Ok, I'm sitting in class right now, wondering about our basketball team. I'll admit to not knowing a ton about basketball, but there are some statistics out there that are pretty telling about our basketball team. We all have certain notions about how our team plays, and I was surprised by some stats, and not so surprised by others. The stats come from sites that I cite, so they are correct, but my own math is coming from what I know of statistics....a course I didn't understand much in, so bear with me there.
Three PT FG Defense- We rank 87th nationally in this category. Maybe not where you want to be, but I was honestly shocked to see us in the top 100. Teams shoot 31.5 percent on us from there. Texas, the number one team in the country is giving up 25.6 percent. Mt. St. Mary's is dead last, coming in 345th with 42.4 percent. (NCAA's website) 87th out of 345 puts us in the 26th percentile according to my shabby math. That's not too bad.
Assists per game- Shocker here. With our 1 on 1 or 1 on 5 offense, we rank 300th in this category with 10.9 per game. There are only 45 teams in the whole country who do this worse than us. The team in dead last is Northern Illinois, who has only 8.6 assists per game. The difference between us and dead last is only 2. 3 assists per game. Ouch. Ohio is in first place with 18.9 assists per game. That's a good bit more than what we have. (ESPN and NCAA's websites) This puts us in the 86th percentile in assists per game according to what I know of stats. That's awful.
Rebounding margin- Stats are interesting here. According to ESPN's site, which only lists rebounds by themselves, we're 61st in the nation. Not bad. However, according to the NCAA's website, which only lists rebounding margin, we're 217th....this is pretty bad. We've got 63rd percentile here, which is....probably costing us a few games. Again, that's just my math, and class just ended so I gotta go. If you want more stuff like this, I can give it a try. If this was awful, don't be afraid to say so.
Comments
Must be an important class, if you're there on a Friday.
Seems like he was really only half there...
Haha.
Thanks for the interesting info, jhs! Glad we could help you occupy your class time, and benefit of it ourselves.
Those statistics do not surprise me at all.
Let start with rebounding, which in my opinion, is the best statistics to own if you are a team because I always believe in whoever control the glass wins the game. The rebounding took a massive nose dive lately, and that's probably because JJ wants the team to haul ass back on defense rather than to give up transition basketball. Tech does very poorly in crashing the board on the offensive end, but they do okay with defensive rebounding. I would like to see JJ encourage more offensive rebounding next season to gain 2nd chance points, or a trip to the charity stripe for two chances at free throws.
Assists is also problematic. Erick Green basically has a 1 to 1 assist to turnover ratio, which is awful, and part of that is because his teammates don't help him out when they are fed the ball from him. I have seen far too many easy layups being blown and far too many missed jump shots. If those were made, then his ratio would be better.
3-point defense is a trick pony. I often ignore it because it doesn't always tell the whole story. Sometime a team just gets hot from the 3 point land, and it skews the stats, or teams goes cold and misses more 3s. An example of that would be VMI. They missed a lot of open 3s but Clemson and Maryland killed Tech from three point lands. So, I don't think that should be a major stats to look at.
Erick Green Stats
I was trying to figure out if a win/loss was directly attributed to Erick's performance, whether good or bad. Here's what I found (ESPN Stats):
In our 11 wins, 25.27 PPG, 3.73 APG, 53.11 FG%.
In our 11 losses, 25.09 PPG, 4.55 APG, 45.35 FG%.
This doesn't show me very much except whether or not he is shooting well from the floor. It is a little odd with respect to assists. I then looked at if the support of Jarell Eddie played a role, just because he is the second leading scorer on our team.
In our 11 wins, 15.18 PPG, 1.64 APG, 48.16 FG%.
In our 11 losses, 12.55 PPG, 1.0 APG, 37.57 FG%.
Again, nothing too noticeable with Jarell with the exception of FG%. This leads me to believe the problem is with defense. Here they are:
In our 11 wins, 68.09 OPP PPG, 39.0 OPP FG%.
In our 11 losses, 78.82 OPP PPG, 45.02 OPP FG%.
This is a tad more revealing of our team. I could keep analyzing but happy hour is calling. However, WE NEED DEFENSE. Some (most) of our team is inconsistent on offense but the bottom line is defense. Ten more points per game in losses is a lot to make up, especially with our inconsistencies. Also, #beatbama.
Wait...
So you're saying that we're more likely to win if we make more baskets than the other team?
In all seriousness
When we were winning earlier this year, the team's FG% was way higher. It now seems like everyones in a shooting slump except EG and Raines. In the beginning of the year, our offense was fluid. Now it stalls out regularly.
I remember once hearing John wooden (I think) say that in a good offense EVERY player is ALWAYS moving; no one stands in one place for more than a split second or two. Im no basketball coach, but during our 7 game winning streak, we were always moving. Since then, I've seen a lot of standing around. Not sure if this is a function of fatigue, or better competition, or both, but I'm concerned with the offense.
The defense is frustrating. We can't get stops at crucial times. I'd like to see how many second chance points we give up, and how we rank nationally. Can't be good.
These guys go and fight every game, but always seem to be 3 baskets and 3 stops away from a win. I'm not sure how to fix this. Make more shots? Not sure it's that's easy. I will say, that in my 5 years a tech, this team seems to be having the most fun of any team. They seem like an actual TEAM. Not sure that could be said about previous years' squads.
I definitely agree with you on the team aspect. They are having fun and get along great. I want to give credit to JJ. Maybe his style is very conducive to team chemistry and building the "family atmosphere" or whatever Jim Weaver said when he was hired.
It would be interesting to see where we stack up on second chance points.
I met a worker at Moe's tonight claiming to be Erick Green's foster brother if that's of any significance.