How Expected Shot Value Affected Florida Against Florida State

Florida’s sixth consecutive loss to Florida State Sunday was an ugly one and a large part of what led to the Gators taking the L was their lackluster offense that only saw them manage 51 points while shooting 35.7% from 2-point range and 18% from three while turning the ball over 16 times. Florida State’s length and athleticism certainly made things difficult as they swarmed any Gator who made it into the paint and pressuring passing lanes on the perimeter denying Florida any chance at the ball movement they needed to be effective with their dribble drive offense.

With this poor offensive performance the center of attention for Gators fans right now the question has to be asked—were the Gators just missing shots or were they not able to generate good shots? When you see percentages as bad as those that the Gators put up there is always a possibility they were low-quality shots and that’s why the percentages struggled and points stayed off the board, but there is also a chance they got the looks but just couldn’t convert.

To find out if the Gators were missing good looks or if they weren’t generating quality attempts I decided to look at every attempt and chart it by expected shot value.

What Is Expected Shot Value?

Expected shot value is putting a point value on every single shot attempt by seeing what that shot is worth. For example, let’s say player X has a wide-open 3-point shot at the top of the break. Let’s say he is an outstanding 3-point shooter, especially when wide open, and is shooting 50% on those shots. To get the expected shot value you would multiple the potential points by the percent of conversion so in this case:

3×0.50=1.5 Points Per Possession (PPP)

The expected shot value for that possession would be 1.5, and that is a tremendous shot.

Now let’s say player Y gets a bit trigger-happy and takes a long, contested 2-point jump shot. Let’s say he’s shooting 39% on that difficult shot.

2×0.39=0.78 Points Per Possession (PPP)

That would be a bad shot.

For a reference point of the numbers I’ll be talking about in this article you should know that overall the Gators scored just over 0.9 PPP and 0.87 PPP in the half court last season. When it comes to national rank those aren’t particularly great numbers so you should know that the goal for a good shot would be some 0.95 PPP or higher, but if it hits 0.9 PPP it would still be a good look.

The Method

To get the most accurate data on the percentage and PPP of a shot I used multiple variables that all affect the efficiency of a shot. These were:

1) Which player shot (obviously)
2) Shot location
3) Was it off the catch or off the dribble
4) What kind of shot was it (dribble jumper, catch and shoot, floater, etc.)
5) Was it unguarded, closely guarded, or extremely closely guarded

Using these different variables I could get really accurate data for incredibly specific shots to get the accurate PPP. I used a database called Synergy to find these numbers.

One note, I used percentages from last year’s team which made for a large sample size which should make for more accurate numbers than if I used the miniscule sample size from this year, but it obviously won’t account for any growth or regression from last year. For the freshman, obviously they don’t have a college sample size so for their shots I used Florida’s average percentages from their position group to get their numbers, i.e. for Scottie Lewis it was the average numbers from Jalen Hudson, KeVaughn Allen, and Noah Locke. That obviously won’t be an exact number for these particular freshman’s skill sets but it should still be relatively accurate as there isn’t super wild swings in percentages between what most players shots at the rim and what they shot on open corner threes, for example. I know it’s not exact, but I still think it works. For Blackshear, I used his numbers from last season from Virginia Tech.

Anyways, here are my findings that will hopefully shed some light on whether or not Florida’s offensive shortcomings were due to the inability to create shots or whether it was just them missing shots.

The Expected Shot Value Against Florida State

First of all, the Gators scored 51 points by 4 of those points were from free throws in the bonus on non-shooting fouls so we need to take those off the board for the purposes of the exercise. So, the Gators had 47 points on shooting possessions against FSU.

After looking at every single shot the Gators took and meticulously plugging in each variable to find the most accurate shooting percentages, the expected total of points the Gators should have put up against Florida State was …drum roll please…

58.4 points.

I’ll let that sink in for a moment because it’s an interesting number. On hand, it’s 11.4 points more than they should have scored, which indicates they shot worse than their average PPP would indicate and therefore it was an unlucky, bad shooting night.

However, on the other hand, 58 points still isn’t that much, and it still wouldn’t have been enough to beat the Seminoles in a game that the Gators did pretty well defensively. The 16 turnovers really hurt in that area as a turnover gives them an expected shot value of 0 by not even being able to put the ball at the rim, and a 58 point expected night still isn’t going to win you a lot of games.

Let’s look at one player for an example of how his night went. Noah Locke was someone who particularly struggled going 1-11 for 2 points. Here were the expected shot values for each of his attempts:

0.693
1.611
0.462
0.999
0.462
0.6
1.779
0.999
0.554
0.82
0.945

Total: 9.927

So, the 10 points the expected shot value would have suggested he would get is definitely better than the 2 he ended up with but as you can see he took a number of really low percentage attempts, mostly mid-range jump shots off the dribble and floaters. He also missed some incredibly valuable shots (those 1.611 and 1.779 shots were open corner threes, shots he absolutely feasted on last season) but he took enough poor shots to really lower the value of his overall offensive game.

