We've all heard the stereotype: the Big 10 is a plodding basketball conference full of big slow guys and short on electric athletes. The brand of basketball is a slow one, and scores are in the 50s more than they are in the 70s. At the risk of confirming this stereotype, I decided to dive into the numbers.
Possessions (Conference Games)ACC: 72.33
SEC: 68.25
Big 12: 67.58
Big East: 67.41
Pac 10: 65.19
Big 10: 63.04
Or, to put this graphically,
The Big Ten was slow, but not as much as the ACC was fast. Surely this will dishearten some Big Ten fans, but should it? Some people think that the culprit behind the slowness is physical defense. Others think that it's
doubt in the offense. These are theories, not facts, mind you, but one thing every Big Ten conference fan should remember is that
slow does not equal bad. In 2005-06, for instance, the Big Ten was again the slowest of the BCS conferences. But it was also
#1 in RPI.
Now, let's see how the stereotype holds up over the past 5 years or so:
Pretty well actually. The Big 10 has been slow for a while now, but the root cause evades me. Any ideas out there?
That said, every BCS conference falls within 63 to 68 possessions, with the exception of the ACC. While it's possible that those 2 possessions that the Big Ten lacks makes all the difference in the world, I happen to think Big Ten ball looks about the same as the basketball everyone else is playing. Except the ACC.
3 comments:
One intuitive observation: Shot selection is better in the Big Ten. It just seems like I see fewer bad shots in Big Ten play than I do when I watch games in other conferences.
I'm not sure there's any way to prove this, though. It might not show up in shooting percentages, since Big Ten teams may tend to recruit more defensive-minded players.
(Notice the use of the words "seems," "might," and "may" in this comment. Hardly the sign of a hypothesis advanced with confidence.)
A plausible theory, but as you noted, it has the convenience of being virtually unprovable.
I thought the answer might lie in FTR, as calling fouls can accelerate the pace (free throws being a short-circuit to the end of a possession), but the data (at least for this year), didn't line up so great.
What if you corrected for "outlier" teams. For example, I assume that Northwestern brings down the conference average due to their extremely deliberate pace. On the flip side, teams like UNC are the opposite extreme and bring up the average of the ACC. Perhaps the median value would be informative? My opinion is the teams with the extreme styles end up biasing the opinion of the entire conference. If you take out Duke and UNC, are the other ACC teams pace different than MSU, Michigan, etc.?
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