What you may have missed last night:

1) Miami Ohio and Kent State both won tight MAC road games, staying on a collision course for a March 2 showdown between the conference’s two most deserving at-large teams. Miami’s win was tainted by buzzer-beating controversy.

The headline on the above Miami link at the time of this posting:

RedHawks Pull Out Close 54-54 Win at Ball State

This article explains why the game should have gone to overtime.

[Update: the Muncie Star Press has produced a brief documentary video of the final moments.]

2) There was a rare late-season showdown to settle the debate between the nation’s biggest underachievers. Missouri won, er…lost, 74-71 to UNLV.

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I got a few thoughtful responses on a contradiction posed last Friday regarding teams with efficient offenses that don’t get many assists. Dear reader Matt broke out some numbers…

Ken,

Your post about assist percentage and its correlation to efficient offense was interesting. A possible explanation for the fact that Duke and Villanova have efficient offenses but low assist percentage could be that they have 3 players that score an overwhelming proportion of their offense. Consider:

Duke

Reddick, Williams and Ewing account for 66.2% of their scoring.

Villanova

Ray, Sumpter and Foye account for a very similar 66% of their scoring.

By contrast very efficient offenses like Wake Forest and Illinois have much lower proportions for their top 3 scorers.

Wake Forest 56.2%

Illinois 52.4%

UNC which has been repeatedly lauded for their unselfish, share-the-ball attitude has a very low 50.5%.

It would seem reasonable that if a smaller number of players were responsible for a team’s scoring there would be fewer opportunities for assists during the normal course of a game.

Great website!

Matt

It can’t be disputed that an efficient offense without a lot of assists means that the team has players that are able to score on their own. I think this tidbit that Matt uncovered is a function of that. ‘Nova is the poster child for this kind of team, with three players that can regularly create their own shot.

The third team that fell into the high efficiency/low assists bin was Texas. They never had the dominating trio to which Matt refers. But it’s not a coincidence that the Longhorns offense has been noticeably weaker after losing one of their scorers, PJ Tucker. By contrast, both Villanova and Duke have withstood prolonged absences from starters without any impact. This is probably because their trio of scorers has remained healthy and their scoring ability isn’t as dependent on getting help from teammates.