First in chart form:
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sources: kenpom, ncaa record book, kpi-sports[/caption]The first surprise for me is how little per-possession efficiency has changed in that time span - just 0.5 points per 100 possessions. There are two spikes in the graph. One is a smaller mid-decade bump and one is last year which was mentioned above, but those gains (and more) have, again, been given back.
It's no surprise then that tempo and points track fairly closely. Both have decreased by about 4 per game over 14 seasons. 0.5 points per 100 possessions in efficiency is probably imperceptible, but 4 possessions is going to be noticeable. The interesting takeaway here is that the players aren't necessarily "worse". We often hear one and dones being a reason that college basketball isn't as good, or the AAU influence, and while those both probably factor into longer term trends, the equilibrium between offense and defense hasn't changed much on each possession.
How has offense changed at a lower level?
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source: kenpom[/caption]FT rate increased markedly last year as officials called games tighter. That's mostly stopped this year, though teams are shooting more FT than they did in 2012 and 2013. Turnovers are on a steady decline, making it hard to see how the game is getting sloppier as we so often here.
The flip side of less turnovers is more shots being taken. And in that case, things don't look great. We're definitely seeing more misses. Three point shooting and free throws are at their lowest levels in this period and two point percentage could set a record-low as well. It may be time to move the three-point line back from 20'9" to 19'9". That one never made much sense to me.
But what about the power conferences? Those are the ones we watch the most. Are they tracking with DI? The average statistics assume changes at Weber State matter as much as changes in Washington State. It would be a nice, egalitarian world if that were true, but it's just not. You don't see the smaller conferences unless you go searching for them, and it's probably fair to assume that when they get to play the big boys early in the year, the power conference teams are the one dictating pace and style more often than not.
So, more chartage:
When you consider only the top six conferences, you can see that pace of play has fallen by much more than the rest of Division I since 2002. While the whole of DI has seen 3.7 fewer possessions, the average power conference game* is down 6 possessions, going from slightly above average in 2002 to almost 2 possessions per game below average this season.
The ACC is a big offender. Some of that is an influx of new teams, but former running stalwart Duke is a mid-tempo team, even by today's standards. In raw terms, the average Duke team has eight less possessions each game than it did in 2002. Jim Boeheim and Syracuse are similar, using 10 fewer possessions last year than in 2002, before rebounding a bit this year.
I don't have any clue what to make of this. Is it just cyclical? When we look at just the six power conferences, that's around just 18% of the total Division I membership.
Kenpom weighed in with some thoughts earlier in the season. The main idea to takeaway is that measures which are only designed to increase pace of play, for example lowering the shot clock to 30 seconds, will come at the expense of per possession efficiency. It's important that the NCAA takes action to both increase the quality and number of possessions. Some might not think we've reached the critical point yet, but as I watch #7 Arizona and Oregon State locked in a 24-24 brawl at the under-16 of the second half, I think we are.
*Averages are not weighted by teams in each conference. POWER average is a simple average of the six conferences' individual pace.
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