It's really too early in the season for this, but we can get a glimmer of the way things are. These are the raw numbers, as opposed to what Ken Pomeroy publishes. KenPom makes adjustments to account for opponent strengths and weaknesses, but it's too early in the season to get serious about that because the good teams tend to fill their early schedules with lesser opponents. Once everyone has played 10-12 games, his adjustments become much more realistic as comparison tools.
You can see that the raw differential between OE and DE is about 9 points per 100 possessions. KenPom says our adjusted offense isn't quite that good, but the adjusted defense is much better, so his scoring differential is more like 13.5 points per 100 possessions. That puts us in 11th place among ACC teams at this point in the season, with five ACC teams sporting differentials of more than 22 points.
KenPom ranks the OE at 18th in the nation, pretty much what you'd expect considering that Gottfried teams are always in the top 35 even with less talent than this one. He ranks the defense 88th which, unfortunately, is also about what you'd expect. Adding a skilled big man and an athletic big man to the rotation should bring that number down -- see rebounding below.
You can see that the raw differential between OE and DE is about 9 points per 100 possessions. KenPom says our adjusted offense isn't quite that good, but the adjusted defense is much better, so his scoring differential is more like 13.5 points per 100 possessions. That puts us in 11th place among ACC teams at this point in the season, with five ACC teams sporting differentials of more than 22 points.
KenPom ranks the OE at 18th in the nation, pretty much what you'd expect considering that Gottfried teams are always in the top 35 even with less talent than this one. He ranks the defense 88th which, unfortunately, is also about what you'd expect. Adding a skilled big man and an athletic big man to the rotation should bring that number down -- see rebounding below.
- Our effective FG%, thanks to hot three point shooting lately, is very high -- 44th in the nation. By contrast, we finished under 50% last season and only managed to shoot better than 50% once in our first seven games. If we can maintain that level of shooting we'll make the rest of the game much easier. Holding opponents to 47.9% ranks us 127th.
- Turnovers are a mixed bag. Ending only 15.6% of your possessions with a turnover is very good -- it translates to getting at least three extra shots per game. No complaint there, especially considering the youth, but only forcing 15.6% from the other team is not good. We are ranked 306th there.
- Rebounding is an issue that we hope will be corrected when we get the big folk on the court. Our OR is only NCAA average and our DR (100 minus opponent OR) is awful enough to rank 311th. We were out rebounded in every game except St. Francis, and you might remember who showed up to grab a bunch in that game.
- Getting to the line has been a strength of Gottfried's teams. For all the complaining we do about officiating we've been to line line 44% more often than our opponents. That will surely slow down -- we tend to average about 30% more points from the line for a full season -- but drawing extra fouls should continue to buy us a few extra points per game.
