4 of the bottom 10(including Syracuse) slowest tempo teams are in the ACC

[Alsacs]

www.teamrankings.com/ncaa-basketball/stat/possessions-per-game

I gotta give Millhouse credit for bringing up the subject of more possessions yesterday.

There are 351 Division 1 basketballs Syracuse ranks 348th out of 351th in total possessions. That is amazing. The fact we are 25-1 and have the 4th lowest possessions per game is amazing.

Virginia is 343th with 63.3 possessions per game.
Syracuse is 348th with 62.2 possessions per game.
Clemson is 349th with 61.8 possession per game.
Miami is 350th with 61.7 possessions per game.


We play Duke tomorrow who is 225th in the nation with 68.1 possessions per game.

The highest ACC team and NCAA team we played this entire season is North Carolina at 50th in the nation 72.8 possessions per game.

John Swofford needs to have the Associate Basketball Commissioner at the next ACC basketball meetings ask the coaches about this trend.

 

[PeteCalvin]

If teams would stop cheesing out and playing zone against us, SU would get a ton more possessions.

 

[pfister1]

www.teamrankings.com/ncaa-basketball/stat/possessions-per-game

I gotta give Millhouse credit for breaking up the subject of more possessions yesterday.

There are 351 Division 1 basketballs Syracuse ranks 348th out of 351th in total possessions. That is amazing. The fact we are 25-1 and have the 4th lowest possessions per game is amazing.

Why is that amazing? If you are efficient and/or play good D why shouldn't you be able to win at a slow pace?

 

[Alsacs]

Why is that amazing? If you are efficient and/or play good D why shouldn't you be able to win at a slow pace?

Its amazing because we have 8 games that could have swung one way or another depending on 1 play. We are 7-1 in those games and when your margin for error is thin even if you are efficient I would never expect to win every single time. The chances of a flipping a coin and having it land heads or tails 8 times in a row is hard to occur. I think we are good in close games because of Ennis but expecting him or Fair to come thru each time is hard.

I realize their is nothing that can be done this season to speed up the game, but I hope the ACC at its Annual meetings atleast brings this up for discussion and asks what has happened to a league that used to be more wide open up and down the court.

 

[Alsacs]

Another point that I found interesting and fits what Knicks411 has been saying.

http://www.teamrankings.com/ncaa-basketball/stat/effective-possession-ratio

We are FIRST in the ENTIRE nation in possession per point efficiency.

Per every possession we are averaging 1.046 points. Which shows our offense is NOT BAD. Its just we aren't getting enough possessions to put up more points. Maybe our average would go down from being 1st out of 351, but it would still be in the top 30 I believe.

 

[Knicks411]

That's interesting; I'm not sure exactly what it is measuring? We're 15th in adjusted offensive efficiency, which is basically points per possession adjusted for opponent.

Apparently this is the stat

Effective Possession Ratio [(Possessions + Offensive Rebounds - Turnovers) / Possessions] — This measures how good a team is at actually getting scoring chances out of their possessions. Turning it over costs them a chance, while grabbing an offensive board gains them an extra one. Higher is better.

So basically what it means is we get a lot of offensive boards and don't turn it over much

 

[Alsacs]

That's interesting; I'm not sure exactly what it is measuring? We're 15th in adjusted offensive efficiency, which is basically points per possession adjusted for opponent.

Apparently this is the stat


So basically what it means is we get a lot of offensive boards and don't turn it over much

Yeah we are getting offensive rebounds on 39% of our misses and we don't turn the ball over much. We score 1 point basically for every possession we get. Which means either its because our of slower tempo giving us less chances for having empty possessions or we need to do whatever we can speed our opponent up give us more possessions. Personally, what that stat tells me is good matchups for us are teams that like to play a faster game like Villanova/Iowa State type teams.

