Timing of Turnovers for Top 10 Most Turnover Prone Players 2019-2020

Welcome to the CBB Statistics Blog! For my first article, I decided to look into when exactly the players with the highest total turnovers in the 2019-2020 season coughed up the ball the most. I used Sports Reference to get the following list of players:

1. Josh Sharkey (Samford) - 177 turnovers

2. Jomaru Brown (Eastern Kentucky) - 149 turnovers

3. Colbey Ross (Pepperdine) - 140 turnovers

4. Antoine Davis (Detroit) - 136 turnovers

5. Tajuan Agee (Iona) - 135 turnovers

6. John Crosby (Delaware State) - 129 turnovers

7. A.J. Lawson (McNeese State) -127 turnovers

8. Antonio Daye Jr. (FIU) - 125 turnovers

9 (tie). Ahmad Clark (Albany) - 123 turnovers

9 (tie). Holland Woods (Portland State) - 123 turnovers

Sharkey tops this list and had the highest number of turnovers since the 2007-2008 season which is when Sports Reference seemingly started keeping track. He edged out Ja Morant's 2018-2019 total by 7. The fact that a guy like Morant found himself on this list despite his pedigree emphasizes that many of the guys aren't on this list because they're bad players, but because they're so depended upon by their team to constantly make plays which inevitably leads to more turnovers.

To get the timing of when each turnover occurred, I used Luke Benz's ncaahoopR package in R. I wasn't able to get data for every game, but in most cases these are nearly complete samples. I then created histograms for each player and made the bins based on eight 5 minute sequences of the game (overtime was excluded). For instance, the first bin will show how many turnovers a player had with 40-35 minutes left in the game (the first 5 minutes of the first half). Without further ado, here are the results along with more information on the players and some brief analysis:

Sharkey led his team in scoring (18.0 ppg), assists (7.2 per game), and steals (2.7 per game) in his senior season. Unfortunately, his dominance in these areas did not translate to much on the court success for the Bulldogs as they finished 8th in a tough SoCon and saw head coach Scott Padgett get fired. The above histogram shows Sharkey was pretty consistent with when his turnovers occurred with an increase coming at the end of games. Given how much his team needed him, this is expected.

Brown led the Colonels with 18.4 ppg and added 2.7 assists per game. The team had a successful season finishing 4th in the Ohio Valley and making it to the conference tournament semifinals before bowing out to eventual champions, Belmont. Brown's turnover distribution is very interesting as a large portion of turnovers comes in the first 10 minutes of the game. There's also a very clear continual decrease as the first half progresses. This could be an area for opponents to exploit by applying additional pressure in the beginning of games before letting off when Brown tends to settle in. It's also likely an area that the Eastern Kentucky staff is targeting to minimize these early turnovers so the team isn't put in a hole at the beginning of games.

Following the trend of these players being high-scorers, Ross was Pepperdine's leading scorer with 20.5 ppg and assist leader with 7.2 per game. He helped Lorenzo Romar's squad have a decent season with a .500 conference record and pushing Saint Mary's to double overtime in the conference tournament. We see Ross had above average turnovers at the beginning of games, right after halftime, and at the end of games.

Son of head coach, Mike Davis, Antoine does it all for the Titans. He was 4th in the country this past year with 24.3 ppg which is actually down from his 26.1 ppg the year prior. He doesn't just score as he led the Titans in assists (4.5 per game) and steals (1.7 per game). He had slightly more turnovers than his average coming out of the half and had a pretty large increase in the final 5 minutes because he's certainly the guy who's getting the ball to close out games.

Iona had a somewhat down year struggling in their conference and without head coach Tim Cluess who later resigned due to health reasons. The Gaels would've snapped their 4 consecutive NCAA tournament berths streak even if COVID-19 hadn't shut down the season as they already lost in the MAAC quarterfinals. Finally we have a player in Agee who didn't lead his team in scoring and who is our first non-guard. However, he was still their second scoring option with 14.7 ppg while being their best rebounder (7.2 per game) and shot blocker (1.2 per game). Yet again we see a slight spike in turnovers after halftime and in the closing minutes.

