DobbsRover2
Slap me 10
- Joined
- Aug 27, 2011
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There is a thread going on here that has brought out a steady flow of worship of FT% as a critical factor in a team's success. I too love to see UConn players nail their freebies and I smack my forehead silly when a player bounces two charity stripers, but before I give myself too many concussions I try to remember that in the end quantity matters more than quality, and simply winning is most important of all.
If UConn outshoots ND from the line with a nice 78.6% to an ehhh Irish 70.8% while making 6 less FTs and losing 73-72 (1-5-2013), I could care less about that better FT%. And I also know that there are many factors that lead to team success, and I have always had a suspicion that things like shooting baskets effectively and keeping the other team from copying your effectiveness might be more important to top teams like UConn.
Stats and number analyses are often met with some hostility on the BY and can even get you banned, but possibly a few pieces of data about the top teams can find one or two takers during the holiday season. And since I noticed that of the season's stat categories for last year's UConn NC team was 1st or 2nd in nine of them but was 25th in FT%, ranking a little worse only in 3pt FGs per game and steals per game, I wondered what effect FT% had on the fortunes of other top teams.
Briefly, the table at the bottom shows the average ranking of a group of top teams in the 17 stats categories for 2013-14 provided by the NCAA for teams nationwide (excluding won-lost percentage, which is kind of redundant here and doesn't affect any numbers). The top 8 teams chosen for the analysis were the Elite 8, who were all seeded no worse than #4 and who didn't exit early like #1 seeds UTenn and USCar. Neither of the two missing #1 seeds were good FT shooters if anyone is wondering, with the Gamecocks ranked 233rd (real ouch there). The Elite 8 teams were UConn, Notre Dame, Stanford, Maryland, North Carolina, Louisville, Baylor, and Texas A&M.
What the table shows are the stats that the good teams tend to be good at, and also the ones that don't seem to be so critical for success. Stats analysis purists might rightly point out though that one unusual team can skew a stat, and UNC is certainly the bull in the china shop among the eight as it had by far the worst ranking in 7 of the 17 categories, with Texas A&M, at 4, MD at 2 and ND, Stanford, Louisville, and Baylor at 1. UConn had 0. (I was kind of stunned that ND was by far the worst in FG% defense, though they balanced it with the best FG%.) To correct a bit for skew, I also compiled the averages while throwing out the best and worst rankings among the 8 teams, centering on a generally truer average while tossing UNC's terrible #234 ranking in FT% and Texas A&M's no-show performance of #339 in 3pt FGs per game among the 343 teams.
The top seven stat categories by relevance to success with both the full 8 and sliced 6 ranking order of the 17 categories are (not surprisingly) 1. Scoring margin (1/1), 2. FG% (2/3), 3. Assists per game (3/2), 4. Scoring offense (4/4), 5. Rebound margin (5/6), 6. Assist-TO ratio (6/5), 7. FG% defense (7/7). In those categories, teams ranked in the top 40 on both scales. Despite what some think, making good passes and not throwing dumb passes does seem to matter for good teams.
Of middle relevance with teams on average ranking at least in the top 100 for remaining categories were: 8. 3pt FG% defense (8/8), 9. Scoring defense (9/9), 10. Turnovers per game (10/10), 11. 3pt FG% (11/11), 12. Blocks per game (12/12), 13. Turnover margin (13/13). Some might be surprised that scoring defense is only #9, considering how important it is to UConn, but there are many semi-skilled teams high up in those ratings that play a slow-down type of game, and a #51 rating for a fast-paced team like ND is actually pretty good.
Of lesser relevance with categories that feature a 100+ ranking average for the top teams are: 14. Personal fouls (14/14), 15. FT% (15/17), 16. Steals per game (16/16), 17. 3pt FGs per game (17/15). So the least relevant factor for the success of these eight top teams was either 3s per game or FT%. Again, for those of us who love the 3s, the teams that hit a lot from the arc tend to be weaker teams like Sacramento State and Oregon that don't have a big Top 25 presence, and UConn actually was the highest ranked in the category among the Elite 8 teams even though it was the Huskies' next to worst category.
As to FT%, there will of course be BYers who swear it is the Holy Grail of winning no matter what the stats say, just as I secretly believe that deadball rebounds are the key to life. No one wants to see FT misses by their team, but like snowy days in Storrs, they are always going to happen. Throw out the extreme cases high and low for the categories and FT% is at the bottom of the list of important factors for the strong teams here. FT% fans may want to run to the list of top FT shooting teams and try to prove that they have the secret elixir, but last year's list included three non-winning teams in the top 10, including poor 6-25 Valparaiso. It's certainly nice to have it, but working on FG% is far, far, far more important.
And just as I'd rather have a 9-0 record than an 8-5 one no matter what the orange and the blue-and-gold fans say about that, nor will I feel it's a choke if UConn only shoots way back at 72% from the FT line in an NC year like 2009-10, because obviously they did the most important things right.
Stat Category
Average for E8
Category Rank (8)
Average w\o Max-Min
Category Rank (6)
Assists\TO
32.6
6
20.5
5
Assists per game
18.1
3
12.7
2
Blocks per game
73.8
12
65.8
12
FG%
14.6
2
13.3
3
FG% Defense
34.6
7
36.2
7
FT%
119.1
15
115.0
17
Personal fouls
107.2
14
100.5
14
Rebound margin
24.2
5
21.2
6
Scoring defense
51.7
9
48.0
9
Scoring margin
8.5
1
6.7
1
Scoring offense
23.4
4
14.5
4
Steals per game
121.6
16
112.5
16
3pt FG% defense
44.9
8
36.7
8
3pt FG per game
124.8
17
102.7
15
3pt FG%
59.8
11
57.7
11
TO margin
89.5
13
77.7
13
TO per game
57.5
10
50.0
10
If UConn outshoots ND from the line with a nice 78.6% to an ehhh Irish 70.8% while making 6 less FTs and losing 73-72 (1-5-2013), I could care less about that better FT%. And I also know that there are many factors that lead to team success, and I have always had a suspicion that things like shooting baskets effectively and keeping the other team from copying your effectiveness might be more important to top teams like UConn.
