Monday Night Musings: How long can we push the tempo?
Posted by kj on Monday, December 22nd, 2008
Monday Night Links
- How to Think About the (Not So) New Three-Point Line
TAFKATBTW has a second cyber-residence. - Big 10 Efficiency Rankings of 2008, Courtesy of Football Outsiders
FO’s numbers say the MSU football team was, wait for it, a more efficiency passing team than running team this season. Unfortunately, that may say more about the running game than about the passing game.
Rankings Update
The two major polls’ respective opinions about us diverged this week. The AP voters have us at #11; the coaches have us at #18. Usually the coaches are a little kinder to us than the writers. I’ve always assumed that’s a function of the level of respect Tom Izzo has in the coaching fraternity. In this case, the disparity may be a function of the fact that the writers probably watch more games involving ranked opponents than the coaches do and have made the judgment that the team that beat Texas Saturday is not the same team that lost to North Carolina by 35 points.
Minnesota (#23) and Michigan (#24) both moved into the AP top 25 this week, giving the Big Ten five ranked teams, with Illinois and Wisconsin lurking in the “Others Receiving Votes” category.
Moving on to the numbers-based ratings, neither set likes MSU as much as the human voters do at this point. Sagarin has us at #21. Kenpom has us even lower at just #41, with our defensive numbers (particularly TO% and 3pt%) continuing to drag our rating down.
As Spartalytical noted the other day, the predictions for rest of MSU’s schedule generated by the Kenpom ratings are pretty ugly at this point. We’re the underdogs in the first nine games after the Oakland game, and the mean projected outcome of conference play is a 9-9 record. It’s not in my nature to ignore quantitative data, but at this point I think you have to tell the statistics to shut up and instead have faith that (1) Goran Suton makes us significantly better that our pre-Texas results would indicate and (2) the Big Ten isn’t quite as deep as it looks on paper at this point.
Speaking of our prospects in conference play . . .
Pushing the Tempo
Long-time* readers of this blog know that I’ve advocated in the past for MSU to push the ball more on offense. And, after pondering my advice during the offseason, Tom Izzo decided to go ahead and follow it.
*”Long-time” equals approximately 10 months.
So how are we doing in the pushing-the-tempo category? The table below shows “adjusted tempo” for the 11 Big Ten teams for both last season and the beginning of the current season. Adjusted tempo (from Kenpom) accounts for the average pace of the teams you’ve played and should, therefore, smooth out most of the differences between nonconference play and (much slower) Big Ten play. The teams are sorted based on last season’s adjusted tempo, from fastest to slowest.
| Adjusted Tempo | |||
| Team | 2007-08 | 2008-09 | Change |
| Purdue | 68.3 | 70.7 | 2.4 |
| Indiana | 68.0 | 69.5 | 1.5 |
| Michigan | 66.2 | 63.7 | (2.5) |
| Minnesota | 66.1 | 65.5 | (0.6) |
| Ohio St | 65.5 | 64.9 | (0.6) |
| Michigan St | 64.9 | 70.5 | 5.6 |
| Penn St | 64.9 | 65.0 | 0.1 |
| Illinois | 62.4 | 64.1 | 1.7 |
| Northwestern | 62.4 | 62.3 | (0.1) |
| Wisconsin | 62.1 | 60.4 | (1.7) |
| Iowa | 60.4 | 58.4 | (2.0) |
So far, the numbers would indicate that MSU has been successful in pushing the ball more on offense this year. And we know from actually watching the games that Kalin Lucas takes every opportunity to see if a basket can be generated in transition. MSU has gone from finishing 6th in the conference in adjusted tempo last season to being just 0.2 possessions/game behind #1 Purdue this season.
So that’s the good news.
The bad news is that the rest of the conference doesn’t look like it’s following suit. Purdue and IU are both playing even faster than they did last season (in IU’s case, that’s a function of being ranked in the bottom ten nationally in offensive TO%), and Illinois has crept up slightly, too.
