crazy scary efficiency...

Air Force line:
143.4 offensive efficiency. They scored 94 points, on ONLY 65 possessions! Shooting 70% eFG and only turning the ball over a petrifying 9% of the time. On the other side, they forced Wake into 40% shooting and only an 88.5 offensive efficiency rating. Hence the blowout of 94-58. Obliterated the over!

Ohio St-UNC game lived up to it's billing. Both teams were highly efficient (122 for OSU and 135 for UNC) while still keeping the pace fast. Even though the game stood at 74 possessions, it felt faster in the way that both teams pushed the ball throughout the game. OSU matched Air Force's low turnover percentage, only turning it over 6% of possessions. In the end, UNC's 20 free-throw attempt margin helped seal the win.
Both of these teams played a far more mature and efficient game than I think most people expected.
Also killed the over.

Place them bets...

Wake Forest at Airforce. The over/under stands at a paltry 132. With the Falcons running at 130 off efficiency, at a nice 59 possession pace, this game shouldn't have a problem getting into the 140's.
Wake's D isn't anything (107 efficiency) to look at either with opponents shooting close to 50%.

With the two big boys going tonight, it's tough to forecast the total points, as their efficiency numbers are skewed from blow-out wins. At a currently posted 160, it doesn't look like they'll beat it, more like scores in the 140-150's, but if UNC gets a runnin', it could eclipse the 80's for both teams.

Interesting addendum to stats of last night:
Northwestern helped chalk up a W for the Big Ten last night, despite giving up 50% of Miami's missed shots back to them in the form of offensive boards for the 'Canes. NU also only grabbed 18% of their own misses. Shooting 65.8% eFG and only turning the ball over 16% of the time will overcome most decrepit showings on the glass.

quick recap

Sure Shawn Pruitt led the Illini in points at 18 in their (gasp!) home loss to an extremely strong Maryland team, but the huge stat of the night was his 34% defensive rebounding percentage. All doing this with only 25 minutes on the floor.
Maryland holding Illinois to 38% eFG helped put an end to the 51 non-conference game home winning streak.

Florida State's athleticism cost them as they became careless with the ball, often resulting from charges or lazy turnovers, posting a 85 offensive efficiency.
Wisconsin ran away from them late in the second and easily covered the conservative (yet valid) over/under of 133, at a total score of 147.

Duke-Indy was an ugly defensive slugfest (all in the interpretation) with turnovers occuring 25% of the time for both teams along with sub 45% shooting. Duke's 2:1 free-throw attempt margin gave an added boost to their bottom line. 105 on the total points on 66 possessions!


Those boys down in Gainsville just don't play nice. Holding Southern University to a 40 offensive efficiency from a 35% turnover rate and only 24% eFG. Just wrong! But, gold star award goes to the Jaguars reserve forward Chike Ekweozor, who, with only 7 minutes on the floor, and 12 possessions to work with, led the team in points (6), offensive board percentage (30%) and 67% shooting on three shots. Keep that up, and with a full game to work with, he'll be pouring in plus-30 points a game.

Apparently the Kansas-Florida matchup was still occurring as the Jayhawks attempted to match the Gators' feats against their own version of a winless team.
Florida ended up winning the rematch as Kansas could only hold Dartmouth to a 49 offensive efficiency rating on 28% shooting. With an uncle as an alumnus, I felt compelled to at least get the Big Green a spot on this page. I just wish it was under better circumstances.


Mas juegos manana.

BigAcc Challenge

After quite a tasty little 4 day weekend of hoops, we can look ahead at the BigAcc challenge, now one game done with the NC St victory over the number 2 football team in the nation.

Butler of course was a big surprise of the week. How effective were they in their first seven games?
As we all know they prefer the 3 point shot (46.4% of their shots) however they haven't been shooting it all that well (only 33.1%). They've made up for it with great ball control (14.6% TO rate) and limiting the possessions in the game (a tepid 59 per game, almost last in Division I).
With a weaker Horizon league than in years past with Udub-Milwaukee being down this year and only 2 other teams still with winning records, look for Butler to continue to press their pace on others and walk away at worst second in the league. But, unfortunately, that's why there's still the rest of the season.

Kansas-Florida
Ugly first 25 minutes turned into a beauty. Not much more to say, as you've already read enough about it.

Every MVC team is at least .500 or better. Yikes.

San Diego St. could be right in the mix of the Mountain West with Air Force and Wyoming.
On their way to a 7-0 start, including a big win over Cal, they've been shooting 56.7 eFG while still keeping the pace at a brisk 73.8 possessions a game.


