Losing Larry Drew II

EDIT: I accidentally named Strickland in the paragraph on defensive plus-minus rather than Drew. Now fixed.

The North Carolina Tar Heels just lost Larry Drew II, transferring after playing some pretty decent basketball (according to that article).

Let's take a moment and look at Larry Drew's estimated offensive impact.

Using 15% of the Tar Heels' possessions for 57.5% of each game, with their lowest Offensive Rating, I estimate that losing Drew will bring Carolina's 'Raw' Offensive Efficiency up to 107.88 (from 106.45). Depending on how you look at it, Drew's absence would add between 1.4 and 1.5 points per 100 possessions to Carolina's 'Adjusted Offensive Rating'.*

Also, I ran StatSheet's plus-minus data and found that (weighted by minutes played) while Drew was on the court, Carolina averaged a point margin of 2.3 per 40 minutes. With his replacement point guards on the court, they averaged 10.8 points per 40 minutes. To this effect, Drew's on-court presence hurt Carolina by 8.5 points per 40 minutes.

But Larry Drew's main claim to fame was his defensive prowess. There are no truly good defensive stats for players like Drew, but we have to assume that he contributed some to Carolina's defense. Let's try to take a closer look:

Some quick stats from his Pomeroy page: I'll rank him among the three players who run point the most (Marshall, Strickland, and Drew).

Defensive Rebound%: Drew takes the lead at 9.3%, in close second is Strickland's 8.7%. Marshall isn't far behind at 7.4%

Block%: Ha! Marshall is the only one recording noticeable blocks, with 0.3%.
Steal%: Drew posts an impressive 2.7, but Strickland and Marshall have him beat at 3.1 and

Fouls Committed per 40: While fouling helps in some situations, Carolina's best Four-Factor stat is how few times their opponent gets to the line. This will likely only improve, as Drew's
modest 3.4 is bested by Marshall's 2.3 and Strickland's 2.6.
Defensive Plus Minus: Not going to rank players (takes too long to get these numbers), but with Drew on the court, Carolina allowed 40.9 points per 40 minutes. Off the court, Carolina allowed only 28.0 points per 40 minutes. That means that with Drew on the floor, Carolina did 12.9 points per 40 worse on defense.

It's never a very good idea to only use plus minus when looking at players, but NET +/- can tell us some reasonably accurate things about the effect of substituting players. As long as Carolina can emotionally push through this, losing Drew could actually win them an extra game or two. I just pray that the boys stay out of foul trouble and don't get fatigued now that a lot of minutes have to be filled.

Furthermore, I think that I would personally stick with Strickland, not Marshall. While Marshall posts an insane assist rate of 42.8 (compared to Strickland's 12.6), I'll take Strickland's TO% of 18.4 over Marshall's sloppy 32.9 any day.

That is all!

*One way of adjusting is just adding the 1.4 to the raw numbers. But if I use the ratio of UNC's Adjusted Efficiency to Actual Efficiency (1.034), the impact goes from -1.43 to -1.47.