Saturday, January 18, 2014

Three Offensive Tiers for BG....



I noticed an interesting trend for the BG men's basketball team when I was looking at points per possession.  In a way I don't recall seeing for any team so far, there have actually been 3 BG offensive teams this year.  As you can see above, the offensive games are clumped together in discrete groups...Those above 1.08, between .98 and .92, and then below .78.  Those gaps are just really unusual.

So there is Team A.  This is a good offensive team.  In D1 this year, the median team is scoring 1.06 points per possession.  In 4 games BG has scored higher than that, and they have won each of those games.  This team has yet to show up on the road.

Then, there is Team B.  This team is well below average and BG is 2-4 in that group, including a road win @Morehead State.

Finally, there is Team C, an awful offensive team.  BG is 0-5 in those games, including 3 home losses.  Even sadder is that BG played pretty good defense in a few of these games, and essentially wasted some pretty good offensive performances.  Anyway, you'd be hard pressed to win any games at that kind of efficiency.  The IPFW game was .28 points per possession below average.

Taking B and C together, BG is 2-9 in games where is scored less than 1 point per possession and 4-0 when it scores above 1.08.  (I eliminated the Earlham game).

Anyway, the key point here is that the offense is either decent, bad or terrible and the team has needed at least decent offense to win consistently.

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