In advanced sorry for the TLDR rant

So I as many on here have said I am ready for a change at the top of the Bucks Hoops.

I don't claim to be good enough at X's and O's in hoops to point to strategy changes etc to say why Holtmann has failed. Mainly because there are various strategic means by which a coach can be successful. IE does your team press and play lights out D man to man, or do you play the old Syracuse zone. Do you chuck up 3's, look to run the floor, play motion, high/low, iso ball etc. All can and have been successful.

The key is results.

So, with that in mind I wanted to compare Holtmann's results vs the first 11 years of the Matta 13, (I think we can all agree Matta's last 2 years were poor). And this has led to the collapse we are witnessing.

IE why did Matta succeed, win titles, make occasional deep runs in the tourney etc, where Holtmann has come up short when looking at the stats/results.

So lets start with Offense and focus simply initially on Points scored per game. And again the is Holtmann's 6+ years vs Matta's first 11.

Pts/game

Holtmann - 73.6, Matta 72.4., so in fact Holtmann's units have been on par if not slightly better than Matta's by about 1 point per game. We could dig deeper here into shooting pct's, TO's etc, but frankly this is the end result and those "details" become slightly meaningless in the wash.

So defense and Pts allowed per game.

Holtmann - 67.8

Matta - 61.6

So a 6+ point per game difference, or about a 10.1% higher rate for Holtmann.

That is fairly significant as this makes the average margin much closer with Holtmann at + 5.8, while Matta was + 10.8. a near 50% decrease in win margin.

What is also telling is that the data points to 70 points allowed as the key.

Both coaches won well under 50% of their games when allowing the other team to score at least 70 points, but there does seem to be a difference in the outcomes

Holtmann has won only 34% of these games, while Matta thru year 11 had won 40%.

Now look at when they allowed less than 70, Holtmann is 82% while Matta was 87%

So this appears to be where the "in game coaching" aspect many harp on seems to show, ie in close games Matta was better at getting his team in a position to either hold the lead, make the comeback, or make the needed plays down the stretch and hence getting the extra 6% in "bad" defensive games and a 5% difference in "good" defensive games.

The other major factor is how often did Opponents score over 70, ie what percent of total games. Given Matta's deeper tourney runs and B10 tourney runs he faced more quality teams than Holtmann has in those settings making it possible his percent of high scoring games by opponents to be higher than Holtmann's,, but not true.

Holtmann's teams have allowed 70 or more in 42.5% of games, while Matta was only 23.2% of the time. 

Clearly this is why Holtmann has "failed", lack of good defense.

So where does this lack of defense show up in the stats.

#1 - Steals - Matta's teams averaged 7 steals a game, Holtmann only 5.2

#2 - Blocks - Matta 4.2, Holtmann 3.8

#3 - TO's created - Matta 13.9, Holtmann 11.1

#4 - Opp Eff FG% - Matta 46.58, Holtmann 48.26 (lower is better here)

For all the harping on here about our own TO's, Holtmann's is essentially identical to Matta in that stat at 11.4 for Holt vs 11.6 for Matta and rebounding is also slightly in Holtmann's favor.

1 last stats I looked at is what is called EPR or Eff possession ratio. The math is (possessions +off rebs allowed-TO's created)/possessions, what this means from a defensive perspective is how many opportunities did you give your opponent to score, In other words, you may have the same eff fg d, but if you allow more chances for the other team to get shots, you will still allow more points. The ratio is a percent and lower is better from a defensive perspective. IE you create TO's and do a good job on the boards and this ratio will be lower.

Holtmann has averaged .955, Matta averaged .930, meaning that Holtmann's teams are about 25 percentage points worse than Matta's at limiting possessions and hence opportunities to score.

1 last thing, Holtmann's stats have been much worse defensively the last 4 years vs the first 3.

PTs/game allowed = 65.6 vs 69.4, Pct of games over 70 = 32% vs 53%, Steals/G = 5.7 vs 4.8, TO/game = 12.2 vs 10.3, Eff FG% = 47.73 vs 48.65, only blocks have gotten better mainly due to Okpara this year and Liddell a couple years ago.

IN the end it will be poor defense that ended Holtmann's run.. Hopefully!!!