Men's Basketball Tempo--Facts Suck, Part II

So, starting this I was prepared to prove the following:

• The teams in the MAC play at a very similar pace, more so than other conferences.
• The pace of play in the MAC is much slower than in other comparable conferences.

Facts still suck.

All stats courtesy of statsheet.com and use conference only numbers.

Let's start with a look at the possessions per game in the MAC.

A couple notes.  As you can see, even among the slow, BG is among the slower, something which is not going to be a surprise to anyone observing the team over the past season.  Some perspective on the top....with 71 possessions a game, OU was #46 in the country (out of 335).  With the exception of VMI, which is over 83 possessions per game, every team in the country was 76 and below.  So, OU and NIU are not that far off the top ranking.

One last note.  Last year's tempo was 63.3, so the MAC did play at a quicker tempo this season.

Now, let's look at the MAC versus other comparable conferences.

Ahem.  Cough cough.  Pull collar.  Nervous glace.

OK.  So the MAC is NOT the slowest, in fact, is essentially the same as two other conferences, including the Horizon, and plays a little faster than the MVC.

Beyond that, I looked at the range from top to bottom to test my idea that the teams in the MAC played pretty much the same.  The range from top to bottom was 12 possessions per game.  The Big 10 was 17, C-USA 11, and MVC, Horizon and Summit were 8 or under.  Now, the MAC is hampered by having UT, which played at among the 10 slowest tempos in the country, but beyond that, I think it is clear that the MAC is no more uniform than these other conferences and possibly a little less.