College Basketball Scoring Problem

Dan Dakich won't shut up about this.  Jay Bilas himself?  That guys a douche.  I kinda like the basketball that is played in the B1G this year, it is (usually) exciting to watch.  That game between IU and MSU last night was intense, I also felt like they called a fair amount more fouls last night than we have seen lately.

ESPN The Magazine, I think, had an excellent article a few months ago about how tempo has slowed down. It highlighted Loyola-Marymount, for those of you who remembers those teams, and their epic game against LSU when Shaq was there. An excellent read, if someone could find the link.

Thanks for posting.  I think college basketball's biggest problem is that the best 20 and 21 year olds in the world no longer participate in it because they're already in the NBA.  Style has certainly changed too, though, and I don't know why anyone who doesn't have a rooting interest would watch a Wisconsin game. 

An interesting read, and thanks for sharing.

Actually, the team in the Big Ten which comes nearest to West Liberty's 80 possessions per game is Indiana, which averages 70.3 possessions per game - that's good for 87th place in Dvision I in this particular statistic. Actually, here's the entire Big Ten and their relative ranking as well as a comparison to last season, courtesy of TeamRankings:

Contrast that, however, with the one thing the Big Ten does do fairly well despite the relatively few possessions - get something out of the possessions they do have. Here is the conference performance in terms of effective possession ratio, which essentially measures your ability to get scoring chances:

I suppose I haven't really noticed it, I don't mind games in the 60-70 point range, and the balanced teams.  I'm happy watching whatever -- in games with fewer possessions, it makes things that much more interesting/important/meaningful each time you've  got the ball, it becomes a chess-game of sorts, and I enjoy that aspect.  However, I don't mind a good old fashioned shootout either because everytime teams score it is exciting.

I've noticed the game seems to be slowing down, but I don't think I've cared that much.

I don't remember who said it (or if its even true, so take this however you want), but someone said that there didn't used to be much zone defense in basketball. That could be why there is less scoring now, since good players would just blow by the one man assigned to them before.

One of the things I have always liked about college basketball, as well as college football, is that there are a lot of different styles of play.  If all of the games were 127-115, it would get boring pretty quickly for me.  

As for what the refs call in the Big Ten, it's much preferable to most of college basketball, where Duke does whatever they want on defense and everyone else gets called for touch fouls.

The physical play is definitely the biggest thing. On the perimeter and on finishing near the basket. So much bumping with the hips and torso too. It's the fouls that don't get called. There are some teams that basically foul on every play because the coaches and players know that the refs are not going to call all of those fouls. Calipari was 100% correct. They need to call those fouls even if it means calling 70 fouls in a game. But they won't. A game with a zillion fouls called would be brutal to watch but eventually if you keep calling them the overly physical play will stop and the end result will be a superior game.  

The 30 second shot clock is definitely something that they should go to. The women do that and the NBA plays with 24. There is no reason that you can't get a good shot within 30 seconds. That won't solve everything but it will be an improvement. 

The lack of the veteran talent which is now in the NBA instead of being college seniors and juniors certainly hurts the high end teams a lot. But that really hurts a relative handful of teams and since a lot of those guys are post players anyway it really doesn't slow the game down that much to not have them around. 

Miami games have been particularly low scoring, in particular. The score was 18-16 at the half against Clemson on Sunday. They played another low-scoring game last night too. 

Re: the shot clock, I'm not sure it'd make much of a difference to lower it to 30 seconds.  It's been lowered once before (from 45 to 35 seconds, in the mid-'90s) and that didn't seem to increase the pace of the game or scoring output.  As Pomeroy notes in the article, while cutting it down to 30 seconds would presumably increase the number of possessions, it might actually make teams less efficient per possession.

Phil Jackson has argued that the NBA should extend its shot clock to 30 seconds now that zone defenses are legal.  Having teams take quick shots doesn't mean much if they're not quality ones.

I would love to see the West Liberty basketball team play, too. I'll search for their games on You Tube later.

It sounds like they could have some great games against Division-I teams. What a bummer that after beating Marshall in 2005, their coach has had trouble getting D-I opponents to face them. Also, it's nice to hear that several coaches "enjoyed watching Indiana and Michigan's balanced offenses this season..." 

Watching a lot of games recently, I can't help but think the lack of players capable of hitting the midrange (10-17 feet) jumper with consistency contributes to the lack of scoring too.  I understand the risk-reward benefit of backing up behind the 3 point line with the similar likelihood of success, but it seems defenses gain more by only needing to guard outside the arc or at the hoop.  Without having a threat from the elbow/short corner the defense can clog the lane and make drives more difficult.  Not to mention being in better position to take charges, which was discussed in a thread last week.  But without being able to spread the defense across the entire floor inside the arc, offenses are having a more difficult time finding open shots.

High ball screen action-missed shot, high ball screen action-missed shot, high ball screen action-missed shot, etc.. I swear this was the Pitt-ND game the other night and it seems it's almost every college basketball game these days. Don't get me wrong I love college basketball but this is definitely one of the offensive issues.