Big Games from Jennings and Moute
The Bucks didn't play great offense last night, but they did play great defense, and they won every important battle. They won the opponent free throw rate battle (45% vs. 56%), they won the rebounding battle (45 vs. 37), and they won the turnover battle (14 vs. 20). If they do all of those things every game, who needs offense? They'll never lose.
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Click Here to see Game Win Chart for the Bucks
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Win Chart Results: Mostly because of defense, everyone on the Win Chart except C Andrew Bogut made it more likely the Bucks would win last night. In other words, every Buck except Bogut had a good game... despite what their traditional box score numbers looked like (they were ugly).
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Tiny Jennings: The biggest win contribution last night came from rookie PG Brandon Jennings, whose defense was absolutely superb, and whose offense was pretty damn good by Milwaukee standards. To tell you the truth, I'm much more encouraged by this performance than I was by his debut (which the media spewed over, because of his near "triple double"). Why? Because the near triple double was basically an aberration. A 6'1'', 165 pound player is not going to grab double digit rebounds on a consistent basis like the great Oscar Robertson was able to do. And, more importantly, if you examined my Win Chart from the opener, or indeed heard Coach Skiles post game comments, you will know that Jennings defense gave all of that production back. Last night, though, he locked down Detroit's pretty good PG combo of Stuckey and Bynum (Bynum is very underrated). If he can do that every night, or at least some of that, it will carry him through the inevitable 25% shooting nights he will have. Provided the effort is there, defense doesn't have "off" nights.
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Return of the Mout: The second game ball goes to SF Luc Richard Moute. He had a very productive night and held his counterparts in check. He bounced back very nicely from a weak opening, almost invisible, opening night against the Sixers. He was the best rebounder Milwaukee had on Saturday night.
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Big Men: The third game ball must be shared between the Bucks backup centers. PF/C Ersan Ilyasova and C Dan Gadzuric both had outstanding games in very limited action. Their combined offensive Win Score production (+11.0) makes me think something may be wrong with C Andrew Bogut. The normally productive Bogut produced only 2.5 Win Score points in nearly the same minutes. I didn't watch the game last night, but on Friday night he looked sluggish and a bit slow, or rather, a bit more sluggish and a bit slower than normal 
I wonder if the time off because of his back robbed him of his sea legs.
I wonder if the time off because of his back robbed him of his sea legs....
PROJECTING THE BUCKS: This is a new feature I will provide. Basically what I'm doing is adjusting the Bucks performances according to the strength of the competition they've faced. (So its not at all like the Journal-Sentinel's idiotic Brewer projections, where they simply multiply the team's winning percentage by the number of games they play). If you adjust the Bucks numbers to account for their competition, their "offense" stinks to high heaven. Not surprising. The offense is a (-11.8). But, as I expected might happen, their defense is very strong, but not quite strong enough to overcome their offense. The defense is a (-9.9) -- (note that on defense a minus number is good). Combining the two numbers, the Bucks projected record at this moment is: 38.5-43.3. As we move along in the schedule, and we get more opposition data, the adjusted projection will take on more meaning, but at the moment it stands almost exactly where we predicted.
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You didn’t see the game?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEKVUGWQMrg
What I tell yah?