Bumped. Great stuff. --GoBr--

First of all, I would like to express my disappointment that no site I can find is recording player +/- statistics in college basketball. Please let me know if you do find one so I can save myself the time.

Until then, assuming I do have time, I plan on posting the +/- stats of our players after every game, using the official play-by-play data on texassports.com.

What's my motivation to do this? Well quite frankly, this is easily the most intriguing season of UT basketball that I can think of since I've been following the team. This team is absolutely LOADED. How can you not envy Rick Barnes? Then again, coming up with the best 5-man rotations with this team can be a challenge. I hope these +/- stats can help us come up with our own analysis regarding this deep team, such as which rotations are the best, which players had the greatest impact on the game, and which players' impact goes beyond the typical box score.

If you follow the NBA, you should check out the Gameflows created on popcornmachine.net. Here's the gameflow from the recent Rockets vs Lakers game for example. It doesn't just list the +/- for each player. It goes through the entire game, listing all the rotations and the performance of each. It illustrates critical aspects of the game such as huge runs. I followed this concept and created a "gameflow" of my own on a spreadsheet.

I plan on posting this spreadsheet after every game, so please don't hesitate to suggest improvements on the look of it. I tried to make it look pretty. Anyways, without further ado, here is the "gameflow" for the Texas vs UC Irvine game.

Click here to view the Texas vs UC Irvine gameflow

via i38.tinypic.com

My attempted analysis after the jump...

Before I discuss the results, the number in parentheses next to the name is how many minutes the player accumulated. Positive +/- in green, negative in red. I've also highlighted in green/red any rotation that gained/lost 5 or more points. Everything else should be self-explanatory, but just ask if you're lost. Here are the best performances as far as +/- goes (lets keep in mind that this stat isn't some ultimate stat to show Player X > Player Y, there's so many other variables involved). Lets not make too many conclusions as this was the first game vs UC Irvine.

Pittman +35
James +31
Balbay +29
Hamilton +27
Bradley +25
Ward +22
Brown +18
Mason +18
Williams +14
Johnson +10
Hill +5
Wangmene +1
Dick 0

A few things stand out to me:

• I know there's a few Dogus Balbay haters on here, but his impact on the game was significant despite the box score suggesting otherwise. It was critical early that he took care of the ball, after J'Covan Brown's wildness and early 4 turnovers to start the game. Rick Barnes yanked Brown immediately and inserted Balbay, and we played well (led the team in assists too with 6, and did not turn the ball over). He took care of the ball, and his team played well when he was on the court, as the spreadsheet shows. Surely this will give Barnes confidence to continue playing Balbay when Brown struggles. For those on here hoping that the huge influx of PG talent would severely reduce Dogus' playing time, this game was bad news.
• At the same time, there's no need to worry about Brown, despite his +/- being significantly lower than the rest of the starters. As you can see on the gameflow, he started out as an ugly -9 due to his turnovers. Early on, we only ate into our early deficit when he was on the bench and Balbay was in there. However, from midway to the 1st quarter and on, his +/- was a +27, which fits right in to the rest of the starters. He was the PG for the most part when we blew the game open in the last half of the 1st period.
• This spreadsheet illustrates the key points of the game that led to the blowout. Our 23-0 run in the 1st half mainly employed Pittman, James, Brown, Hamilton, Bradley, and Ward.
• Dexter Pittman is the most important player on the team. His skills cannot be replicated by any other player on the roster, so it's absolutely critical for him to stay out of foul trouble. Not surprised at all to see him lead the team in +/-, as he was simply unguardable in the paint.
• It appears the best 5-man rotation in this game was Pittman, James, Hamilton, Bradley, and Brown. That's really good news for us, given they were the top 5 players in minutes played, and will probably become our eventual starting lineup. Many here proposed this exact lineup to start, so good job.

Anything else you BONers notice? Comments? Like I said earlier, I do plan on making these gameflows after every game. Can't really make a whole lot out of these blowouts, as the 2nd half was complete garbage time. I'm definitely looking forward to making these for the huge non-conference showdowns and big conference games.