This comes a little late this week as I have had many offline things going on which sort of prevented me from working on the truly important items such as MGoDiaries, but before we play our final regular season game on Saturday, I thought I might provide a minor update to folks. One thing I will say, however, is that it is nice to know that the title is ours now and that we aren’t in need of any help from any one game to clinch it, nor do we need to win the last one, although I am sure that, like me, you want this last one quite badly given the opponent.

So, the summary averages after 17 conference games look like this:

 

	MICHIGAN	OPPONENT
Field Goal %	48.98%	45.03%
Three Point %	41.47%	31.51%
Effective FG%	56.97%	50.40%
Free Throw %	76.10%	72.36%
Off. Rebound %	26.52%	29.59%
Def. Rebound %	70.41%	73.48%
Assist / Turnover Ratio	1.65	1.46
True Shooting %	61.31%	53.93%
Free Throw Rate	35.99%	29.42%
Possessions	60.64	61.00
Points / Possession	1.20	1.08
Turnover %	13.97%	14.34%
Points	72.53	65.53

 

One thing that does come to mind here is that the advantage in assist / turnover ratio seems to be slowly returning after spending several weeks nearly matching that of our opponent’s average, so the ball distribution and ball handling has definitely been better lately. I know we saw how good it could be in the Illinois game. I added the average points here because I think that it is significant that, on average, we are beating opponents by three possessions, and if we narrow it to just wins, that margin in wins is 11.5, so four possessions in that case. That’s fairly decisive, I would think, particularly in a conference like the Big Ten. That we typically win with room to spare, if you will, has helped make this season very enjoyable indeed.

There is something else worth mentioning here. The points per possession stands at an average of 1.20, which is very efficient from an offensive standpoint, but it came to mind to ask the other day just how consistently efficient has Michigan been in conference play. As it turns out, the standard deviation of the individual PPPs is 0.12, so we definitely have a rhythm and style that is well-defined and generally won’t stray from too much. There are noted exceptions, of course, but it points to very consistent play on our part.

This idea about the rhythm of the game and how good this team is at controlling play most of the time also shows up in a brief analysis of possession average. In conference play, we have averaged 60.67 possessions per game with a standard deviation of 3.67. It may not look pretty at times, but that’s a team that is generally controlling the pace of the game, I would think.

LAST 5 GAMES:

Here are the four factors over the last five games, as well as A/T ratio. As usual, we are the blue line –

 

This season, at least in my mind and in a good way...