Q-and-A: Ken Pomeroy offers insight on Pitt’s prowess in advanced statistics

Follow @TraffordsGift

Throughout the past decade, progressive coaches across the country — Pitt’s Jamie Dixon, included — have shifted toward more statistics-based coaching principles, hoping to find loopholes in the rules of college basketball while developing smarter, more efficient ways to score and defend the basketball.

Ken Pomeroy is one statistician — and a former meteorologist — who is responsible for much of this evolution.

Pomeroy’s extensive website, kenpom.com, is a highly trafficked college basketball database containing in-depth ratings and scouting reports for all 347 Division I teams and their players. It also features statistical coaching resumés. 

The site is frequented by coaches, analysts, writers and gamblers all working to individually evaluate players and teams while predicting college basketball game outcomes.

Simply put, Pomeroy’s player and team ratings are box scores on steroids. They don’t value wins and losses, but margin of victory and loss. Instead of acknowledging points per game, emphasis is placed on a team’s points per possession. Pomeroy also doesn’t express interest in shooting percentage, but rather, the amount of high-percentage shots each player attempts.

Pomeroy’s statistical hub updates daily with new information. Pitt has finished each of its seasons since 2003 rated in Pomeroy’s top 25, and Pitt players often appear in Pomeroy’s top offensive player listings.

This season, the Panthers (20-6, 8-5 ACC) are rated No. 14 in Pomeroy’s poll, and senior guard Lamar Patterson is rated as the most efficient offensive player in the ACC.

In an interview with The Pitt News, Pomeroy talked about his system’s annual appreciation for Dixon’s scheme and teams.

The Pitt News: What stats or ratings do you use that Jamie Dixon’s teams benefit from the most?

Ken Pomeroy: My system is based off offensive and defensive efficiency and trying to adjust that for strength of schedule. And so margin of victory comes into play there, and Pitt in the past decade has a pretty decent track record of a few lopsided victories against decent opponents, and that’s a source of their high ratings — a combination of that and generally playing good teams really close when they lose.

TPN: Lamar Patterson has sat atop your ACC offensive efficiency ratings for the majority of the season. What does that suggest about Patterson as an offensive player?

KP: He’s very efficient. He’s a really good shooter, and furthermore, he has an excellent assist rate. Whether he was a point guard or not, [his assist rate] would be a heck of a line, but the fact that he’s a wing player makes it especially impressive. The things he does that show up in the box score are good things. They lead to points, and so that ultimately is what that offensive rating captures — how efficient is this player when he does something? And Lamar is extremely efficient. I think people nationally don’t give him enough credit because Pitt plays at a very slow pace, so when you look at counting stats, he’s not going to fare quite as well as someone who plays on a fast-paced team. But given the framework that he has to survive in, he’s a very efficient player.

TPN: Four of Pitt’s six losses were decided in the final possession of play. Should Pitt fans be optimistic about their team considering the narrow margin of defeat in losses to the No. 3 (Duke), 5 (Syracuse, twice), 7 (Virginia), 24 (Cincinnati) and 25 (North Carolina) teams in your poll?

KP: Yeah. Pitt definitely cornered the market on good losses. Just because Tyler Ennis hits a miracle shot at the buzzer doesn’t mean that Jamie Dixon is going to think of his team any differently in terms of how they played that [Syracuse] game, so going forward, there should be optimism. The problem is that the basketball selection committee is not going to look at those losses the same way my computer does, so they’re probably not going to get a great seed in the NCAA Tournament, and that’s going to affect their chances of going deep there, but as far as whether or not they have a Top 25 team, I think certainly Pitt is one of the 25 best teams in the country. 

TPN: The Panthers are tied for 89th in offensive rebounding this season with 12.2 per game, but Jamie Dixon’s teams are generally among the best offensive rebounding teams in the country. How valuable is offensive rebounding?

KP: It can be very valuable. Usually, it’s something that Pitt depends on because they’re typically not a good shooting team. That’s definitely true this year. They’re not a great shooting team (46.2 percent, t-81st). Offensive rebounds give you more cracks at the basket, and it is very important. The one issue for them this year is that they really aren’t that great an offensive rebounding team. They’ve really struggled, especially against quality competition. If they don’t improve their offensive rebounding, they could have a disappointing March. 

TPN: Jamie Dixon rarely brings in NBA-type offensive prospects that thrive off one-on-one moves. With that in mind, does your system suggest that college teams with young NBA-type superstars are better off than teams, such as Pitt, that thrive off ball movement and more evenly distributed scoring? 

KP: I think in general, to have postseason success, it is better to have more balance in your offense than to have one go-to guy. As you get in the tournament and face better defenses, they’re able to lock down on one player, and that player could have an off night, too, and that team doesn’t have a backup plan. So generally speaking, you want more balance in your offense. In terms of how easily those players create shots, it’s totally beneficial to have a guy or two or three who are able to get their own shot off when the defense breaks down. I think that’s where Pitt has struggled in the past. They [haven’t] really had guys like that necessarily, so when they get in the tournament, it becomes that much more difficult to sustain offense. Their offense is usually underrated, but there’s that one weakness typically where they don’t have a guy who can make things happen when the shot clock winds down.

TPN: When you saw that Jamie Dixon called a timeout up one with 4.4 seconds to go against Syracuse last week, did you stop and think of a statistical reason as to why calling a timeout there might not be in Dixon’s best interest?

KP: It was a really tough call on whether to second-guess him or not. Typically in that situation, a timeout is in the defense’s best interest, but I’d [only] feel pretty strongly about that if there were 10 seconds left. With four seconds left, it’s a little different because at that point, the offense does have a disadvantage because there’s so little time left. They have an advantage to set up a play and try to actually get a shot off. It ended up being a close call in my mind. Thinking about it before knowing the results, it’s a little more difficult to blatantly criticize Jamie [Dixon] for the decision.