I sure hope we can go all in both football and basketball wise for this young man, he is a once in a decade if not lifetime type player. He really is that good on in both sports.

Prediction Contest results through Syracuse
Contest #2
Check your results!

I acquired all of the Division I team data since 2002, and from that we can observe some fascinating trends and data relationships in the data. This is a multipart series exploring some of that data.



Next up is game pace. The graph shows total possessions per game, by year, for the last 23 seasons, through the morning of February 15, 2024 (242,559 games in all). This analysis uses the "Smith Method" of defining a possession which is defined as ending whenever a team loses control of the ball. A possession can end with a made basket, a trip to the free throw line (1-and-1, 2, and 3-shot situations), a turnover, or an attempted field goal. It is important to remember the latter when gaining an understanding of this data compared to data published elsewhere. Stay tuned for much more on the topic of Possessions when I address the Ken Pomeroy data.

The grey line shows the per game average for all of Division I, while the green line shows the possession average for teams that made the NCAA tournament that year. Once again we see little difference in pace of play between tournament teams and the national average. Therefore pace isn't very useful in predicting a team's propensity to make the tournament.

In 2023 the average game had 158.7 possessions, with a standard deviation of 8.2. So, 2/3 of the games generally ranged from having 150 to 167 possessions, and 90% of games fell in the 142 to 175 possession range.

The national average, incidentally, is trends steeply upward in 2016,. This was the effect of reducing the shot clock from 35 seconds to 30 which increased game tempo by about 4%. This also explains the upward movement of scoring that we saw in the scoring graph in Part I of this series. Since that point, however, there has been a slight downward trend in pace of about 0.55 possessions per year.

UNC, shown in blue, has had significantly higher-paced games than the rest of the nation. We know that one of Roy Williams' tenants of coaching was faster play, so it stands to reason that his teams had more possessions than others. On average, his teams had 8.1% more possessions than the rest of the nation.

In addition to Possessions, I'll circle back later about Points Per Possession in great detail soon.

Next up: Field Goal Percentage

Andrew have a question which you may not be able to answer, but maybe you can ask Davis on Thursday. Does the starters still use the philosophy which some teams use that when they are fatigue they give the tired sign for some rest? Or is this dictated by Davis when he believes they are tired and he substitutes, since most of our starters never want to leave the game. Yet it appears there are a lot of tired legs out there toward the end of the game, and it shows with the execution.

Steat. I couldn't figure out how to message you. I am going to be out of pocket for the next week and want to make my picks blind.

I will take Heels and Over in the MIAMI game

Syracuse an Under in the SYRACUSE game.

Thanks.

Tim

The last two Tuesday night games have been awful for UNC so hopefully Carolina can navigate all the snow that New York have gotten the last two days and MELT AWAY any chances the Orange have of getting into March Madness.

Coach Adrian Autry and his team come into this contest badly needing a big win as they just stand 15-9…They have some excellent guards in Notre Dame transfer JJ Starling and the always reliable Judah Mintz. Chris Bell and Quadir Copeland also are big time scorers for the Cuse.

Syracuses biggest weakness might be in the paint where center Naheem McLeod is out for the year and their other center is like Trimble a game time decision. If Carolina is smart they will feed Bacot all night long and take full advantage of him in the paint.

Like the Clemson game the Orange can come out and hit everything in sight and build up a big lead but even with a large crowd despite all of the snow outside of the Carrier Dome cheering them on in my humble opinion Carolina just has to much firepower to lose another dreaded Tuesday night game.

As much as I too would like to see a Trimble suit up again in the visiting Carolina blue he might be held out again and have him ready for a Virginia Tech team on Saturday…

I might miss portions of this game especially at the beginning because I took the wife to Myrtle Beach to celebrate Valentine’s Day but if that is the case I will chip in when I can because the wife in my case is a priority…Give em Hell Heels and take no prisoners and leave no doubt…

Discussion
The Heels, coming off a near loss against Miami, found themselves on the true loss column again at Syracuse, with a 7-point defeat.

Contrary to much of the post-game analysis, this was a very good offensive game for UNC, scoring 1.03 points per possession. The Heels shot a bit above average overall (48%), but were excellent from 3 (44%). They did turn it over on 14% of their possessions, which is a bit more than average.

Defensively, however, the Heels were, once again, not good. Syracuse scored 1.26 points per possession, a level only seen 3 times in the last 1,013 games. Syracuse did it with red-hot shooting, especially within the arc (71%). We've only seen 1 team shoot better, 2015 Pitt.

Once again, UNC didn't for many turnovers, allowing Syracuse to turn it over on 12% of their possessions.

This was very slow-paced game, as well, with only 145 total possessions. We've only seen 62 slower games in the last 1,013 games.

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So was this a putrid defensive performance or was Syracuse just out of their minds? We pondered the inverse a month ago when teams like Syracuse were shooting under 20% from 3-point land. Was it great defense or did UNC just face teams that happened to be cold? This is where the Percentage Loss of Ball is useful. Defensively we usually see an inverse relationship between Pts/Poss allowed and %LOB; the better the team is at preventing scoring, the better they usually are at forcing teams to turn it over.

When UNC was "holding" opponents to such low shooting numbers, I was suspicious because those teams were turning it over on less than 10% of their possessions as well. I have never believed that this is an elite defensive team. That said, while last night's defense was the biggest problem, it wasn't that bad. I've maintained that this team is, defensively, below the program's standard. Under Hubert Davis, guards are not forcing turnovers. We saw Duke penetrate and easily get to the ball 8' from the basket, but we also saw Syracuse penetrate with ease. This will be a key differentiator for this team in March.