Is Ryan McMahon UofL's most irreplaceable player?
The Cardinals have had strong offenses before, but never anything quite like this. They are supremely accurate from the field, with an effective field goal percentage of 59.4%...better than any team posted last season. This is in large part due to hitting 41% of their threes, better than Louisville has ever posted for a full season since KenPom began tracking in 2002. This is new territory for the Cards, and it's being led by senior guard Ryan McMahon and his 54% shooting from deep. When McMahon hits the bench, however, the Cards outside shooting goes south fast. In this edition of Hoops Insight, I'll look at the impact he has on the Cards offense.
First, here's the one page stats profile for UofL this season:
UofL Stats Profile through Nov 29
What You Should Know: When Ryan McMahon is in the game, UofL's offense is otherworldly. Take a look at the difference when McMahon is in and out of the game (all stats below exclude garbage time):
With McMahon in, the team hits almost half of their threes. When he sits, they hit a quarter of them. Oddly enough, the team shoots threes just as often regardless of whether McMahon is in or not. As you'd imagine, UofL's offense drops off considerably when they shoot a lot of threes but hit them much less often.
Luckily, McMahon plays a lot; he's played over 80% of UofL's non-garbage time minutes.
What Is Happening? The key is who's taking the shots. McMahon is UofL's best outside shooter this season at 54%, so losing him is a big deal, but Dwayne Sutton (53%) and Jordan Nwora (50%) have also been outstanding from outside. Nwora and Sutton play quite a bit when McMahon sits; at least 1 of them has been in for 79 of the 80 possessions McMahon sits, and both have been in together for over half of the time McMahon is out. You wouldn't expect UofL to fall off so much when they still have 2 serious outside shooting threats...but take a look at how the 3 point shots have been distributed when McMahon sits:
Nwora and Sutton are still unconscious when McMahon sits, but they get a smaller share of the outside shots. Here's another way to visualize this by looking at how the 3 point shots are distributed.
The above infographic shows the percentage of 3pt FGAs taken by various groups of players when Ryan McMahon is in the game, and is color-coded according to their 3pt FG%. The vast majority of 3 point shots are taken by McMahon, Sutton, or Nwora, who are all amazing shooters. Here's the same infographic for the time McMahon sits:
As with many things in life, red means bad...and that's a lot of red. Sutton and Nwora are still great shooters, but they take only a quarter of the outside shots. The rest are distributed between a lot of terrible shooters (Darius Perry, Lamarr Kimble, and assorted other players) who have hit only 2 of 18 shots from deep during this time.
That's not a great way to run your offense. Ideally you'd see Sutton and Nwora taking at least half of the 3 point shots when McMahon sits, given they are the only other players who have hit them consistently. It would also probably be a good idea to tone down the frequency of shooting threes when your ace three point shooter sits on the bench...but Louisville is doing no such thing.
The structure of the offense also has something to do with these results. McMahon has a lot of "gravity", which means that he attracts defensive attention and usually has a defender stuck to him. This allows other players more room to penetrate off the dribble without McMahon's defender helping. Louisville has had success this season (and in past seasons) by setting up drives on McMahon's side of the floor, as his defender doesn't help and the driver usually has a path into the lane. When defenders help off of other players, there are kickout passes to open shooters.
When McMahon sits, the opponent has more freedom to have defenders help off of the perimeter. Watching film, defenders frequently help off of Kimble or Perry, especially when Nwora is trying to create. Louisville also runs most post-ups when McMahon is out of the game, which takes away open driving lanes and eliminates the opportunity to drive and kick. These post-ups could create open looks if defenders were helping off of the perimeter, but that's not happening much; when it does, it's usually defenders helping off of poor shooters. It's harder for Nwora and Sutton to find open shots from three in these cases, so they are taking a smaller portion of the outside shots, and the offense is suffering.
What Does This Mean? Louisville certainly has a weakness when McMahon leaves the game. However, he doesn't leave the game very often, as I noted above; he's played the 3rd most minutes on the team. What's more, the two players who have played more are Nwora and Sutton...so UofL's best shooters are playing the most minutes. Also, none of these players are foul prone; McMahon ranks among the 150 least foul-prone players in the nation. It's very unlikely that foul trouble will cause UofL to bench any of these players unwillingly, McMahon in particular. UofL should be able to play these players heavier minutes against better teams without much concern, making their offense possibly even better that it has been.
Additionally, Louisville has been without freshman guard David Johnson most of the season so far. It's quite possible that Johnson could help fill some of the McMahon-less minutes without a significant dropoff in shooting. Johnson is only 1-2 so far this season from deep, but if he can provide a threat (or orchestrate the offense to get Sutton and Nwora more looks) then Louisville can piece together a solid offense when McMahon hits the bench.
It's a real testament to the work ethic of Ryan McMahon that he could grow from redshirting, playing 6 minutes a game his freshman year, starting 1 game through the end of his junior year, to starting on the #1 ranked team his senior year and becoming possibly the fulcrum of an elite college basketball offense. Regardless of how the rest of his basketball career turns out, he is deserving of being remembered fondly by Cardinal fans. For the Cardinals' sake, however, he will hopefully become a bit more replaceable as this season goes on.
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