June vs Rusty - Analysis

[couch 'em]

Yesterday in a thread I posted a quick comparison of the offensive and defensive performance of June's last 3 years vs. Rusty Burns' last 3 years at SMU. That post is below. Of course, someone pointed out W's vs. L's. I also crunched some numbers on W vs L real quick. That will be posted next. Sorry, not too indepth, can't waste too much time today.

Let's compare:

I omitted both June's first year and Rusty's first year as that is an implementation year.

The following is the year, the number of points scored per game (against CUSA opponents only), and th enumber of points given up (against CUSA games only) per game.

year - for - against

Rusty/Bennett:
2005 - 22.125 - 22.000
2006 - 27.000 - 26.500
2007 - 31.375 - 41.375

June/Mason:
2009 - 28.500 - 27.375
2010 - 26.556 - 24.222
2011 - 24.625 - 23.000

Total Averages
Rusty/Bennett - 26.833 - 29.958
June/Mason - 26.560 - 24.866

So Rusty scored slightly more than June on average, and Mason is crushing Bennett, but only when you include the horrible 2007 year. They are quite similar with slight edge to Bennett without that year.

Interestingly scoring went up every year under Rusty, even in the 1-11 final year in 2007, but have gone down every year under Jones.

We can surmise from this that had Bennett not had a defense in 2007 twice as bad as the 2006 and 2005 defense, he may not have been fired.

How does offensive production affect defensive production? Does more or less points scored cause more or less points given up? When the other team scores often does the offense benefit from 'more' chances to score, or does a low scoring game where the opponent is going 3-and-out benefit offensive production? Perhaps a really good or really bad D benefits the O, whereas a mediocre D hurts scoring? I'll leave that to someone else.

Also, just from glancing at the scores, the Rusty/Bennett years had a lot more close games, both high scoring and low scoring, whereas the Jones years seem to have more blowouts. How does this affect offensive production? This ties into the previous question.

[couch 'em]

Now let's look at record. For fair comparison, I'm only including CUSA games, no OOC.

The following will list:
Year - CUSA Record - Total Opponents W's - Total Opponents L's - Opponent Winning % - Success Factor

Success factor is a number I made up to compare SMU's W's and L's vs the record of the opponents. I took the total winning percentage of the opponents times number of SMU wins. This way, going 2-6 vs teams with 90% winning records is better than going 5-3 vs teams with 20% winning.

So:
Year - SMURecord - OppW's - OppL's - OppW% - SucFac
Rusty/Bennett
2005 - 4-4 - 40 - 52 - .435 - 1.74
2006 - 4-4 - 49 - 52 - .485 - 1.94
2007 - 0-8 - 53 - 50 - .515 - 0.00
Avg Success Factor: 1.23
June/Mason
2009 - 6-2 - 45 - 56 - .446 - 2.67
2010 - 6-2 - 44 - 55 - .444 - 2.67
2011 - 5-3 - 51 - 51 - .500 - 2.5
Average Success Factor: 2.61

By this comparison, June's teams have been far superior. It also makes Bennett's last year look not quite as bad. Sure his D was horrible that year, but it's also the strongest CUSA schedule in these six.

However, the point of the thread is to compare June to Rusty. How would June have done saddled with Bennett's D and how would Rusty have done with Mason helping him out? Afterall, Rusty's best year (2007) was wasted with Bennett's worst D, and June's worst year (2011) was helped by Mason's best D thus far.

I went back and looked at the actual games scores for the sample years. Look at the three year defensive averages for both D's in my first post above, you'll see that Bennett's average D gave up 29.958 points/game where Mason's average D gave up 24.866 points/game. So, I recalculated each year's conference win/loss record based on the following: For Rusty/Bennett years, any game where 25 or more points are scored by SMU is a win, and for June/Mason years, any game where 30 or more points are scored by SMU is a win.
Year - AdjustedSMURecord - AdjustedSuccessFactor
Rusty/Mason
2005 - 4-4 - 1.74
2006 - 5-3 - 2.43
2007 - 5-3 - 2.57
Avg Success Factor: 2.25
June/Bennett
2009 - 4-4 - 1.78
2010 - 4-4 - 1.78
2011 - 3-5 - 1.5
Average Success Factor: 1.69

As you can see, Rusty with Mason's D is much more successful than June with Bennett's D. Rusty pulls in the best two years in the set. June's campaign from this past year looks really really bad without Mason's.

What does this all mean? I think it confirms what we already knew - June is underperforming, Rusty Burns was pretty good.

On the defensive front, Bennett did about as good as Mason his first year in the set, and went down hill and crashed and burned. Is that because of his coaching ability or his lack of recruiting? Mason started off with Bennett's crash-and-burn talent and has improved every year and been quite consistent.

Anyway, this all makes my head hurt. You guys can analyize it more.

[SMU 86]

Pretty detailed analysis.

[kull]

Junes SMU offense is different then what was run at Hawaii in terms of scheme. We have been more of a 'WCO/Marchibroda Hybrid set' out of the shoot to manage clock and help out the defense. The emphasis on recruiting has been on defense.

[ponyte]

Other stats to briefly consider:

Jones/Mason vs. Rusty/Bennett post season
2-2 vs. 0-0

Jones/Mason vs. Rusty/Bennett Big Horseys

2 vs. 0

Jones/Mason vs. Rusty/Bennett cool blitz calls

0 vs. 1

Jones/Mason vs. Rusty/Bennett burning the stadium down

0 vs. 1

All these look pretty even to me.

[SMU 86]

Isn't Rusty Burns the new TCU OC now?

[ponyte]

If true, it looks like next season is gonna be more fun in many different ways.

[sbsmith]

Isn't Rusty Burns the new TCU OC now?

Co-OC, he'll share playcalling duties with another coach.

[EastStang]

And Bennett was of course a defensive genius.

[SMUer]

Maybe SMU isn't a great fit for geniuses...

[bball4tc]

Isn't Rusty Burns the new TCU OC now?

Co-OC, he'll share playcalling duties with another coach.

I am guessing the other Co-OC it is the same guy that held the Co-OC position previously and in that case I would bet Rusty Burns will be doing all the play calling.

[Mustangunner]

You have too much time on your hands

[couch 'em]

Bump for IPP

[PerunaPunch]

Nice job!

[AusTxPony]

I think June may agree that he has underperformed especially in the QB area. But the team has performed better in the W-L numbers and that is what counts in the end, right? Also, the talent has been better I think, more All-conference players, more Bowl games, more NFL draft picks though Bennet did recruit some of those graduating seniors, I believe, but June and crew coached them.