Scoring efficiency is up significantly in Division I men’s hoops in 2024 even as shooting accuracy remains more or less the same as it was last year. Teams are simply attempting more shots.
Giving credit for trends on the largest scale is challenging, but one version of events could venture to say the praise for our current high-scoring game might go to Kelvin Sampson and the NCAA, in that order.
Sampson is the guru of shot volume. This season the guru has landed in what is still, even with the presence of his Houston team, the lowest shot volume league of the six major conferences.
Broadly speaking, the Big 12 hasn’t traditionally done shot volume. More precisely, the league has perhaps hosted two schools of thought represented tidily by recent national champions. The Baylor school does say yes, please, to shot volume. The more influential paradigm, however, has been the Kansas school which has shown vividly you can win national titles, plural, without this volume stuff. This season the Jayhawks are pushing this to an extreme even by their own standards, cruising toward a No. 2 seed while ranking No. 67 out of 80 major-conference teams for shot volume.
Then there’s Sampson. When you watch a Houston game in 2024 the analyst will still say the Cougars’ best play call on offense is a missed shot. This remains a fair description as far as it goes, but tonight, for example, UH will host Cincinnati and based on Big 12 play the Cougars won’t even be the best offensive rebounding team in the building. Houston in 2024 carries the lowest whole-season rank for offensive rebound percentage of any post-pandemic UH team.
Looking only at conference play, the Cougars are in truth one of the weaker offensive rebounding teams among the 2024 shot volume elite.
Shot volume index (SVI)
Conference games only: ACC, Big 12, Big East, Big Ten, Pac-12, SEC
TO% OR% SVI
1. Houston 12.3 34.7 104.8
2. Texas A&M 14.5 39.2 104.3
3. Florida 14.5 37.9 103.7
4. Illinois 14.7 36.2 102.6
5. Purdue 16.4 40.2 102.5
6. Arizona 14.9 35.6 102.1
7. Tennessee 14.3 33.3 101.7
8. UConn 15.9 36.4 101.3
9. Xavier 15.3 34.8 101.2
10. North Carolina 15.2 33.5 100.7
If you want to single out incredible offensive rebounding in 2024 you look not to Houston but to West Lafayette. Moreover, Purdue needs those offensive boards from a volume standpoint because the Boilermakers commit a normal number of turnovers.
Conversely if you want to single out incredible Bo Ryan- slash John Beilein-level caretaking of the ball, Sampson is your guy. He’s had a great deal of success by having his team attempt more shots than the opponent, and the rest of D-I’s taking notes.
On each “effective” (turnover-less) possession, the Cougars outscore conference opponents by 0.05 points. In real life the margin is 0.16. Combining “possessions ending in an attempt” with “an occasional second chance” yields one powerful substance on offense.
As a case study in how extreme Houston’s 12 percent turnover rate in Big 12 play truly is, consider Richmond. At this very moment the Spiders are straining every muscle in Atlantic 10 play and posting the very same incredible turnover rate as Houston. Richmond, however, combines this amazing work with the nation’s most emphatic “no, thank you” to offensive boards.
If you’ve ever wondered what would happen if a team literally ranked No. 1 in the country for turnover rate but No. 362 for offensive rebounding, now we know. The answer is that your shot volume is not very good. If the Spiders were on the major-conference list below, they would rank No. 66.
A major-conference turnover rate that’s trending down toward 16.0 percent is behind the sky-high 104-ish numbers at the top of the shot volume index. These low turnover rates, in turn, are to an extent downstream from the NCAA’s change to the block/charge rule prior to this season.
Fewer turnovers now result from defenders hurling themselves bodily into the ballhandler’s path. The change in the rules has improved the game both aesthetically and statistically. Well done, NCAA. (Now, about those timeouts.)
Of course, not every team received the “don’t turn the ball over anymore” memo. At the bottom of the shot volume rankings we find mostly offenses mired in turnovers, albeit ones sitting enviously alongside a few conscientious objectors to offensive boards.
Need more scoring chances
Conference games only: ACC, Big 12, Big East, Big Ten, Pac-12, SEC
TO% OR% SVI
70. Nebraska 16.7 23.6 94.3
71. Missouri 16.6 22.9 94.1
72. Oklahoma State 17.4 24.7 94.0
73. Oregon State 18.0 26.0 94.0
74. Virginia Tech 16.7 22.3 93.7
75. Louisville 18.5 25.5 93.2
76. Notre Dame 20.0 29.3 93.1
77. West Virginia 19.2 25.8 92.5
78. Stanford 18.6 22.7 91.8
79. DePaul 19.0 21.1 90.6
80. Kansas State 22.0 28.6 90.5
Here’s how every major-conference team rates out for shot volume, complete with pithy group labels at plus and minus one standard deviation. Where’s your team?
