Charting the Gators: What's In a Plus-Minus Number?

Mike White and the Gators don't swear by plus/minus numbers (no one does), but they do look at them and talk about them.

Charting the Gators: What's In a Plus-Minus Number?

Saturday, January 13, 2018 | Men's Basketball, Chris Harry

Not surprisingly, there are a lot more pluses than minuses attached to UF's players during their 4-0 SEC start.

By: Chris Harry, Senior Writer

OXFORD, Miss. — Plus and minus.

Good vs. Bad.

Numbers-crunching in sports has evolved into something of a science, what with the study of advance metrics now a common practice among all teams at all levels. The Florida basketball program certainly swears by them. The Gators are very much in tune with the fashionable (and Bible-like) KenPom digits that have taken the collegiate game by storm. Mike White knows all the pivotal offensive and defensive efficiency numbers that one coach can cram into his cranium.

"I usually study all the numbers for a couple hours before I even watch film," White said of his pre-game scouting habits, which have come a long way since he first broke into coaching as an assistant in 2000 at Jacksonville State, where using two VHS recorders might take eight hours to cut a five-minute clip to show the team. "It's just the way I do it. I think if you dive right in and watch it, it can be misleading. When you look at the numbers and then go watch it, to me, it's fascinating."

Who doesn't like the numbers?

Or for the purpose of this story, the symbols?

Like "+" and "-."

Plus/minus is not so much a pre-game statistic as it is a post-game measurement. It's one that sometimes is included in box scores, depending on the news service, and one the UF video crew tallies for all its post-game reports delivered to the coaching staff.

The data is usually pretty interesting, often enlightening, sometimes even a tad mystifying.

"It's definitely not the be-all, end-all," UF director of basketball operations Kyle Church said. "But we do pay attention to it."

The individual plus-minus statistic is based on the score of a game when a particular player is on the floor. Say, Egor Koulechov starts, plays the first six minutes, and when he gets subbed out the Gators are ahead 14-10. Koulechov's plus-minus for those six minutes is plus-4. Say he returns four minutes later, with the Gators ahead 21-20. He re-enters the game still at that plus-4. When he checks out five minutes later, UF is up 33-30. The Gators have increased their lead by two points with Koulechov in the game, so his plus/minus goes from plus-4 to plus-6.

Meanwhile, all the players around them are compiling plus/minus as well, based on their court time and score.

Each player's aggregate plus/minus is compiled for his respective total minutes in the game, and thus provides a metric — though, as Church suggested, not a hard-and-fast defining one — of how that player performed in the game, independent of individual points scored, rebounds grabbed or 3-pointers made.

"Just another metric to consider," White said. "It usually leads to consideration and conversation."

On Saturday, the Gators (12-4, 4-0) will go for a seventh straight win and try to remain alone atop the Southeastern Conference standings when they face Mississippi (9-7, 2-2) at the Pavilion at Ole Miss. During its unbeaten start in league play, UF has had three players post "plus" performances in all four games. Florida has had one player tally at least a plus-13 in three of those wins, a starter with a minus-10 in the two-point victory at Missouri, and three players at a combined plus-41 or better in SEC play.

[Read senior writer Chris Harry's "Pregame Stuff" setup here]

Going back to the ups of November and downs of December, the Gators also had two players who posted six straight "minus" games at one point, one game where only one player posted a "plus" score, and another when all but one registered a "minus."

The statistic, of course, can be skewed. If one of the five players on the floor is getting torched with straight-line drives on defense, but a couple of his teammates are draining 3-pointers on offense, the player struggling to guard can still have a nice "plus" score next to his name. It also doesn't get into the weeds as far as what defense an opponent is playing, what opposing players are on the floor, pace of play, etc. That stuff is left for KenPom, Synergy and the like.

But the data can be helpful (for "consideration and conversation"), especially when taken as a sample over several games, as to who is playing well and who isn't.

Taken further, according to video coordinator and lead analyst Bryce Douglas, a plus/minus score of five-man combinations can go a long way toward helping the staff determine the best group to be on the floor for best results, against certain defenses or various situations. Douglas has plus/minus data on every five the Gators have rolled out over their 16 games to date.

"Those can be interesting," Douglas said. "And really helpful."

Below is a look at Florida's individual plus/minus scores during the current four-game winning streak. Notice point guard Chris Chiozza was a minus-10 at Missouri because of a sub-par first half when he was in foul trouble, yet he was terrific in the second half and made the decisive play of the game. Forward Keith Stone, fueled by with that huge 18-point game at Texas A&M, is playing the best basketball of his career, thus the four straight plus games. Same with Koulechov, who has rediscovered his shooting stroke. Ditto, Jalen Hudson, who has come off the bench in three SEC games. KeVaughn Allen's scoring is significantly down this season (7.0 per game in SEC play), but his four-game total of plus-44 tops the team, coming off a plus-15 Wednesday in the win over Mississippi State, despit only scoring three points.

"You can look at KeVaughn's overall numbers and say he's not scoring," White said. "But then you look at [the plus/minus] and see he's not only not hurting us, but likely doing some other things well."

To repeat, it's not the be-all, end-all.

But it's worth a look.

CHARTING THE GATORS
Here's the plus/minus tallies of each UF player though the team's four SEC games

Player	Total	Vanderbilt	Texas A&M	Missouri	Mississippi State
KeVaughn Allen	+44	+13	+19	-3	+15
Egor Koulechov	+43	+3	+9	+9	+22
Keith Stone	+41	+11	+19	+3	+8
Kevarrius Hayes	+30	+5	+16	-8	+17
Chris Chiozza	+29	+9	+11	-10	+19
Jalen Hudson	+29	+7	+1	+13	+8
Mike Okauru	+2	-8	-2	+10	+2
Gorjok Gak	+2	DNP	+1	+1	0
Deaundrae Ballard	+2	-4	+11	-5	DNP
Dontay Bassett	-7	-1	DNP	DNP	-6