Game Done Changed (HV Weekly 11/6/20)
The top offenses in 2019-20 were unlike the top offenses from other seasons. Here's why...
Welcome back to the Hoop Vision Weekly!
With the world focused on the election, Ken Pomeroy casually dropped his 2021 preseason ratings late Tuesday night. And while it’s pretty strange to see kenpom team pages with completely blank schedules, we are moving closer to a season nonetheless.
Several marquee matchups were announced earlier today. Kansas will play Gonzaga in Fort Myers on Thanksgiving day. The Champions Classic games will take place on December 1 at separate venues — Michigan State at Duke and Kansas against Kentucky in Indianapolis.
In today’s edition:
Duke, the four factors, and a shift in how offense is played
The biggest jumps from the kenpom preseason ratings
Links from around the internet
Duke and the four factors
This week at Hoop Vision PLUS, we sent out a newsletter on the Duke offense. Over the past decade, Duke has produced — by far — the most consistently efficient offense from a statistical perspective. Coach K’s teams have finished top 10 in kenpom adjusted efficiency for 12 seasons in a row.
Purely from a tactical perspective, the Duke offense would probably be described as “simple” — maybe even “boring”. It sets up an interesting dichotomy…
The best offensive program in college basketball isn’t on the forefront of innovation or complexity. And not only that, but a large chunk of Duke’s offense is comprised of actions that have started going extinct in the modern NBA game — like Floppy and Hi-Lo action.
Full article available for HV+ subscribers
In the article, we explained how Duke’s success has largely been due to statistical balance. Unlike some of the more motion-heavy offensive schemes that essentially “punt” a four factor, Duke relies on being at least above average at everything.
In the kenpom era, Duke’s offense has finished in the top 100 nationally in all of the four factors — shooting, turnovers, rebounding, and free throws — on eight different occasions. The table below shows every instance where a team has matched that feat in a season. (The number to the right of each team is their offensive efficiency ranking — unadjusted for schedule.)
Beyond just Duke, the most interesting trend in the table is that it’s become rarer for any offense to make the list in recent seasons. Since 2012, only 19 offenses have finished in the top 100 in all of the four factors.
For regular readers of this newsletter, you might remember we have covered this dynamic in the past. Because of the added importance of three-point line, it’s now easier than ever to be an elite offense simply by shooting the lights out — just ask BYU. In turn, that can make the other four factors (besides shooting) a smaller priority.
Game done changed
To investigate further, we constructed a metric to measure how strong an offense is at the other three factors besides shooting.
Turnover percentage
Offensive rebounding percentage
Free throw rate
The metric simply takes the z-scores for the other three factors listed above and adds them all together. All three factors are given equal weights — which makes the metric a bit crude, but works well enough for our specific purpose here.
The table below lists how every top 10 offense since 2002 — according to raw points per possession — performed in the “other three factors” metric.
The red highlight indicates teams that were below average in the “other three factors” metric. In other words, the highlighted teams had offenses that were still top 10 in efficiency despite being below average in the non-shooting aspects of offense.
From 2002 to 2016, there was never more than one highlighted team in a single season. That means the vast majority of top offenses were above average in a combination of turnovers, rebounding, and free throws — as you would expect.
But since 2017, the list has a significant amount of red. It started with Lonzo Ball’s UCLA team — where the Bruins led the country in raw points per possession despite being 342nd in free throw rate and 184th in offensive rebounding percentage.
Last season, things were taken to another level. Of the 10 most efficient offenses, seven of them were below average in the non-shooting aspects of offense — the same amount as during all of 2002 to 2016 combined.
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It’s important to note that it’s still very possible to win with styles of play that don’t involve spreading the perimeter and letting it fly from three. We’ve already covered West Virginia’s bully ball and Gonzaga’s hi-lo in the past. And don’t forget Tennessee was one of the best offenses in the country just two seasons ago doing this.
However, I think it’s safe to say that the current era of basketball rewards spacing and three-point shooting to a higher degree than ever before.
In the NBA, the narrative is that the three-point revolution is ruining offensive diversity. “Everyone” — at least according to the narrative — is now playing the same way.
In the NCAA, I’d argue that the three-point revolution is actually increasing offensive diversity.
In the past, the clear path to success in the college game was to overwhelm opponents with size and athleticism. Now, the added benefits of three-point volume and efficiency at least presents a formidable trade-off for teams looking to play bully ball.
We’ll be closely monitoring how this all develops in 2021 and beyond.
All six of our preseason previews can be found at the links below.
Part one: Villanova. Part two: Illinois. Part three: Louisville. Part four: Richmond. Part five: Creighton. Part six: Duke.
Become a Hoop Vision PLUS member today for access to our entire catalogue of content — and for upcoming analysis throughout the 2020-21 season.
Kenpom preseason ratings
Before the start of last season, we looked at how Ken Pomeroy’s preseason projections have fared in the past. In particular, we examined the difficulties of projecting a very freshman-heavy roster.
Now with the release of the 2021 ratings earlier this week, here are the 10 teams projected to make the biggest jump in AdjEM according to Ken’s system.
Largest jumps in preseason adjusted efficiency margin relative to 2019-20
Howard +18.4
Virginia Tech +11.9
Texas +10.8
North Carolina +10.4
Chicago St. +10.3
Miami FL +10.3
Middle Tennessee +10.0
Mississippi +9.9
Utah +9.5
Kennesaw St. +9.2
Howard jumped about 100 spots in Ken’s preseason rankings following the commitment of five-star recruit Makur Maker. They will receive another big boost if Nojel Eastern is granted a waiver to play immediately.
As an aside, I just recently re-upped my kenpom subscription for the year. Personally, it’s the website I visit the most from November to April and would highly recommend a subscription to all college basketball fans.
Links from around the internet
If an NBA draft prospect walked into a gym right now and shot 100 free throws in a row, how many would they make out of 100?
Hoop Vision crossed over into higher ed
Rob Dauster and Jeff Goodman launched the Field of 68 media network
Matt Norlander ranked all 357 college basketball teams
If you’ve been with us for a while, you know that Edgar Walker has played a large role in the development of Hoop Vision’s business strategy. He was on the DNVR Biz podcast this week talking about newsletters, Substack, and the future of digital media