It's not Defense that wins Championship but Offense

[KnightBridgeAZ]

My "tongue in check" retort was to the adage that "defense wins championships" in which I am unequivocally stating NO, OFFENSE wins titles with help from defense. I never, ever said "Defense was not important" and that is exactly how you tried to frame my discussion. You struggled with the pretty simple and straightforward concept of points per game as the barometer which I still think is a good stat (albeit not perfect) for offense. Defense, does need a more refined metric than "points allowed" so I incorporated DER. Whether that is as strong an indicator of good defense vs. points per game on offense is unknown but at least it is something. Somehow you decided on an "interesting take" of a tangential points scored which I am assuming is the point totals in the title game, which is not a logical assessment at all. To be clear, I am not "shifting" but stating for you OFFENSE IS MORE IMPORTANT than defense at the elite level AND YES you need defense but your offense if more important.

The data is very clear- TOP 15 Scoring offenses (as defined by Pts per game) make it to the final four more than TOP 15 DER defenses do.

In the past 10 years 12 TEAMS ranked in the top 15 in offense made to a FINAL FOUR without a defense in the top 40. Conversely, only 1 Defensive team ranked in the top 15 made to the FINAL FOUR without an offense in the top 40 (Oregon State in 2016-118th in offense and 4th in defense). That alone should be pretty telling.

There were two teams with mediocre offense and mediocre defense who made Final Fours- Virginia Tech in 2023 (51st/43rd) and NC State in 2024 with 49th offense and 59th defense.

Being more specific to you is MM at Notre Dame won 2 titles 2001/2018) with a top offense and a not top 40 defense. ND qualified for 3 Final Fours in the past 10 years with #1, #3, #5 offenses and NO top 40 defenses. Maybe she would have won more titles with better defenses, but she at least got to 3 final fours without stellar defense. No one has won a title with just a TOP 15 Defense and not a TOP 15 Offense.

So I again assert OFFENSE wins titles.

I said it before, I'll say it again - what Pat Summitt said about defense is it wins games. She said rebounds win championships - but again, she's talking about the championship game and I'm not sure it is necessarily true, although winning teams in games most often do out-rebound the losing team.

I agree that very few teams with a less than stellar offense have a chance at getting to the Final Four - I followed Rutgers for all of CVS's best years, and my take was always that defense could keep you in a game and give you a fighters chance at beating a better offense. But it takes doing that 6 times in a row to win a natty, and Rutgers only came close once.

I think defense is extremely valuable, I always felt - without looking it up - that UConn excelled on both sides. And that's why they have the number of NC's that they do.

 

[Gamecockfan77]

it's been awhile since I went through the exercise but I want to say Maryland and maybe ... purdue?... were not so high on the defensive rankings?

Also Iowa obviously was on my mind.

You look at contenders and offensive efficiency generally always jumps out.