Welcome back to another addition of the +/- Player Analysis for your 2011-2012 Indiana Hoosiers! WOW!!!! I don't know about you, but I still have a giant grin on my face. This is the best feeling I've had relating to ANY IU Athletic in the past 4 years. I'm not going to overstate the importance of this game, or declare us a Top 25 team, but I will say this team showed courage on Wednesday night. This team didn't hang their heads when things started going wrong (included "Goal tending" calls!). They stayed focused and came back. This squad is unlike the last three years... they just turned a 7 point deficit with 7:38 to go in the game into an 11 point "We Just Did That" win. That is growth and maturity folks.
Key Players:
- Christian Watford - You might say that Hulls or Zeller should get top billing, and maybe you are right. But I'm giving it to Watford. Watford has been a major talking point all year amongst Hoosier fans as he has struggled to find his new role on this team. I'm not going to declare that he found it, but I will say he played a very solid game for us with 16 pts & 9 rebs. He even had himself a Blk!
- Jordan Hulls - Hulls will continue to lead this team in minutes. IU plays so well with him in the game. Hulls showed up in a big way scoring a season high 20 points. The three pointer he hit late in the second half could be one of his biggest shots as a Hoosier.
- Cody Zeller - Cody, Cody, Cody. He's all he was talked up to be and more. It's still early in the season, but if Zeller can continue to play at this level, Chad Forde won't be crazy for listing him as the #19 overall pick in the 2012 NBA Draft. That being said, I don't think it makes any point including him in those projections until 2014 or 2015 (we hope...)
+/- Player Analysis vs NC State
*Just in case you forgot, here is a quick breakdown as to what the +/- Player Analysis is looking at.
Example: Here is a quick example of how the +/- stat is determined. Zeller, Watford, VJIII, Hulls and Sheehey start the game for IU. Therefore the score is 0-0. Coach Crean makes his first substitution at 15:00 with the score IU up 15-10. Oladipo comes into the game for Sheehey. For this stint in time, Sheehey would earn a +5 (while Sheehey was in, IU increased their lead by 5 points). The Lineup of Zeller, Watford, VJIII, Hulls and Sheehey also earned a +5. This will continue throughout the game.
Game Overall
Key Takeaways:
- Oladipo took the honors as Best of the Night in terms of +/-. He made every minute count as he went +21 in his 22 minutes of play. That is pretty incredible for a game you only win by 11! (ie when Oladipo was on the bench, IU was -10) Check out Oladipo's Thunderous Dunk to close out the game!
- Watford, Zeller and Hulls also had incredible games. Each player recorded a +/- greater than our margin of victory which indicates for each of them, when they were on the bench, IU got outscored.
- Elston and Pritchard: Seeing them both down there on the list shouldn't be surprising to anyone. When you saw the athletic ability of NC State's big men, you knew that would spell trouble for these guys. The interesting part is Coach Crean's decision to use them together again later in the game after it didn't work out very well for the Hoosiers in the first half. Too athletic.
- VJ3 - Most people were up in arms with VJ again. I'm starting to think that VJ is the player you either love or hate. You will either defend him or attack him. I'll say this, the people out there saying he hurts the team are incorrect. If he would have played 40 minutes tonight, and maintained his +/-, IU would have won by 1. Now you can make the argument that putting another player in for him (Sheehey) would be more beneficial, but you can't say he hurts our chances of winning. VJ3 was a part of the unit that got the early 11 point lead, and in his first stint, ended at +6. Therefore over the remaining 35 minutes of the game he went (-5).
- Remy Abell: This is interesting. If I were to ask you all how you thought Abell's +/- would go, I'm assuming you would all think he did fairly well. From a game standpoint, he was huge for us. He came in and hit a big three pointer that calmed our team down. He played decent defense as well. I think our shock of seeing him play well and make a few buckets clouded the fact that we still lost more points when he was in. (Don't place much credence in this, it was a small sample size and even though he was negative, he helped this team win tonight from the Mental aspect of the game.
