Senior night stats revisited

I did a little analysis yesterday of past seniors' performances on their final night playing at the Palestra and concluded that they generally don't get the psychological bump in performance many expect from the special occasion. I also posited that this year's seniors had more to play for than just a final home game — they were playing to keep their season alive. And they did.

So there may be a couple variables at play here, and correlation doesn't equal causation (Hey, Mom, I learned something in Psych 001!) but lets look at how seniors Zack Rosen, Rob Belcore, Tyler Bernardini and Mike Howlett played last night, compared to their season averages.

Zack Rosen: Had an all around great night, and as you can see did better than the typical Rosen performance (if that's what you can call it). What's amazing here is that he did this in only 30 minutes — eight below his season average.

Rob Belcore: In my opinion, Belcore was the player of the game for how he handled the tough assignment of Yale big man Greg Mangano. Belcore, listed as four inches shorter than the 6-foot-10 Mangano, actually requested the defensive assignment earlier this week, and after the game coach Jerome Allen called it "probably the most impressive performance I’ve seen in this league the way [Belcore] made Mangano work for everything he got." Belcore held the center to ten points, eight points below his season average. The point of all that praise, is that it won't necessarily show up the following graph; nonetheless Belcore still outdid himself:

Tyler Bernardini: The fifth-year senior has struggled the last three weeks dealing with a foot injury, though this weekend he was noticeably more mobile than the last two, and played his most minutes (28) since the Dartmouth game three weeks ago. While his numbers were below average, he continues to play stellar defense:

Mike Howlett: There's not a large sample size for Howlett, who averages about 10 minutes per game, but he too had a good night by his standards: