As Angel Rodriguez Slumps, So Does Miami
Posted by Brad Jenkins (@bradjenk) on February 5th, 2015If we have learned anything about Miami this season, it’s that as Angel Rodriguez goes, so go the Hurricanes. And unfortunately for Jim Larranaga right now, that’s not a good thing. Due in great part to a major drought from its on-floor leader, Miami has now dropped three straight ACC games and has likely fallen on the wrong side of the NCAA bubble. The Hurricanes’ home defeat to Louisville on Tuesday night was just the latest example of how difficult things are for Miami when the junior is having an off night. A look at the box score reveals that he failed to reach double-figures for the fourth time in conference play — all Miami losses. The chart below shows just how strong the correlation is between Rodriguez’s performance and the team’s ACC fortunes.
The trend also extends to Miami’s non-conference games. In the Hurricanes’ two solid November road wins against Florida and Charlotte, Rodriguez averaged 19.0 points and made 9-of-15 three-pointers. In those two head-scratching blowout home losses to Green Bay and Eastern Kentucky, he only managed a total of 13 points and shot a miserable 1-of-11 from distance. Part of the problem is that Miami relies too much on the transfer guard for offense — carrying an extremely high usage rate of 31.9 percent in ACC play. Here’s a look at how Rodriguez compares to some of the other prominent ACC guards in both usage and performance.
For sample-size purposes we decided to only compare him to players from teams with at least three wins and losses in conference play. The first thing that stands out is that Rodriguez’s scoring and accuracy are basically halved in Miami’s defeats. The others all suffer a certain degree of drop-off in performance in their team’s losses, but not to the extreme that he does. We also can presume that the impact is magnified because of Rodriguez’s much higher usage rate. Perhaps Larranaga had that in mind in the Louisville game, as Rodriguez only logged 24 minutes and contributed his second lowest usage rate (26%) in ACC games this season. Some of that was due to foul trouble, but the veteran coach may have also recognized that when Rodriguez is off his game, he rarely turns things around. Maybe the answer for Miami lies with others stepping up their offensive production, as sophomore Davon Reed did in scoring a career-high 19 points against Louisville. On the year, Reed has not been very aggressive (with a 13.3% usage rate), but maybe if he and the other efficient players such as Sheldon McClellan and Manu Lecomte can take some possessions away from Rodriguez, the team will benefit.
In the Louisville game, Rodriguez appeared to be a player who has lost his confidence, a far cry from the energized catalyst who took down Duke in Cameron Indoor Stadium just a few weeks ago. For those not familiar with his life story, the young man has come a long way to get to this point. Perhaps he is merely putting too much pressure on himself to perform rather than simply enjoying the journey. For Miami’s sake, he needs to break out of his current slump soon or this season’s journey is unlikely to end in the NCAA Tournament.
