Statistical Analysis of this season's UCLA BBall team

Turning into a bit of a conversation with myself here, as I've mentioned a couple of times in the past, I'm doing a series of posts on UCLA and USC basketball, using some modern statistical analysis. You can find my first post, explaining what these numbers mean, here. Again in case you missed it before, I'm using David Berri's Win Score metric, which attempts to quantify all a player's stats into a single numerical value. After laying out what I planned to do, I first took a look at USC, titled "Why O.J. Mayo is overrated - part 9,745,398,606". I posted a brief summation in a diary here on BN. I can imagine you get the gist of that one.

Now comes today's post, "Why UCLA is very lucky to have Kevin Love, part 34,785,900". This title, too, is fairly self-explanatory, though the post itself goes into much more depth. The short version: Love is good. Really good. Like... best in the country good. And Luc and Zo are much better than people give them credit for being, while Shipp and Westbrook are perhaps a tad overrated (though, I hasten to add UCLA's top 6 players all have a higher Win Score than O.J. Mayo, heh). A sample section, some of the analysis on Mbah a Moute and Mata-Real:

Probably the biggest surprises in this group of stats are the high rankings of Mata-Real and The Prince. Zo and Luc (despite his 3-point follies) are high-percentage shooters that rebound the ball extremely well. If it sounds familiar, it should - nearly all high-value players in Win Score do so. Because he's a smart, well-coached player who picks his spots to shoot while going after every rebound Mata-Real scores well in this stat. Furthermore, he's actually one of the better shot-blockers in the Pac-10. Let's correct for playing time, as a theoretical exercise. Assume a linear increase to Zo's stats, relative to his minutes played. Now change the number of minutes Mata-Real plays to the number of minutes Kevin Love has played so far. In that case, Zo would average around 2 blocks a game. That's around the same level as the much more touted shot-blocking of Taj Gibson.

In comparison to Lorenzo's focus on boards and blocks, Luc's high score shows the value of a well-rounded game. He doesn't necessarily excel at any one aspect, and in fact has regressed statistically each year he's been at UCLA (more on this in a later post). But he still provides plenty of value to the team in nearly every category. His turnovers are a bit high for a 3/4 on a team with plenty of ball-handlers, but that's about his only real weakness. Much like Lorenzo's offense, Luc plays defense very intelligently - he avoids fouls, grabs a handful of steals and blocks when he can, and protects the defensive glass.

All in all, it's interesting how modern statistical analysis can in some ways support what you believe: UCLA as a team is better than USC by a pretty sizable margin (yes, I know UCLA lost at Pauley - and the Yankees let the Red Sox come back from 3-0, odd things happen in sports), Kevin Love is an absolute beast. In other ways, though, it challenges what you originally thought: Westbrook is a bit overrated, Roll won't really be missed (obviously, the stat can't measure the impact of having so few healthy bodies, but based solely on production he didn't really add anything). Hope you folks find this moderately interesting. My analysis of this team version last season comes up next, and, uhh... I imagine it might be rather vehemently disagreed with.

Still, one must soldier on! Go Bruins!