Minnesota 59, Illinois 36

Suffice it to say that this game was a worst-case scenario for Illinois. I'm not going to say that the sky is falling. Barring a complete collapse, this still looks like an NCAA Tournament team. But what this game might tell us is that the Illini won't make it past the first weekend simply because they are too one-dimensional on offense. Since they are not a good rebounding team nor a team that draws a lot of fouls, they absolutely have to make shots for the offense to be successful. They came into this game leading the Big Ten in field goal percentage and so the offense had done well enough to complement the team's perennially-outstanding defense. Yet I knew if they ever had an off night shooting the ball, it could get ugly and that's exactly what happened.

I don't think the plus-minus chart tells us a whole lot about what happened in this game, besides to show that the whole team was flat:

Player	P/M	Minutes
Demetri McCamey	-14	24
Trent Meacham	-16	31
Chester Frazier	-16	30
Mike Davis	-10	14
Mike Tisdale	-12	31
Calvin Brock	-5	17
Dominique Keller	-10	18
Jeff Jordan	-11	6
Alex Legion	-13	24
Richard Semrau	-8	3

Fortunately, Illinois has an 87% chance of defeating Iowa tomorrow according to the Pomeroy Ratings, so they should get back on track.

The Vagaries of Illinois Football

One thing I've learned over the last few years is that the difference between a winning team and a losing team in college football can come down to just a handful of plays. The ever-insightful Dr. Saturday provides an excellent illustration of this point in a post on his blog today. Despite what was only a narrow increase in net yardage from 2005 to 2006, Illinois went from 2-10 to a 9-4 Rose Bowl season. Yet despite another increase in net yardage this season, Illinois' record dropped to 5-7 and they failed to make a bowl.

As an Illinois fan, this season was obviously frustrating. In particular, the home loss to Minnesota where the Illini outgained the Gophers 550-312 but lost 27-20 due to 3 costly turnovers still burns. Yet was it really just bad luck or was Illinois systematically underperforming in a manner not indicated by their net yardage numbers? Dr. Saturday suggests the reason for the large discrepancies in Illinois' win-loss record over the last 3 years despite rather similar underlying statistics is the team's turnover margin. He provides a chart showing that Illinois was -15 in 2006, -2 in 2007 and -6 in 2008. Although their turnover margin was still unspectacular in 2007, it was worse in the other two seasons and undoubtedly that made a difference.

Still, I wondered if that was the entire story as to why the 2008 team declined by 4 wins. One theory I had was that the loss of Rashard Mendenhall might have made Illinois less effective in the red zone, since their passing offense relied on being able to spread the field. This theory didn't hold up, however, as Illinois scored on 82% of their red zone opportunities in both 2007 and 2008. And in fact, the team's scoring increased slightly in 2008 (28.7 vs. 27.8).

On the defensive end, however, the team gave up nearly 5 points more per game in 2008 despite allowing less yardage. The reasons for this are not quite clear. Indeed, turnovers were an issue as the Illini intercepted only 6 passes the entire season compared to 17 in 2007. That said, they also recovered 14 of 21 lost fumbles compared to just 8 of 19 the previous year, so they also benefited from some luck. Overall, there is no statistic that points directly to what went wrong. Illinois was worse at defending punt and kickoff returns in 2008, but not by a huge amount. It was slightly less effective in the red zone, but not unreasonably so.

It seems that these small differences (a few less turnovers forced, slightly worse special teams, slightly worse red zone defense) really added up, however, proving that the difference between a successful and a disappointing season can be thin indeed. It is possible to blame Ron Zook for the team's inability to win close games, but then again, it might just be bad luck. Fortunately, since the team's underlying performance has actually improved over the last three seasons and turnover margin tends to regress to the mean, there is every reason to expect that the team will rebound for a bowl berth next season and into Big Ten contention.

Illinois Plus-Minus Chart, Conference Play

Player	P/M	Minutes
Chester Frazier	+75	232
Trent Meacham	+57	203
Mike Tisdale	+52	158
Mike Davis	+44	209
Demetri McCamey	+31	222
Calvin Brock	+22	128
Dominique Keller	+18	82
Jeff Jordan	+10	40
Alex Legion	+9	115

I've been promising to expand beyond single-game statistics and the above chart does just that. Although 7 games is a small sample and plus-minus is not a perfect statistic, there are some conclusions we can begin to draw from this chart. Chester Frazier has clearly been the team MVP so far in conference play, as he has finally blossomed into a player who can do more than just defend. Averaging over 5 assists a game with a assist/turnover ratio over 2, he is no longer a liability on offense. On a per-minute basis, however, Mike Tisdale has been the most effective player on the team. Even with his thin frame, his size is a big asset on defense. It should be noted that Bruce Weber is quick to pull him when he is struggling with a match-up, perhaps artificially inflating his per-minute numbers. This is one of the reasons why I find it more helpful to provide a raw plus-minus chart, rather than a per-minute one.

