So many coaches and teams around the country say they want to "play up tempo, run, press, and PLAY FAST". Very few teams truly PLAY FAST. Why?? Coaches often have to give up control in order to do so, and coaches are usually control freaks.
Say and joke all you want about Iona, but they ACTUALLY play fast. Playing fast means getting out into the open court AND playing fast in your halfcourt offense. It means playing a highly increased possessions basketball game.
I think it was Rick Pitino that said that "basketball is over-coached and under-taught." This team truly needs to play fast. While we have won the "fast break points" facet against most if not all of our opponents thus far, we haven't truly played fast until that stretch against Georgia Tech.
I think a comparison of some stats we've analyzed here more than a few times are in order. They won't surprise us too much in light of the game occurrences thus far.
All National Ranks
Poss. per 40 Min. Pts/Poss. Effective FG% (eFG%) Turnover % Off. Reb % FT Rate
St. John's 249 209 266 300 209 204
Iona 140 96 81 279 272 302
Cuse 331 30 159 304 12 130
These stats are more acknowledged indicators for
Scoring, Shooting, Ball Handling, Rebounding, Getting to the Line...
We don't have a lot of possessions every 40 min., not effective shooting the ball, have a high TO ratio, not compensating for the frenetic pace making up ground by rebounding the O-Glass better, and not getting to the line enough.
Theo - actually Iona hasn't been too good with how many possessions/gm as well as the others.
If we protect the ball better and pass more judiciously, TO rate reduction obviously leads to more possessions. More possessions, better shots lead to more O Rebs due to better positioning, etc.
There's a lot of work to be done. For those that want to critique these criteria, they are pretty good, well accepted parameters by statisticians as most of you know. Don't shoot the messenger. Good news is these stats can change quickly as the spread between teams is not drastic. And at the end of the day, we know if the feel of the games gets better, the guys will be winning. that is what will matter.