For an explanation of the Defensive Score Sheet go here.
It's never pretty looking at losses, but here's the DSS for Arkansas. I also take a look at Terrence Jones over the last several games similar to what I did for Lamb last time. There are some happy things to say about Jones' defense so maybe that will help.
First here's a look at Jones' Defensive Rating in comparison to the Team Rating for each game. Positive numbers indicate his rating was higher (worse) and negative numbers indicate it was lower (better).
Say what you want about Jones on offense, but on defense he is nearly always on. A low rating is not in and of itself an indication of good defense for a game, but when you are consistently better than the team average it's hard not to arrive at the conclusion that you are getting it done on the defensive end.
Now here are his Stop% along with the Team Stop% and Usage rate on defense.
Unlike Lamb, Jones is consistently better than the overall team rate at stopping the opponent from scoring (other than a slightly worse performance against USC). Jones also has a much higher usage rate on defense which is not a surprise when you consider that he plays near the basket. Teams are going to try to score near the goal since the percentages are so high, but when they try to do it against Jones, more often then not they come away with nothing.
So why is Jones so effective on the defensive end? Based on what I've seen Jones rarely allows his man to get around him when he is in the post and does a good job of forcing shots to go over his long arms rather than around his body. He also rarely leaves his feet when he shouldn't and of course he's a good shot blocker. I'd like to know what others have seen though.
Here's the DSS for the game. Click for a larger image.
- Against South Carolina last week, UK got 18 open shots and hit 13 of them (72%). Against Arkansas the Cats got 20 open looks but only hit 8 (40%). If there is one aspect of the loss that had everything to do with the Cats and absolutely nothing to do with Arkansas, this might be it.
- Josh Harrellson had a good defensive game to go along with his fine work on offense.
- Arkansas had a possession in the 2nd half where they had a mind boggling 6 shots and 5 offensive rebounds. UK prevented them from scoring - take a bow Darius Miller, Josh Harrellson, and Terrence Jones who each contributed 2 forced misses during that trip.
- One of the things I've been experimenting with is a variation of the Individual Defensive Rating that uses +/- information to better reflect what the team defense is like while the player is actually on the floor. I mention this because under this modified rating, Lamb goes from a 123.04 to an astronomical 168.76 - the second highest such rating I've seen for a player with 10+ minutes played (the other UK players stay roughly the same with the modified rating).
- To put that modified rating in perspective, a UK defense with a 168.76 rating would allow 111 points in a typical game.
- You might notice that UK had 64 defensive possessions while Arkansas had 66. This is because UK started and ended both halves with the basketball meaning they got the ball two more times than Arkansas did during the game. This outcome is pretty rare, but it does happen from time to time.