 

[Millhouse]

Why is that amazing? If you are efficient and/or play good D why shouldn't you be able to win at a slow pace?

more possessions is like a bigger sample size. fewer = smaller sample of possessions = higher margin of error.

regression to the mean is less likely to occur in a single game with fewer possessions. (it's a lot easier to hit 50% of threes in game with fewer shots. alot easier to hit 0% too)

we're still really good but it's surprising that there aren't more lucky shooting opponents stealing wins given how slow the games are

that BC game was the perfect storm of crappy samples. eventually BC's 3 pt shooting comes down, our shooting goes up. it just sucks that we ran out of time

 

[Millhouse]

Yeah we are getting offensive rebounds on 39% of our misses and we don't turn the ball over much. We score 1 point basically for every possession we get. Which means either its because our of slower tempo giving us less chances for having empty possessions or we need to do whatever we can speed our opponent up give us more possessions. Personally, what that stat tells me is good matchups for us are teams that like to play a faster game like Villanova/Iowa State type teams.

we don't need to do anything radical, just getting the ball up the floor quicker before getting into the regular half court offense will add up little by little. we just need a little more urgency.

unless DC plays into boeheims thinking, if he's terrified of keita getting minutes.

i want them to speed it up and I don't want keita to play. roll the dice. i guess that's why they don't pay me the big bucks.

 

[Knicks411]

Yeah we are getting offensive rebounds on 39% of our misses and we don't turn the ball over much. We score 1 point basically for every possession we get. Which means either its because our of slower tempo giving us less chances for having empty possessions or we need to do whatever we can speed our opponent up give us more possessions. Personally, what that stat tells me is good matchups for us are teams that like to play a faster game like Villanova/Iowa State type teams.

Just to be clear, that stat doesn't refer to our points scored per possession. (Though we are good at that at well, but not #1). It basically means we do the best job of any team int he country of getting a shot up on any trip down the floor.

 

[Alsacs]

Just to be clear, that stat doesn't refer to our points scored per possession. (Though we are good at that at well, but not #1). It basically means we do the best job of any team int he country of getting a shot up on any trip down the floor.

I understand now. I see we are 15th in per point per possession. Which is 15/351 is the top 4% in college basketball.

 

[Knicks411]

That stat also shows you why we can be 177th in the country in effective FG% and 15th in offensive efficiency.

 

[realorange]

We are not slow strictly on our own account. As the old expression goes, it takes two to tango.

 

[Madbiker]

Its amazing because we have 8 games that could have swung one way or another depending on 1 play. We are 7-1 in those games and when your margin for error is thin even if you are efficient I would never expect to win every single time. The chances of a flipping a coin and having it land heads or tails 8 times in a row is hard to occur. I think we are good in close games because of Ennis but expecting him or Fair to come thru each time is hard.

I realize their is nothing that can be done this season to speed up the game, but I hope the ACC at its Annual meetings atleast brings this up for discussion and asks what has happened to a league that used to be more wide open up and down the court.

Right on. SU is always at risk in the NCAAT against mid majors because we allow them to control tempo and play a very low possession game which almost always results in a very low scoring game. If we make a couple of bad turnovers late, miss a few FT's, or clank a couple of late shots you're in real danger of losing. It's always better for us when SU draws teams that want to run and play rather than hold the ball. Ennis is good at running the controlled half court offense, which is why we have won a lot of these slow games, but the danger is always there. That JB allows our opponent to control the tempo isn't new it goes back a long ways. It's the bad that comes along with the good.

 

[jncuse]

With respect to our offensive efficiency. Don't let the #15 ranking for the reason, trick you into thinking our efficiency is not a concern.

After the Duke game we were #4 in KP offensive efficiency (and I believe we may have been at 2 or 3 at some point as well). It has been a fairly quick fall all the way to #15.

I'm not sure what our efficiency ranking has been since the Duke game, but it has to be somewhere below #50 in the country.

 

[pfister1]

Its amazing because we have 8 games that could have swung one way or another depending on 1 play. We are 7-1 in those games and when your margin for error is thin even if you are efficient I would never expect to win every single time. The chances of a flipping a coin and having it land heads or tails 8 times in a row is hard to occur. I think we are good in close games because of Ennis but expecting him or Fair to come thru each time is hard.

I realize their is nothing that can be done this season to speed up the game, but I hope the ACC at its Annual meetings atleast brings this up for discussion and asks what has happened to a league that used to be more wide open up and down the court.

