I decided to take a look at his Penn State numbers in a little more detail. First some background on the graphs:

Background info

First, some notes on the graphs:

• the data only includes the regular season, the Big Ten Tournament game against Illinois is not included.
• the efficiency numbers don’t distinguish between home and away games but SW says that the trendline should smooth out the home/away differences.
• these are raw efficiency numbers that are not adjusted for the opponent so it’s possible that up or down trends are related to the quality of opposition.
• for offense, the higher the number the better, thus upward trends are good. For defense, lower numbers are better, so downward trends are good.
  trendlines are used to smooth out data.
• Spartan’s Weblog used a third order polynomial trendline. I’m not sure that was the most appropriate trendline to use but SW doesn’t go into his rationale for the choice. Also, some of the reader comments imply there aren’t enough data points for the analysis to be meaningful.

Still the data is interesting to look at.

PSU Efficiency Chart

Here’s Penn State’s chart.

When SW analyzes it, he basically says the defense was poor all year long, the offense started out ok, went downhill with Claxton’s injury, then rebounded as the freshman matured.

I wanted to take this a step further.

Big Ten Tournament

First, I know for reasons of consistency across all teams, Spartans Weblog chose to use only regular season data. Since I was only interested in PSU’s data, I decided to take a look at the numbers including the Big Ten Tournament game against Illinois.

Here’s that graph:

Efficiency Margins

The difference between a team’s offensive and defensive efficiency numbers is called their efficiency margin. Since, by definition, teams have the same number of possessions in any specific game, if you have a positive efficiency margin for a game, you have scored more points than your opponent and thus won the game.

Here’s a graph with Spartan’s Weblog’s choice of a 3rd order polynomial trendline of PSU’s efficiency margin for all their Big Ten games, including tournament play.

Other Trendlines:

Spartan’s Weblog never described his rationale behind choosing a 3rd order polynomial to plot his trendlines. I know little about what defines the appropriate order to choose. I do know that an N-order polynomial will plot a graph that has at most N-1 hills and valleys. So his choice of a 3rd order for the trendline means the graph will have at most one hill and one valley. We see that in the chart of the offensive efficiency. The defensive efficiency just has one hill.

As an experiment, I decided to plot the efficiency margin charts using 2nd through 6th order polynomials, thus providing a graph with at most one hill or valley, in the first case, and five hills and valleys in the last case. Here are those charts.

Efficiency Margin 2nd Order Polynomial Trendline

Efficiency Margin 4th Order Polynomial Trendline

Efficiency Margin 5th Order Polynomial Trendline

Efficiency Margin 6th Order Polynomial Trendline

As you can easily see, the 4th through 6th order polynomials look remarkably similar. They do differ from the 3rd order polynomial in that the 3rd order shows a season ending downturn while the 4th through 6th show a year end improvement (as does the 2nd order polynomial). Someone with a better knowledge of trendlines than I can argue which is more meaningful but my “blue and white goggles”, “glass half full”, “DeChellis lackey” viewpoint is going to choose to dismiss the 3rd order and go with one of the other views.

We are now halfway through conference play so it’s time to take another look at the key tempo free team statistics. I’ll run through many of the numbers and note any significant change for Penn State from the previous report that I published on January 15th.

Penn State remains 7th in the league in pace of play averaging 63.3 possessions per game which is down from the 64.7 possessions two weeks ago. This is undoubtedly a conscious decision that was made following Claxton’s injury.

Two weeks ago we were a remarkable second in the conference in offensive efficiency with a 107 rating. We’ve since dropped back to the middle of the pack with a 101 rating. We remain next to last in the conference in defensive efficiency. That means we’ve fallen from seventh to ninth in efficiency margin with a negative 11.8 rating. Not surprisingly, Michigan and Northwestern are the teams behind us.

Quite naturally our shooting percentage mirror our efficiency numbers. We’re middle of the pack in two point and three point shooting but 10th and 9th respectively in two point and three point field goal defense (with a huge delta between us and 8th place Minn in 3pt defense). That doesn’t bode well for us tonight since Purdue is the best three point shooting team in the conference. Of course the good thing with three point shooting is that pretty much no one is always on. Every team is going to have an off night some night, perhaps tonight is it for Purdue.

We made a ton of free throws against Michigan State which has solidly in fifth place in the league in free throw proficiency (FT prof measures how well you get to the line and make your free throws). Unfortunately, that’s entirely do to the fact that we’ve managed to get to the line a lot. We sure haven’t been making our free throws when we get there though as we are now dead last in the conference in FT shooting percentage at 61.1%.

Losing Claxton has meant that we have tumbled from previously being second in the conference in offensive rebounding to fifth. We haven’t slipped near as much on the defensive glass however. Previously we were tops in the conference, now we are second only a hair behind Indiana.