But three teams whose coaches have reputations for preaching a methodical approach to the game–Michigan, Iowa, and Wisconsin–have all gotten somewhat slower this season. (For Michigan and Iowa, that’s probably a function of taking much better care of the ball this season.)
The net result is that the Big Ten, outside of our Spartans, looks to be as plodding as ever. The question is whether Michigan State can impose its will on other teams and create transition scoring options. If we can’t, the results may be ugly, given our inconsistent perimter shooting. (The low-post game, with Suton, Morgan, and Roe, does provide some hope in the half-court game. But it’s hard to build an offense around low-post play at the college level.)
Creating fast break chances starts on defense–forcing tough shots and rebounding the ball. (I don’t expect us to create a ton of turnovers.) Defense creates offense. That sounds a bit too glib. But just because something is glib doesn’t mean it isn’t true. If Tom Izzo can get the guys to play defense like they did against Texas (and rebound the ball a bit better) for the next two and a half months, they just might make a run at ending that seven-year conference title drought.
Filed in links, rankings update, stats analysis5 responses so far
5 Responses to “Monday Night Musings: How long can we push the tempo?”
huberton 23 Dec 2008 at 10:07 am 1Good post. But you know, every year, it seems like we talk about the spartans playing at a faster pace. I just don’t think this can happen in the Big Ten, given defenses, the way the games are called and the ability of all these great coaches to dictate pace.
Between Roe, Suton and Morgan, MSU has more of an inside presence than they have had in years. Also, it seems like feeding the post is finally a priority — perhaps because Roe already seems better at demanding the ball in the blocks than, say, Gray. This means that the guards will get open looks all year, and the issue is really whether or not Allen and Co. will knock them down. If they do, this team can win in the half court. But I agree that is the big question.
kjon 23 Dec 2008 at 10:21 am 2Good points, Hubert. In re-reading this post this morning, I think I’ve oversimplified things–even more so than usual. There are, of course, any number of ways MSU can be successful on offense. And playing good defense is important for its own sake–not just for the dynamic impact on your offense.
I do think the combination of Lucas’ speed and Roe’s ability to run the floor increases the odds MSU will be able to manufacture more transition scoring than they have in past seasons, though.
spartanproduceron 23 Dec 2008 at 10:22 am 3good points Hubert, our half-court passing has been stellar in recent games, heck even Gray is throwing good passes (the same Gray who got his first assist last season at about this time). The low post guys will give us more options in slower games.
While it’s good that our possessions per game is way up, I wonder how much of that is due to the two games (Idaho and Alcorn) where we scored more than 110 points, seems like those might be throwing the average a bit out of whack.
kjon 23 Dec 2008 at 12:12 pm 4The Idaho State game (81 possessions) was clearly an outlier, but the Alcorn State game was only a 69-possession game.
We haven’t played a game below 63 possession through 10 games. We had two of those in nonconference play last season (UCLA and BYU).
Mark in DCon 23 Dec 2008 at 4:33 pm 5To what extent is our faster pace a product of the turnover bugbear raising its head again this year? I’m sure we had a lot of possessions against UNC but a lot of them ended prematurely (i.e. before we got a shot off). I hope we can continue to run but think our half-court offense will be OK to very good – it has been for several years running (minus the turnovers of course).
Both Allen and Summers have shown an ability to hit outside shots, although both have been somewhat inconsistent this year. Morgan and even Suton can also hit from three point land so while we may not have that one go-to outside threat like we did last year I think we should be able to find a hot hand in just about any game. The bottom line is that, for the past few years, we just haven’t shot that many 3s – it’s not as much of a priority in our offense, so I don’t think our half court offense will suffer much because we don’t have that one outside marksman.
If we can shore things up on the defensive end and improve our rebounding a little bit, I like our chances for a good year whatever happens tempo-wise. If our defensive efficiency stays stuck in the range of 70th in the nation we’re not going to be anywhere near meeting our pre-season expectations.