With such a young hoops team in 2010-11, “Statistically Challenged” has spent the first 13 games of Nevada’s basketball season waiting to find out just what kind of Wolf Pack club the Silver and Blue faithful have on their hands.  Now that the Out of Conference (OOC) schedule is over and Nevada sports a woeful 3-10 record, the identity of the team is a lot clearer. Nevada has plenty of athletes, depth and rebounding, but so far have to shoot the ball accurately.

Why use Tempo Free Stats?

There are a lot of new members at Silver and Blue Sports, so here’s a quick review or what we do with “Statistically Challenged”. The goal is to shed light on the positive and negative attributes of the Nevada basketball team using “Tempo Free” statistics, mostly from Ken Pomeroy’s website.  This means that we are most concerned with how efficient a team or player is per possession not the gross number of accumulated points, rebounds or assists.

Why do this? It stands to reason that different teams play at different speeds. The fastest tempo team in the NCAA is currently averaging 79.8 possessions per game. The slowest team averages only 59.7 possessions per game.  The team with the faster style of play will generate more points, rebounds, assists, turnovers and every other imaginable statistic.  But this doesn’t mean they are a better team. So how can we accurately compare these two teams?

By breaking down the measures of performance into their fundamental unit, which is possession, or more to the point, points per possession.  The team that scores more points per possession will nearly always be better and win games.

Ken Pomeroy’s Nevada page can be found HERE.

The Nevada Offense:

What immediately jumps off the page is how drastically the offensive efficiency has fallen from last season when the Pack featured the 42^nd most efficient offense in the nation.  In fact, should the offensive efficiency not improve, this will be the worst Nevada offense since 2000-01.  Looking at the “Four Factors” it is easy to see why Nevada is struggling. Effective FG% (properly weights 3pt shots to come up with an overall measure of shooting efficiency) is down to 45% compared to 53.4% last year. Also this year’s team is turning the ball over on more than 22% of their possessions compared to 16.7% last year.

Conversely, this year’s Pack is a much better offensive rebounding team and gets to the FT line more often than last season. These were major complaints about last year’s team. The frequency with which the Pack gets to the line is even more impressive when we consider that this number is not being padded by intentional fouls at the end of games.

Hunt has come into his own as a junior (Photo by Mark Rauh of SilverandBlueSports.com)

These are the miscellaneous components that explain the Four Factors:

The Pack is (no surprise) a poor shooting team.  That’s something that usually goes with being inexperienced, and Nevada is clearly inexperienced (ranking dead last in experience of all D-1 programs).  The poor shooting is even clearer when compared to last season, as Nevada was in the top 25% in every measure and much better than that in 2pt FG% and FT%. The turnovers and having too many shots blocked are important, but they become minor factors when compared to the huge drop in 2ptFG%.  The simple fact is that Nevada is currently in the bottom half of the entire NCAA in all of these categories.

Until we see better PG play and better shooting/shot selection out of the offense the struggles will continue.

The Nevada Defense:

There has been some talk of the improved defense with this year’s team, but that is simply not the case so far. Last year’s team featured Nevada’s worst defense since at least the 1999-2000 season and this year’s defense is thus far no better. Certainly there are differences. This year’s team often plays with more aggression and hustle, but that’s lead to what appears to be the biggest problem. Opponents are shooting almost 42 free throws for every 100 field goals. Some of this is due to intentional fouls at the end of close games, but it’s been common to see opponents shooting 1 and 1 with more than 10 minutes left in a half.  Even bad free throw shooting teams are far more efficient at the foul line than they are shooting field goals.  Outside of that the Out of Conference defensive play is quite similar to last season.

On the positive side, these numbers do not tell everything about this year’s team. The on-ball defense is better. Opponents are not getting to the hoop as easily and they are not shooting 3pt FGs as well.  As the rotation is tightened up the defense should become more consistent. Finally, this team is far less experienced than the ’09 team and will only improve as they head into the conference season.

As negative as these numbers appear, perhaps the most important measure is the youth of the team. While some fans are so frustrated that they minimize or don’t accept that as a valid reason for the poor win/loss record to date, it’s still the best and most logical explanation for what has thus far been a disappointing season.  The OOC games were always going to be an extended training camp; a period that would allow Coach Carter to get the new players acclimated to D-1 basketball and help him to determine how to share out the minutes to the many new players on the team.

Nevada was never going to get an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament.  That was out the door they lost back to back games in L.A. against Pacific and Pepperdine.  But they can work toward being a dangerous team come the WAC tournament.

The sky is the limit for Burton (Photo by Mark Rauh SilverandBlueSports.com)

Individual Players:

Statistically, the two players that stand out the most are junior center Dario Hunt and freshman Deontè Burton.

Dario is currently the nation’s 24^th best offensive rebounder. He’s doubled his importance on the offensive end, as he’s forcing opponents into almost 6 fouls per 40 minutes. On top of that, he’s hitting 68.5% of his FTs—-a fantastic improvement from his first two seasons—-and he’s ranked in several other important measures of performance. He’s improved far more than almost anyone expected.

Burton is barely tapping into his potential, but so far he has a much higher assist rate than former WAC Freshman of the Year Armon Johnson did during his freshman year. He’s forcing opponents into 6.4 fouls per 40 minutes (103^rd nationally), and he’s 155^th nationally at getting to the FT line and is leading the team in FT percentage (over 80%).  These are all important traits of a good point guard, and I look forward to seeing him develop over the rest of the season.