We continue to protect the ball well and are third in the conference in turnover rate just a shade higher than we were two weeks ago when we were second. Unfortunately, our soft defense doesn’t create many turnovers and we are only 8th in that category.

With out low turnover rate, you might think that we would sit high in the conference in assist to turnover ratio. Surprisingly, that’s not true and we are way under 1.0, 0.93 to be exact, in our A/TO ratio. That’s not good and, I believe, a symptom of our lackadaisical passing. Just the opposite is true on defense. Our soft play lets out opponents work the ball looking for the easy shot. Thus we are next to last in the conference in A/TO defense.

That’s a quick synopsis of where we stand with out tempo free numbers. Feel free to play around with the tool to check out other teams.

Because this is year long data, the numbers for Penn State don’t reflect the loss of Geary Claxton and thus the tool’s utility for this game can be questioned.

However, I’m still publishing it because the data is most certainly valid for other league games and people might want to make use of it.

Don’t know that there’s much to say here. Indiana has a solid lead in many of the categories. We do have a slight edge in offensive rebounding but with Claxton’s loss, who knows if we can sustain that. Turnovers are the one area where we look ok. We are better at protecting the ball and have a very slight edge in causing turnovers. That will certainly have to be a stat we maintain if we are going to have any chance on Sunday.

While we are only four games into conference play, some trends are definitely beginning to emerge. Rather than go through each of the categories and list where Penn State stands, I’ll just comment on those categories where we stand out – good or bad.

In one of the more surprising stats to surface, PSU is second in the conference it Offensive Efficiency. Our 106.8 rate (that’s the number of points we score per every 100 possessions) trails only Wisconsin’s 114.8. Wisconsin’s number is probably also a surprise to many observers. The efficiency of their offense is masked by their pace of play. Wisconsin is the most deliberate team in the league at 62.1 possessions per game, but they score on a significant number of those possessions.

Of course, now that you know how efficient we are on offense it should come as no surprise that we are next to last in defensive efficiency at 110.8 (only Northwestern is worse than us). Once again, our old bugaboo defense hurts us.

A quick bit of subtraction shows that we have a negative efficiency margin of about 4 points per 100 possession. We’re seventh in the league with that stat and you can probably guess that the four teams worse than us are Michigan, Iowa, Illinois, and Northwestern.

Digging beneath the offensive efficiency number shows that it’s our two point FG shooting that’s carrying the load for us. We score at a 52.6% on our two point shots just a hair behind Wisconsin’s 52.7% rate. We’re smack dab in the middle of the pack with our 3PT shooting but next to last in FT shooting (yes, there actually is someone in the league worse than us from the charity stripe – Iowa).

What’s causing our defensive woes? Most people would probably guess 3 point defense, and they would be partially right. Opponents are shooting three’s at a 40.5% rate against us which ranks 10th in the conference. When you couple that with our worst in the conference 58.2% two point defense, you come up with a worst in the league 59.2 effective field goal percentage for our opponents. That’s the same issue that we had last year.

Because of our incredible rebounding efforts against our first three opponents, our lackluster effort last night only marginally impacted our standing in the league. We are second in the conference behind perennial leader Michigan State in offensive rebounding and we lead the conference in defensive rebounding.

We’ve also done a very good job of protecting the ball. I think the average fan has no concept of how often teams turn the ball over and thus they fail to recognize when their team actually protects the ball well. Right now we are second in the conference with a turnover rate of 19.3%. Only Purdue at 18.5% is better than us. Unfortunately, we aren’t particularly good at creating turnovers, forcing them at only a 7th in the league 18.6% rate, which means we actually have a negative turnover margin despite taking such good care of the ball.

Our assist to turnover rate is 1.0, which is average. However, that number is deceiving. It would appear to be acceptable but our low turnover rate masks a problem with assists. We are actually next to last in the league in assisted baskets. We don’t move the ball well enough and too many of our shots are unassisted chucks. Better ball movement would fix that problem.

One other stat stands out. Not because it’s an outlier but because it’s average when you wouldn’t think it should be. That’s free throw proficiency. Free throw proficiency ostensibly measures how well you get to the free throw line and MAKE your free throws. Given our poor free throw shooting, one might think that our free throw proficiency would be poor also. Surprisingly, it’s not. We are actually fifth in the league (the actual formula is made free throws divided by field goal attempts). My guess would be that our performance in that stat isn’t due to our ability to get to the line, it’s probably more so an indicator of how willing our opponents are to go ahead and foul us and put us on the line. In fact, we’ve taken 96 free throw attempts which is WAY ahead of Ohio State’s second place 83 attempts.

