Ricky Doyle played up to the competition. [Fuller]
While our attention has, for the most part, turned to football in the offseason, a new KenPom feature has me digging back into hoops. On individual player pages, KenPom now displays split stats for performaces against (1) conference opponents, (2) games against top-100 opponents, adjusted for game location, and (3) games against top-50 opponents, with the same home-court adjustment.
This is a very useful tool for parsing out how well players did against better competiton. Michigan's big man situation continues to fascinate me, so I thought it'd be useful to see how last year's troika performed against the best teams on the schedule, especially since the disparity in big man quality tends to be large between bad teams and good teams. While KenPom hasn't yet separated out stats for non-top-100 opponents (consider this a humble suggestion from a mathematically challenged blogger), we can get a baseline by looking at each player's full stat line from last season.
| %Min | %Poss | ORtg | OR% | DR% | TORate | Blk% | FC/40 | FTM-FTA | 2PM-2PA | 3PM-3PA | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ricky Doyle | 43.7 | 17.9 | 117.4 | 10.4 | 11.9 | 12.0 | 2.6 | 4.0 | 39-66 (59%) | 72-119 (61%) | 0-0 |
| Max Bielfeldt | 34.2 | 22.3 | 107.2 | 12.4 | 19.5 | 13.7 | 1.9 | 3.8 | 22-32 (69%) | 54-99 (55%) | 8-30 (27%) |
| Mark Donnal | 22.3 | 17.0 | 119.6 | 10.2 | 16.1 | 9.6 | 3.8 | 6.4 | 19-27 (70%) | 25-44 (57%) | 7-19 (37%) |
And now, each player's stats against only top-50 opponents. This covers 13 games from last season; Ricky Doyle and Max Bielfeldt played in all 13, while Mark Donnal participated in 11 of them.
| %Min | %Poss | ORtg | OR% | DR% | TORate | Blk% | FC/40 | FTM-FTA | 2PM-2PA | 3PM-3PA | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ricky Doyle | 51.4 | 15.5 | 117.7 | 8.3 | 13.5 | 12.6 | 2.2 | 3.8 | 16-25 (64%) | 33-55 (60%) | 0-0 |
| Max Bielfeldt | 32.7 | 22.9 | 91.8 | 8.7 | 21.9 | 16.7 | 2.1 | 4.6 | 8-11 (73%) | 19-38 (50%) | 3-14 (21%) |
| Mark Donnal | 17.0 | 20.6 | 128.2 | 13.9 | 7.3 | 3.6 | 4.0 | 8.4 | 7-11 (64%) | 12-22 (55%) | 2-6 (33%) |
The above helps clarify why John Beilein was comfortable letting Bielfeldt go despite having the opportunity to bring him back. A few takeaways:
Doyle held strong. Doyle's offensive numbers stayed almost exactly the same against top-50 competition; his shooting held at 60%, he took care of the ball, and he allowed the offense to run through the guards/wings. While his offensive rebounding dipped, he still did pretty well in that regard. Equally as encouraging was his ability to hold up defensively; Doyle's foul rate stayed level and he took on a larger share of rebounding duties against top teams.
Bielfeldt's shortcomings became apparent. Bielfeldt proved effective against mid- and lower-tier teams in large part because he dominated the offensive glass, providing himself with easy putback opportunties. Against top-tier teams, however, his offensive rebounding fell off dramatically, his turnover rate rose, and he didn't have a post game or reliable outside shot to make up for either.
Bielfeldt also resorted to fouling more on defense. He was clearly overmatched on that end against high-level competition and that took him out of games even when he had it going offensively; for example, he had nine points on 4-6 shooting in the home overtime loss to Wisconsin but picked up three fouls in 14 minutes because he couldn't defend Frank Kaminsky or Nigel Hayes.
Donnal showed promise on one end. Donnal's decreased role as the season wore on means his sample size is smaller than the others—he essentially played two games worth of minutes against top-50 teams, and he did so in short stints. Those short stints weren't always by design. Donnal was foul-prone in the best of times but especially against good teams; yes, that 8.4 fouls/40 minutes figure is real and speaks to some major defensive shortcomings that were apparent to anyone who watched him play.
There's hope in the offensive numbers, however. Donnal was... good? Again, the tiny sample size makes it hard to draw grand conclusions here, but his rebounding rate and shooting numbers are encouraging.
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With a bulked-up DJ Wilson—listed at 6'9, 240 on the updated roster—set to bolster depth up front, it makes sense for Beilein to prioritize developing Donnal and Wilson into reliable options instead of giving significant minutes to a redshirt senior whose limitations become very apparent in the most important games. With a year of development under Ricky Doyle's belt and a logjam at the four, Michigan may only need one of those two to play a major role off the bench anyway.