In Rounds 1 & 2 of the tourney so far, MSU faced two decently stout opponents in Bryant and New Mexico, resulting in games that weren’t pushover blowouts but were actually almost uncomfortably competitive through the first halves. Let’s dive into the the stats for the games – the “Four Factors ”.
MSU’s Rebounding and Free Throw Rate correlate really strongly with the first and second round wins. It’s tough for teams to make up for those significant differentials in the other two categories despite the expectation that Rebounding (20%) and Free Throw Rate (15%) only cover 35% of win success.
Add to that, vs Bryant, the Spartans’ 51.4% effective Field Goal percentage (40% of win success) dwarfed the Bulldogs’, despite the Bulldogs being much more careful with the ball (25% of win success). Against New Mexico, that the Lobos were shooting moderately better overall gives a glimpse of how they were able to keep the score closer than most folks in Green were hoping for – certainly in the first half – before the deficit + defense, and a couple of late turnovers, just became too much for New Mexico.
Rick Osentoski-Imagn Images
But how did these numbers compare with the Season stats for MSU?
eFG% for our guys in Green notched around 51.1% while holding opponents to 46.1%. Against Bryant we were a bit ahead and versus New Mexico, we were a few percentage points behind.
Turnovers in the Tourney games were held below the season average of 14.2% – part of that may be tourney-time focus, but also remember this aspect of the Spartans’ game cleaned up a bit through the latter part of the regular season – with better passing and really pushing the fast break as well.
Rick Osentoski-Imagn Images
Free throw rate against Bryant dropped against the season average of 29.4% on the high volume of shots (70; normally the Green & White put up 59-60). However, it got a decent boost on lower shot volume and more aggressive driving by the smaller lineup against New Mexico – even managing to get the Lobo’s big man, Nelly Joseph, into foul trouble and then out of the game with almost three tocks left on the clock. However, the pure free throw make rate below 68% in that game meant there were a few points that never made it onto the board – just being back at 78% season average would have been good for an additional three points of cushion and/or an earlier Lobo backbreaker. Also 22-28 just looks a lot better than 19-28.
Rebounding is something Izzo has emphasized all his career and this season and these most recent two tourney games are no different. D-rebounding got a boost in both games over the 75.6% season average. However, against Joseph and UNM’s other bigs with with our series of smaller but modular and very active lineups, the opportunity for offensive boards came down slightly.
Rick Osentoski-Imagn Images
So where do the Spartans go from here – well, this week they are certainly going to focus on free throw shooting, but as we saw above – even correcting to the season average might not be the biggest net gain (though certainly an extra three points will be welcome the rest of the way). The Spartans will get the biggest bang for their buck drilling on offense to reduce the turnovers and converting clean opportunities to put the ball through the net. We saw enough point-blank shots that didn’t drop the last two games, as well as wide open shots that rimmed out (or lodged between rim and backboard). Fortunately, there weren’t too many ill-advised shots. Though against UNM that the shot clock got a bit late several times meant the offense wasn’t running quite the way it needed to – part of that was the inside game not being fully on. The corrections will also mean focusing on positioning, communication, and not forcing the ball places – not that we had a lot of that last piece this season, but you can bet Oh, Miss! is pouring over tape and studying our lanes on breaks. Basically, it’s back to some of the basics – as Izzo mentioned in a presser this week, defense and rebounding got the team through the season, not trying to be offensive superstars.
Ken Blaze-Imagn Images
Just for fun we took a look at some of the national stats for the MSU matchup with Mississippi. O logged the full preview here , but stats-wise, this isn’t the scariest team we’ve seen. They have a strong A/T ratio 1.57 (good for 14th in the land) and are among the nation’s leaders in turnover margin (5th – at 5.2 per game) and straight up steals per game (28th – at 8.8 per game).
For MSU’s part, our A/T ratio of 1.46 is good for 35th (Gonzaga is #1 at 2.07). Though for pure assist volume, MSU’s 586 Assists (to 401 Turnovers) or 16.7 Assists per game (22nd) dwarfs Ol’ Miss’ 497 Assists (with 316 Turnovers) whose 14.2 per game average puts them about 126th. (Gonzaga leads with 19.7 Assists/game.)
However, for other stats, like Bench-Points/game where MSU sits 5th nationally at 34.5 (Southern U is #1 at 39.2), the Ol’ Miss numbers start to fade.
Fast Break ppg: MSU is 3rd at 16.1 (Milwaukee: 18.4; btw, New Mexico was 4th at 15.8 ppg, though they didn’t seem to push much)
Blocks/game: MSU tied for 40th: 4.5 (UConn: 6.2)
Opp FG% at 40.4% MSU sits 23rd (Tennessee: 38.2%)
FTA/G: MSU’s 22.5 ranks 31st (Winthrop: 28.5)
FT% MSU’s 77.6% ranks 23rd (Wisco 82.6%)
Rebounding Margin: 9 ranks 2nd (St. Mary’s (CA): 10)
and MSU’s 11-point Scoring Margin sits 18th (Duke: 21)
While Ol Miss, wasn’t listed on the first page of the official stat site for any of these. They are a solid SEC team that finished their league tied with KY who can certainly do some damage picking pockets and just running an efficient offense – or just getting hot from deep in the tourney. Anyhow, take a look at O’s piece and enjoy Friday’s game.
Go Green!