Apparently Appalachian State isn’t the only program with a monster from Scandinavian folklore. Thank you ESPN!

Ken Pomeroy, who’s stuff I often reference when discussing stats, gets a piece in the Cinci. Post.

What Pomeroy wanted to do was see what the statistics told him about each team, how teams compared to each other using statistics. One of the traditional ways was looking at how many points a team scored per game versus how many it gave up.

Sounds pretty simple, except that it doesn’t give you a realistic look at teams based on their style of play. Instead, Pomeroy is interested in how efficient teams are, that is, how often they score in a possession.

“Most analysts tend to think that points per game accomplishes this, but that statistic is heavily influenced by a team’s style of play,” Pomeroy said. “The best example in the Big East is West Virginia, who plays at a very slow pace but has a great offense when you take pace out of the equation.”

West Virginia averages 75.9 points per game, but John Beilein’s team runs a complex offense that isn’t as fast as, say, the four-guard Villanova lineup. What the Mountaineers do, though, is score when they have the chance. Their offensive efficiency is very high, meaning they score on most of their possessions. The formula is actually pretty simple, it’s how many points a team scores in every 100 possessions.

Because the Mountaineers play slower than many other teams, they’re seventh in the league in scoring average. But they’re the second-most efficient team in the league, scoring 113.4 points per 100 possessions. Villanova is second in scoring (82 points per game) and first in efficiency (117 points per 100 possessions). The Wildcats are first in the country in scoring efficiency.

Pomeroy uses the same formula to examine defense.

Pitt is one of the slowest teams in the country (209), but is very efficient on offense (41) and even better on defense (13). The team’s biggest weakness — no surprise to most of us — is the 3-point defense.

ESPN.com’s latest Power Poll, puts Pitt at the top of the #3 seeds. Most of the ESPN.com experts have Pitt right around their poll value in the individual power polls, except for Jay Bilas who has Pitt down at #16. And yet, he has Florida at #3? Well, Andy Katz has Pitt at #3.

I’ve pimped Every Day Should Be Saturday before, but this is an absolute must read. They’ve been deconstructing university’s promotional spots. They hit the motherload with Appalachian State University. I mean the spot alone is off the chart in sheer badness, but the breakdown is overwhelming. Maybe it was the cumulative effect, but I was completely in tears of laughter by the time I got to this point.

We’d like to state that the ASU mountaineer looks less like a congenial mascot and more like the fuzzy incarnation of a baby-eating monster from Scandinavian folklore.

Read. It. All.

The late game on Thursday, coupled with general national disinterest in the teams, means not a lot of stories.

The AP story, picks up on the DePaul Coach’s complaints.

What did catch Wainwright unprepared was how rough-and-tumble Pitt was for a team that starts only one senior, and ended the game with only one player having more than two fouls.

“Maybe I should give Coach Cowher and the Steelers a call and see if we can play them a scrimmage while we’re here,” Wainwright said, in a thinly veiled criticism of the officiating. “I wonder if there would be as much hitting in that game.”

Pitt went 20-of-28 at the free throw line to DePaul’s 5-of-8, and Wainwright appeared to question why there was such a big disparity.

“We’re not good enough to be up by 13 on anybody,” he said. “After that, you have to earn some baskets and get to the free throw line and we didn’t do that.”

That’s gamesmanship at most to BE refs for the next game. It was physical, but the foul disparity has more to do with shot selection and style. DePaul wasn’t driving and dumping down inside. They settled for a lot of jump shots or at most a little penetration before pulling up. Pitt played inside a lot more, and DePaul found itself out of position to stop it. Especially in the second half when Pitt attempted 21 FTs, Pitt only took 3 shots from behind the 3-point line.

Coach Dixon was encouraged by the second half effort.

“We were very efficient in the second half,” Pitt coach Jamie Dixon said. “We wanted to get it inside to Aaron from the start. We missed some easy ones early. Our patience was good in the second half. We used the clock and got shots at the end of the clock, which can wear down teams. We really had good clock management.”

Gray had five of his seven field goals in the second half. He was 6 for 9 from the free-throw line and had six offensive rebounds.

“The coaches just told me to be patient,” Gray said. “I get real anxious when I see teams are playing me man-to-man. Early on, I had a lot of bad turnovers. I think that goes to the fact that we hadn’t played in eight days.”

Pitt of course doesn’t want to discuss still being undefeated.

“I haven’t given it much thought,” Dixon said. “We’re always just looking at improving and just getting better. This week, we haven’t even talked about our record.