Tonight:

A little creepy that Florida St and Wisconsin post the exact same offensive and defensive efficiencies at 108 and 92 respectively. Bucky is favored by 11, but look for a more athletic FSU team to at least give Wisconsin fits throughout the game.

No other over/unders are jumping out as high or low. As you can see by the previous predictions, the forecasting on these is still a work in progress as I try and tweak how to weight each team's overall strength into the mix in order to dictate tempo.
Also, one obvious fact is that it is so early in the season, so a team's stats can easily be skewed further from their "expected" play.

moving on...

continuation....

Georgia Tech attemped 50 free throws on the way to securing a valiant comeback against an extremely strong Memphis team.
Any game with 80 possessions always opens up the possibility of a large comeback, and Georgia Tech took full advantage of it to slowly crawl back into the game in the second half. Even though G Tech was out shot by almost a 10% effective FG percentage, they made up for with 10 extra offensive boards and a healthy 13 free throw attempt margin.
The over/under on this game was 160!! And they still beat it by 17.

Games of note tonight:

Tennessee runs, Butler uhh, suns. (Rhyming is tough) We'll see who wins the possession battle as Tennessee brings in a 78 pos/game avg vs. Butlers clipping 57 pos/game pace. With Butler running efficiently (130 ppp currently), look for this game to eclipse the over/under of 137. 140's is more likely.

Kentucky is overly efficient at 130 ppp but lacking slightly on D (105 ppp). Memphis, as we all know will run until they turn off the lights, so with both teams averaging the mid-70's in possessions, I don't see how this game can come under the posted 153 point total put up by the bookies. 160's, here we come!

UNC-Zags
Zags are almost at the bottom in the percentage of 3 pointers that they take (22.3), however that number may change significantly as they go up a much stronger UNC team which will push them further out towards the arc than they've been accustomed to.


Out of town for a few days, back on Sunday.

Classic Tuesday Night

Thoughts and observations from a great night of roundball, with a dash of Hawaii:

Duke vs. Marquette
Picture Dominic James last year. Now picture him a few notches better with more maturity. This kid is scary to watch how he can take control of a game and produce opportunities for himself and his teammates. Not only did he post a tasty 1.40 PPWS, he dished out 7 assists to only one TO. On the other side of the ball, Josh McRoberts struggled ignormantly (so much that I had to make up a word), even though he constantly wanted the ball down the stretch. There was a span of about 5 minutes where Duke's offense consisted of feeding the ball to McRoberts, only to see him do a lazy drop-step and ending up with a weak fade away clanker. It was an ugly team-leading 15 points, as he cruised along at .75 PPWS with 3 TO's against 4 assists.


Gotta run, more recap tomorrow.

Tajuan Porter

Much has been made lately, and deservedly so, of freshmen sensation Tajuan Porter of the Oregon Ducks. After hearing rumblings from practice and the early exhibition games in which he was lighting up teams for 30 points notice was taken.
The early games for the ducks have been composed of cakefests in the friendly confines of Mac Court.
A true test came last night against Rice in Houston. With the Ducks trailing 60-52 with 1:32, and Tajuan Porter and Chamberlin Oguchi shooting a combined oh-fer on three's for the night, the following unfolded:

1:32 Aaron Brooks made Two Point Jumper. 52-60
1:29 Oregon Full Timeout. 52-60
1:29 Foul on Aaron Brooks 52-60
1:29 52-60 Chris Hagan missed Free Throw.
1:29 52-60 Rice Defensive Rebound.
1:29 52-61 Chris Hagan made Free Throw.
Then:
1:21 Tajuan Porter made Three Point Jumper. 55-61
1:17 Foul on Tajuan Porter 55-61
1:17 55-62 Chris Hagan made Free Throw.
1:17 55-63 Chris Hagan made Free Throw.
1:08 Maarty Leunen made Two Point Layup. 57-63
0:56 Foul on Aaron Brooks 57-63
0:56 57-64 Chris Hagan made Free Throw.
0:56 57-65 Chris Hagan made Free Throw.
0:50 Tajuan Porter made Three Point Jumper. 60-65
0:48 Oregon Full Timeout. 60-65
0:40 60-65 Marius Craciun missed Two Point Layup.
0:40 Oregon Defensive Rebound. 60-65
0:34 Aaron Brooks made Three Point Jumper. 63-65
0:23 Foul on Bryce Taylor 63-65
0:23 63-66 Rodney Foster made Free Throw.
0:23 63-66 Rodney Foster missed Free Throw.
0:23 Aaron Brooks Defensive Rebound. 63-66
0:23 Tajuan Porter made Three Point Jumper. 66-66
0:18 66-66 Rice Full Timeout.
0:07 66-66 Rice Full Timeout.
0:02 66-66 Rice Full Timeout.
0:00 End of the 2nd Half.

