The current engine is supposed, I think, to give more emphasis to matchups.  With that in mind, I took a rudimentary look at the results for a guy who should be a sut down defender.  It does look like he held people down.

My Maryland team in Rupp had this guy - with A+ man to man hoop IQ:

Name	Yr.	Pos.	A	SPD	REB	DE	BLK	LP	PE	BH	P	WE	ST	DU	FT	TOT
Kenneth Reynosa	Sr.	PG	100	100	39	100	28	25	49	87	68	88	92	100	B-	876

I looked at the guy he guarded in all of his ACC games (regular season and conf tournament) - sometimes he played PG sometimes SG - I tried when possible to match him up on the better offensive guard on the opponent

his matchups had the following

57 FG  157 FGA - 36.3%

27 FG3  84 FG3A - 32.1%

Hard to know what chunks of that performance was against him and not a backup, but probably most of their minutes were against him. 

Looks like he had an impact - subject to big uncertainty

 

Before the season schedule etc goes away, any ideas for other easy approaches to considering whether he had a shut down ish effect - if this guy doesnt (100 SPD, 100 ATH, 100 DEf, A+) then who would....

Well, it does take some time, but you can kinda go through the people that were playing across from them and compile what their normal cumulative performance is, subtract the numbers in games against him. .and compare.

Good idea - but too much work.  Still, taking that idea I went and looked at the shooting percentages of each of his opponents.  Added them up and calculated an average.  If he played a guy twice, I counted it twice.  Did not attempt to weight by number of shots each guy takes, so it is an average of the shooting percentages and not an aggregate shooting percentage.

43.6 and 36.8

Further distortion - these are full season and just conference games, so it includes presumably weaker non ACC opponents.  Still, it suggests that a strong defender does make a difference.

This is a case wher a +/- would help owners see what impact players have while in the lineup, much like they do in hockey.