WFU Sports Analytics 1

Assessing Jeff Bzdeliks Time at Wake Forest

Adam Yudelman
Wake Forest University 16 yudeaj12@wfu.edu

Abstract:
Big time sports in a big time conference leads to big time expectations. For Wake Forest mens basketball, decades of sustained success have been replaced by difficult seasons and fan unrest. The target of the frustration surrounding these struggles has been Coach Jeff Bzdelik, who in four years has yet to lead the team to an NCAA tournament berth. In this paper, I examine the environment in which Bzdelik took over the program and the progress the team has made under his watch. This is meant to be an unbiased look into a hotly debated topic.

Introduction:
Setting the Stage In assessing Jeff Bzdeliks time at Wake Forest, its important to briefly look back at the recent history of Wake Forest basketball. Prior to the arrival of Coach Dave Odom in 1989, Wake Forest had occasional success with the basketball program, having competed in the NCAA tournament eight times in the previous 50 years. Odom himself matched that total in his 12 years at Wake Forest. Led by future NBA first rounders Rodney Rogers (90 93), Randolph Childress (91-95), and Tim Duncan (93-97), Odom led the Deacs to winning seasons in all but his first year. Having set a culture of success, Dave Odom left Wake Forest for the University of South Carolina after the 2000-2001 season. Athletic Director Ron Wellman tapped Skip Prosser, formerly of Loyala University Maryland and Xavier University, to succeed the most successful era in Wake basketball history. Prosser not only continued on with the success, but brought the Demon Deacons to another level. In his first four seasons, Wake won 94 games against just 35 losses, including winning at least one NCAA tournament game each year. After the loss of NBAbound Chris Paul in 2005, the Deacs hovered around .500 for two years before the sudden death of Coach Prosser at the age of 56. Faced with having to choose a new coach despite the tragic loss, Wellman decided to stay house, deciding upon Dino Gaudio, an assistant coach on Prossers staff. Gaudio inherited a talented roster and incoming recruiting class, which included future NBAers Jeff Teague and James

WFU Sports Analytics 2 Johnson, and led the Deacs to two NCAA tournaments in three years. Coming off a second round loss in the tournament, Gaudio was poised for another strong season with a heralded five man recruiting class; however, Wellman decided to fire Gaudio despite a 61-31 record. Wellman, at the announcing press conference, stated, "This was not a decision based upon a one-year performance. We can put up with a disappointment. We have disappointments all the time. But there is a pattern here that needed to be addressed, a 3-year pattern that needed to be addressed. After a week, Wellman announced Jeff Bzdelik as head coach. Bzdelik had previously coached in the NBA with the Denver Nuggets and in college at The Air Force Academy and Colorado, yet his resume included no NCAA tournament wins. Wellman commented at the introductory press conference that, "I am very pleased that Jeff Bzdelik has accepted our offer to become our head coach. He is a perfect fit for Wake Forest. Jeff holds the same values and the same standards that are so dear to this university. He has a great deal of experience in both collegiate and professional basketball. He will produce a program and develop players that we will be thrilled to have as Demon Deacons." The Wake Forest values and standards that Wellman cited would prove to be important in the beginning of the Bzdelik Era.

WFU Sports Analytics 3 Player Movement A sign of a healthy college basketball program is the ability to recruit and retain high quality players. For Bzdelik, it seems that he inherited an unhealthy program that was on the verge of major upheaval. This subsequent player movement is again necessary to provide context to Bzdeliks performance at Wake. Looking at a four year recruiting span consisting mostly of individuals recruited by Gaudio, the amount of players leaving the program is astounding:

Prior to the beginning of Bzdeliks first season, the new coach suspended former 5 star recruit Tony Woods after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor stemming for an assault charge. Woods never played for Wake again, and he eventually transferred to Oregon. After an 8-24 first season, small forward Ari Stewart transferred while two members of Dino Gaudios highly rated recruiting class of 2010, Melvin Tabb and JT Terrell, left the school after criminal charges. During Bzdeliks second season, another Deac found himself in trouble with the school as center Ty Walker was ultimately dismissed from the team after having been suspended for the fall

