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Message: [QUOTE="JoePgh, post: 4486264, member: 1131"] All of the Boneyard (including myself) agree that turnovers have been the biggest issue in UConn's on-court performance in the last half dozen games or so. There has been a lot of speculation about the causes, but not much data. So I'm offering below a detailed analysis of UConn's turnovers in one recent game (the Seton Hall game). In that game, just before the Christmas break, UConn had its full roster available except Azzi, so the [B]22 turnovers[/B] in that game cannot be blamed on Nika's or Dorka's absence. Nor can it be blamed on Seton Hall's amazing defense, given that UConn scored 98 points in the game. To obtain and validate this data, I re-watched the game with pen in hand, noting every UConn turnover. I then cross-referenced my observation to the box score published on UConn's web site, using the details in the multi-page PDF which provide a play-by-play record of the game. So I am pretty confident of the accuracy of what is presented below. The high-level breakdown of UConn's turnovers was: 8 dead-ball turnovers (traveling, 3 seconds, step on line) 1 offensive foul 10 bad passes 3 Seton Hall steals that were not on bad passes (i.e., stolen out of hands) Interestingly, [B]none[/B] of UConn's 22 turnovers were against full-court pressure by Seton Hall, even though the Pirates did apply such pressure briefly in the third quarter. Also interestingly, 19 of the 22 turnovers occurred in the first three quarters, during which UConn accumulated a 31-point lead, winning those quarters by 15, 7, and 9 points respectively. UConn lost the 4th quarter by 6 points, but committed only 3 turnovers while doing so, so there is no correlation at all between UConn's offensive success and its turnover rate, at least in this game. It should be noted that UConn had 30 assists in the game, so the A-to-TO ratio of 30/22 is still quite favorable. Re-watching the game, there were a lot of amazing passes, especially by Nika, that resulted in layups but that were within inches of being turnovers. Nika's personal A-to-TO ratio (11 to 4) is still very exceptional, and probably compares favorably with legendary UConn PG's like Jen, Sue, Renee, Moriah, and Crystal. I would make the argument that the team's 30 assists should be compared to the 10 bad passes (which might be called "failed assists"), and that 3-to-1 ratio suggests that making a certain number of bad passes is the inevitable price of making amazing passes to score big points. It's like an NFL quarterback who throws more than an average number of interceptions, but throws three times as many TD passes as interceptions. Coaches and fans should accept the INT's as the price of the TD passes that he is able to launch. Certainly some of the 10 bad passes were dumb passes, and Geno is right to be concerned about them -- but some were calculated risks, and those should be accepted. The numbers of the other categories of turnovers (8 dead-ball turnovers, 1 offensive foul, and 3 balls lost on steals) do not seem excessive to me, and do not indicate major carelessness in UConn's ball custody. Bottom line: UConn's turnovers are a valid cause for some concern, but not for the Boneyard's level of hysteria when you look into the issue more deeply. I didn't look at games other than Seton Hall, but I expect that they would tell a similar story. [/QUOTE]

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