In January, Ben pieced together a nice look at Ski Ball. In his study, Ben informed us that
there are two types of games Booker can have that tend to have a significant outcome
on the game: A good game and a bad game. After all, here’s a kid taking the 91st highest
percentage of shots of anyone in college hoops and the outcome of all those shots is
most definitely going to determine the game’s potential victor. What Ben found was that
a good game for Booker could be defined as 40% shooting or above. A bad game was
below 40%. When we look at these numbers across now the entire regular season, we
find that in Askia’s good games the Buffs are 10-1. In his bad games, they’re 10-9.
From this I learn two things:
1. The Buffaloes are best when Booker is at his best
2. Booker misses a lot of shots
But we knew this. It’s his game and – not unlike Mark Lyons – Booker is the type of
player that allows the Buffaloes to be exceedingly good (Charleston Classic MVP!) or
not so much (shot 6-27, 2-12 3FG in losses to Utah and OSU, Colorado’s “bad losses”).
So we get it: Askia shoots poorly and the Buffs’ chances to win drop. Makes pretty good
sense. But the question I really want to explore is when do his “bad games” occur? Is
there a pattern to this? Can we foresee when Booker might be off and connecting at a
sub-40% clip?
My initial hypothesis was that I could find some a pattern where following a “good
game” Askia would soon thereafter find himself in a poor shooting performance. So I
ran through the games. Game by game I came to find that this hypothesis was incorrect.
That Booker was in fact the definition of a streaky shooter. On only two occasions this
year did he not follow up a good game with another good game. Which is also to say that
when he’s hot, he’s hot. He opened the season on a four game streak of good games and
has since had such stretches across three games once and back-to-back games twice. He
shoots 45% in the game immediately following a good game. But the alarming trend here
is that the goods are becoming fewer and further between.
I also hypothesized that maybe Askia had some of his best games in “big games.” I
defined this as games involving teams with a KenPom rating of higher than 54. Why 54,
Adam? Well, because Oregon and Cal rate 53 and 54, respectively and so that added four
more sample sets to my analysis. So yes, KenPom greater than 54. What I found here was
again somewhat disheartening. In these games, Booker shoots 36% from the field. And
across all games he doesn’t necessarily get to the line. OK, so maybe if we toss out those
Bay Area outliers we can find that he really does shine in “big games?” Oof. OK without
those games he’s shooting 32%.
So here it is. We found that Booker has more “bad games” than “good” and he
plays about average in “big games.” I didn’t necessarily find a glaring pattern to his
performances.
And look, numbers tend not to lie. But they also tell me that he’s due. That the young
man is going to have another big game and we’ve arrived at the time of year when that
big game is going to come – has to come – at a big moment. He’s the one Buffalo with
the opportunity to push this team to the next level. And now it’s March. Now is the time.
There’s only big games left.
