Falcon Men's Basketball....the year in numerical review....Off-FENSE

So, first we looked at the Men's Basketball team's stats based on defense, which I thought was appropriate because we are sort of a defensive team, all, your shooting percentage shouldn't determine your winning percentage.

And, as we found, the defense was not in the top half of our conference.

Now, here comes offense.  (Remember, all stats below are conference games only).

Overall, we were 10th in points per game.  Remember, we were 10th in possessions/game, or tempo, so we can expect that the 10th place thing is pretty reflective.  Indeed we were 9th in points per possession, one of only four teams in the conference to score under 1 point per possession.

Transferring to the Four Factors, BG was actually 4th in FG%, which is among our better rankings.  That's a little misleading, because our shot mix was very heavy toward 2 point FGs, and you would, therefore, except to have a higher percentage.  (Cue:  Inside-out).  We were 11th in 3FG attempts and tied for last in made 3s.  We were 10th in 3FG%.

So, that's one problem.  If you're going to shoot that way, you're going to have to make the most of all your possessions, get to the line, and get some boards--and probably shoot higher than 44%.

These were things that did not happen.  BG had the 3rd highest percentage of turnovers per possession in the MAC and led the MAC in giving up steals.  (I have a still to be explored theory that steals are worse than other turnovers because they lead to transition opportunities, while a traveling call yields to an inbounds pass.  Anyhoo).

The other issue was getting to the line.  BG was 11th in FTs attempted.  (We had 294.  UT was last, they shot 194.  This boggles the mind.  You know what else is weird?  BG took 294 FTs and allowed 294 FTS, and made 209 and allowed 205.  Anyhoo).   So we were 11th in FTs made too.  So, that's not really a strong point, either.  Now, it could have been worse, because we did really turn our FT shooting % around---it was dreadful in the pre-MAC but ended up 4th in the conference.

Finally, our rebounding was just pretty average, as we were 7th in the conference in offensive rebounding percentage.

So, that's a look at the offense.  We were worried that we would lack offensive firepower this year, and we did.  We did have our moments, but consistency was lacking and we certainly did not score well in the aggregate.  That, combined with a below average defensive performance means that you have a team that finished 10th.