Interesting Stats from Kenpom

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GopherGack

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Last night I did quite a bit of looking at Kenpom (I love that site, more for the stats then the rankings). I found quite a few interesting things that I thought I would share. Some of this will be familiar. Some of it may be new to you. The numbers in ( ) are where we rank nationally out of 345 teams. All of these stats are rate independent or in other words are the % you accomplished a feat out of the possible chances.

Offensively
The rate [FTA/FGA] at which we shoot FT's is VERY high. (6)
We get 39% of the possible offensive rebounds (11)
64% of our buckets come off assists. (13)
We are average in TO rate @ 20.4% of our possessions but.... (167)
We give up a lot of steals @ 10.2% of our offensive possessions (245)
We are a very poor FT shooting team @ 65.4%. (273)​


Defensively
We block 17.4% of our opponents 2 point attempts. (3)
Only 43% of our opponents points are from 2 pointers. (6)
Teams are only shooting 42% on those 2 point shots. (11)
Our opponents shoot few FT's. (14)
We get a steal on 11% of our defensive possessions but...[see TO's below] (73)
We are an average defensive rebounding team getting 79% of possible rebounds. (123)
Teams shoot slightly above average on 3 pointers against us @35.6%. (226)
....We only create TO's on 19% of our defensive possessions. (262)
Teams shoot 74.8% on FT's against us which is 12 in the nation [in the bad way]. (334)
41.5% of the points we give up come from 3's. (335)​

Thoughts
If we could shoot a higher FT% we would be a VERY good team.
We need to have fewer TO's.
We need to create more TO's.
We really should be a better defensive rebounding team.
We do a great job of not sending opponents to the FT line but they are making an absurd 74% when they get there...What can you do?
We actually defend the 3 pointer pretty well considering the teams we've played, very good outside shooters, and how many we 3's we force opponents to take.
 

I don't mind using KenPom for stats, but I don't get how everyone treats his ratings and matchups like the gospel.
 

good stuff, we were a lot better at creating turnovers when al was still playing. Without him we don't really have any ball hawks. against northwestern we could've almost scored 100 points if we were a good free throw shooting team...a lot of misses and a lot of front ends of 1 and 1's missed
 


Goldy in da house said:
good stuff, we were a lot better at creating turnovers when al was still playing. Without him we don't really have any ball hawks.
Click to expand...

I think our FT rate and defensive steal rate will decrease and our offensive TO rate will increase without Al. Which means we need to compensate by increasing our efficiencies somewhere else.
 


GopherGack said:
We need to create more TO's.
Click to expand...

This is a stylistic question. There are lots of good defensive teams that don't create lots of turnovers. In fact, the low FG% that the Gophers give up is probably directly related to their defensive style and that stat may suffer if they tried harder to turn the opponent over.
 

Our 'worst' stat 41.5% of the points we give up come from 3's. (335) is not necessarily a bad thing. Should be expected with our lineup. I like the fact that we don't give up many FT's, draw so many fouls, and rebound offensively.

Like the summary of stats.
 

GopherGack said:
I think our FT rate and defensive steal rate will decrease and our offensive TO rate will increase without Al. Which means we need to compensate by increasing our efficiencies somewhere else.
Click to expand...

I agree, but i don't expect our FT rate to drop off. With our offense now focused on getting the ball to the bigs and Blakes ability to feed the post, I see Trevor, Ralph, and Colton continuing to get plenty of attempts at the charity stripe (as long as they can stay on the court, out of foul trouble). Just maybe not as many as we had against NW. haha
 

justthefacts said:
This is a stylistic question. There are lots of good defensive teams that don't create lots of turnovers. In fact, the low FG% that the Gophers give up is probably directly related to their defensive style and that stat may suffer if they tried harder to turn the opponent over.
Click to expand...

I both agree and disagree with your statement. It is true that we don't try to pressure the ball heavily or deny the passing lanes to create steals, both would be difficult with our lineup, but we are in the bottom 25% of teams in creating TO's. Just to be clear, we actually get a high % of steals. With Al we were in the top 20% in the nation at creating steals but the other things, travels, passes out of bounds, taking charges....we are very poor at creating.
 



JGopher said:
Our 'worst' stat 41.5% of the points we give up come from 3's. (335) is not necessarily a bad thing. Should be expected with our lineup. I like the fact that we don't give up many FT's, draw so many fouls, and rebound offensively.

Like the summary of stats.
Click to expand...

I completely agree. That is a good thing listed in a bad way...maybe I should have flipped it around and listed us as 11th in the nation.
 

Something I didn't look at was individual stats. Here is a worrisome one, Fouls per 40 minutes:

Iverson - 5.0
Mbakwe - 4.2
Sampson - 3.8
Williams - 3.2
Hoffarber - 1.0 (he's 4th in the nation btw)

The bigs are going to have to clean that up. If we continue to go zone that will help.
 

I think that we are going to see.........

that zone about as much as Syracuse does. We can't go out on the floor and guard people without Al....and besides we need Hoff too much on offense to have him out there wearing down. We have only 8 scholarship players etc....we're going to play zone unless we're way behind late in the game.
 

GopherGack said:
We do a great job of not sending opponents to the FT line but they are making an absurd 74% when they get there...What can you do?
Click to expand...

I suppose this means that we foul good FT shooters more than average. Perhaps we foul opposing gaurds more than we foul opposing bigs?
 



We need to play better free throw defense.
 

It really does make sense that our opponents are shooting a relatively high percentage at the line this year. Teams aren't setting up down low due to our size and length down low. As long as Colton continues improving on not committing some of those silly fouls down low, we should continue to keep down the free throw volume, which in reality is more important than teams hitting a little higher percentage.
 

leftyslefty said:
that zone about as much as Syracuse does. We can't go out on the floor and guard people without Al....and besides we need Hoff too much on offense to have him out there wearing down. We have only 8 scholarship players etc....we're going to play zone unless we're way behind late in the game.
Click to expand...

That's the ticket with this team. A tough zone, ala Syracuse.... pros and cons with it, but it's the D that we need to play with what we have with the remaining players. Work them on the zone Tubby....
 

GophersInIowa said:
Everyone?
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Well, I don't know if you are new to the english....but sometimes when people say the word everyone, they mean a great number and not necessarily every single person.

I should have instead used the phrase "a great many people" because I forgot that some people on this message board have such a terrible grasp of the english language and can only follow language in the way that it is directly defined. I don't know if this is necessarily a poor use of the english language or if it is just a lack of common sense.

Perhaps it is just dbaggary
 

16FeetUnder said:
I suppose this means that we foul good FT shooters more than average. Perhaps we foul opposing gaurds more than we foul opposing bigs?
Click to expand...

Could make sense as other teams are able to get mismatches when the Gophs play man to man D.
 

"We block 17.4% of our opponents 2 point attempts. (3)"

Impressive stat...and I looked up some other numbers related to this:
Totals blocks & blocks per game (6 bpg) is 1st in the Big Ten and 9th nationally

I guess it shouldn't be a major surprise, though, considering the lineup.
 


Husker in Gopherland said:
"We block 17.4% of our opponents 2 point attempts. (3)"

Impressive stat...and I looked up some other numbers related to this:
Totals blocks & blocks per game (6 bpg) is 1st in the Big Ten and 9th nationally

I guess it shouldn't be a major surprise, though, considering the lineup.
Click to expand...

Yep - and although I get frustrated with Sampson and his non emotional play sometimes, he is an excellent shot blocker.
 

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