“The number of wins never comes into conversation in practice. Of course, we get asked about it by the media and other people. I think it does bring some exposure to the program, and that’s always good.”

In Chicago (sort of) Paul Zeise freelances this piece.

Coach Jerry Wainwright said the combination of his team’s inexperience and the Panthers’ depth, size and physical style was too much to overcome. He said one positive is that the Demons clearly have progressed from their first Big East road game, an 82-60 loss Jan. 4 at Cincinnati.

“I thought we played exceptionally well given the circumstances we had to overcome,” Wainwright said. “It is never experience that wins games, but what you do with that experience, and it is clear we have to continue to build depth, get stronger and add some weight. If we continue to move forward, we’ll have a great future, but I’d like to see the growth process accelerated.

“If you look at Pitt’s minute distribution, there is no dropoff. It seemed like they just interchanged guys the entire game, and that had a wearing effect on us. It is like a boxer taking body blows. Early in the second half, they finally got us to drop our gloves.”

Pitt definitely started wearing down DePaul, but the depth for Pitt is one of the strengths of the team this year. Coach Dixon has recognized and exploited it well this season, while getting the kids more experience.

Chicago newspapers, of course, now get to have fun of puns on Pitt’s name, hence the editor who came up with this original headline “Demons find road the pits.” The story itself is a mostly perfunctory summary of the game without anything really worth excerpting.

DePaul came out shooting and with energy. Pitt did not. It took Pitt about the first 10-12 minutes of the game to start shaking things off and playing better. During that period, DePaul was just looking faster than Pitt. They were able to keep Pitt from getting clean looks, they got to the loose balls and rebounds faster and were able to get clean shots. Pitt was just slower looking.

It also helped that DePaul was making their shots. They had the shots and hit them. A team that only averaged around 31% on 3s started out hitting 3-4. They came out hitting their first 5 shots, and overall they hit 9-11 in the first 7 minutes. That’s how Pitt found themselves down 21-8. Chandler and Mejia were the big beneficiaries of Pitt’s slow start. The 2 combined for 9-11 shooting and 20 points in the half. The rest of the team shot 5-18

In that same 7 minute stretch, Pitt was 3-8 and turned the ball over 3 times. For the entire half, Pitt found itself running in spurts and sputters. Hitting a few shots in a row, missing a few. No real flow or order to the offense.

The defense started coming around first. Creating more pressure and turnovers. The shots were more tightly contested as Pitt adjusted to DePaul taking the mid-range jumpers. DePaul had trouble trying to get the ball inside more and find the uncontested shot.

One of Pitt’s key second half adjustments was simply not letting Chandler and Mejia get the same opportunities. Really, putting bodies on them to prevent the jumpers. Make the rest of the Blue Demons make shots. Chandler was completely taken out of the picture, only going 1-4 in the second half. Mejia, who could penetrate more, was a little more productive with 3-6 shooting. Still, neither was able to get the shot opportunites they had earlier.

On offense, Pitt went completely inside and stopped committing turnovers. Pitt had 11 in the game, but only 4 in the second half. Gray was the main culprit with 4 turnovers. Going inside on drives or passes inside not only led to high percentage shots, but got the team to the free throw line. As per, Pitt’s inconsistency from game-to-game, Pitt shot 20-28 from the free throw line (16-21 in the second half).

Krauser and Gray were excellent and really led the team in the second half. Krauser had 19 points on 7-15 shooting (3-5 on 3s) — an eFG% of 56.7% — 5 rebounds, 6 assists, 2 steals and only 1 turnover. Gray had another double-double with 20 points (7-14), 12 rebounds, 5 blocks, 2 assists, 1 steal and 4 turnovers.

Levance Fields and Sam Young are not just good young players, but are becoming very efficient, unselfish players. They combined for 20 points on 6-9 shooting and 8-10 from the free throw line. Both played very sound defense. I really liked what I saw from Young on defense, because he was in much better position to avoid the dumb fouls. Just better footwork and awareness, rather than just assuming his athletic ability would do the job.

My only concern was in the final 5 minutes or so. Krauser went out of the game because of some cramps, and Pitt started having trouble closing the game out. Pitt went from being up 9 to only 5 with a little under 3 minutes left, and not looking totally focused. Krauser was forced to come back in and help re-settle the team. It was the second game in a row, Pitt had trouble closing the game without Krauser out there. It isn’t completely unexpected at this point, but a concern.

Overall, a game that was about as expected. A rusty start after 8 days off, and a strong second-half as the team got comfortable once more with playing.