12-30-2014, 05:51 PM | #1 |
Demiurge
Join Date: Aug 2005
Posts: 36,365
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BYU uptempo is the outlier
There is a piece in ESPN the magazine this week about tempo in college basketball. I looked for an online link and couldn't find one. If link is available, it will be INSIDER only.
It's been steadily declining since Kem Pomeroy has been tracking it since 2001. Tempo is usually higher in the first half of any given season, and then declines in conference play, as teams are in more half-court sets. And it has something to do with the competition as well (easier to run against bad teams). This year college basketball is on pace to have the slowest tempo in its history since 2001. Changes in rules made last year to increase offense have failed. Most of the best teams are among the very slowest in tempo. Like Kentucky. Wisconsin. In contrast you have BYU, which is not among the best teams, but among the highest in tempo (the article didn't mention BYU). Given the current college basketball landscape, this isn't a winning formula. Consistently high tempo teams do not do well when it matters. And we've seen that BYU cannot dictate tempo to slow-down teams. It's the other way around. Those slow -down teams dictate the tempo to BYU, if they are half-decent. But at the very least we have to credit Rose with this: giving us a basketball style that is not tedious to watch. I'd much rather watch high-tempo basketball, than 58-50 scores. Plus it would be a lot more fun to play for Rose, if you are offensively minded. The thing that BYU lacks is a great high-intensity effective defense that would more dictate tempo. College basketball is broken. I don't watch any college basketball outside of BYU. It's awful. They need to reduce the shot clock to 30 pronto. |
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