Hoops Year In Review (Part II--the nation looks on in horror)
Usually, I just run our stuff by the MAC numbers, because it tells us enough to see how we ranked against our peers. But when I looked at our NCAA rankings, I was sufficiently shocked at what I saw that I wanted to start here.
| Category | Rank | Actual | National Leader | Actual |
| Scoring Offense (326 ranked) | 236 | 65.9 | Long Beach St. | 83.3 |
| Scoring Defense (326 ranked) | 236 | 71.4 | Air Force | 53.9 |
| Scoring Margin (326 ranked) | 281 | -5.5 | Texas | 16.0 |
| Field-Goal Percentage (326 ranked) | 182 | 43.5 | Florida | 50.8 |
| Field-Goal Percentage Defense (326 ranked) | 265 | 45.7 | Kansas | 36.8 |
| Three-Point Field Goals Per Game (326 ranked) | 91 | 7.1 | Troy | 11.9 |
| Three-Point Field-Goal Percentage (326 ranked) | 46 | 38.1 | Southern Utah | 42.9 |
| Free-Throw Percentage (326 ranked) | 76 | 72.0 | St. Joseph's | 79.3 |
| Rebound Margin (326 ranked) | 312 | -6.1 | Connecticut | 10.5 |
| Assists Per Game (326 ranked) | 144 | 13.7 | Tex. A&M-Corp. Chris | 19.6 |
| Blocked Shots Per Game (326 ranked) | 317 | 1.6 | Connecticut | 9.3 |
| Steals Per Game (326 ranked) | 198 | 6.7 | Houston | 12.1 |
| Won-Lost Percentage (326 ranked) | 285 | 30.0 | George Washington | 92.9 |
| Turnovers Per Game (326 ranked) | 276 | 16.5 | Temple | 7.7 |
| Personal Fouls Per Game (326 ranked) | 326 | 24.0 | West Virginia | 12.7 |
The litany of woe begins with the foul statistic. We all knew from watching that we fouled--a lot. And, let there be no doubt, we fouled and fouled again. In fact, no team in DI hoops fouled as much as we did. (The irony of the team with the fewest fouls in the nation shall pass without further comment). Not to pre-empt a future post, but our opponents made 591 FTs, against our 432. That's a difference of 159 free throws, or 5.5 points per game lost on the free throw line. Then go up and look at our scoring margin, and I think our work here is done, with the exception of a nod to the idea that these numbers make it hard to believe its the official's fault.
There's nothing else here that is quite so graphic, but there remain some startling stats. We are in the bottom 50 (or about the bottom 20%) in rebounding margin (-6.1), Turnovers, and scoring margin, and below 200 in scoring, defense, FG% defense, and blocked shots. Suffice it to say that on every conventional measure, we were a really bad DI team.
What were we good at? 3FG% (46th), FT% (76th), and 3s per game (91st). Those are fine things to be good at, but obviously not enough when you don't defend shots well, turn the ball over, foul a lot, and never rebound.
On the bright side, nobody should have any illusions that we were "this close" in 2006. In fact, as Coach said in his final post game, "we're not close."
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