Men's Basketball Offense, Part III

So, now a chance to review the overall trends in our men's basketball offense, just as we did for the defense.  What have the Orr years brought us?

We'll start with an overall notion....the Orr years have been lean offensively. That won't be a surprise to anyone who watched us play those games.  That, combined with being a team that played only average defense, has gotten us where we are today.

Note....stats are ranking in MAC, using conference games only.

Starting, then, with the most important measure, which is offensive efficiency, we see that BG had only been in the top half of the MAC one time during Orr's years, and that was this year.  In 3 of the 5 years, we have been between 9th and 11th.  Now, you can argue that Coach Orr now has his own players...and that this figure is a step in the right direction.  That will be true, if sustained.  If, on the other hand, this is an artifact of our 3 seniors, then it will be tough to keep it going.

Here, we see BG not improving its relative rank at all from last year to this year.  We noted at the end of last season that BG was not the only team with a lot of guys coming back and the team as a whole would need to get better, not just older.  Overall, on offense, they did, but here, despite our C getting a year older, we see that offensive rebounding was in the middle of the pack this year and last year.  I thought one of the strong points of the inside-out attack was the ability to get rebounds, but we have never excelled here.  Oh, and those back-back 6th place finishes are the high point...

The next of the Four Factors is turnover%.  This one is certainly a little bouncy.  The best year was Orr's .over .500 season, when BG finished 4th.  Last year, we were 6th and this year 5th, which sort of mirrors where BG was in the standings, which is one slot higher.  This is a decent number to have if you want to be a decent team, but is not great if we are trying to be an elite team in the MAC.

Finally, free throws.   If there is one thing that is the identity to our program, I would say it is this:  we don't shoot free throws.  Here, we are talking about getting to the line--not even whether we make them, which has also been an issue.  Now, remember, on the defensive side we did note that we rarely foul, so it isn't that we are falling way behind here.  But, we're not drawing fouls, which is not surprising because the team only really had one really good dribble penetrater and he is 5'6".

So, in general, BG was been, at best, an average offensive team and usually worse than that over the last five years.  Which will lead us to the last part of the review of the season for men's basketball.  The ultimate question is whether the team is going in the right direction.  This quote comes from the last "Ask the AD," in which the AD said that BG was going in the right direction.  This has caused a mini firestom inside the nation.  I'll try to look reasonably at whether we are going in the "right direction" or not, but, just to preview, I will also say this:  regardless of where you fall on the directional thing, we certainly hoped to be more competitive than this after 5 years.  On that, I think everyone--including our Coaching Staff and the AD--would be able to agree.