- I cannot stress this enough, anything in the GREEN, means the player had a positive impact on the game and helped IU get to their blowout win.
Lineups of the Night:
Key Takeaways: (click to enlarge)
- Here you can see the game flow throughout the night. The chart reads from the beginning of the game to the end from top to bottom.
- Our first two lineups went +11, then we went on a -14 over the next 21 lineups. Ended with a +14!
- Overall, Coach Crean used 17 different combinations of players in the game (fewest amount used so far this year). Of his 17 combinations, ONLY 4 were positive, 6 were neutral (0) and the remaining 7 were negative.
- 6 different units played multiple times these evening.
I'm not going to single out one lineup tonight for having a 1pt higher +/-. There were two lineups for IU tonight that were OUTSTANDING.
The Openers:
The best lineup of the night (+11) belongs to Hulls, Oladipo, VJIII, Watford and Zeller. This unit played 3 different times throughout the night (the most). They did their mostly all of their damage at the beginning of the game when they went +10.
The Closers:
The second best lineup of the night (+10) consisted of Hulls, Oladipo, Sheehey, Watford and Zeller. Notice that the two best lineups all contained Hulls, Oladipo, Watford and Zeller. Good fuel for the Sheehey/VJ3 fan battles... They played together twice, and did their damage in the second half at the 5:20 mark where Zeller came in for Pritchard. They entered trailing 64-67, and left with the Hoosiers leading 82-75 with 40 seconds remaining. I would argue that this is the lineup of the night, as they closed out the game for us.
Worst Lineup of the Night:
The worst group of the night (-5) consisted of Hulls, VJIII, Sheehey, Watford and Pritchard. They only played together once, and only for 1:07. They came in at the 14:01 mark in the first half and left at the 12:54 mark. It's not hard to get a -5 in a minute (insert Roth getting a +9 in 1 minute stretch last year, as the 3 ball can play a big part.) Don't look much into this one.
Season to Date:
As many people like to point out, looking at the +/- for one specific game is not entirely telling. Tracking this over the course of the year, will give a much clearer picture as to what each player brings to the team. Below is the updated season to date +/- for each player.
There wasn't much movement overall. The fact that we have now played 2 quality opponents and two road games and we still have so many players that high is promising! Double digit wins will do that for you though!
Lineup Combinations
Here are some quick stats related to the Lineups Tom Crean has used through the three regular season games:
- Coach has used 115 different lineups this year.
- Of those 115, only 34 are negative year to date. (Increased by 3 this game)
- Best lineup is +37 (Also tonight's Best Lineup. Crean's favorite unit (16 times) of Hulls, Oladipo, VJ3, Watford, Zeller)
- 2nd Best Lineup is +19 (only played in 4 games, 7 times total. Consists of Hulls, Oladipo, Sheehey, Watford and Zeller)
- Worst lineup is -6. (Consists of Oladipo, Sheehey, Moore, Abell, Elston)
- Zeller is in the 13 best lineups for the year.
- 28 lineups have been used multiple times this year.
Here is your chance to play Coach Crean!
What you can do is go to this link, "+/- Lineup Generator" and it will open an Excel file for you. Using the filters already on the page, you can filter the lineups for the year to see how all the different combinations of players play together.
For instance, if you wanted to see how the team does when Oladipo and Sheehey are in the game together, filter both their columns. This will return all lineups for the year that Oladipo and Sheehey have been on the floor together!
Overall
There were plenty of articles at the end of the Butler game declaring that was Tom Crean's most important win of his IU career, I'm not going to say they were right or wrong, but I don't think that applies. Moving beyond Coach Crean, this was the biggest win for the Indiana Basketball program in 4 years. This game showed everything IU fans wanted to see from our boys; heart, perseverance, determination.... and a KILLER INSTINCT.
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