Other points I take away is that Demetri McCamey, although he has many flashes of brilliance, still has not developed into a complete basketball player. According to plus-minus, he is the weakest of the five starters and I suspect this reflects his streaky shooting as well as his proclivity towards taking plays off on defense. I'm not going to put up a season-long chart today but suffice it to say that McCamey has lagged behind his fellow starters in plus-minus for the entire season, so I feel confident that this is no 7-game fluke.

The following chart is a bit more experimental, but it provides team offensive and defensive efficiency while each player is on the floor. I will admit that these are estimations based on the team's season-long pace and the number of minutes played by each player. I don't have the time or the inclination to actually count the number of possessions each player was on the floor. For those unfamiliar, Offensive Efficiency is simply (Points/Possessions)*100.

Player	Off. Eff.	Def. Eff.
Chester Frazier	107.4	86.8
Trent Meacham	110.8	92.9
Mike Tisdale	105.2	84.3
Mike Davis	105.5	92.1
Demetri McCamey	105.9	97.0
Calvin Brock	99.5	88.6
Dominique Keller	104.1	90.1
Jeff Jordan	94.0	78.0
Alex Legion	100.8	95.8

Again, I want to reiterate that this is a small sample and that each player's numbers could be skewed by the fact that they share time with four other players on the court. That said, I think these problems are not as apparent in an inter-team comparison as they would be in a cross-team comparison. And so far, at least, these numbers back up a lot of my hypotheses. The team no longer suffers on offense when Frazier is on the floor and is very good on defense. The offense is solid with McCamey but the defense clearly suffers due to his presence. Tisdale ranks as the best defensive player on the team; I suspect largely because of his height. Alex Legion has not made the impact many fans had hoped for on offense due to his poor field goal percentages and has struggled on defense. Calvin Brock and Jeff Jordan are not great offensive players but perform well on defense. Overall, I think these numbers, along with the plus-minus chart, go a long way towards understanding this year's Illini. I will continue to update these charts as the season progresses.

Illinois 64, Wisconsin 57

First off, I want to apologize to all my adoring fans for not posting a game recap after the Ohio State game. Simple negligence on my part and it won't happen again. At any rate, after knocking off Wisconsin yesterday, Illinois is looking rather strong at 5-2, 17-3. Although I never want to get my hopes up too high, it is starting to look like the Illini can focus more on their seeding than whether or not they get into the NCAA Tournament. I think the big story from yesterday's game is Demetri McCamey, who had perhaps his finest game as an Illini with 25 points, 7 assists and 4 rebounds. He was extremely efficient too, shooting 6-10 from the field (2-5 from 3) and 11-13 from the free throw line. Getting 13 free throw attempts in one game is probably an aberration but I am optimistic that McCamey will start to utilize his strength and get to the basket more often.

Here is the plus-minus chart from yesterday's game:

Player	P/M	Minutes
Demetri McCamey	+2	35
Trent Meacham	+9	35
Chester Frazier	+8	35
Mike Davis	+5	37
Mike Tisdale	+13	19
Calvin Brock	-1	13
Dominique Keller	+5	19
Jeff Jordan	-2	3
Alex Legion	-4	4

Surprisingly, the team was only +2 with McCamey on the court. I don't know how much to read into that since he played 35 minutes but his plus-minus lagged behind the other starters in this game, which is a pretty consistent trend with him. I wonder if even when he's making shots, the offense has a better flow without him since he hogs the ball a lot. Certainly the team defends better without him. Tisdale was an unbelievable +13 in 19 minutes, making me wonder if Illinois could have put the game away earlier if he hadn't been in foul trouble in the first half. One reason he might have been particularly effective in this game is Wisconsin's lack of comparable size. Jon Leuer is 6-10, but skinny, and after that they have no one above 6-8.

