| Analysis of Marquette’s early bigs on Paint Touches

On By Littum

I like to give the season some time to breathe before diving into the numbers, as a 2 or 3 game sample just isn’t big enough to give us a sample worth dissecting. So as you read, keep that in mind. Trading 3 misses for marks (or vice versa) changes entire discussions. It’s not worth getting too worked up about, either positive or negative.

Ben Gold 3s

You knew exactly that after that intro, didn’t you. The biggest chatter I see from Marquette’s 3-0 start to the season has to do with Ben Gold’s shooting.

It’s not just that Gold is shooting a paltry 19% from distance on 21 attempts, it’s that 80% of his field goal attempts on the season have come from behind the arc. As a reminder, he set a record last season for a big player taller than 6’10” by taking 78% of his shots from 3-point land, the highest rate for a big since at least 2008, according to BartTorvik.com .So that doesn’t come as a surprise per se, it’s just that it’s much less ideal to shoot so much with so little accuracy.

And there is another point that deserves mention. Gold not only has jack-up attempts as a supporting character in Along Came Polly, he’s taken really good, open, in-rhythm 3s that have Shaka and Nevada’s blessing.

Per Synergy, all of his 21 3s have been catch and shoot types, which are significantly more effective than dribble jumpers, and more shockingly, Synergy classifies 16 of them as “unguarded” or open. Last season, the D1 average for unguarded spot up 3s was 1.13 PPS (37.6% accuracy). The D1 average for guarded spot-ups was 0.968 PPS (32.2% accuracy). So we have large-scale proof that unguarded spot ups are 17% more effective than their guarded counterparts.

Gold leads the country in volume with 16, but of the 70 players with double-digit attempts, Gold is 65th, making just 3 of those 16 attempts.

On the one hand, you figure this is a little test blip and you encourage him to keep shooting through it and support him with full confidence. On the other hand, at some point you fall into an opponent’s trap as they don’t think you’re worth covering and would love to see you start it 8+ times in a game.

After talking to Nevada directly and listening to Shaka several times, they will say that they have full confidence in Ben and will continue to support his shooting, even through a dry spell.

Here’s a plot of Gold’s 3pt shooting by game in his career, with his season percentage rolling average in green. He has been a very slow starter each season (albeit with much) less volume. Panicking after 3 games makes no sense.

Here’s the same chart, but tracked to his career percentage. He’s not a great shooter based on a large amount of data, but not an abysmal one either. Flattening around 33% to 35% seems to be the logical destination.

At the same time, however, Shaka and Nevada will advocate for more aggressiveness inside the arc. You can’t have opponents clogging lanes knowing you’ll only be active on the perimeter.

I said it in the season premiere and I’ll say it again. Ben Gold is too good of a finisher to only have 5 attempts from beyond the arc this season. Marquette loves the spacing he provides, but it also needs his ability to penetrate.

P&R screening

One very tangible change that I hope we see over the course of the season is the distribution of the “pick and roll man” playstyle, which tracks the possessions where the screener ends up with the ball. With Tyler Kolek and Oso Ighodaro running the best 2-man game we’ve ever seen, Marquette was elite at this type of play, finishing in the top 80% efficiency each of the last 3 seasons. It won’t be like that this year, and I don’t expect it either, but the shot distribution feels skewed.

This season, 80% of “P&R Man” possessions end in 3pt attempts. It has never been above 32% under Shaka. This is not unexpected, Joplin and Gold are Sagittarius and Kam often finds them, but the distribution is too skewed. The defense knows exactly what’s going to happen after a pick, and it’s not a toss-up.

I went over every offensive possession with Gold as a screener against Central Michigan, and of the 10 screens he set, he jumped to the perimeter on 8 of them and only rolled to the rim on 1. And again, this has created great looks against overmatched teams, but as opponents increase in size and athleticism and scout for this, it will only make them harder to find and easier to guard.

That’s why I had to cut this from Monday.

Royce Parham gave us vintage Oso for a possession, sliding the screen beautifully and finishing with a soft float touch. Of course, this won’t be available every time, but being less one-dimensional with the screener movement (especially for gold) will be imperative going forward.

Royce Parham Breakout?

And let’s get back to something else here. Royce Parham has been a revelation.

I was fortunate enough to see both Parham and Damarius Owens in person earlier this year, and I thought Royce didn’t have the athleticism to make an impact early. Now it’s time to point and laugh at me.

Maybe that game was lopsided for me, but Parham has really impressed me with his activity level, especially on the defensive end. He doesn’t look sluggish when substituted and he doesn’t lose the ball.

We’ll see how he holds up against better competition, but again, we’ve seen several games with really encouraging signs.

Breaking down the bigs this season, Parham has played 23 minutes as the only 5, far from enough to draw any definitive conclusions, but still, you can see the stark contrast to Cadin’s 22 minutes below.

Parham is +23 so far while Caedin is -1. And when paired with Gold, Parham they are +6 in 10 minutes.

Once again, it is useless to analyze plus or minus with such a small sample. I’m not saying bench Caedin forever and make Royce the primary backup. What I’m noticing is that his impact on the field has been much more positive than I expected at this point, and that’s exactly the kind of addition Marquette needs.

And one more thing, despite all the gold buzz, Marquette has been at its best so far with him on the court, especially from a defensive perspective. Friday will be a stern test to see how those trends hold, but if you’ve complained about Ben’s defense to date, you might be missing the forest for the trees.

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