As mentioned above, I had trouble getting data for certain games for every player, but I certainly had the most issues with Crosby and his Delaware State team. Thus, this isn't a very complete sample and not much should be taken away from it. Crosby brings us back to looking at guards and no surprise in that he also led his team in scoring after transferring from Dayton with 19.7 ppg and assists with 3.3 per game. The Hornets went winless against D1 foes until January 11th and struggled to a 6-26 record.

We head to the Southland conference for our next guy, A.J. Lawson of McNeese State. Lawson was behind forward Sha'markus Kennedy in scoring, but should take on more of the scoring load next year in his senior season with Kennedy having graduated. The Cowboys were gearing up to play in the Southland conference tournament following their 6th place finish before the season ended. We see a decent turnover increase after half and at the beginning of games. There's also a slight increase in the final 5 minutes, but Lawson has the lowest total turnovers in this 5 minute segment of everyone we've looked at so far (including John Crosby with his half-missing data).

Daye Jr. bucks the trend of everyone on this list being either the 1st or 2nd scorer on their teams as he had only the 4th highest ppg on a very balanced scoring FIU team. While he may have lacked in scoring, he made up for it with 4.9 assists per game and 1.8 steals, both of which were team highs. The Panthers were still in the Conference USA tournament and were looking for at least one more win to cement a second consecutive 20 win season. Daye's turnover histogram is certainly unique with slightly higher than average totals in the traditional first 5 minutes and first 5 after half, but the largest increases being at seemingly random segments. The 15-10 minute left interval seems too low to be normal, so this could be indication of a time where he gets his rest before the final stretch.

Clark was the points guy (16.7 ppg), assists guy (4.2 per game), and steals guy (1.6 per game) for the Great Danes. Unfortunately, he wasn't able to lead his team to the NCAA tournament in his final season as Albany was bounced by Stony Brook in the America East quarterfinals. Clark's turnover distribution is a fairly even one with a slight increase at the end of games. Interestingly, his ball security was best for the two 5-minute segments sandwiching halftime.

For the final player of the list, and who's actually tied with the above Ahmad Clark, is Portland State's Holland Woods. Woods was the Vikings' leader in points (17.7 ppg), assists (5.2 per game), and steals (2.1 per game). However, he won't be able to work on trimming down his turnovers for the Vikings as he'll be headed to Tempe to play for Arizona State presumably after sitting out a year. It's a disappointment for the Vikings who enjoyed a nice 4th place finish in the Big Sky. We see Woods with a huge drop in turnovers after the first 5 minutes, almost as dramatic as Eastern Kentucky's Jomaru Brown mentioned earlier. He also had an increase leading up to and after halftime, but finished it off with a rare slight decrease in the final 5 minutes compared to the previous 5 minute interval.

Overall Analysis:

While it was fun to look at these distributions, there's not too much that we can take away from them. After all, most "large" increases or decreases in turnovers between the 5 minute intervals were by about 5-7, which when distributed across a 30+ game season, become not very significant. In fact, the only really significant takeaway is how drastically different Jomaru Brown's turnover distribution was. His early game turnovers is something valuable for his own team to work on as well as for the opposition to prepare for. In addition, we saw the expected trend of total turnovers being higher than the average at the beginning of games, right after halftime, and in the closing minutes. This makes sense given that in the beginning of games, players have to adjust to the opposing defense. They also may struggle to shake off the rust after taking their halftime break and/or have to deal with any defensive adjustments by the opposition. Lastly, the ending of games is always chaotic and given these players' importance to their teams, it's a given that they'll make some mistakes with the ball being almost constantly in their hands at the end. Given that many of these players are "the guy" for their respective teams regardless of how poor they play, an interesting follow up to this analysis would be to look at the distributions for the top 10 power conference turnover leaders. These power conference teams have the depth to pull a guy who's coughing up the ball a lot early, so their distributions may be more skewed to the right.