Michigan State 63, Illinois 57

Unlike the last Illinois game, this one was carried on ESPN so I was able to watch. Unfortunately, the Illini could not hold on to a 7-point halftime lead and lost the game 63-57. It's true that Illinois got beat on the glass (39-26), especially with regards to offensive rebounds (16-9). But that was pretty much bound to happen given that Michigan State is 10th in the country in offensive rebound percentage. What Illinois needed to win was a hot-shooting performance and while they got that in the first half, they went cold in the second, allowing the Spartans to pull away late for the win. According to Ken Pomeroy's numbers, Illinois' effective field goal percentage has a .85 correlation with its offensive efficiency, meaning that they are dependent on good shooting to win. This intuitively makes sense, given that Bruce Weber's motion offense relies on setting up open jump shots rather than creating penetration opportunities. If the jumpers aren't falling, Illinois will struggle, and that was what we saw yesterday.

Player	P/M	Minutes
Demetri McCamey	-11	34
Trent Meacham	-2	25
Chester Frazier	+4	32
Mike Davis	-5	33
Mike Tisdale	-9	16
Calvin Brock	+4	22
Dominique Keller	-2	9
Jeff Jordan	-3	3
Alex Legion	-1	23
Richard Semrau	-5	3

Looking at the game's plus-minus chart, it is clear that Illinois was more effective with some players on the court than others. Frazier and Brock were the only players who saw Illinois outscore Michigan State while they were on the court. Frazier's back injury late in the second half was poor timing for the Illini, to say the least. The players who struggled the most were McCamey and Tisdale, not surprising given their box score statistics. McCamey was 0-9 from the floor and 0-7 from 3 continuing his puzzling streak of inconsistency. Tisdale had solid numbers in limited minutes but his 4 fouls suggest that he was struggling to keep up with Michigan State's frontcourt athleticism on the defensive end. What looked at first like a breakout game for Alex Legion wound up with him needing 13 shots to get 15 points and thus the team was not appreciably better with him on the court.

Overall, this was a game Illinois was expected to lose, and although they kept it respectable, they indeed lost the game. I'm not worried yet, but I do have some concerns going forward based on the overall season plus-minus numbers which I will discuss in a later post.

Illinois 66, Michigan 51

A great win for the Illini, who move to 15-2 overall and 3-1 in the Big Ten. They needed to defend home court against a good Michigan team, especially with a tough game against Michigan State on Saturday, and they did just that. I didn't get to watch the game, since I don't have the Big Ten Network, so I don't know how the team looked. Looking at the box score, the keys to the game were Illinois outshooting Michigan (54.4 eFG% vs. 38.1 eFG%) and getting to the foul line more often (22 free throw attempts). This was the reverse of the previous game against Michigan (a 74-64 loss) where Michigan outshot Illinois 59.4 to 50.0 and Illinois barely got to the foul line at all.

Below is a plus-minus chart for the Illini in last night's game. These numbers are hard to find for college basketball and thus I have had to manually calculate them from the play-by-play data. For those unfamiliar with plus-minus, it measures how well the team does when a given player is on the court. For example, in last night's game, Illinois outscored Michigan by 8 points in the 25 minutes that Mike Davis was on the court.

Player	P/M	Minutes
Demetri McCamey	+3	33
Trent Meacham	+11	34
Chester Frazier	+12	34
Mike Davis	+8	25
Mike Tisdale	+15	34
Calvin Brock	+7	19
Dominique Keller	+0	4
Jeff Jordan	+11	10
Alex Legion	+5	7

Not surprisingly, the team was +15 with Mike Tisdale on the court as he posted 24 points on 10-12 shooting. Tisdale and McCamey were 16-21 from the field, while the rest of the team was 6-27. That said, McCamey was only +3 in his 33 minutes, meaning the team played significantly better without him on the floor. This is largely because McCamey came out of the game in the 2nd half with Illinois leading 52-45, at which point they promptly went on an 8-0 run to take a 60-45 lead. Jeff Jordan subbed in for McCamey during this 8-0 run, meaning Illinois was an excellent +11 when Jordan was on the court, despite the fact that he only played 10 minutes.

Especially in an individual game, plus-minus numbers must be taken with a grain of salt. We can't necessarily give all the credit to Jordan for the 8-0 run. Over the course of the season, however, statistical flukes should even out and there should be a clearer trend as to which players are contributing the most to the team's success. Thus I will provide numbers from conference play in another post.