You can just as easily have close games at a faster pace...witness the Duke game. If you play efficient offense and good defense it doesn't matter what the pace is, you should score more points than your opponent. If your offense isn't particularly efficient and your defense isn't great...you can play a faster pace and still lose.

We are winning these close games not because we are lucky, but because we are efficient and very good at making plays both on the offensive side and defensive side of the ball.

The last couple of games have been a bit of an anomaly in my mind. We were just beginning to adjust to a different rotation with no DCII and then Baye goes down. I'm not sure we ever really adjusted to losing him. Now we have him back, so we'll see how that impacts our games. Won't change the pace, but may change whether or not we pull are able to pull away.

 

[Cusefannotindc]

A lot of the slow pace is from SU having the longest defensive possessions of any team. The zone forces teams to hold the ball longer to get a shot. SU's offensive possessions average 18.4 seconds, defensive 21.4. By my calculation, those extra three seconds are costing SU about 5 possessions a game, their pace would be ranked around 250 if time of possession were the same on each side of the ball.

 

[cuseattle]

When Pearl was announcing his college choice, he did it on a Saturday CBS telecast on a game of the week broadcast. I can't remember exactly what he said, but it was something like " I'm heading to the run 'n gun Syracuse Orangemen".
How times have changed.

 

[thebigeast44]

Based on those numbers, the SU/Virginia game should be a barnburner

 

[PoppyHart]

Gotta love Big 10 basketball

 

[cuseattle]

Gotta love Big 10 basketball

We are them. But we can still play fast. Let's score tomorrow!

 

[Quazzum69]

The Duke game needs to be a close to 50 possessions as possible. We are struggling on offense and I don' think the defense can keep Duke's four or five excellent shooters from scoring from deep - they couldn't do it last time.

We are the inferior team at the moment and, as such, should employ the tactics of an inferior team by slowing things down. Things could get crazy at Cameron if this gets toward 70 possessions.

 

[007]

That stat also shows you why we can be 177th in the country in effective FG% and 15th in offensive efficiency.

This is THE point people need to pay more attention to, IMO.

I appreciate the point that Millhouse is trying to make about increasing the number of possessions and the effects of regressions to the mean over larger sample sizes. But these are not simple chance occurrences. The stats suggest that SU is able to negate the relative poor shooting percentages through offensive "efficiency." That level of efficiency is achieved through deliberate pace for this team. Although O rebounding does play a role, the lack of turnovers is a bigger factor.

More possessions can only be achieved through turning the other team over (pressing, trapping, stetals), forcing them to shoot sooner, rebounding more, fast breaks, and/or putting up shots at a quicker pace.

Only one of those factors is controlled strictly by offensive tempo and that is playing at a quicker pace. JB - you know the guy who sees this team perform for hours EVERY day - seems to feel that the quicker this team plays on O the poorer (less efficient, lower FG%) this team plays.

 

[Knicks411]

I get the point of more possessions =more regression to the mean, cause it's true. But I think the margins are so slim here anyway I am not sure how much of a difference there is gonna be. (of course we've played 3 straight nailbiters so every point could count). But the idea of going from 62 possessions to 67 or something; I don't think that's moving the needle as far as regression to the mean goes.

I would like to see us try to speed teams up a little more; but it's a lot easier to slow games down than it is to speed them up. Especially since JB clearly doesn't want to play a lot of guys, which kinda takes the press out of play except for special circumstances.

 

[007]

I get the point of more possessions =more regression to the mean, cause it's true. But I think the margins are so slim here anyway I am not sure how much of a difference there is gonna be. (of course we've played 3 straight nailbiters so every point could count). But the idea of going from 62 possessions to 67 or something; I don't think that's moving the needle as far as regression to the mean goes.

I would like to see us try to speed teams up a little more; but it's a lot easier to slow games down than it is to speed them up. Especially since JB clearly doesn't want to play a lot of guys, which kinda takes the press out of play except for special circumstances.

Agreed, which argues even more for the emphasis on offensive efficiency.

One "easy" way to gain more possessions is to...rebound better, on both ends. I think that will be a key to the Duke game tonight.