A Tale of Two Cupcakes
After defeating two teams with sub 200 RPIs, we just wanted to recap how things fared on the numbers for Marquette.
Sacramento State
In the Preview for Sacramento State, we said to watch for the following items:
Marquette's effective FG % - FG% that is adjusted to account for the extra value of a three point shot)
Marquette's Offensive Rebounding % - This is the percentage of available offensive rebounds that a team obtains. Equation is: OR / (OR + Opponent DR)
The Turnover Rate forced by Sacramento State - This is turnovers / possessions - 20% is about average
Sacramento State was very poorly rated for eFG% defense and OR% Defense, and the one item that they did well was force turnovers. Turnovers were the matchup to watch for the game.
Results
eFG% - 0.565 (Season Avg - 0.547) As expected, there was some padding of the average, but it was not as substantial as maybe expected.
OR% - 40.0% (Season Avg - 36.5%) Again, some padding of the average, but not substantial. However, we actually had Sacramento State get a higher % (41%) than we did.
Turnover Rate - 19.7% (Season Avg - 18.2%) Sacramento State was able to force a higher rate of turnovers than we usually commit, but all things considered, Marquette still was about average.
IPFW
In the Preview for IPFW, we said to watch for the following items.
Marquette eFG% and Marquette OR%. The one strength for IPFW was their ability to limit opponents at OR%, and this was the matchup to watch.
eFG% - 0.531 (Season Avg - 0.547) A little unexpected. According to the matchups (strong eFG% against weak eFG% defense), we should have had a higher % than our average. However, this is a minor quibble. After all, our season average is already one of the highest in D1.
OR% - 34.2% (Season Avg - 36.5%) These results are actually somewhat interesting, but mostly because of Crean's post game comments (link to Rosiak). Crean was upset that we only managed 13 Offensive Rebounds, but our percentage was actually close to our season average. IPFW was able to keep Marquette slightly below season average, but not by much. IPFW only secured 25 Defensive Rebounds, so to get 13 / 38 possible rebounds isn't that bad.
I know that Crean is upset that we only got two more offensive rebounds than IPFW, but their percentage was much, much worse (23%). Marquette grabbed 37 defensive rebounds, so IPFW only got 11 out of 48 possible offensive rebounds.
That's about enough coverage for Sacramento State and IPFW. On to Coppin State!
http://www.crackedsidewalks.com/2007/12/tale-of-two-cupcakes.html
I starting mentally tracking the possessions of the game.
Against Sacremento St. we turned the ball over on our first possession, scored on the next five and 13 out of our first 20 possessions. We had 17 more possessions in the half and I believed we scored on 8 of them. When Trend was in he did not take a shot. He was in for four or five possessions and the team did not score on any of them. I believe Christopherson was in for three possessions and MU did not score on any of them. One game but, it made me interested in tracking this. However, I am only going to do it for the first 20 possessions. MU was 8 out of 20 against IPFW. MU missed, got offensive rebounds and missed again.
Since you mentioned possessions...
We are averaging 71.6 possessions / game. We're about average in D1.
Against Sacramento State, we had 76 possessions, 42 of which were scoring possessions (At least one point). That's a floor percentage of 55.8% (our season avg is 54.7%).
Against IPFW, we had 78 possessions, 39 of which were scoring possessions. That's a floor percentage of 50%.
Your observations of SC and LB are consistent with their season averages. Combined, the two account for less than 1% of all total possessions. In contrast, James and McNeal account for just around 40% of all total possessions.