(Gus Stark)
Recently I dropped in on a Division II practice and spoke with an analytically woke head coach who had two urgent messages for me. First, shot volume is great. Second, what happened to Tuesday Truths?
Let’s focus on that first highly perceptive part. Shot volume is just one half (how often you shoot) of one half (offense) of basketball, but it is, by far, the 25 percent of the sport that garners the least attention. It is this imbalance in explanatory bandwidth and not any silver-bullet features of the metric itself that is unfortunate. (It is no silver bullet. Ask Notre Dame.)
If you want to know how it’s possible, nay conceivable, that Illinois (still!) might wear home uniforms in its first-round NCAA tournament game despite being the least accurate team from the field in Big Ten play, our good friend X’s and O’s can’t solve that riddle alone. An awareness of shot volume can help.
As always, one of the most intriguing takeaways from these numbers is how the hoops gods seriously do not give a flying fig how you get the job done. Shot volume’s a stylistic buffet, and everyone’s invited. Whether you love offensive rebounds or choose to fear them the way early civilizations dreaded mirrors and solar eclipses, the bottom line on volume can turn out exactly the same….
TO% OR% SVI 53. Utah 19.7 29.5 93.6 54. Virginia Tech 15.8 19.8 93.6
Your national leader in shot volume, for now, is LSU, a team that has achieved the not inconsiderable feat of having the best offense in SEC play despite not shooting as accurately as its conference opponents. The Tigers take pretty good care of the ball, but, to the extent that there’s a secret sauce in Baton Rouge, it is that Darius Days and Emmitt Williams are very good at pulling down offensive boards.
At the other end of the shot volume buffet line we find Stanford, a team that once held promise for being an interesting case but now appears to be faltering its way out of tournament contention. Jerod Haase’s men never, ever get to shoot, a fact the group from Palo Alto has transcended, to an extent, with good defense and non-Colorado Pac-12-leading accuracy from the field.
In our end-of-regular-season shot volume update leading into Champ Week, we will expand our population of teams and consider the fascinating question of BYU. In the NASA-style control room at Shot Volume Headquarters, technicians in white lab coats have been huddled around the Cougars’ console pretty much all season long.
Could this BYU offense be about as good as Villanova 2018 if only the the prevailing attitude in Provo were a relaxed and naturalistic WCC 40th percentile view of offensive rebounds instead of fearing them the way early civilizations dreaded mirrors and solar eclipses? Possibly.
Shot volume index (SVI)
Major-conference games only, through Feb. 17: ACC, Big 12, Big East, Big Ten, Pac-12, SEC
Gluttonous TO% OR% SVI 1. LSU 16.5 36.2 100.5 2. Auburn 16.7 35.3 99.8 3. Illinois 16.3 33.3 99.3 4. Michigan 14.0 27.0 99.0 5. Purdue 16.3 32.4 98.9 6. Arizona 16.0 31.2 98.7 7. Minnesota 15.7 30.4 98.7 8. St. John's 14.0 25.8 98.5 9. Baylor 18.4 36.5 98.3 10. Rutgers 16.2 30.9 98.3 11. Notre Dame 14.9 27.5 98.2 12. Villanova 13.4 23.9 98.2 13. Syracuse 15.9 29.6 98.1 14. Penn State 14.4 25.8 98.0 15. Iowa 17.0 31.9 97.9 16. Pitt 16.6 30.9 97.9 Normal TO% OR% SVI 17. Georgetown 16.2 29.0 97.4 18. Duke 17.6 31.4 96.9 19. Marquette 16.6 28.9 96.9 20. Mississippi State 19.3 35.8 96.9 21. Oregon 17.0 29.8 96.9 22. Louisville 18.0 32.1 96.8 23. Wisconsin 14.4 23.4 96.8 24. Kentucky 17.5 30.4 96.6 25. Florida 18.1 31.3 96.3 26. Kansas 18.0 31.0 96.3 27. Nebraska 14.3 22.1 96.3 28. North Carolina 19.3 34.3 96.2 29. Alabama 17.1 28.4 96.1 30. Butler 17.9 30.3 96.1 31. NC State 17.2 28.6 96.1 32. Oregon State 16.2 26.1 96.1 33. Providence 19.6 34.3 95.9 34. Xavier 19.0 32.7 95.8 35. Colorado 17.7 28.4 95.4 36. Indiana 19.2 32.1 95.4 37. South Carolina 18.5 30.5 95.4 38. Arkansas 14.7 20.9 95.3 39. Florida State 19.8 33.1 95.1 (average, huzzah) 40. Creighton 16.1 23.5 95.0 41. Michigan State 18.4 29.2 95.0 42. Oklahoma State 19.0 30.5 94.9 43. Texas A&M 20.6 34.8 94.9 44. UCLA 20.2 33.7 94.9 45. West Virginia 23.2 41.7 94.8 46. Maryland 18.0 27.6 94.7 47. Oklahoma 16.6 23.2 94.3 48. Seton Hall 18.9 29.1 94.3 49. Ole Miss 17.3 24.5 94.1 50. Northwestern 15.6 20.4 94.1 51. Miami 18.3 26.6 93.9 52. Ohio State 19.1 28.2 93.7 53. Utah 19.7 29.5 93.6 54. Virginia Tech 15.8 19.8 93.6 55. Washington State 17.4 23.3 93.4 56. Arizona State 19.3 27.6 93.2 57. USC 20.7 31.3 93.2 58. Tennessee 20.2 29.7 93.1 59. Boston College 18.5 25.2 93.0 60. Clemson 17.5 22.7 93.0 61. Missouri 20.2 29.5 93.0 62. DePaul 20.7 30.5 92.9 Starving TO% OR% SVI 63. Georgia 21.1 30.1 92.2 64. California 19.3 25.1 92.1 65. Vanderbilt 18.1 21.8 91.9 66. Virginia 20.2 27.1 91.9 67. Wake Forest 21.2 29.2 91.7 68. Iowa State 20.9 28.2 91.6 69. Texas Tech 20.4 26.8 91.6 70. Georgia Tech 22.4 31.5 91.3 71. Kansas State 20.9 26.9 91.0 72. Texas 20.7 25.9 90.8 73. Washington 22.5 28.4 89.8 74. TCU 23.5 30.4 89.5 75. Stanford 20.8 22.1 89.0 AVG 18.1 28.9 95.1
Let’s revisit this in a few weeks. See you then.
John Gasaway 