If you walk into Ohio coach Saul Phillips' office in The Convo, a large plasma screen TV playing college basketball can be seen over your left shoulder.
There's a treadmill pushed against the far wall with a damp towel hugging its handles. A large window illuminates the room and displays a busy Richland Avenue.
Phillips isn't in his office, but the voice of college basketball commentator Dick Vitale can be heard from a few feet outside.
“The theory I have is that I sit around and think about basketball 18 hours a day,” Phillips said.
A father of two boys and a daughter, Phillips is not as complex as one may think.
One preseason weekend, Phillips and his sons, Charlie and Benjamin, had a “boys night” — filled with boxes of pizza and probably some late-night cartoons — to detox from basketball.
His mind, however, for the sport he coaches is constantly in analysis, probing for new statistics to help the Bobcats improve.
“The way (Phillips) thinks about basketball and scouting is kinda the same way I do, and it makes it easy,” forward Kenny Kaminski said. “He’s really good at finding statistics that normally aren’t in the box scores and can put two-and-two together really well. That’s a gift he has, and not many coaches can do that.”
The second-year coach for Ohio said he follows Ken Pomeroy’s advanced statistics, a website of collegiate basketball's offensive and defensive numbers, in order to help evaluate his players.
Pomeroy’s database was created in 2003 and synthesizes more than 300 different D-I basketball teams yearly, including Ohio. Pomeroy breaks down stats the NCAA does not keep track of in order to give coaches a more in-depth look at how teams operate on the court.
For example, "adjusted offensive efficiency" calculates points scored per 100 offensive possessions against an average D-I defense. "Adjusted tempo" estimates possessions teams would have in 40 minutes against an average D-I team.
Phillips said Pomeroy’s analytics give him a little more insight into how the Bobcats’ offense is doing each possession instead of bloated, overarching stats like "points per game" and "rebounds per game."
In 2015, the Bobcats offense has improved – thanks to Phillips' ability to analyze Pomeroy’s stats – with Ohio averaging 77 points per game in comparison to 67 in 2014.
According to Pomeroy’s website, Ohio is ranked 92nd in adjustment offense — the Bobcats’ better end of the court — and is the 164th best team in college basketball.
But advanced statistics aren’t everything for Phillips, a coach mostly filled with humor and wit.
Sure, Phillips will attempt to match players up based on true shooting percentage and deeper scrutiny, but there’s still value in coaching through "natural instinct."
“He puts it in really great, easy terms with us, and a lot of coaches try to over complicate things with doing different things in different actions,” Kaminski said.
Kaminski noted how Phillips coaches ball screens. At Michigan State, coach Tom Izzo uses “nine or 10 different ways” of defending ball screens. In contrast, Phillips uses just two different, simple ways to defend ball screens.
Phillips said against Western Michigan this season, he used a certain set he had incorporated during his time at North Dakota State. Phillips explained how his players didn’t need to understand the backstory for his analytics.
He tried to take overly complicated analysis and simplify them for the Bobcats.
“There’s all kinds of reasons why we do what we do,” Phillips said. “If (the players) trust you, they don’t need to know every little (statistic). ... They know I’m trying to do my job and just trying to put them in the right spots. I could go, ‘Hey, go here and does this.’ They don’t need to know the entire backstory of how I came up with that (play, set).”
Ohio’s players said they have loved working with the verbose, outgoing coach this season, even if it means not understanding every little detail of Phillips' membranes.
“It’s a great system and it fits me perfectly,” freshman Gavin Block said. “I’m really comfortable playing here. We’ve got a long way to go as a group and we just need to continue to work hard and we’ll be okay.”
No one player on Ohio’s roster thinks more like Phillips than point guard Jaaron Simmons.
Simmons said Phillips sometimes gives Pomeroy’s analytics before games, but does a “great job of keeping things simple.”
The player-coach combo have a deep-rooted trust, as Phillips has hinted at Simmon’s eventually coaching earlier this season.
“He doesn’t allow us to over think too much so he really looks into numbers and stuff like that, and he may mention it from time to time, but coach Phillips does a great job keeping it simple,” Simmons said. “He gives us the freedom to go out there on the court and do what we need to do.”
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His office might stay the same. The towel in the same place. The television still on. The echo of basketballs bouncing in The Convo arena fading in and out. But Phillips probably still won't be in there.
But one thing is for certain.
He's thinking about basketball somewhere.
@Lukeoroark
lr514812@ohio.edu
