Pri Tweet: Reason For Optimism?

[Goose]

From Coach Pri on Twitter:

Workouts were good this morning... The team is getting better... Out offense is ahead of our defense.

Now first off, it's pre-season workouts. So reading too much into anything at this point would be a huge mistake. That said, I'm encouraged by this news -- mainly because I thought with SHT back, shifting Dufault to PF and Alec (who I loved) gone, our defense was set to take a step forward this year while offense was going to take a step back. For a little background, here's KenPom.com's Offensive & Defensive efficiency ratings from last season (points per 100 possessions. BTW, the national average is 101.3):

	Offensive	Defensive	Difference
Colorado	117.3	102.4	+14.9
Arizona	117.3	96.4	+20.9
Arizona St	102.8	99.7	+3.1
Cal	109.3	98.9	+10.4
Oregon	105.6	98.1	+7.5
Oregon St	100.7	100.9	-0.2
Stanford	103.2	97.6	+5.6
UCLA	107.2	93.2	+14.0
USC	106.1	92.1	+14.0
Utah	100.9	99.3	+1.6
Washington	117.8	94.7	+23.1
Washington St	106.5	94.0	+12.5

Now looking over those numbers, offensively we would have been tied for second in the conference in offensive efficiency last year, but would have been dead last in defense. I feel safe saying that we will not be as bad defensively this year as we were last year. So while our offensive production will come back to Earth a bit this year (I would still plug us at +2-3 above the national average to be honest), I think our defense will dramatically improve as well.

So am I reading too much into a simple tweet here? Possibly. But if I'm not, and our offense stays in the top half of the conference and our defense joins it up there, we could be looking at a great season.

 

[Buffnik]

Could be motivational because of the emphasis on defense. I don't think you'd hear Izzo praising his defense this early, either. But it is a good sign that they're feeling pretty good about the offense.

Much better than if he had tweeted, "Bad offense is making our defense look ahead of where it really is." :smile2:

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Also...

We should take a look at NCAA tournament teams from BCS conference and do an analysis of what type of + efficiency margin is likely to equate with going dancing. Let's look at rebounding efficiency and other metrics, too. Also, we should specifically look at the Pac-12.

One thing I really want to do is elevate basketball discussion beyond the ESPN featured stats of PPG and RPG, because they're useless as far as how they rank teams in the different categories. Wisconsin doesn't score much, but they're extremely efficient and are in the tourney every year. Let's make AB the gold standard here.

 

[Lt.Col.FrankSlade]

Tough to say. Didn't we lose some of the main parts of offense from last season? (Burks / Higgins)

 

[Goose]

Also...

We should take a look at NCAA tournament teams from BCS conference and do an analysis of what type of + efficiency margin is likely to equate with going dancing. Let's look at rebounding efficiency and other metrics, too. Also, we should specifically look at the Pac-12.

One thing I really want to do is elevate basketball discussion beyond the ESPN featured stats of PPG and RPG, because they're useless as far as how they rank teams in the different categories. Wisconsin doesn't score much, but they're extremely efficient and are in the tourney every year. Let's make AB the gold standard here.

For those that are slightly confused by what Nik & I have said, Wisconsin is the perfect example.

Wisconsin		National Rank
Points Per Game	68.2	192nd
Offensive Efficiency	123.3	2nd
Pace	58.0	344th

The average person doesn't take pace into account. If you just looked at points per game, you would think that they were horrible on offense. But when you take offensive efficiency and pace into account, you realize that they would score 1.2 points on average EVERY TIME THEY HAVE THE BALL. That's phenomenal. Now everyone thinks that CU was good on offense last year (and they were as they were 10th in the nation in offensive efficiency and 13th overall in PPG). CU averaged 79.6 ppg. If they scored with the same efficiency that Wisconsin did, that would have added 4.1 ppg to their average.

A better example than CU is VMI. They lead the nation in scoring with 87.9 ppg, but they weren't very efficient. If they scored at Wisconsin's efficiency, they would have averaged 93 ppg.

'Nik (and anyone else really), what other metrics do you want to mention. Pace, Offensive Efficiency, Defensive Efficiency, Rebounding Rate and eFG% are the main ones I look at. Any others we should include for the pre-season primer?

 

[Goose]

Coach T:

It's about defense. Defense is about winning games and Championships.

Honestly, I love seeing the D emphasized. With our accelerated pace (although I was shocked to see it wasn't in the top 100 today), we're going to get chances at easy baskets. The key is to make sure that our opponents don't do the same.

 

[Shldr2Shldr]

I am just excited for the season to start, I honestly think we do much better than we are expected too, and I think we play in the semi or finals in the inaugural Pac-12 Tourney and sit on the bubble again. Hopefully this year we end up on the right side.