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[QUOTE="SWC75, post: 2016675, member: 289"]
Just some background numbers:

You can estimate possessions per game pretty accurately with this formula: Filed Goals attempted - Offensive Rebounds + Turnovers plus 47.5% of the free throws attempted. The SU athletics website has those numbers for every season from 1982-83 onward. This site has numbers for years before that: [URL="http://www.orangehoops.org/Bball.htm"]Syracuse Orange Basketball Season Records[/URL] but offensive rebounds and turnovers were not recorded. The good thing about that is that those two stats tended to be about equal. So you can shorten the formula to FGA + 47.5% of FTA and get what is still a pretty good idea of the possessions per game. Using those numbers, I came up with this list of the average total possessions, (and thus the pace of the game) for each season since our legendary 1965-66 season, when we set a national record, (since broken) of 99.0 points per game:

1965-66                186
1966-67                169
1967-68                165
1968-69                164
1969-70                171
1970-71                157
1971-72                168
1972-73                157
1973-74                156
1974-75                157         
1975-76                156
1976-77                169
1977-78                166
1978-79                156
1979-80                150
1980-81                134
1981-82                141
1982-83                163
1983-84                154
1984-85                145
1985-86                149
1986-87                145
1987-88                147
1988-89                153
1989-90                145
1990-91                152
1991-92                140
1992-93                150
1993-94                153         
1994-95                153
1995-96                144
1996-97                146
1997-98                141
1998-99                142
1999-00                137
2000-01                140
2001-02                142
2002-03                145
2003-04                139
2004-05                135
2005-06                142
2006-07                144
2007-08                146
2008-09                147
2009-10                142
2010-11                133
2011-12                130
2012-13                132
2013-14                122
2014-15                133
2015-16               130
2016-17               139 (through 14 games)

So the pace has not been the problem so far this eyar. It's actually returned to historical norms, (but may decline as we go through the conference season).
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