Thursday, October 16, 2008

As if Indiana Didn't Have Enough Problems

Most stats that have a real impact on the outcome of a game mean something, they're not just dumb, blind, luck. Whether it's shooting, rebounding, turnovers, steals, blocks, etc., these stats not only significantly determine the outcome of a game, but they're also indicative of a team's ability. But there is one big exception: free throw defense. For obvious reasons, this stat has little to do with any abilities the team has, and has more to do with the other teams' skills. And if we look at a scenario where everyone has roughly the same opponents (such as in conference play), large differences in FT defense are fairly attributed to luck.

In other words, we have to count that against them in the coming season. A solid efficiency number that was achieved, in part, through excellent FT defense must be discounted. So if your team had great FT defense last year...that's not good news.

2007-08 FT Defense Leaders (Conference Games)

Team
 Opp. FT %
Indiana
 63.8
Michigan State
 65.5
Michigan
 66.0
Wisconsin
 68.2
Purdue
 69.2
Penn State
 70.2
Minnesota
 70.6
Northwestern
 71.0
Illinois
 71.1
Iowa
 72.6
Ohio State
 73.4

Some good news for Buckeye fans (as well as some aggravation over the fact that some unlucky bounces prevented them from reaching the NCAA Tournament last season).

And just to prove this isn't some sort of home-court phenomena, here are the leaders from the 2006-07 season:

Team
 Opp. FT %
Wisconsin
 65.3
Iowa
 65.6
Penn State
 69.0
Michigan
 69.6
Ohio State
 70.1
Michigan State
 70.2
Purdue
 70.5
Northwestern
 70.9
Minnesota
 72.7
Indiana
 73.4
Illinois
 76.7

If this had something to do with home court advantage, then the Orange Krush really need to step up their game. They were at the bottom of the Big Ten in 2005-06 as well (75.2%). They need to get back to their 2004-05 form (68.7%), but that goes for the whole team, really.
Posted by Josh at 7:15 AM
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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Luck is always an underestimated factor. We usually assume that 5 or 10% variances in shooting percentages are the result of skill differences, but that's often not the case. It's interesting how much variance in shooting is luck based. However, in this case, the luck factor may be a little bit less than the 63.8% free throw defense of Indiana and the 73.4% free throw defense of Ohio State as some of this may be explained by unbalanced conference schedules.
For example, Northwestern wasn't quite as unlucky in free throw defense as the numbers suggest. Part of the explanation is that Northwestern had only one game against each of the two worst free throw shooting teams in the Big Ten (Penn State and Illinois).

October 16, 2008 7:28 PM
Adam said...

Interesting; I'd hadn't ever thought to look at that. Although the argument that FT defense must be luck is not necessary true---good teams may have good FT defense because they're smart enough not to foul good FT shooters. Not sure if it's possible to get the data needed to control for that possibility, though.

October 17, 2008 10:38 AM

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