Ken Pom: Foul Trouble Data by Coach
Posted: Wed Jul 13, 2016 8:32 amkenpom.com/blog/foul-trouble-data-by-coach
Let’s take inventory on how every coach in college hoops handles foul trouble. To make this as simple as possible, for each head coach I’m going to determine how often a starter with two fouls is on the floor in the first half. As shown in the previous post in this series, there’s a lot more context to account for with respect to players in second-half foul trouble, so for now, we’ll ignore that in the interest of providing a number that’s simple to interpret.
To make this happen, I’m using the last seven seasons of play-by-play data. I’ve sampled every game at each minute of the first half. For example, with exactly 19:00 left, I’m checking if there is a starter with two fouls and whether that starter is on the floor, then repeating this for 18:00 and each minute thereafter all the way to the end of the half.
This is essentially a random sample of the data, especially when you consider I am throwing out situations where the play-by-play data doesn’t allow one to definitively know who is on the floor. But it’s going to uncover each coach’s tendencies quite well. Just don’t take the percentages beyond the decimal point as a literal record of what’s happened in the last seven seasons. It’s reasonably close to what happened given the limitations of the data.
Among gentlemen that have coached in all seven seasons of the sample, Tubby Smith has been the most protective of starters with two fouls. He’s let a starter play just 64 of a possible 1,310 foul-troubled minutes, or 4.9% of the time. Memphis fans, you’ve been warned.
But there may be a new sheriff on the scene. SMU head coach Tim Jankovich played a starter with two fouls just 13 of a possible 798 minutes (1.6%) in his three seasons at Illinois State for which we have data.
There are also coaches who don’t go nuts if a starter has two fouls, but one rises above them all. Western Carolina’s Larry Hunter is the only person to coach in each of the past seven seasons that has his two-foul starters on the floor more often than on the bench. Of 2,135 minutes where a Catamount starter had two first-half fouls since 2010, they were on the floor for 1,189 of them, or 55.7%.
His starters tend to commit a lot of fouls and perhaps a small reason for that is they know there won’t be a quick hook when they get whistled for a second. Not only does Hunter lead the nation in percentage but over the past seven seasons, the 1,189 foul-troubled minutes by WCU is significantly ahead of the next most aggressive team over that time (Oakland, 1,067).
Who is Larry Hunter? Perhaps he’s a visionary. Or some kind of irresponsible madman. He’s coached for 23 years including a previous 12-year run at Ohio. He’s won 375 games. He shares a name with a famous computational biologist. So there are a lot of reasons to think he knows what he’s doing.
But does he?
The Catamounts went 10-8 in SoCon play and 16-18 overall but that doesn’t tell you anything about whether the strategy was effective. Their starters fouled out 25 times which tied for second with Nevada, behind Washington’s 34. If the goal is to maximize starters’ minutes, Larry Hunter was successful at that. But the goal is to improve one’s chances of winning and whether that was achieved is unknown from the information given. Nonetheless, while every coach restricts first half playing time for a player with two fouls, it’s clear some are way more flexible than others.
Here’s the data on all 321 active D-I coaches that have at least one year of experience in the books since the 2009-10 season [see link above]
Let’s take inventory on how every coach in college hoops handles foul trouble. To make this as simple as possible, for each head coach I’m going to determine how often a starter with two fouls is on the floor in the first half. As shown in the previous post in this series, there’s a lot more context to account for with respect to players in second-half foul trouble, so for now, we’ll ignore that in the interest of providing a number that’s simple to interpret.
To make this happen, I’m using the last seven seasons of play-by-play data. I’ve sampled every game at each minute of the first half. For example, with exactly 19:00 left, I’m checking if there is a starter with two fouls and whether that starter is on the floor, then repeating this for 18:00 and each minute thereafter all the way to the end of the half.
This is essentially a random sample of the data, especially when you consider I am throwing out situations where the play-by-play data doesn’t allow one to definitively know who is on the floor. But it’s going to uncover each coach’s tendencies quite well. Just don’t take the percentages beyond the decimal point as a literal record of what’s happened in the last seven seasons. It’s reasonably close to what happened given the limitations of the data.
Among gentlemen that have coached in all seven seasons of the sample, Tubby Smith has been the most protective of starters with two fouls. He’s let a starter play just 64 of a possible 1,310 foul-troubled minutes, or 4.9% of the time. Memphis fans, you’ve been warned.
But there may be a new sheriff on the scene. SMU head coach Tim Jankovich played a starter with two fouls just 13 of a possible 798 minutes (1.6%) in his three seasons at Illinois State for which we have data.
There are also coaches who don’t go nuts if a starter has two fouls, but one rises above them all. Western Carolina’s Larry Hunter is the only person to coach in each of the past seven seasons that has his two-foul starters on the floor more often than on the bench. Of 2,135 minutes where a Catamount starter had two first-half fouls since 2010, they were on the floor for 1,189 of them, or 55.7%.
His starters tend to commit a lot of fouls and perhaps a small reason for that is they know there won’t be a quick hook when they get whistled for a second. Not only does Hunter lead the nation in percentage but over the past seven seasons, the 1,189 foul-troubled minutes by WCU is significantly ahead of the next most aggressive team over that time (Oakland, 1,067).
Who is Larry Hunter? Perhaps he’s a visionary. Or some kind of irresponsible madman. He’s coached for 23 years including a previous 12-year run at Ohio. He’s won 375 games. He shares a name with a famous computational biologist. So there are a lot of reasons to think he knows what he’s doing.
But does he?
The Catamounts went 10-8 in SoCon play and 16-18 overall but that doesn’t tell you anything about whether the strategy was effective. Their starters fouled out 25 times which tied for second with Nevada, behind Washington’s 34. If the goal is to maximize starters’ minutes, Larry Hunter was successful at that. But the goal is to improve one’s chances of winning and whether that was achieved is unknown from the information given. Nonetheless, while every coach restricts first half playing time for a player with two fouls, it’s clear some are way more flexible than others.
Here’s the data on all 321 active D-I coaches that have at least one year of experience in the books since the 2009-10 season [see link above]
