basically disappeared in Maui. I was also a bit disappointed by Cliff Tucker's regression - he could've been big off the bench.

With points out the way, how bout we get to the bigger problems: rebounding.

Star-divide

Rpg_medium

Look at the culprit here: Landon Milbourne. Tsk, tsk, tsk. Milbourne should be bringing in 5 rebounds a game; in Maryland's two Maui losses, he had 1. Even in the wins he wasn't outstanding, barely breaking 5 against below-average competition.Some argue that, because Landon was in foul trouble and thus didn't play much, so his numbers were deflated. To counter that, I looked at the performance by minute, and the graphs are almost identical.

Reboundspmin_medium

Something is seriously not right with Mr. Milbourne, and the more I think about it, the more I warm up to the idea of Landon at the 3. It can't be a full-time thing - Maryland simply has too many good guards to keep off the floor and Landon is definitely a liability at the spot defensively. But his rebounding is so terrible that he's going to start losing time to Jordan Williams and James Padgett anyway, and he's better than Jin Soo Choi. He'd also present a matchup problem on offense for smaller threes.

I'm still shying away from the idea of starting 2 freshman and having literally JSC and Goins as our frontcourt depth, though. I'm all for decreasing Landon at the 4, bumping him up a little at the 3, and taking away some of Adrian Bowie's minutes, who's been in a funk ever since last year. Greivis Vasquez could stand to see a small decrease in the short-term, too.

On the good side, color me impressed with Jordan Williams and, to a slightly lesser extent, James Padgett. Williams needs to start trimming some fat, and fast, but once he gets cut he'll be a force. The next piece of the puzzle with him, though, is learning how to dunk. All-ACC at that point. Padgett has some nice post moves that I didn't expect - he's a bit limited by his size compared to Williams, but makes up for it with his athleticism.

Any thoughts on the graphs? Not a lot of conclusions to draw from it that we didn't already know, of course, but it's nice to see it in numbers form.

0 recs  |  Comment 2 comments |

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i’m for playing the 2 freshman together. i would like to see more plays run for padgett in the low post. he has good hands and good foot work around the basket. i think bowie’s minutes will lessen. he doens’t have any real feel for playing point guard and his outside shooting is still very inconsistent. if healthy i would hope goins gets some minutes to see what he can do. we need the depth and length upfront. i look for tucker to play more and hopefully he’ll play with some aggressiveness. speaking of aggressiveness it’s time for jordan williams to play more aggressive in the low post particularly going to the basket. stuff the ball young man. take it hard to the hole. we’re a better tea with milbourne playing the 3 rather than the 4.

by fkterp on Nov 28, 2009 2:02 PM EST reply actions   0 recs

Yes, this is a problem...

Defensive rebounding is very much a team stat. There are very few guys (Michael Beasley comes to mind) who can single-handedly make a team good at it…but all it takes is one frontcourt player who doesn’t box out and you have our situation. Of course, it doesn’t help that we’re playing three guards instead of a traditional frontcourt/backcourt setup.

I firmly believe Milbourne can be a passable rebounder…I think it’s mental for him. He takes too many risks defensively and gets out of position. He can get away with this against the Charleston Southerns of the world, but not against the big boys. Nik Caner-Medley learned over the course of his career that the occasional blocked shot was not worth the risk of being out of position, and he became a very solid rebounder at the 4 his senior year. In our case, if Milbourne can have a similar epiphany, we’ll be in much better shape in terms of defense/rebounding.

Gregory’s return will give us much more leeway, but for the next two games I’m not sure what the answer is. Villanova isn’t a big team but they are pretty good rebounders. I’ll be interested to see what approach GW takes.

by jellisjenius on Nov 28, 2009 3:18 PM EST reply actions   0 recs

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