• Welcome to OGBoards 10.0, keep in mind that we will be making LOTS of changes to smooth out the experience here and make it as close as possible functionally to the old software, but feel free to drop suggestions or requests in the Tech Support subforum!

Danny Manning - Margin by Half

buckets

buckets

#1 Bald Hero
Joined
Mar 28, 2011
Messages
38,967
Reaction score
4,787
Anecdotally, it has seemed that Danny's Wake teams seem to be competitive through the first half only to fall apart in the second half of a lot of games. I went back and looked at the pts margin by half since Danny has been here and there's some evidence that the dude struggles in second halfs (first number is the pts differential; second number in parantheses in the NCAA rank):

2014:
1st half: +0.4 (153)
2nd half: -3.2 (302)

2015:
1st half: -0.4 (187)
2nd half: -4.5 (322)

2016:
1st half: +3.8 (55)
2nd half: +0.6 (131)

2017:
1st half: -0.1 (186)
2nd Half: -0.4 (191)

For the sake of fun, here is [Redacted]'S last season, which also sucked:
2013:
1st half: +0.5 (139)
2nd half: -2.0 (241)

My BOY WES MILLER:
2017:
1st half: +4.8 (45)
2nd half: +3.8 (44)

SAUCE: https://www.teamrankings.com/ncaa-basketball/stat/average-2nd-half-margin?date=2017-04-04
 
To further this analysis - in Manning's best year (last season) the delta between the pts differential in each half (-3.2 between the 1st and 2nd half) ranked Wake #307 out of 351 teams
 
Now I'm sure Danny is reading this saying, "Hey! This isn't fair, there are lots of good teams that get up big in the first half and then grind out second half wins."

Ok, Danny. But you're not Tony Bennett (the coach NOR the singer).

In this season's cluster, we have the following:

There are 126 teams with negative point differentials in both halves (i.e. they lose both halves). Wake is ranked 92 out of those 126 teams in terms of how much worse it gets in the second half. Sandwiched right in between Incarnate Word (6-20) and Pacific (14-17).

THAT'S NOT GOOD!
 
Bad coaching takes time to fully manifest itself. By the last 5 minutes it is in full bloom.
 
Curious if this holds up for other coaches known as being weak game managers and vice versa. Also if bad teams in general do worse due to lack of depth, the better teams flipping a switch, etc
 
Thanks for posting this stuff.

Perhaps only tangentially related, but after the ND collapse, I was curious about our late game futility this year. More specifically, how many games did we piss away that we should have won? So I went to KP and looked at the win probability graphs for each game to see how many games we lost this year that very much should have been ours at some point in the game.

Bottom Line: Surprisingly (to me, at least), most of the games where I felt like we collapsed were more "toss-ups" where we fell apart vs. blowing a lead we should have been able to sustain.

Losses that should have been wins (75%+ win probability at some point):
Notre Dame - 88.3% win probability when we held 69-60 lead w/ just over 8 minutes to go
Drake - 97.6%; Up 60-49 w/ ~10min to go
Georgia Southern - 96.2%; Up 27-13 midway through the 1st half
Liberty - 92.5%; 90%+ most of the 1H, 50%+ until we fell apart between 15-10min mark of 2H

Wins that should have been losses (Opponent held 75%+ win probability and Wake wins anyway):
FSU - 89.6%; 39-30 lead just before the half... 64.3% chance when they led 72-71 in the last minute of the game
Syracuse - 75.8%; Cuse leads 51-46 w/ 7min to go

Now, there were other games where we had moments in time where the game should have been ours for the taking, but I'd say these were more toss-ups (or missed opportunities):
NCSU (away) - 62.7% to win w/ 4min to go
UNC (away) - 65% to win w/ 2min to go (But UNC was 80%+ win probability most of that game)
Tennessee (home) - 66% to win in 1st half
Houston (neutral) - 65.8% to win in 1st half
BC (away) - 57.1% to win in 1st half
Clemson (home) - 56.5% to win with about 5min to go
NCSU (home) - 50%+ very early on in 1st half

That's it.

In every other win, there was never a point in the game where we weren't projected as the winner.
In every other loss (VT Duke-x2 UVA Louisville Miami Cuse-away), there was never a point in the game where we were projected as the winner.

Not sure what all that says about the team or Manning... I'll let you all debate that.

To me, I guess it means that we SHOULD be 13-16 right now (who cares)... And it probably also means that we should have won a couple of those "toss-ups" if it weren't for horrifically shitty play down the stretch.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top