Friday Roland Ratings Review II

Today is Friday and that means it’s time for Friday Roland Ratings Review, a semi-weekly post that will recap and breakdown the Kentucky Wildcats basketball players by examining the +/- stat. If you’re not familiar with the plus-minus, it’s pretty simple: the number represents the team’s net point differential when the player is on the floor compared to when he is not. If a player has a positive value, it means the team scored more points when he was the floor, and a negative value means the opposite. If you want to read more about the stats, take a look at the original post from early in the season. Last time it was Julius Randle taking the crown for top Roland Rating average through Kentucky’s first four games (+18), but Aaron Harrison was a close second (+15), and Andrew Harrison was third (+13). In total, four different players were the Roland Rating leaders in each of the first four games, meaning the team is spreading the wealth. That’s a good sign. ********** It was close at the start, and that’s about all this game was good for. James Young led the scoring with 26 points, but it was Andrew Harrison and his 15 points and 6 assists that took the +/- lead. They both logged 29 minutes but in the time Harrison was off the floor, the Cats struggled much more than they did without Young, hence the significant gap. Dakari Johnson and Dominique Hawkins each contributed solid minutes, so ignore their low scores. One downfall of this statistic is that it is overly critical of role players. Once again the leading scorer isn’t the top contributor to the team. Julius Randle paced the offensive output with a staggering 15 points and 15 rebounds, however Willie Cauley-Stein was the +/- leader thanks to his 11 points to go along with 4 blocks. There is a 20-point differential in points allowed between Randle’s time on the floor and Cauley-Stein’s, signaling that defense was the key factor in separating the two. Cauley-Stein’s 30-minute contribution helped the Cats pull away from the Vikings in the 2nd half and in turn, ease the nerves of Big Blue Nation. Aaron Harrison scored 22 points and added 7 rebounds and 2 assists, but finished fifth-best on the team in terms of Roland Rating. Are we sensing a trend? Right now it’s all about defense. That is the difference. And James Young played much better defensively despite being silenced on the offensive end. This UK squad has talent all over the floor and more than half-a-dozen players could be the leading scorer on any given night. But it’s the D that is key to victory. For the second set of games no one player dominated across the board. Andrew Harrison, Cauley-Stein, and Young each finished atop the charts, and while this example does have an arbitrary endpoint, the idea that this team is distributing the load across the entire team and not relying solely on one or two players remains true. We’ll hold the Providence data for next time and group it together with more of the games against similar competition. Until then, watch the development of this team when they don’t have the ball. We’ve seen they can score points and as a team stay out of foul trouble, and that gets them more than halfway to the Promised Land. But once the defense kicks it up a notch it’ll truly be lights out. @StuartHammerKSR