Tuesday, October 05, 2004
Today's Must Read
More than you ever wanted to know about the "Pace Factor, Defensive Efficiency, Offensive Efficiency and Points per Shot Attempt."John Brumbaugh's column provides (a lot of) data to support what we already knew; the Pac-10 was miserable last season.
Other extrapolations from John's number-crunching:
-- Boston College performed better than expected last year
-- Colorado may not be a bubble team this season (as I had earlier suggested)
-- Stanford deserved our love and attention while undefeated
-- Vanderbilt was quite lucky in 2003-2004
-- Maryland struggled more than was perceived without big-name stars
John’s most interesting conclusion?
When people talk about Big Ten Conference basketball, they talk about solid defense. The traditional statistics definitely bear this out as the teams within the Big Ten are routinely on the top of the points against statistics. What the defensive efficiency numbers are here to show is that while teams may not score a lot against Big Ten defenses, it is more of an effect of game pace than actual defense, at least in the 2003-2004 season.
Only Illinois, Purdue, and Wisconsin allowed less than one point per possession when they were on the defensive side of the ball. The other eight teams in the conference all allowed more than one point per possession, the sign of a poor defensive team.
Today's must read.
