Pace, Tempo and the Cooks that Make It

Over at BigTen Wonk, Mr. Gasaway provided a humorous look at the Big Ten's sluggish pace thus far. As he pointed out here, he's as big of a fan of varying styles as the next guy.

But, in his defense in backing up his response to an email inquiry regarding what is a "good" collection of tempos in-conference, the Big Ten lags far behind in not just pace, but variance between the teams' tempos.

As a hometown fan of the Big Ten, I will stand up for it anytime, but it's interesting to see the big gaps between the major (hello MVC!) conferences:


Average Pace (possessions per 40 minutes)

ACC	69.8
SEC	67.6
Big 12	67.3
Big East	65.9
Pac 10	64.3
MVC	63.8
Big 10	60.9

Standard Deviation of Pace

Big East	4.3
Big 12	4.2
ACC	3.4
Pac 10	3.2
SEC	2.8
MVC	2.2
Big 10	1.9

Of course, with a smaller sample size (11 teams vs. some of the larger leagues), your standard deviation will be slightly smaller. But just take a look at The Big Ten and compare the teams to the other conferences to see the noticable difference.
(Take Northwestern out of the picture and the average rises to 61.5 but the standard deviation is a miniscule .5)