Scoring output worst of Seth Greenberg era

I've been pondering our offensive woes this season, and wanted to compare this season's scoring to past seasons under Seth Greenberg.  While some of the numbers aren't drastically different, so far this season is the worst overall - I'm sure you're shocked.

In the below spreadsheet I listed the past 9 seasons and included team scoring, our 4 leading scorers each season, their contributions to scoring, and the percentages of their contributions against the team total.  I also included the final four teams from the last 3 seasons as a comparison.

This season Erick Green, Dorenzo Hudson, Jerrell Eddie, and Robert Brown are our top 4 scorers with 15.9, 11.9, 9.9, and 7.7 points per game respectively.  As a team, we're averaging 67.7 points per game, Green and Hudson are accounting for 27.8ppg (41.1% of the total), and all four are accounting for 45.4ppg (67.1% of the total).  The team's 67.7ppg and Green's 15.9ppg as the leading scorer are the worst since the 2005-06 season when we were 14-16 overall, 4-12 in the ACC, and it was the last time we had no postseason.  Green and Hudson's combined 27.8ppg is the worst top 2 scoring we've had under Seth.  Likewise, Green, Hudson, Eddie, and Brown's 45.4ppg is the worst top 4 scoring.

On the bottom half of the sheet I put the same stats for the final four teams of the last 3 NCAA Tournaments.  (Note: The green and yellow cells of the Final Four stats are the maximums and minimums for that column.)  What I found interesting is that 8 of those 12 teams scored less than 75 points per game.  Scoring-wise, the Hokies of the last 5 seasons (2006-2011) almost fit right in with those Final Four teams.  We were scoring 70+ points per game, our top 2 scorers during those years were contributing over 40% of the points, and the top 4 scorers were scoring over 50 points per game (72+% of the team's output each season).  Not only is scoring down for our top scorers this season, but they're contributing less to team scoring compared to year's past.

My thought has been that this year we lack a true playmaker, and that's the reason why we're not scoring as well as we've had in the past.  Our half-course offense (as ugly as it is) is no different this year than it has been in past seasons.  The difference is that we've generally had one or two guys who were scoring threats. eg: Bryant Matthews, Zabian Dowdell, AD Vassallo, Deron Washington, Malcom Delaney.  The closest thing we have to a playmaker on this team is Erick Green, but he's only scoring 16 points per game and getting very little support from the rest of the team.

I've seen some discussion about it, and I believe the fact that he's playing point guard is hurting his scoring opportunities.  Seth is going to have to get creative by putting Rankin and Green on the floor more, and moving Green off the ball.  That should create more scoring chances for him.  The other thing that must change is our offensive philosphy in the half-court.  To my non-expert eye, it's essentially been the same since Greenberg has been here: a couple of guys moving, the others standing still, and we leave it to one guy's athleticism to make a play.  This year we have no one making plays, and the two contributing seniors on this squad (Hudson and Davilla) are scoring less than 20ppg between the two of them.

I do not know what the rest of this season will bring, but if you go by the numbers and the trends, we will be fortunate to make the CBI.

NOTE: All statistics from previous seasons came from ncaa.org, and this season's stats came from espn.com.