I don't know how interesting some will find this, but I do this every year to prep for a bit of tournament betting. I think I've noticed something pretty interesting relative to IU, so I thought I would share it here. I'm basically an X and O moron who picks up very little watching games, so I have to make up for my stupidity in one area by really digging into the statistics. So, I'm interested in what the X and O folks think about what I'm presenting here.
Speaking of trade offs, teams that have a primary defensive focus of turnover creation and general chaos for their opponents offense will typically have to sacrifice a bit in two areas in particular. These types of teams will often foul too much and have defensive rebounding woes. Often they will mitigate those issues by crashing the offensive glass and employ an offensive style that draws a lot of fouls. In other words, they concern themselves more with rebounding and free throw differential.
With that groundwork out of the way, here's a color coded chart of the prospective NCAA Tournament teams who excel at turnover creation. In the chart Green is Good and Red is Bad.
The first thing to notice is that Free Throw Differential is the hardest thing for these teams to overcome. At first glance the Defensive Rebounding Rate might not even look all that bad, but just compare it to the second chart and you'll see that there is certainly a price to be paid on the defensive glass. One last thing before I let you just look at the charts, I used Bart Torvik's site so I could eliminate games vs Quad 3 and Quad 4 opponents.
I have IU highlighted because it appears to me that IU is trying to be a team that belongs in the first chart, but just can't produce the turnovers. They are certainly paying the price in fouls and defensive rebounding that fits the profile of the top chart. Also, IU's most important victories have been the sweeps of Illinois and Purdue, both teams with freshman point guards.
In 7 of IU's 10 losses, the opponent has had either it's best offensive day of the year or damn near it. I like the philosophy of an aggressive defense as that is the style that has been most productive in deep tournament runs the past 7 or 8 years, but without X this team is incapable of playing this style well against the type of perimeter play that is headed our way. We blame effort as fans and say "flush that one", but I don't think they have enough effort in them to play this style of defense without a healthy X against what is looming.
Speaking of trade offs, teams that have a primary defensive focus of turnover creation and general chaos for their opponents offense will typically have to sacrifice a bit in two areas in particular. These types of teams will often foul too much and have defensive rebounding woes. Often they will mitigate those issues by crashing the offensive glass and employ an offensive style that draws a lot of fouls. In other words, they concern themselves more with rebounding and free throw differential.
With that groundwork out of the way, here's a color coded chart of the prospective NCAA Tournament teams who excel at turnover creation. In the chart Green is Good and Red is Bad.
The first thing to notice is that Free Throw Differential is the hardest thing for these teams to overcome. At first glance the Defensive Rebounding Rate might not even look all that bad, but just compare it to the second chart and you'll see that there is certainly a price to be paid on the defensive glass. One last thing before I let you just look at the charts, I used Bart Torvik's site so I could eliminate games vs Quad 3 and Quad 4 opponents.
I have IU highlighted because it appears to me that IU is trying to be a team that belongs in the first chart, but just can't produce the turnovers. They are certainly paying the price in fouls and defensive rebounding that fits the profile of the top chart. Also, IU's most important victories have been the sweeps of Illinois and Purdue, both teams with freshman point guards.
In 7 of IU's 10 losses, the opponent has had either it's best offensive day of the year or damn near it. I like the philosophy of an aggressive defense as that is the style that has been most productive in deep tournament runs the past 7 or 8 years, but without X this team is incapable of playing this style well against the type of perimeter play that is headed our way. We blame effort as fans and say "flush that one", but I don't think they have enough effort in them to play this style of defense without a healthy X against what is looming.
