076: Three things
Carolina's lineups without Trimble, another plug for WABStick, and remember Julius Peppers.
Carolina misses Seth Trimble
Seth Trimble has missed the last two Carolina games with an upper body injury. In his absence, UNC is 1-1 with a negative point differential.
While Trimble has started only one game this season, he has been the key reserve off the bench.
The Tar Heels played 60 unique lineups in its first 11 ACC games. Five of those 60 lineups played double-digit minutes together.
Trimble was on the floor or part of four of those five lineups.
Without Trimble, Carolina has put out 22 different lineups over the past two games. UNC played only eight unique lineups in the win against Duke or the last time Trimble played.
There is not a lot of depth behind Trimble.
Paxson Wojcik played 40 minutes over the past two games. Wojcik played 47 total minutes in the previous 11 ACC games combined.
RJ Davis has played ~96 percent of possible minutes over the past two games. In the small sample size of three minutes where Davis hasn’t been on the court, Carolina has been outscored 12-1 (-11) in those possessions1.
Elliot Cadeau played a career-high 35 minutes at Miami. Cadeau logged two fewer minutes (20) than Wojcik played against Clemson (22).
Here are those 22 linueps over the past two games . . .
Without Trimble, Carolina’s bench doesn’t have the same punch.
WABStick
Last week I shared WABStick, a tool to compare college hoops teams using wins-above-bubble. The tool is a joint venture with Ryan Campbell (Fifth Factor) and we’re still working to improve it2.
The app should look a bit better than when first released, check it out here:
You can get an idea of a team’s opportunities to improve its résumé. For example, Wake Forest has a big one tonight at Duke:
Julius Peppers is a first ballot hall of famer
I feel confident in saying that Peppers is the best defensive end to ever play college basketball. The old hoops highlights are just silly.
The two dunks against Wake Forest, my goodness3:
The football highlights are equally silly too. Peppers picks off Oklahoma’s Nate Hybl for a touchdown in 2001 and makes almost the same play against Kurt Warner about seven years later in the NFL:
This old Sports Illustrated article from Tim Crothers is worth a read.
Peppers strolled over to one end zone and began doing backflips the length of the field. No hands. For 100 yards. In full pads and helmet.
What an athlete.
🤟 Thanks for reading this far 🤟
Specifically not sharing +/- numbers from this data because it can be so noisy. Not sure you can always trust the play-by-play.
If I’ve learned anything working in software over the last several years, it’s sometimes more important to ship something, even if that something is sort of shit. It forces you to improve, and I think the second iteration of the app looks much better.