Last night (correction: game was Tuesday), Florida International coughed up the ball 26 times against UConn. This was more than any single UConn opponent turned the ball over last season.

In 15 of their 39 games last season, Huskies opponents committed fewer than 10 turnovers, and only twice did their opponents cough the ball up more than 20 times. Notre Dame turned it over a grand total of 13 times in three games against UConn! Plain and simply, UConn was inept at forcing turnovers. They ranked 322nd nationally in opponents turnover percentage (the percentage of possessions that an opponent commits a turnover). And yet it didn’t matter.

Earlier this week, I presented some data that showed that offensive field goal percentage was more important to the formula of winning basketball games that defensive field goal percentage (read it here). When you look at turnover rate, this pattern continues – a team’s own turnover rate is more important that its opponent’s. Teams that excelled in taking care of the basketball regularly in 2004 also won regularly, and teams that gave it away lost. However the same can’t be said for teams that forced their opponent to give it up a lot. The best teams in this category represented a seemingly random cross section of the college game. There was almost no difference in the winning percentage of teams that forced a lot of turnovers compared to teams that forced few turnovers…

Offensive TO%
Top 30 teams in this category had a cumulative .650 winning percentage
Bottom 30 teams in this category had a cumulative .293 winning percentage
The difference between the top 30 and bottom 30 was .357

Defensive TO%
Top 30 teams = .563, Bottom 30 teams = .483 (difference = .080)

This is not to say the forcing turnovers is irrelevant to winning. There are common threads to playing winning basketball. For instance, winning teams must shoot the ball better than their opponents. But when it comes to turnovers, it’s not a necessary ingredient to force a lot of them. Some good or even great teams don’t force many and make up the difference in other ways, either by blocking shots or winning the rebounding battle to name a couple.

Last season, there was no better example of this than UConn. They were the fifth worst team in the nation at forcing turnovers. However, they compensated for this by being one the ten best teams in field goal defense, probably because they didn’t give up many shots close to the hoop. On the other hand, Duke was one of the best teams in the nation at forcing turnovers. Sure enough, in the 2004 national semifinal between the two teams, UConn was -9 in the turnover department, yet shot 50% from the field to Duke’s 41%. And the result was a Husky victory.

I’m not really sure what all this means (maybe nothing?) and I’m certainly open to suggestions. I feel fairly confident that offensive ability is more important than defense to playing winning basketball. But it should go without saying that being an elite team requires greatness on both ends. Connecticut was a great defensive team, but the way they achieved this was unusual.

Another idea that falls out of this is that a turnover is caused more by the offense than the defense. So defenses that rely on forcing turnovers will have a difficult time against offenses that refuse to give it up. Maybe I can develop this idea a little more in the future. (An interesting aside here: Florida International was the had the highest turnover percentage in the nation last year. So Huskies fans shouldn’t get too excited that their team is going to force more turnovers this season.)

In other news, Islander Fever has apparently caught on in the blogging world, where Hoops Junkie has an interview with Texas A&M Corpus Christi head coach Ronnie Arrow. (Personally, I think he’s just hoping to score an all-expenses paid trip to South Padre for spring break.) Then there’s midmajority.com, who took my idea regarding Texas A&M – College Station a step further.