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In evaluating a player, we’re influenced first by whether a player is a good shooter.

Fans should take a wider view and consider both the value of player’s shooting and non-shooting stats, and the relation of different statistical categories to each other.

Often we’ll say a new player has potential if see some things we don’t like.

Transfers Jake Forrester and freshman Josh-Pierre Louise fall in this category. Most posters like both players, even though there are aspects of their games, fans want to see improve.

Let’s look at Jake Forrester first.

Forrester hustled and shot fairly well as averaging 16.1 mpg in conference play, he averaged 6.6 ppg, took 5.2 shots per game, and converted 2’s at a decent 51.1 percent rate. He did not shoot any three’s.

He averaged taking 2.8 foul shots per game, but shot only 48.9 percent from the foul-line. He shoots a good bit.

Offensively, our first impression is that he’s a an ok shooter, but we’d like to see him improve his foul shooting.

He averaged 1.3 offensive rebound per game, which is good given the amount of time he plays.

Our attention is not drawn to his assist, steals, and blocks as he makes few of those. He only averaged 1.7 defensive rebounds per game.

Forrester averaged 1.6 turnovers per game, and committed 2.6 fouls per game. Those numbers severely undercut his scoring. But how many points does his negative turnover and fouls numbers result in opponents points?

General speaking we can say that each turnover a player makes results in approximately 2.5 point swing. I say that because each turnover represents one less scoring opportunity for Temple and one more scoring opportunity for the opponent, and assuming each would convert 50 percent of each shot, that would be a little higher than two points as each team would have shot some three’s.

So I would estimate 2.5 point swing to the opposition off of one his turnover. That clearly how costly any turnover is by a player, and why when you look at a player’s box score you should look at a players turnovers. You should also look to see if the team won the overall turnover battle regardless of one player’s performance.,

So, given that Forrester committed 1.6 turnovers, generally speaking that means that the opponent scored an 3.8 points off his turnovers. That’s a devastating number of points.

We also saw that he committed 2.6 fouls per game. How many points did an opponent likely score off those fouls? There’s probably some stat article that indicate their worth, but I haven’t read them.

To get some rough idea, I decided to compare a team’s total number fouls over conference play to number of fouls shot by opponents. It comes to about one foul for each foul committed by the opponent.

And given that opponents average 70 percent or so on foul shots, I decided to give each foul committed by a player a value of .7 points.

So given that Forrester averages 2.6 fouls per conference games, that converts into 1.8 opponent points per game off his fouls. But, it’s probably even be more as I haven’t calculated in the number of shooting fouls he commits, nor the cumulative effect his high fouling rate on the number of one and one’s (penalty) the player he fouls takes or number of foul shots opponent players take.

So, off of Forrester’s combined turnovers and fouls, opponents score since 5.6 points per game, while he scores 6.6 points per game.

But that’s just the beginning of the calculation, as Forrester does average 1.3 offensive rebounds per game, and that provides Temple 1.3 possessions and scoring opportunity that Temple would have otherwise not have had. Offensive rebounds are worth far less than turnovers, so while a portion his 1.6 turnovers are offset by his 1.3 offensive rebounds, opponents still score more points off his turnovers than Temple does off his offensive rebounds.

His steals should also offset his turnovers he makes few steals per game (.4). He should try to look for more steals given his quickness. Temple coaches need to show him to.

Some players like Rose make a good number of steals, but their steals need to be subtracted from their turnovers, in determining his turnovers point value.

Forrester has to learn to foul less often and commit fewer turnovers. Not sure how if he can reduce some of his turnovers as I often see him flubbing the ball away. He also fouls backing his man down that results in both an offensive foul and turnover being called on the same play
Was not taught how not to do that. Nor was he taught how now to make body contact when opponent who has ball so he won’t be called for a foul.

His defensive stats show that opponents scored quite well when he’s on the court (105.1 points per 100 possessions) His excessive turnovers and fouls cause that.

His turnover rate and excessive fouls on offense coupled with his
offensive rating as well as Temple ss scores less points and opponents more points by a wide margin when he plays. 93.1 points per 100 possessions.

Temple can’t afford to see nee year another overall poor performance in which Forrester fouls once every 6.2 minutes, and turns the over once ever 12.3 minutes.