Reply to thread

Message: [QUOTE="stamfordhusky, post: 3324865, member: 649"] I don't think 80 points is a rule of thumb for a winning season. If a team scores that many, they may be in the running, not just for a winning season, but for a championship - assuming that they are not playing at a very fast tempo. Last year UConn gave up more than 73 points exactly four times all year. And two of those were in blowout wins. They held Notre Dame, Baylor, and Louisville (tournament game) to an average of 70.7 ppg - all UConn wins. So if the defense is solid, a team can win almost all its games if it gets 75 ppg More to the point, how many points a team scores isn't a very relevant stat - since it is very dependent on the pace of play. If a team scores 80 points in 65 possessions, that is great. If it scores 80 points in 80 possessions, that is below average. Last year UConn averaged 71 possessions per game. So 80 ppg means they would have scored 1.13 points per game - which is quite good but not great. In the men's game last year, average number of possessions per game ranged from a high of 77.6 to a low of 59.4. So if the team with the fewest possessions per game - which happened to be Virginia - averaged 72 ppg, that would be tremendous and make them one of the nation's top offensive teams. But if the team that averaged 77.6 possessions per game scored 72 ppg, that would be quite poor. [/QUOTE]