One stat sometimes used to evaluate coaches is efficiency on plays right after timeouts. Celtics and Stevens were almost 4 pts worse after right after timeouts than their regular halfcourt average. http://regressing.deadspin.com/which-nb ... 1482773198 Only eight teams had a worse performance differential.
Performance by quarter: 8th best pt. margin during 1st quarter, 19th in 2nd, 24th in 3rd, 28th in 4th. They keep getting worse not better as the game goes on.
Brad Stevens assessment at first season halfway mark
Re: Brad Stevens assessment at first season halfway mark
Wanted to understand Stevens' college accomplishments a bit better. 77% career win%, 5 NCAA tournaments in 6 years with two final fours is very good. Conference is pretty good but not top level.
How do the accomplishments with Stevens compare to before him? His predecessor had a win% at Butler of 68% (with 3 of last 6 seasons at 81+%) and 2 NCAA tournament appearances (including getting to the 3rd round in the season right before the transition to Stevens). Making the tournament was basically a new thing beginning in the 90s but they went 6 out of 11 years before Stevens.
Stevens inherited 5 seniors and a junior for his first season, including 3 of the team's 4 leading scorers from the previous season. Team SRS though went down a point and change the first season. Then down 3 more the next season. Then up 4 in future pro starter Gordon Hayward's second season. Then back down almost 3 pts the next. Then down 9 pts the next season after Hayward left and missing the tournament. Then up 8 for the next and final season. But a second round exit to a lower seed by 12 points. If a coach was going to leave, this might have been about as late as you'd want to do it and still make the biggest impression. This year's team lost 2 of the top 3 scorers from last season but SRS is only down a modest 3.5 points. So altogether it was 2 positive year to year changes and 4 negative on SRS during Stevens' run. That is down and up bouncier than I expected for such a highly regarded coach. He is the most successful coach at Butler but built on the 2 previous fairly successful coaches and has aided by 2 years of the best player in school history.
How do the accomplishments with Stevens compare to before him? His predecessor had a win% at Butler of 68% (with 3 of last 6 seasons at 81+%) and 2 NCAA tournament appearances (including getting to the 3rd round in the season right before the transition to Stevens). Making the tournament was basically a new thing beginning in the 90s but they went 6 out of 11 years before Stevens.
Stevens inherited 5 seniors and a junior for his first season, including 3 of the team's 4 leading scorers from the previous season. Team SRS though went down a point and change the first season. Then down 3 more the next season. Then up 4 in future pro starter Gordon Hayward's second season. Then back down almost 3 pts the next. Then down 9 pts the next season after Hayward left and missing the tournament. Then up 8 for the next and final season. But a second round exit to a lower seed by 12 points. If a coach was going to leave, this might have been about as late as you'd want to do it and still make the biggest impression. This year's team lost 2 of the top 3 scorers from last season but SRS is only down a modest 3.5 points. So altogether it was 2 positive year to year changes and 4 negative on SRS during Stevens' run. That is down and up bouncier than I expected for such a highly regarded coach. He is the most successful coach at Butler but built on the 2 previous fairly successful coaches and has aided by 2 years of the best player in school history.
Re: Brad Stevens assessment at first season halfway mark
Over the past few years it looks like an SRS of 10 happens to cut off about the size of the NCAA tourney field (50-60 teams). So as an arbitrary number, it seems like an ok one for assessing if a team is doing well nationally or not. In the 6 years before Stevens, Butler broke 10 SRS only twice and averaged a 7.2; the best team was the one he inherited at 14.3 and the worst was a .62. In Stevens' tenure, they were above 10 SRS five out of six years and averaged a 10.47; the best team was 14.37 and the worst was 2.86. By that measure, the team was almost always better than it had been and the low point wasn't so low. Perhaps the team quality was jumping around, but it was jumping around a higher level of performance.
Re: Brad Stevens assessment at first season halfway mark
It was a strong run. But fairly short. I might look at NCAA coaches who had strong first 6 years and what happened after. I recall at least a few strong starts that faded later. If one divides Stevens' career in half, he win 86% of his team's games the first 3 seasons and 69% the next 3 seasons. So he had a really veteran team his first season then 2 years with Hayward during his strong run then without Hayward his win% for the final 3 season was essentially the same win% as his predecessor's 6 season run. The most impressive thing was getting back to Final game without Hayward.
During his 6 seasons the NCAA title winnner averaged an SRS of +24, only one was below 25 and was still 18. With Butler's SRS they did really appear that strong contenders by this measure for actually winning the title in either of their 2 finals appearances (one very close despite hitting 35%, one not). In fact they were by far the weakest runner-ups in the 6 year period as well.
I did quickly look at over 2 dozen of the best fairly young college coaches. Most had achieved peak SRS higher than Stevens. At least 10 had near equal or higher career average SRS. A lot of Stevens' specialness hinges on those back to back final appearances. Does that say: he is a good in playoff type coach (in terms of head to head strategy), good at getting the most out of talent, best when he has his best talent, surprised better teams / got lucky or what? He had his worst season with what probably was his youngest team. of course that is not surprising but how is he going to do with in future with NBA teams younger or much younger than what he has right now? Are his best years going to be in his 2nd contract not his first 6 seasons? What are the odds he gets thru the 1st contract without going back to college? 50%? Less? I would not guess much higher than 50% given the track record of other college coaches in the pros.
It would be interesting to see an adjusted plus-minus estimate for Stevens and other major college coaches similar to what Jerry E. did previously with NBA coaches.
Went 12-14 to open the season and now 3-17.
During his 6 seasons the NCAA title winnner averaged an SRS of +24, only one was below 25 and was still 18. With Butler's SRS they did really appear that strong contenders by this measure for actually winning the title in either of their 2 finals appearances (one very close despite hitting 35%, one not). In fact they were by far the weakest runner-ups in the 6 year period as well.
I did quickly look at over 2 dozen of the best fairly young college coaches. Most had achieved peak SRS higher than Stevens. At least 10 had near equal or higher career average SRS. A lot of Stevens' specialness hinges on those back to back final appearances. Does that say: he is a good in playoff type coach (in terms of head to head strategy), good at getting the most out of talent, best when he has his best talent, surprised better teams / got lucky or what? He had his worst season with what probably was his youngest team. of course that is not surprising but how is he going to do with in future with NBA teams younger or much younger than what he has right now? Are his best years going to be in his 2nd contract not his first 6 seasons? What are the odds he gets thru the 1st contract without going back to college? 50%? Less? I would not guess much higher than 50% given the track record of other college coaches in the pros.
It would be interesting to see an adjusted plus-minus estimate for Stevens and other major college coaches similar to what Jerry E. did previously with NBA coaches.
Went 12-14 to open the season and now 3-17.