Stats and number analyses are often met with some hostility on the BY and can even get you banned, but possibly a few pieces of data about the top teams can find one or two takers during the holiday season. And since I noticed that of the season's stat categories for last year's UConn NC team was 1st or 2nd in nine of them but was 25th in FT%, ranking a little worse only in 3pt FGs per game and steals per game, I wondered what effect FT% had on the fortunes of other top teams.
Briefly, the table at the bottom shows the average ranking of a group of top teams in the 17 stats categories for 2013-14 provided by the NCAA for teams nationwide (excluding won-lost percentage, which is kind of redundant here and doesn't affect any numbers). The top 8 teams chosen for the analysis were the Elite 8, who were all seeded no worse than #4 and who didn't exit early like #1 seeds UTenn and USCar. Neither of the two missing #1 seeds were good FT shooters if anyone is wondering, with the Gamecocks ranked 233rd (real ouch there). The Elite 8 teams were UConn, Notre Dame, Stanford, Maryland, North Carolina, Louisville, Baylor, and Texas A&M.
What the table shows are the stats that the good teams tend to be good at, and also the ones that don't seem to be so critical for success. Stats analysis purists might rightly point out though that one unusual team can skew a stat, and UNC is certainly the bull in the china shop among the eight as it had by far the worst ranking in 7 of the 17 categories, with Texas A&M, at 4, MD at 2 and ND, Stanford, Louisville, and Baylor at 1. UConn had 0. (I was kind of stunned that ND was by far the worst in FG% defense, though they balanced it with the best FG%.) To correct a bit for skew, I also compiled the averages while throwing out the best and worst rankings among the 8 teams, centering on a generally truer average while tossing UNC's terrible #234 ranking in FT% and Texas A&M's no-show performance of #339 in 3pt FGs per game among the 343 teams.
The top seven stat categories by relevance to success with both the full 8 and sliced 6 ranking order of the 17 categories are (not surprisingly) 1. Scoring margin (1/1), 2. FG% (2/3), 3. Assists per game (3/2), 4. Scoring offense (4/4), 5. Rebound margin (5/6), 6. Assist-TO ratio (6/5), 7. FG% defense (7/7). In those categories, teams ranked in the top 40 on both scales. Despite what some think, making good passes and not throwing dumb passes does seem to matter for good teams.
Of middle relevance with teams on average ranking at least in the top 100 for remaining categories were: 8. 3pt FG% defense (8/8), 9. Scoring defense (9/9), 10. Turnovers per game (10/10), 11. 3pt FG% (11/11), 12. Blocks per game (12/12), 13. Turnover margin (13/13). Some might be surprised that scoring defense is only #9, considering how important it is to UConn, but there are many semi-skilled teams high up in those ratings that play a slow-down type of game, and a #51 rating for a fast-paced team like ND is actually pretty good.
Of lesser relevance with categories that feature a 100+ ranking average for the top teams are: 14. Personal fouls (14/14), 15. FT% (15/17), 16. Steals per game (16/16), 17. 3pt FGs per game (17/15). So the least relevant factor for the success of these eight top teams was either 3s per game or FT%. Again, for those of us who love the 3s, the teams that hit a lot from the arc tend to be weaker teams like Sacramento State and Oregon that don't have a big Top 25 presence, and UConn actually was the highest ranked in the category among the Elite 8 teams even though it was the Huskies' next to worst category.
As to FT%, there will of course be BYers who swear it is the Holy Grail of winning no matter what the stats say, just as I secretly believe that deadball rebounds are the key to life. No one wants to see FT misses by their team, but like snowy days in Storrs, they are always going to happen. Throw out the extreme cases high and low for the categories and FT% is at the bottom of the list of important factors for the strong teams here. FT% fans may want to run to the list of top FT shooting teams and try to prove that they have the secret elixir, but last year's list included three non-winning teams in the top 10, including poor 6-25 Valparaiso. It's certainly nice to have it, but working on FG% is far, far, far more important.
And just as I'd rather have a 9-0 record than an 8-5 one no matter what the orange and the blue-and-gold fans say about that, nor will I feel it's a choke if UConn only shoots way back at 72% from the FT line in an NC year like 2009-10, because obviously they did the most important things right.
Stat Category
Average for E8
Category Rank (8)
Average w\o Max-Min
Category Rank (6)
Assists\TO
32.6
6
20.5
5
Assists per game
18.1
3
12.7
2
Blocks per game
73.8
12
65.8
12
FG%
14.6
2
13.3
3
FG% Defense
34.6
7
36.2
7
FT%
119.1
15
115.0
17
Personal fouls
107.2
14
100.5
14
Rebound margin
24.2
5
21.2
6
Scoring defense
51.7
9
48.0
9
Scoring margin
8.5
1
6.7
1
Scoring offense
23.4
4
14.5
4
Steals per game
121.6
16
112.5
16
3pt FG% defense
44.9
8
36.7
8
3pt FG per game
124.8
17
102.7
15
3pt FG%
59.8
11
57.7
11
TO margin
89.5
13
77.7
13
TO per game
57.5
10
50.0
10
