Who feeds Jeff Withey the best?

Posted by Jesse Newell December 11, 2012 at 3 p.m.

Kansas center Jeff Withey soars in for an alley-oop dunk against Saint Louis in the first half of the championship game of the CBE Classic, Tuesday, Nov. 20, 2012 at the Sprint Center in Kansas City, Missouri. by Nick Krug

I'll admit it. I'm fascinated by how Kansas center Jeff Withey scores his field goals for KU.

This started last year when Ken Pomeroy, in one of his blogs, said Withey "was assisted on short 2s like few other post players."

The numbers in Hoop-Math.com back this up.

Last year, 78 percent of Withey's made field goals at the rim were assisted. Compare that to then-teammate Thomas Robinson, who had 60 percent of layups/dunks assisted.

I wondered if that might change for Withey this season. After all, without Robinson as a go-to scorer inside, one might think that Withey would have to try to create more offensively in the post.

Amazingly, Withey's point production has gone up (13.8 points a game from 9 points per game) though his assisted rate remains almost completely unchanged on close shots.

According to Hoop-Math, 74 percent of Withey's layups/dunks are assisted this year, only slightly down from 78 percent a year ago. (In case you're wondering, Withey makes 67 percent of his layups/dunks, which is well above the NCAA average of 53 percent).

I wanted to take an even closer look at Withey's baskets, giving us a better feel on how he scores on all his field goals (layups/dunks and jumpers).

Going through the box scores, I went charted each of Withey's made twos, taking a look at who assisted him on each of his field goals.

Here's the breakdown.

Jeff Withey by Jesse Newell

A few interesting things I found:

• If you take out Withey's seven baskets that came after offensive rebounds, you're left with a crazy statistic.

Only three of Withey's 42 field goals this year have been unassisted. Three. That's only 7.1 percent of his made field goals.

This much is clear: The big man is almost entirely reliant on teammates (or his own offensive rebounding positioning) to get his points.

Withey posted one unassisted basket against Michigan State, San Jose State and Oregon State. In KU's other five games, he had none.

• There seems to be a learning curve here when it comes to feeding Withey, as the chart above is dominated by returning players.

KU senior guard Elijah Johnson is the best, and that's not surprising, considering he's KU's best passer.

Outside of Ben McLemore, though (five assists), no other freshman has more than two assists to Withey. Some of that might be contributed to limited playing time for the newcomers, but there still seems to be a bit of a difference between the two groups (For example, Kevin Young has played one more minute than Perry Ellis this year but has two more assists to Withey).

• KU sophomore Naadir Tharpe might be the biggest surprise player on the chart above.

In 135 minutes, Tharpe has only assisted Withey twice. That especially doesn't look good when you see that in 233 minutes, Johnson has assisted Withey 12 times.

In addition to keeping his turnovers down, Tharpe might have another way to help his chances of staying on the floor if he's able to better feed the Jayhawks' center.

Delicious
Digg
Tumblr
Wordpress
Reddit
Copy and paste the link:

plasticJHawk 5 months, 2 weeks ago

It will be very interesting to see if this trend continues as the season unfolds.

I know that this has been defined before, but what is the dividing line when Withey makes a play in the post that he gets credit for an unassisted shot. Does it has to do with whether or not he dribbles? Is it dependent on how long he has possession? Because it's pretty evident that for him to have the ball on the offensive side of the court the ball has to either be inbounded to him, passed to him during live action, or he has to grab an offensive rebound or loose ball.

So did the three unassisted shots come off of inbounds plays and loose balls? Or did he receive a pass and then make an individual play to get to the basket?

Jesse Newell 5 months, 2 weeks ago

It definitely depends on the scorer at each school, but I found the NCAA definition at this link and posted it below.

http://coachingbball.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=rules&action=display&thread=2496

Typically, unassisted plays will be what you mentioned above: receiving a pass and making an individual play to get to the basket.

"A player is credited with an assist when the player makes, in the judgment of the statistician, the principal pass contributing directly to a field goal (or an awarded score of two or three points). ... Such a pass should be either (a) a pass that finds a player free after he or she has maneuvered without the ball for a positional advantage, or (b) a pass that gives the receiving player a positional advantage he or she otherwise would not have had. Philosophy. An assist should be more than a routine pass that just happens to be followed by a field goal. It should be a conscious effort to find the open player or to help a player work free. There should not be a limit on the number of dribbles by the receiver. It is not even necessary that the assist be given on the last pass. There is no restraint on the distance or type of shot made, for these are not the crucial factors in determining whether an assist should be credited."

plasticJHawk 5 months, 2 weeks ago

Thanks. That helps me understand how he can score without an assist.

raprichard 5 months, 2 weeks ago

I totally didn't recognize Kevin Young in the pictures above.

Jesse, as opposed to comparing Withey's assisted baskets to TRob or another KU teammate, how would he compare to other true centers? I would think a majority of a center's baskets would have to be assisted as they usually don't dribble much, they get the ball near the basket, and they typically don't have many breakaway opportunities. I'm not sure if that is an easily available stat or not, but I was just curious.

Thanks for the different statistical analyses each week. I love these!

Jesse Newell 5 months, 2 weeks ago

Good question.

A big thing is who we consider as centers and not forwards. It's hard to actually pick out other good centers, as there just aren't that many out there.

Here are a few, with their layup/dunk assisted percentage from Hoop-Math:

West Virginia's Aaric Murray: 23%
Kentucky's Nerlens Noel: 50%
Baylor's Isaiah Austin: 56%

Any other big ones you can think of?

VancouverHawk 5 months, 2 weeks ago

Here are a couple from last year:

Ohio State's Sullinger: 58% Kentucky's A. Davis: 61%

Whitey's seems to stand out.

raprichard 5 months, 2 weeks ago

Thanks for the info! About the only other one that I can think of off the top of my head is Caleb Tarkewczxswkzchski at Arizona, but I'm not sure how much he has been playing. I'm pretty surprised at how low some of these are. After looking at these, Withey really does stand out.

The real question then becomes, will this kind of analysis hurt Withey's NBA stock? Is he a guy that can't create his own shot? Or, is that even a big concern since his biggest value is as a rebounder and shot blocker.

Jesse Newell 5 months, 2 weeks ago

Kaleb is at 57 percent.

plasticJHawk 5 months, 2 weeks ago

What about Mason Plumlee?

Jesse Newell 5 months, 2 weeks ago

Mason is at 67 percent.

beware0fph0g 5 months, 2 weeks ago

What about Bachynski at ASU? He posted a Withey-esque triple double last week.

chriz 5 months, 2 weeks ago

I'd expect the assist percentage to go down a bit after Withey focuses this semester on post moves instead of class work. I've never been impressed at his ability to "fight" for the post past like the Twins and TRob did, and I think a lot of Tyshawn's turnovers last year were unfairly credited to him, whereas Withey should've caught a lot of them and was simply out of position. My guess is that if he could do a better job of establishing position, his point total would increase (I guess that's obvious).

So I think he's got the ability to improve his post moves more so than his ability to establish position. That said, I think the other guys will figure him out more and make more conservative post passes to him, and still, eventually, he'll score more points.

Wishawk 5 months, 2 weeks ago

It'd be nice if there is another stat of how many minutes each player was on the court with Withey. Obviously they wouldn't be able to make any assist if they were not there.