(01-17-2017 08:32 PM)NoodleOwl Wrote:  

(01-17-2017 07:26 PM)YOwl Ming Wrote:  

(01-17-2017 06:27 PM)texowl2 Wrote:  

(01-17-2017 05:16 PM)mrbig Wrote:  An update on some stat comparisons to last season. This year:
(1) Rice has improved its 3-point shooting by 7.5%
(2) Rice has improved its 3-point defense (aka, other teams are shooting worse) by 6.9%
(3) Rice has improved its rebounding margin by 8.8 net rebounds per game!
(4) Rice has improved its shot-blocking by .55 blocks/game and while having essentially the same number of shots blocked
(5) Rice is getting 1.8 more assists/game
(6) Rice's turnovers are up 2.7/game, while opponents' turnovers are up 1.2/game.
(7) Rice's steals are up .45/game, while opponents' steals are up .54/game.

Unfortunately, turnovers are up 2.6/game.

Seems to me that increase is due to (1) Max Guercy graduating-4 yr starting point guard and (2) Coach has emphasized speed on offense, willing to sacrifice some safety for scoring. So much different from the era of dribbling around and dribbling around, then with 8 seconds left, Mike Wilks driving the middle of the floor to see what miracle points he could get. (No criticism of Mike-one of my all time favorites)

How many more possessions per game do we (or opponents') have this year? The average shot clock time at first shot is larger than past years.

That's a tough stat to find, but using FGA as a proxy, we're up from recent years at ~58/game ('04-05 was close at 56.9, before that have to go to the '95-96 season where we had 59/game). However, we're shooting 3-pointers at better than a 39% clip, which would be a Rice record. Consequently, this team is on pace to break the all-time Rice record for points per game - averaging 83.8, record 83.4 in 1971. Rice has only had 28 100-point games all-time; 3 of them have been in 2016-17.