A little KenPom curiosity on defense.

[DanL53]

They say defense wins games. By the way, who are "they"? They say a lot of things and usually I completely agree with them. In fact, it has gotten so that if they say it, I believe it almost without question.

Which is how something odd just happened. I was looking at KenPom and thinking about our #50 AdjD rating, and how it had gone from about 30 at the start of January, all the way to just over 100 after the first eight Big Ten games, and now we'd worked that sucker back down to 50!

I was pretty proud of that and that's when I noticed and started comparing the AdjO and AdjD ratings of KenPom's top 25 teams (We're #21 by the way.) Well, let me just show you what I noticed.

Offense:
6,29,11,4,1,5,25,2,12,15,49,19,13,28,18,3,8,99,39,17,24,42,21,64,44

Defense:
2,1,3,20,48,17,5,66,25,15,7,13,36,16,35,130,81,6,22,62,50,19,57,11,27

Of course all this changes by the second with KenPom. But at this moment:

There are 12 teams whose defense is ranked higher than their offense. One tie. And 12 teams whose offense is ranked higher than their defense.

But look at the first three teams. The top ranked defensive teams according to KenPom. And then it occurs to me. We went 4-4 while dropping our defensive ratings to just over 100. We went 7-2 while improving to 50.

I guess we can believe what they say. In this case, defense wins games.

 

[icantfindausernamethatisntused]

Offense matters just as much as defense. You can manipulate the numbers in a different way and look at the top 10 defensive teams and notice that 3 of them (Florida, Temple, and Rhode Island) are all ranked outside the top 50 overall and I don't think any will get an at-large birth into the NCAA tournament. On the other hand, the top 10 offensive teams are all likely to make the NCAA tournament with the worst team being Indiana.

In 05/06 Iowa ranked as the top defensive team in the country. While we were certainly very good, it didn't assure us of making a deep run in the tournament.

 

[DodgerHawki]

I would say it means that defense and offense wins games. Iowa's defense has improved a lot recently, but did that coincide with playing much worse offensive teams like Nebraska, PSU, Rutgers and no Wisconsin and Ohio State? Probably a bit of both.

I realize Pomeroy adjusts his numbers for the opposition, but Wisconsin absolutely destroyed Iowa's defense in the two games this year. The Badgers scored 82 points in 53 possessions at Madison, and 74 in 56 possessions in the rematch. Hide the women and children, Wisconsin did whatever it wanted to do against Iowa's defense in those two games. And Minnesota score 75 points in 61 possessions in the game at the Barn. Just that Iowa's offense was a bit better in that game.

I wholeheartedly agree that Iowa's defense has been better (they are passing the eye test). But it's impossible to ignore that the level of offense recently has not been at Wisconsin or Ohio State's levels. It was very encouraging that Iowa held Indiana (an elite offense) to under a point per possession.

 

[Hawkeye2222]

these are the teams that have scored over 80 points
ISU 90 points
Wisconsin 82 points

and that's it.

6 other teams scored 70-79 points, the others score 4 others scored 65-69 the rest scored between 44-63 points, IA has been solid defensively all season long. and Wooden is the 1st to say Offense entertains the fans but defense wins championship.

 

[Suterman]

Everyone on the Iowa team and their coach will tell you that our recent run has been fueled by the defense. Our offense has improved as well, our shooting has been better too. But the trigger has been defensive intensity.