Possession Stats 101
by Ken Pomeroy on Wednesday, January 26, 2005
If you ever hear the level of success of a team's offense or defense described in terms of points scored or allowed per game, you should ignore it. Among stats published by the NCAA, field goal percentage is much more valuable. But among stats not endorsed by the NCAA, points per possession is better still. A couple of things I saw yesterday used points per game in a misleading way to make a point.
Example 1) Tuesday night at halftime of the Illinois/Wisconsin game, a stat was posted in defense of Doug Gottlieb's claim that Wisconsin was the most overrated team in the Big Ten. It compared the points per game they have given up this season (60.5) to last season (57.2). (If memory serves, the numbers used were during Big Ten play only, where the gap was larger than the overall numbers I am using.)
To which the viewer…