In overtime, The Ducks ran away from them, sealing a spectacular 9 point comeback in the final minute and a half.
In short, after struggling all night, Porter made three absolutely clutch three pointers on the road to keep his team alive and help them go on to win a game that last year, they typically would have lost.

How far this four guard line-up for the Ducks can go, the ol' wait and see method will be in effect.

Mr. Carmody...

Fitting that the slowest two teams currently in the nation seem to be annual victors in the qwest for 1950's cageball.
Princeton and the Princeton-inspired offense of Bill Carmody at Northwestern University continue to tredge through the waters of NCAA play at a brisk 51.5 and 55.8 pos/game, respectfully.
With all of this history behind them, it seems surpising that these sultans of sluggish serendipity wouldn't meet more often. I would pony up my 8 bucks just to see if they could break the 45 mark.
Sadly this pace hasn't produced the high octane offenses such as previously mentioned Air Force (running at 60 pos/game) as they're both treading just below 100 PPP.

NU has a lot more talent than previous years with some top Chicago-area freshmen in the mix so it will just be a matter of time to see if they catch onto the Carmody-offensive scheme and help to raise that O-efficiency number.

Princeton returns a majority of their minutes from a team that really turned around mid-season.

long weekend, short week

Ahh, some days off to enjoy the finer things in life. Plenty of bball to get you through the eating.

Musings from the weekend:

Georgetown getting knocked off by Old D. Why? Well, they shot better, 55.3% eFG vs. 50.9%, but those turnovers, 14 at a rate of 22.5% vs. 9.6% will usually negate a slight edge in shooting.

What's happened to the Panthers of UW-Milwaukee, the tourney gem of the past two years?
Well, coach Rob Jeter put them up against three last year post-season teams in UAB, Northern Iowa, Michigan and a surging undefeated Washington St. team for 4 of their first 5 games.
Going from eFG of 48% to 40% will do it, along with dropping your offensive efficiency to 95.1 from 108. Winning the Horizon now seems like the only way to get back into the dance this year.
How well did Nick Fazekas shoot for Nevada in their win over Ark-Pine Bluff, thus becoming Nevada's career scoring leader? Well, 90.9 eFG% while shooting 9 for 11 from 2 and and 2 for 2 from three. Posting a 1.81 PPWS. Yeehaa!!!!


Looking forward to a shoot-out with Winthrop and Maryland. If Winthrop wants to run with Maryland (81 possessions/game average), they should be able to keep up offensively (120 points per possession) vs. the Terrapins 107. We should see total points in the 130's regardless.


Meanwhile, on the other end, the Air Force-Duke matchup could go either way. Air Force is at 123.7 ppp right now, while both of the teams have D efficiencies in the mid-60's. Point totals under 100 are very realistic. But Air Force was able to run with the Illini in the first round 145 point slugfest since they're offense has the ability to hum on all cylinders.

A good night of roundball to start off the short week no less.

a little nugget....

A good win for MSU over a very very young inexperienced yet athletic Texas team (smells a little last-year Kansas to me). Texas obviously was 5 seperate people who happened to be wearing the same jerseys. Barnes I have a feeling will change that a la Bill Self of '05-'06 and you will see a better Texas team come January and February.
Watching Durant, while posting a .94 PPWS, I was more unimpressed with his laziness on D. His game seemed more NBA already.

Ok, so I already violated my first creed and wrote about the "major" game of the night.
I apologize. It may happen again. First night jitters....

It begins....

Utterly obsessed and intrigued by all things tempo-free, this site hopes to spread the wealth that one encounters after their first all-encompassing experience that is tempo-free stats.
A big thanks to kenpom.com and bigtenwonk.blogspot.com for the data and for greatly expanding the influence of tempo-free stats on the NCAA basketball landscape.

While recognizing the quality and composure of the sites already out there, this site will merely be an addendum to what you currently read. I hope to find those things that, while not on the front page, deserve just as much care and love from you, the bored desk jockey trying to burn up the last few hours of the afternoon.
It may be taking a different angle at the biggest game of the night, or simply a look at a stat that makes you tilt your head and say "wha?"
If it's part of college basketball, hopefully it's here.

With that, I'll wrap it up for now. Thanks for stopping by.

Remember, ingrain in your mind: Tempo Free Stats.

The revolution continues....