The Bubble

[WTSooner]

One thing I don't like about stats like that is that they can't include the ways defense improves offense. In my opinion, a part of good defense is grabbing and clearing rebounds, getting steals and getting fast break points. What I do know is that our shooting percentage hasn't gone up, our turnovers are barely down (-.5), our points from free throws is only up 1%, our offensive rebounds are down, and our offensive efficiency is the same. I just don't see much evidence that the offense is much better and the improvements we have don't seem to be in the half court game. To me all that indicates that our defense is improved and we have the athletes to take advantage of stops to be get transition buckets.

This intrigued me a bit. I didn't have a good answer. So I asked Ken Pom.

His response was that while we may be having similar results, we're doing it against much better defenses. This year, we've played the 10th toughest set of defenses to date. Last year I think we ranked in the 80's. So against MUCH tough defense, we're having similar results. That, coupled with the little things we're doing better (getting more FT's, making a higher % of FT's, etc).