This wasn’t an exercise just to be critical of Locke’s game, but it shows something that some people are going to be surprised by. This wasn’t a game where Locke just couldn’t buy a basket, it was a game where he took some bad shots that would suggest that he wasn’t going to put up a lot of points. On an average night the exact 11 shots he took would have yielded 10 points which is better than the 2 against FSU but it’s not a big points total for a double digit shot attempt game.

Remember how the Gators averaged about 0.9 PPP last year? Let’s use that as a cutoff of what is a good or bad shot with everything above that a good shot and everything below it being a bad shot. Looking at all Florida’s shots against FSU through that lens we can see how many shots were good shots and how many were bad shots. Just so you’re aware the Gators had 61 shootings possessions (these are their field goal attempts as well as their shot attempts that ended up with them getting fouled). Here is what the numbers say:

Good

36 Shots

Bad

25 Shots

Looking at things with the 0.9 PPP cutoff, 59% of Florida shots were good with 41% of them being bad shots. Is that a good number? In my opinion, it’s not. On too many possessions the Gators were hunting for low value shots which resulted in low percentage, low PPP shots and it made for missed shots and the Seminoles going the other way.

One of the other storylines about Florida’s offensive performance was how slow and stagnant their offense was and for that reason I’m sure many of you are thinking that a lot of the bad shots were forced up due to late clock scenarios. For the record, the Gators only took 7 shots in the last 5 seconds of the shot clock against FSU. As well, 4 of those 7 looks were still high percentage shots classified as good by the 0.9 PPP and two of them were made field goals (Keyontae Johnson dunks, one off a baseline drive and one alley-oop on a baseline inbounds). The other two good looks were an open Andrew Nembhard catch and shoot three and a Scottie Lewis baseline drive that drew a foul and let him shoot two free throws.

That means, unfortunately, that the argument about late clock scenarios forcing the Gators into bad shots doesn’t really hold water and a lot of their shot selection and inefficient were just in the regular flow of the offense.

Did The Offensive System Generate Good Shots?

It obviously generated some good looks but on a whole, 36 quality shot attempts isn’t enough and their expected shot value of 58 points in the game also isn’t enough to win you many contests. The dribble drive motion offense employed by the Gators was perfectly defended by a Seminoles team that is perfectly equipped to stop it and they did a good job of taking Kerry Blackshear Jr. out of play while also forcing Andrew Nembhard to play one on one, something he isn’t particularly skilled at. Ideally your team is taking good shots on more like 75% of your possessions and Florida’s 59% wasn’t good enough. They’ll have to find a way to generate better shots.

Part of this could also be education to the players. So many of the low PPP shots that were taken were sought out by players who got the bad look they were hunting and then missed it. When players are hunting for bad shots, particularly in early clock scenarios like the Gators were against the Seminoles, I assume they don’t know any better and aren’t informed about what shots they should be taking and which shots are going to put points on the board. By just looking for better shots instead of dribble jumpers and floaters the Gators could have had an improved offensive effort against the Seminoles but at the same time it looked like the offensive system wasn’t working particularly well either. It was a mix of execution from the players and game plan by the coaches and that was a recipe for a rough shooting night.

So, Was It A Bad Shooting Game Or A Bad Shot Creation Game?

Usually the expected shot value numbers would answer this question definitively in one way or the other but in the case of the Gators against the Seminoles both are true. First of all, they definitely struggled to get good shots which is supported by their expected shot value total of 58 points on the night. That’s a low total and even if the Gators had an average shooting night and put up 58 points they would have lost.

They also fell short of that 58 point expected shot value total by only putting up 47 points on shooting possessions, so you can’t argue that they didn’t have a bad shooting night. It’s clear they missed shots that they would normally hit and they did certainly have a poor shooting night.

Usually I’m not one to go with a soft “a little of both” answer and I’m not going to do it in this article, even though you could argue both sides.

Ultimately in my opinion the 58 points in expected shot value is far too low. It’s a number that the Gators would have hit if they had an average shooting night and they still would have lost the game. For that reason, I have to say the Gators lost because they didn’t generate enough good shots. The Gators would have had to have a better than average shooting day to win on Sunday and since that’s the case I think you’ve got to blame it on the shot creation and the offensive system. To me that’s the game plan but it’s also execution from the players and the poor shot selection they’ve shown at times absolutely plays into that. Florida is going to need to improve their offensive cohesion to improve on that 58 point expected shot value total and if they don’t they are going to have more duds. You’ve got to put your team in a position to have an average shooting night and win and to do that the Gators will need to have something more like 68 or 70 expected points and not 58.

Offense has been a storyline for the Gators throughout Mike White’s tenure and it’s sure to continue until they get some consistency. I hope this article helped frame a little of what went wrong on Sunday against the Seminoles and what you could look for moving forward.