I’ll update these numbers every couple of weeks. Hope you find them worthwhile.

We are just about the midpoint of the season (PSU has 15 games under their belt), so this is as good a time as any to review the tempo free stats for the B10 teams. Details are in the interactive chart above but here are the leaders along with Penn State’s spot in the rankings.

Pace
1. Indiana 69.9
4. Penn State 66.8

Offensive Efficiency
1. Indiana 114 pts per 100 possessions
5. Penn State 197 pts per 100 possessions

Defensive Efficiency
1. Wisconsin 82.4 pts per 100 possessions
9. Penn State 95.7 pts per 100 possessions

Efficiency Margin
1. Wisconsin 26.2 pts per 100 possessions
6. Penn State 11.6 pts per 100 possessions

2PT FG Percentage
1. Indiana 53.8%
7. Penn State 49.5%

2PT FG Percent Defense
1. Wisconsin 40.6%
9. Penn State 46.8%

3PT FG Percentage
1. Minnesota 38.4%
9. Penn State 32.4%

3PT FG Percentage Defense
1. Ohio State 28.4%
8. Penn State 32.8%

Effective FG Percentage
1. Indiana 54.4
7. Penn State 49.2

Effective FG Percentage Defense
1. Ohio State 43.1%
8. Penn State 47.7

Free Throw Percentage
1. Indiana 74.7%
10. Penn State 60.3%

Free Throw Proficiency
1. Indiana 35.2%
10.Penn State 19.9%

Free Throw Rate Defense
1. Ohio State 19.9%
5. Penn State 35.0%

Offensive Rebound Percentage
1. Michigan State 44.4%
2. Penn State 41.1%

Defensive Rebound Percentage
1. Wisconsin 72.5%
5. Penn State 70.0%

Turnover Rate
1. Wisconsin 17.8%
2. Penn State 18.6%

Turnover Rate Defense
1. Minnesota 27.9%
6. PSU 21.7%

Assist/Turnover Rate
1. Northwestern 1.57
3. Penn State 1.23

Assist/Turnover Rate Defense
1. Purdue 0.62
6. Penn State 0.90

Assisted Baskets
1. Northwestern 73.7%
6. Penn State 58.4%

Assisted Basket Defense
1. Illinois 48.2%
4. Penn State 57.0%

Turnover Rate Margin
1. Northwestern 8.8%
5. PSU 3.1%

As someone who has followed the stats for a while, it’s a real pleasure to not see us at the bottom of all the defensive lists. Improving our defense was our most critical need coming into the season and we appear to have made significant progress.

Wisconsin pretty much owns the stats against us. We do have a better offensive rebounding percentage and we do turn the ball over less than they do. However, countering that, Wisconsin is a better defensive rebounding team and they force more turnovers than we do. We will likely have to win both the rebounding and turnover battles to have any chance of winning.

Here’s my user visualization model of the B10 Tempo Free Stats as of today. I’ve preloaded the entry page with the efficiency margin numbers because I think they raise an interesting question.

Clearly, Minnesota has been playing well. Their efficiency numbers put them right up their in the elite of the Big Ten. The magic question what should help be answered this weekend is “Are the Gopher numbers high because of their play or their opponents?”

Tubby booked a cream puff schedule to build his guys’ confidence for the season. Will that confidence carry over on the road in the Big Ten are will their bubble burst? The answer should come in just a few hours.

Here’s the four factor analysis tool with data through games of 01/10/08. It’s preloaded with Minnesota vs Penn State but by following directions in the legend you can compare any of the teams that you would like.

Minnesota has the edge in offensive and defensive efficiency, causing turnovers, and free throw efficiency (getting fouled and making free throws).

Penn State has the edge in offensive and defensive rebounding, preventing turnovers, and free throw defense (i.e. not fouling the opponents when they are shooting).

The logical questions that follow are can Penn State negate Minnesota’s efficiency numbers through rebounding by minimizing the number of attempts that the Gophers at the same time they increase their own shot attempts. The other key to the game will be who wins the turnover battle – the irresistible force trying to create them (Minn) or the immovable object trying to avoid them (PSU).

Also, while Minnesota owns the free throw advantage Penn State has shown some signs in their B10 games that they have gotten past the shooting woes that plagued them during non-conference play (OOC FT % = 59.5%, B10 play = 73.5%) while Minnesota has continued to shoot in the low 60′s. If PSU can continue to shoot their free throws they should win the battle from the charity stripe, particularly since they will be the home team.

These teams match up so evenly that I’m going to predict that this becomes the first game of ours this year that truly comes down to free throw shooting. I say if PSU can shoot above 70% for the game from the stripe, they win.