Yesterday, I did an analysis of the NCAA over the last 11 seasons based upon which was most important – offense or defense. Using FG% (the best way to evaluate the two), I concluded there isn’t any difference at all. A great offense has just as good a chance to succeed in terms of most victories as a great defense. Today, I decided to look only at the NCAA Tournament.

We’ve all heard the phrase that offense wins games and defense wins championships many times in our lives and where there is smoke, there is probably fire. Thus, despite the fact that offense and defense appear interchangeable during the regular season, I suspected I might find something different when evaluating the tournament only. It appears I was right – not that it means I was insightful. Probably any sports fan would have thought the same.

I’ll get right to it so I can take another look at Kansas. A couple days ago, I determined that Kansas’ being great defensively didn’t benefit the team any more than being great offensively with respect to the tournament over the last 24 seasons. And, that’s true. But, even so, KU has an interesting role in this study.

I logged the NCAA rank for offensive FG% and defensive FG% for each team in the Elite Eight going back as far as the NCAA site gives the information – 2002. That’s 11 seasons. Keep in mind, there are about 340 teams per season so a ranking of say, 60, isn’t bad.

I’m going to break this down by the 44 Elite Eight losers, the 22 Final Four losers, the 11 Championship game losers and the 11 Championship game winners.

Here are the average rankings for each of the four groups of teams for both offensive FG% and defensive FG%.

To me, this is fascinating. Of course damn near anything with numbers associated with it is fascinating to me. But, at the same time, nearly everyone reading this blog has to have a little piece of the same genetic make-up in them as I do, so hopefully you will appreciate what this tells us.

There are two critically important things to glean from this. The first is that as you get deeper into the tournament DEFENSIVE FG% is more important than OFFENSIVE FG%. And, it’s also true that as you get deeper into the tourney, both DEF FG% and OFF FG% are more important, but especially so for the championship game!

I’ve written before that the “Mother of all Basketball Stats” is Field Goal percentage margin, but you won’t find that stat anywhere on earth except on this blog. Nobody talks about it. You will find rebounding margin, turnover margin, scoring margin, etc., but nobody discusses FG% margin. Yet, it’s a HUGELY important statistic – extremely correlated to winning. And, it’s an example why, despite the incredible advancements that have been made in sports statistics over the last 30 years, the science has a long ways to go. Maybe long after I’m dead and gone – say 30 years from now, it will finally get where it needs to be. But, that’s for another article.

In the meantime, having shown the value of both a great offense (FG%) as well as a great defense (FG%) in terms of winning the national championship, I can take a look at the best teams in the nation over that time.

COOL FACTOID: Over the 11 years in this study, the team with the better ranking in terms of Defensive FG% coming into the game has won the Championship 10 times!

As you can see in the table below, only Ohio State and Florida in 2007 were backwards.

From 2002-2012, Kansas has the most victories (332). Duke is second at 321. What I thought might be interesting would be to look at the Defensive FG% rankings for the top-20 teams for all 11 seasons and then, to see which ones made the Elite Eight, Final Four, Championship game and Title.

The two teams with the most top-20 rankings by defensive FG% (Kansas and U-Conn) rank first and third by most tournament victories. This is especially noteworthy considering U-Conn is only 10th in total victories during the last 11 seasons. On the other hand, North Carolina is #2 in most tourney wins despite not having been ranked a single time in the top-20 by defensive FG%.

Out of curiosity, I decided to show KU and NC side by side for both offensive and defensive FG% ranking as well as offensive PLUS defensive rankings. Shown is the year and the ranking. Keep in mind Roy Williams was at Kansas in 2002 and 2003 before going to North Carolina.

OFFENSIVE FG%

DEFENSIVE FG%

Offensive PLUS Defensive FG%

FWIW, Kansas has a better combination of offensive FG% + defensive FG% ranking than North Carolina for every single season over the last 11 seasons except 2005 – and that was only barely in favor of NC. Yet, the Tar Heels have done nearly as well as the Jayhawks in tournament wins over that time. I’m not sure what to chalk that up to except to say Roy Williams has done a great job in the tournament the last 11 years with two titles and two other Final Four appearances.

Martin Manley

Sports In Review

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