WFU Sports Analytics 4 semester due to departmental policy violations. Continuing the trend, the two of the three remaining members of the 2010 recruiting class, Carson Desrosiers and Tony Chenault, decided to transfer after the conclusion of the 2011-12 season. In addition, Bzdelik saw the first of his own recruits transfer as Anthony Fields moved to Bradley. Two additional transfers and the departure of Al-Faroq Aminu left a four year stretch of Wake recruiting decimated, with only CJ Harris, Travis McKie and the oft-injured Daniel Green remaining in Winston-Salem. Given that it takes a few years before a coach is able to bring in his own recruiting class, Bzdeliks recruiting has seemed to bring back stability. His 2012 and 2013 recruiting classes have provided the Demon Deacons with nine scholarship players all of whom remain at the school. All of the above is important to consider when evaluating Jeff Bzdeliks tenure at Wake Forest. Coming into his first season, Wake had gone to the NCAA tournament 14 of the previous 20 seasons and produced 13 NBA players, including two future Hall-of-Famers in Tim Duncan and Chris Paul. Once hired, Bzdelik, either by his choice or not, cleansed the program of Gaudio influence, and by the 2012-13 season, the majority of minutes were played by young players he recruited.

WFU Sports Analytics 5

Analysis:
Breaking Down Win-Loss The most important statistic in any team sports is Win-Loss. For Jeff Bzdelik, he has managed to increase Wakes win totals over the past four years: 2010-11: 8-24 2011-12: 13-18 2012-13: 13-18 2013-14: 17-16 Breaking the numbers down a bit show some dramatic splits:

In ACC conference play, Bzdelik has gone 18-55, including 2-32 on the road and 1-3 in the ACC Tournament. Out of conference; however, the Deacs have gone 33-21. The Deacs were able to beat up on this weaker competition, for Wakes out of conference Strength of Schedule has been consistently ranked between 228th and 260th out of the 350ish Division 1 schools. Given this level of opponent, Wake should have the advantage in the large majority of these games. Looking at the home-away splits, Bzdelik has struggled mightily on the road, winning just 5 of 47 games. Two of the non-conference wins were against High Point and UNC-G while the other was against a Nebraska team that finished 12-18. Bzdelik won his two conference road games against two struggling teams in Boston College (2011-12) and Virginia Tech (2013-14), both of which ended their seasons at 9-22.

WFU Sports Analytics 6 Digging Deeper While wins and losses are the ultimate measure of success, there is much about the on-court performance that goes untold. One way of quantifying competitiveness is by looking at the offensive and defensive ratings. The larger the difference between OFF RTG and DEF RTG, the better the team has performed on the court when it comes to point differential.

To add further context to these numbers, below are the average year of contributing players (greater than 50 minutes played in the season) for Wake in each given year: Average Year of Rotation Player Year* 1.9 2.5 1.6 2.4 ` *(1-freshman, 2-sophomore, etc.)

Season 2010-11 2011-12 2012-13 2013-14

Mixing these numbers with what we know about players leaving under Bzdeliks reign, it would seem that Wakes teams have gotten more competitive each year. This has coincided with him playing the players that he himself recruited, particularly with his seven man recruiting class of 2012.

WFU Sports Analytics 7 The Four Factors While these ratings are useful, they attempt quantify offense and defense in such a broad manner, when in reality both offense and defense come down to a variety of variables. Next, lets look at what basketball analyst Dean Oliver calls the four factors. Oliver claims that effective FG%, turnover %, offensive rebounding, and free throw rate are key to claiming victory in a basketball game. All four are necessary for an efficient offense, and if a team is able to control these factors and both the offensive and defensive ends, the team should have a significant competitive advantage. Looking at Bzdeliks progression in these factors should provide insight into how Wake has improved over the four years.

1) eFG% Looking first at effective FG%, which Oliver claims to be the most important, the Deacs have improved both offensively and defensively. This stat weighs the value of a made shot based on the point value, so a made three point shot is worth 1.5 times more than a two point shot. The following graph shows both the Deacs and the opponents eFG% over the last four years when compare to the NCAA average of 48.99%:

Bzdelik slowly improved the Deacs offensive and defensive shot efficiency over his first three years, and then significantly over this past year. This is interesting as the new recruits have not been particularly great shooters. The following graph, describing where Wakes offensive points have come from, provides more insight:

WFU Sports Analytics 8

60.0000% 50.0000% 40.0000% 30.0000% 20.0000% 10.0000% 0.0000% %2PT POINTS %3PT POINTS %FT POINTS

2013-2014 2012-2013 2011-2012 2010-2011

Wakes strategy seems to be mostly the same over the first three years, but then in 2013-14, Wake stopped taking threes, which led to this increase in eFG%. This is a testament to the Deacs coaching staff for recognizing the teams three point struggles, yet given that the two top shooters, Travis McKie and Coron Williams, were not recruited in high school by Bzdelik, it is also an indictment on the shooting abilities of Bzdeliks incoming talent. Overall, it would seem that the Deacs are trending in the right direction, yet how this offensive efficiency holds up over the next year without McKie or Williams is to be seen. Defensively, it is hard to measure the causes for the dip in opponent eFG%, so we can chalk it up to good coaching, more effort, better athletes, etc any of which would be attributed to Bz.