Shot volume index (SVI)
Conference games only: ACC, Big 12, Big East, Big Ten, Pac-12, SEC
Gluttonous TO% OR% SVI
1. Houston 12.3 34.7 104.8
2. Texas A&M 14.5 39.2 104.3
3. Florida 14.5 37.9 103.7
4. Illinois 14.7 36.2 102.6
5. Purdue 16.4 40.2 102.5
6. Arizona 14.9 35.6 102.1
7. Tennessee 14.3 33.3 101.7
8. UConn 15.9 36.4 101.3
9. Xavier 15.3 34.8 101.2
10. North Carolina 15.2 33.5 100.7
11. St. John's 15.9 34.7 100.5
12. Auburn 14.9 31.9 100.3
Normal TO% OR% SVI
13. Pitt 14.2 29.8 100.1
14. Northwestern 12.5 25.2 99.9
15. Iowa 14.0 28.2 99.6
16. Duke 15.4 31.3 99.5
17. Ole Miss 15.7 31.9 99.4
18. Ohio State 14.6 29.1 99.3
19. Kentucky 14.8 29.4 99.3
20. Virginia 13.3 25.6 99.2
21. NC State 14.0 27.0 99.0
22. Michigan State 13.6 25.9 99.0
23. Alabama 17.6 35.8 98.9
24. Georgetown 16.5 32.8 98.9
25. Oregon 15.0 28.7 98.7
26. Clemson 14.8 28.1 98.6
27. Washington St. 15.9 30.7 98.6
28. Cal 14.2 26.4 98.5
29. Iowa State 16.7 32.3 98.4
30. South Carolina 17.3 33.5 98.2
31. Miss. State 18.6 36.5 98.1
32. Baylor 17.7 34.1 98.0
33. Wisconsin 15.6 28.8 98.0
34. BYU 16.6 31.2 98.0
35. Marquette 15.0 27.0 97.9
36. Butler 14.9 26.4 97.7
37. Vanderbilt 15.5 27.6 97.6
38. UCLA 16.7 30.5 97.6
80-TEAM AVERAGES 16.2 29.1 97.4
TO% OR% SVI
39. Utah 15.8 27.6 97.2
40. TCU 18.4 34.0 97.2
41. Texas Tech 15.7 27.2 97.2
42. Villanova 13.9 22.7 97.1
43. Rutgers 17.1 30.2 96.9
44. Seton Hall 19.5 36.3 96.9
45. UCF 17.0 29.8 96.9
46. Washington 14.9 24.3 96.7
47. Penn State 14.9 24.1 96.6
48. Wake Forest 15.7 26.0 96.6
49. Maryland 18.3 32.5 96.6
50. LSU 17.4 30.2 96.6
51. Providence 15.7 25.7 96.5
52. Arizona State 14.1 21.8 96.4
53. Minnesota 17.5 29.7 96.2
54. Georgia 16.8 27.9 96.2
55. Creighton 15.1 23.2 95.9
56. USC 17.3 28.5 95.9
57. Texas 17.6 29.1 95.9
58. Indiana 17.2 27.8 95.7
59. Georgia Tech 16.8 26.7 95.7
60. Florida State 16.7 26.4 95.6
61. Cincinnati 20.6 36.4 95.6
62. Arkansas 15.7 23.8 95.6
63. Oklahoma 16.8 26.4 95.5
64. Miami 16.8 26.1 95.4
65. Syracuse 15.1 21.9 95.3
66. Colorado 18.0 28.7 95.2
67. Kansas 16.4 24.5 95.1
68. Boston College 16.5 24.7 95.1
69. Michigan 18.3 28.9 94.9
Starving TO% OR% SVI
70. Nebraska 16.7 23.6 94.3
71. Missouri 16.6 22.9 94.1
72. Oklahoma State 17.4 24.7 94.0
73. Oregon State 18.0 26.0 94.0
74. Virginia Tech 16.7 22.3 93.7
75. Louisville 18.5 25.5 93.2
76. Notre Dame 20.0 29.3 93.1
77. West Virginia 19.2 25.8 92.5
78. Stanford 18.6 22.7 91.8
79. DePaul 19.0 21.1 90.6
80. Kansas State 22.0 28.6 90.5
Enjoy all the scoring!
John Gasaway 