Deflections

Looking back through some stats at GoPack.com today, I discovered that a few junk stats have been made available: dunks, charges drawn, and deflections. Below I've listed the number of charges drawn and deflections per 40 minutes for each season, along with the Pack's defensive turnover and steal percentages.

 ChrgDrwn/40 Defl/40 TO% (Rk) Stl% (Rk)
2002 1.6 36.0 23.6 (??) 11.4 (??)
2003 0.8 39.6 21.6 (??) 11.4 (??)
2004 1.2 39.5 21.6 (143) 10.1 (172)
2005 1.1 40.3 22.6 (80) 11.2 (106)
2006 0.3 30.4 20.0 (238) 10.7 (131)
2007 1.0 25.2 17.6 (329) 7.8 (305)
2008 1.1 31.2 16.5 (337) 7.6 (315)

It stands to reason that more deflections--indicative of a more active and/or competent defensive unit--would pay dividends in the form of more turnovers, and this small bit of data seems to bear that out. There does appear to be a relationship between deflections, turnover percentage, and steal percentage, which is particularly apparent in the Lowe era. Maybe some sort of Disruption Index could be established with this stuff.

Not surprisingly, the razor-thin 2007 team managed the fewest deflections per 40 minutes of any Wolfpack team in the last seven years; they couldn't afford to take risks, and it shows.

[Brief self-congratulatory note: way back in February of 2006, as a new trend was emerging (that being our complete inability to force turnovers), I wrote:

I'm sure the coaches hold their "deflections" statistic (and whatever else they track) close to the vest, but if we were to get a look at those numbers, I wouldn't be surprised if we found that they were down this season.

Indeed. Deflections fell off by 25% that year, from 40.3/40 to 30.4/40.]

The ten best individual seasons in terms of deflections per 40 minutes (min 40% minutes played):

 Defl/40
Crawford (03) 13.5
Crawford (02) 11.2
Bethel (05) 10.3
Grundy (02) 10.1
Atsur (05) 10.1
Gonzalez (08) 9.8
Evtimov (04) 9.4
Collins (05) 9.1
Atsur (04) 8.6
Simmons (06) 8.3

The number of times a player averaged 7+ deflections per 40 minutes (min 40% minutes played):

2002-06 (5 yrs): 18
2007-08 (2 yrs): 1 (Javi '08)

Lower that to 5+ deflections per 40 minutes...

2002-06 (5 yrs): 30
2007-08 (2 yrs): 8