WFU Sports Analytics 9 B) Turnover % Turnover percentage, the second most important of these factors, is a stat designed to calculate the percentage of offensive possessions that end in a turnover. The following graph again shows the Deacs and their opponents performance in this measure compared to the NCAA average:

Note: Negative is less turnovers than average, while positive is more turnovers than average Bzdeliks tenure can really be split in half, the first two years with Gaudios players, and the second two years with his own. This graph shows that as each group aged, they improved in protecting the ball. This would seem to indicate that this current young core should continue to improve over the next two years; however, despite the Deacs making a significant improvement in 13-14, their opponent also improved to the point where the Deacs still lost the turnover battle. If the Deacs can keep improving even slightly and force their opponents into a league-average TOV%, Wake Forest would be able to control the turnover numbers, which helps lead to easy buckets and control of the pace of the game.

WFU Sports Analytics 10 C) Offensive Rebounding This is where the Deacs really struggle. The following is a graph showing the defensive rebounding percentages over the past four years:

Simply, opponents are consistently out-rebounding the Deacs. Struggling with defensive rebounding leads to offensive boards for the opposing team, which results in additional possessions, often of which end quickly in easy put backs. There is again a glimmer of hope as the linear regressions show that progress has been made over the years, yet the Deacs are still painfully outperformed by the opposing teams. This tends to happen when the Deacs consistently play undersized in the front court. Unfortunately, Wake lost their biggest glimmer of hope for rebounding when Issac Haas, a 7ft 2in center, de-committed from Wake this past fall. In sum, this struggle could be attributed to players being forced out of position, yet when watching games, far too many times players failed to box out. I believe this struggle is a related to player size, for once a team gets offensive rebounds, it can be deflating for a teams effort.

WFU Sports Analytics 11 D) Free Throw Rate Despite being the least important of the four factors, this seems to be the one that Bzdeliks harps on the most. This past season, the Deacs were a top 20 team in free throw rate, a measure of how many free throws a team takes compared to field goal attempts. The idea is that if a team can consistently get to the free throw line, the team should score efficiently because free throws are easier (hence more efficient) than any other shot. Unfortunately for the Deacs, as their free throw rate has increased, their FT% has fallen just as dramatically:

Any increase in free throw rate has been almost negated by the shooting struggles of the team, as seen in the point distribution shot shown with eFG%. While even shooting at such a low rate is still more efficient than a generic two point shot or a three point shot, this begs the question of who Bzdelik is recruiting. Good teams can struggle at the line, but if a coach is emphasizing free throws so much, why not recruit great free throw shooters? Again, with the loss of McKie and Williams, the team may even fall further in their FT%. The idea is right, but the execution is lacking.

WFU Sports Analytics 12

Conclusion:
For a few years, alums and fans alike, having come off 20 years of consistent success, have been calling for Wellman to make a change. The numbers show progression, but unfortunately Bzdelik has not led a program longer than four years, so there is no precedent of success for the fans to look at. In comparison, Dave Clawson, the new head football coach, will likely be given a few years to build the program, for he has shown systematic improvement over time at every stop. However, the above analysis shows hope for the future and path of attack for the Demon Deacons. The Wake Forest players will continue to progress in all aspects of their games. Adala Moto is a great example of this, having shown great improvement in free throw shooting throughout the year. If the Deacs can continue to improve their free throw shooting as a team, they will have a significant advantage given their already sky-high free throw rate. The other three factors, at least for the current core, are really just related to player development. In the future, the team can focus recruitment on size and shooting, for the current guards, along with incoming Shelton Mitchell, should provide the team with ample ball handling. Who will be doing this recruiting, however, remains the big question.

References:
http://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/schools/wake-forest/ http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/news/story?id=5064441 http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/news/story?id=5083201 http://rivals.yahoo.com/footballrecruiting/basketball/recruiting/commitments/2009/wakeforest-9 http://www.cbssports.com/collegebasketball/bracketology/sos/2013-14 http://www.basketball-reference.com/about/factors.html www.teamrankings.com http://www.bloggersodear.com/2012/3/26/2903959/amidst-transfers-jeff-bzdelik-and-wakeforest-is-struggling-to