Another tempo-free look at the season so far

Purdue has opened the B10 season 4-0.  Surprisingly, that's something that the Big Three had not managed to do until this season.  Moreover, two of the wins have been on the road and by large margins--23 over Michigan and 15 over Penn State.  

To put those victories in perspective, the Boilers' biggest conference road win last year was by 12 over Michigan State.  The year before, it was by just 8 over Minnesota.  Only by going all the way back to the 2008 conference season can we find road victories of comparable margin.  That year, the Baby Boilers went on the road and spanked Penn State by 22, Northwestern by 15, and Michigan by 14. (Damn, sometimes I forget how awesome they were that season.) In any case, starting this season with two dominating road victories is pretty impressive.  Add that to a hard-fought but solid victory over Northwestern and a beat-down of Iowa, and things are looking good.

No one would dispute that all four of these wins have been against the bottom half of the Big Ten.  The question is whether they can still tell us something about this year's Boilers.  To take a stab at answering this question, I'm going to compare this season's four conference victories with four conference games from last season against teams of similar quality (according to KenPom's rankings).  Specifically I'll look at the 2010 games vs. Michgan, @ Illinois, and both home and away against Penn State. 

 As always, if you don't like numbers, beware.  Now, on with the stat-laden pontificating.

So here's a chart that displays the season-long four factors numbers for both 2010 and 2011, as well as the average numbers for the team in the 4 conference games of 2011 and the 4 games I selected from 2010.

	2010 	2011 	2010 	2011
	Season	 Season Select 	Select
ORtg 	108.3 	114.5 	109.4 	118.6 
DRtg 	85.8 	82.3 	93.4 	91.1 
Pace 	67.4 	68.2 	64.5 	67.8 
- - - - - OFFENSE - - - - -
EFG 	49.1 	52.1 	53.9 	55.2 
TO% 	16.3 	17.0 	16.5 	16.2 
RB%	29.6 	35.4	28.2 	37.6 
FTR 	38.6 	36.5 	44.6 	44.0 
- - - - - DEFENSE - - - - -
EFG	44.8 	42.8 	45.9 	45.7 
TO% 	23.7	24.6 	22.4 	19.0 
RB% 	31.4 	28.4 	28.8 	22.7 
FTR  	36.8 	30.2 	31.4 	26.6 

OK, that's a lot of numbers.  What to make of them?  The first thing I want to check is how the averages from the 4 Selected Games from 2010 match up with the season-long averages for 2010.  

2010 "Selected Games" compared to 2010 Season Averages

- - - - - OFFENSE - - - - 
EFG  	+4.8	slightly better
TO% 	+0.2	even
RB% 	-1.4	roughly even
FTR 	+6.0	better 


- - - - - DEFENSE - - - - -
EFG 	+1.1 	roughly even
TO% 	-1.3	roughly even
RB% 	-2.6	roughly even
FTR 	-5.4	slightly better

This comparison shows (as one would expect) that the 2010 team's performance against middling to below-average teams was better than their average performance.  

Now let's make a similar comparison for the 2011 season.  This isn't quite the same, since the most challenging part of the Boilers' schedule is still coming up.  Being realistic, we can probably expect the team's overall four factors averages to be a bit worse by the end of the Big Ten season, simply because we'll be playing so many strong teams between now and then.  Still, the numbers should not change drastically.

2011 Conference Games compared to 2011 Season Averages

- - - - - OFFENSE - - - - -
EFG 	+3.1 	slightly better
TO% 	+0.8 	even
RB% 	+2.2	roughly even
FTR 	+7.5	better 


- - - - - DEFENSE - - - - -
EFG 	+2.9	roughly even
TO%	-5.6 	slightly worse
RB%	-5.7 	slightly better
FTR 	-3.6 	slightly better

On offense, the differences between the 2011 season-long averages and the conference game averages match up very well with those from 2010.  Compared to the season-long averages, in the 4 selected games from each season, the team tended to shoot better and get to the free throw line more often, while turning the ball over and grabbing offensive boards at roughly the same rate.

On defense the two seasons are slightly different.  In 2011 B10 play, the team has been forcing turnovers at a rate below the season-long average, but it has been cleaning the defensive glass better.  As Coach Painter has often emphasized, turnovers and rebounding offset each other.  And aside from that, the two seasons' differences between the selected games and the team's season averages are similar.  Roughly equal field goal defense and a better job of keeping teams from getting to the line.

What does this show?  I think it suggests that the relation between the team's performance in games against "so-so" B10 competition and its season-long performance is somewhat consistent, especially on offense.  And that, in turn, suggests that if the team has put up better numbers in 2011 conference play than in the 4 selected games from 2010, that improvement is likely a real one, not to be shrugged off by simply saying that "Purdue hasn't played anyone yet." So now let's look at the differences in the four factors between the 2011 conference games and the 4 Selected Games from 2010.

2011 Conference games compared to 2010 Selected Games

- - - - - OFFENSE - - - - -
EFG  		+1.3 		roughly even
TO% 		-0.3 		even
RB% 		+9.4 		better
FTR 		-0.6		even


- - - - - DEFENSE - - - - -
EFG 		-0.2 		roughly even
TO% 		-3.4		slightly worse
RB%		-6.1	 	better
FTR 		-4.8 		slightly better

Sure enough, the 2011 team looks better, particularly on the offensive and defensive glass (which had been a perennial weakness of Matt Painter's teams).  It also appears to be better at keeping other teams off the foul line (is this an uphost of JJ's ability to avoid the quick foul this year?).  The only slight downturn has been in forcing turnovers, which is something one might have reasonably expected with the departure of Chris Kramer.  

I think that every game tells you something about a team, regardless of the quality of opponent.  The way a team wins or loses tells you something about how they can reasonably be expected to perform down the road.  And I think the above numbers suggest that it's justified to expect pretty big things out of this year's team, even if the majority of their big games haven't been played yet.  Both over the course of the season and in the conference games already played, the team has shown significant and consistent improvement over last year's team.  Add that to the fact that we have one of our better 3-point shooters coming back from injury soon and a young big man in Carroll who appears to be quickly improving, and I truly think that the sky's the limit for this team.