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.
