Big Ten Wonk
Thursday, August 04, 2005
 
BONUS mid-hiatus post! On pace....
Big Ten Wonk will return for real on November 1--but your intrepid blogger momentarily interrupts his otherwise total off-season hiatus for a single post on tempo....

Wonk's been running some numbers in the off-season in an attempt to bring some light to the eternal discussion on which conference plays the fastest--and which league plods along the slowest. Blogger extraordinaire Ken Pomeroy, of course, already has data on every team's average number of possessions per game--numbers based on each team's entire season. (More on possession-based stats and tempo here.)

Building on Ken's indispensable endeavors, this blogger thought it would be interesting to zoom in a bit and look specifically at the closed ecosystems of conference play. (BONUS self-promotion! Blogging hath no dedication like that exhibited by a hoops fan parsing the box score of a TCU-UAB game for insight into a conference that no longer exists in anything like its former state.)

So, without further ado, here's how fast the seven "power" conferences played last year, from quickest to most glacial....

Average possessions per game, 2005 (conference games only)
1. ACC (72.2)
2. Pac-10 (71.2)
3. C-USA (68.4)
4. Big 12 (67.1)
5. Big East (66.7)
6. SEC (66.5)
7. Big Ten (63.8)

ACC (average: 72.2)
1. North Carolina (77.6)
2. Maryland (77.6)
3. Clemson (73.4)
4. Georgia Tech (73.3)
5. Duke (73.3)
6. Wake Forest (71.6)
7. Virginia (71.6)
8. Virginia Tech (70.5)
9. Miami (70.0)
10. Florida State (69.0)
11. NC State (66.1)

Pac-10 (average: 71.2)
1. Washington (75.4)

2. Arizona (73.3)
3. USC (72.9)
4. Stanford (72.1)
5. UCLA (71.9)
6. Oregon State (71.8)
7. Arizona State (71.5)
8. Cal (70.7)
9. Oregon (68.8)
10. Washington State (63.1)

C-USA (average: 68.4)
1. Charlotte (72.0)
2. Tulane (71.7)
3. Cincinnati (71.4)
4. Louisville (71.4)
5. UAB (71.3)
6. E. Carolina (70.0)
7. TCU (69.6)
8. Memphis (68.8)
9. South Florida (67.8)
10. Southern Miss. (66.6)
11. Houston (65.9)
12. DePaul (64.9)
13. Marquette (63.7)
14. St. Louis (62.2)

Big 12 (average: 67.1)
1. Texas Tech (69.7)
2. Colorado (69.3)
3. Nebraska (69.3)
4. Iowa State (68.5)
5. Texas (67.1)
6. Oklahoma State (67.0)
7. Kansas (66.8)
8. Kansas State (66.2)
9. Oklahoma (65.9)
10. Missouri (65.5)
11. Baylor (65.0)
12. Texas A&M (64.6)

Big East (average: 66.7)
1. Connecticut (71.9)
2. Villanova (69.6)
3. Providence (69.4)
4. Syracuse (68.5)
5. St. John's (67.1)
6. Seton Hall (66.4)
7. West Virginia (66.3)
8. Boston College (65.2)
9. Pitt (65.1)
10. Notre Dame (65.1)
11. Rutgers (64.7)
12. Georgetown (61.6)

SEC (average: 66.5)
1. Miss. State (69.9)
2. Auburn (68.3)
3. Kentucky (67.8)
4. Georgia (67.1)
5. LSU (66.5)
6. Arkansas (66.0)
7. Mississippi (65.9)
8. Florida (65.6)
9. South Carolina (65.5)
10. Vanderbilt (65.4)
11. Tennessee (65.3)
12. Alabama (64.1)

Big Ten (average: 63.8)
1. Minnesota (67.7)
2. Iowa (66.9)
3. Michigan State (64.7)
4. Penn State (64.7)
5. Ohio State (64.6)
6. Illinois (63.7)
7. Purdue (63.1)
8. Wisconsin (63.0)
9. Michigan (62.2)
10. Northwestern (61.4)
11. Indiana (60.0)

Wonk herewith posts these numbers without further comment. Another pioneering bit of work in the field of cognitive dispersion? Unconscionable sloth and indolence? You make the call!

Nah, I'll return to these when I get the old girl up and running again in November. Until then....
 



wonk back!
email me


a very special wonk
the blog's final days


basics
me, simmons, and 150 million other american males
the four dullest topics for a hoops blog
drama, magnitude, and finality
2007 "power"-conference velocity report
special report: in tedium's path
stop DAD: defensive attention deficit
consistency, threes, and stereotypes
they shoot free throws, don't they?
every rebound needs an adjective
fouls: call fewer or allow more
was norman dale wrong?
what's PPWS?
POT: perimeter-oriented team
symphony of altruists
mammalian theory of extreme home-court advantage
law of november weight change
scoring and preventing points: how to


tempo-free aerials
(conf. games only)
acc
big east
big ten
big XII
pac-10
sec


geek chorus
intro to tempo-free stats
2007 big ten team tempo-free stats
2006 big ten team tempo-free stats
2005 big ten team tempo-free stats
state of the stats, april '06


canonical bloggers
yoni cohen
ken pomeroy
kyle whelliston
ryan kobliska
chris west
brian cook


November 2004
December 2004
January 2005
February 2005
March 2005
April 2005
August 2005
November 2005
December 2005
January 2006
February 2006
March 2006
April 2006
August 2006
September 2006
November 2006
December 2006
January 2007
February 2007
March 2007
April 2007
October 2007