Basketball??? This is Pony Racing!!!

A game I was going to post about but forgot, I'll elaborate on today:

Virginia Military Institute currently ranks 1st in possessions per game at a blood pressure jolting 93.2 pos/game. On Saturday, they went up against a Mercer team that also likes to run, at a more realistic 72.6 pos/game. Both teams averaged under a point a possession, but plugging in the numbers, the score predicted was totaling over 180. Sadly, Vegas did not post any lines as I would have loved to see what they would have listed it at. Final score: Mercer 105 VMI 103. Taking us back to the Loyola days.
Some stats from the game to digest:
1. VMI took 94 shots!! Sinking only 34 total, while putting up over 51% to the three and shooting 25% from 3. In most NCAA games, the two teams involved take just over 100 shots combined.
2. Mercer turned the ball over 30 times. Now here's where Tempo Free Stats is key. 30 times is an astronomical amount, no doubt, but in a game this fast (106 possessions!!!!), that's still a bad but not incongruously bad 28% turnover percentage. 30 times in a 70 possession game would definitely be horrendous.
3. On the other side, VMI only turned it over 12 times, for an 11% turnover percentage. Brilliant!! Poor shooting obviously killed them and helped Mercer overcome that large turnover margin.
4. And Mercer had all 5 starters in double digits thanks to 61% shooting between them.

Sadly, only 2,200 people were in attendance to watch the slugfest.

Additional scrumptious note on VMI's prestissimo pace: the next fasted team in the land is averaging 81 possessions a game, 12 less than the Keydets.