Six Games Into Basketball: What We Look Like

Submitted by LSAClassOf2000 on

SIX GAMES IN

I thought it might be a nice time to stop and look at a few basketball statistics now that we are starting to get into the season in earnest. Granted, these are non-conference games and what we will be able to get out of some of the numbers right now might be limited, but it seemed like six games was a decent enough checkpoint in the season.

One of the things which gets floated around from time to time here is the extremely good record of John Beilein once the points per possession number gets about about 1.10 or so. It is interesting then, that it has only been below that once, and that game was the very close loss to Villanova. Indeed, right now the average PPP number for Michigan is 1.22. One that I personally like as an efficiency measure is assist / turnover ratio – the season average to date is 1.95 and the only time it has been below 1.00 is also the loss to Villanova.

The comprehensive table of current averages on various stats is below:

 photo HoopsSummaryChart_zpsd05f35ca.png

One thing that is striking to me is that, so far anyway, these numbers aren’t terribly different than many of last season’s averages. For example, last season’s eFG% overall average was 55.95% and right now it is 55.18%. The offensive rebounding percentage last season averaged 28.74%, and so far this year, it is 29.53% - a slight increase. Of course, this is not a true comparison in that you have different personnel responsible for these performances, but it seems to speak to the maturity of Beilein’s philosophy as practiced here.

There are also the Four Factors to consider. Here is what those look like after six games - naturally, we are in blue and the opponent's corresponding statistic is red:

 photo HoopsEFG_zps087ebc7c.png  photo HoopsOREB_zps59605b95.png  photo HoopsFTR_zpsb3d40f35.png  photo HoopsTOV_zpse981f29d.png

I don’t know that you can draw many strong conclusions, but the differences between the Villanova performance and the other five games are apparent. The one that I found amusing – and something that I didn’t think much about while watching the game – is the freakishly high FTR against Oregon. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen 63.04% there, but 29 FT attempts against only 46 FGs attempted is pretty amazing as a single-game stat, I think.

Anyway, here’s how it looks so far. 

Comments

mfan_in_ohio

December 2nd, 2014 at 10:44 AM ^

I think Oregon put a big emphasis on closing out shooters and preventing open 3's, and we responded really well with drives to the basket that resulted in fouls.  If we were a team of "just a shooter"s that wouldn't have been possible, but guys like Levert, Irvin and Walton showed some great ability to get to the basket and either score or draw a foul.  It looks like a better way to defend us is to concede some open shots and hope we miss, which worked for Villanova in the first half.

Jalm

December 2nd, 2014 at 11:06 AM ^

The Villanova game I was going crazy over that point exactly, them giving us open low percentage shots and us just throwing it up and missing. I hope not to see much of that moving forward I want to see more of the play we had vs Oregon, driving to the basket and draw fouls or scoring. (will have a some charges ofc) That's just my limited thoughts I'm sure there are reasons we can't do these at times that I didn't look into that much such as defense style of Vill vs Ore.

Tater

December 2nd, 2014 at 1:22 PM ^

Michigan looks pretty much as I expected them to.  They are beating unranked teams but aren't quite ready to start beating ranked teams yet.  However, my "prediction" is the same as it was at the beginning of the year: by tournament time, Michigan is going to be a team that nobody wants to play.  JB is too effective of a coach for me to believe otherwise.

Blue In NC

December 2nd, 2014 at 4:10 PM ^

I think that's a bit harsh.  Michigan was very ready to beat Nova (a solid ranked team).  

I think it more accurate to say Michigan is not ready to beat elite teams right now but can slug it out with ordinary ranked opponents and at times overwhelm unranked opponents.