What's The Big Deal About Pace Anyway?
OR: GONE IN 0.6 SECONDS
![8255249981_72be633599_z[1]](http://mgoblog.com/sites/mgoblog.com/files/images/Whats-The-Big-Deal-About-Pace-Anyway_BA2/8255249981_72be633599_z1.jpg "8255249981_72be633599_z[1]")
![nik-caner-medley[1]](http://mgoblog.com/sites/mgoblog.com/files/images/Whats-The-Big-Deal-About-Pace-Anyway_BA2/nik-caner-medley1.jpg "nik-caner-medley[1]")
One of the weirdest things about the recent Big Ten expansion—let me start over.
One of the least weird things that was still weird about the recent Big Ten expansion was a particular reaction from Maryland basketball fans deriding the Big Ten for being slow-it-down bore ball. Anyone who's listened to fans from conferences other than the Big Ten has probably heard the refrain about how the league is like watching Charles Oakley and Ben Wallace headbutt each other to death.
It's true that the Big Ten tends to have big burly defenses, but the Big Ten's long-held reputation for slowness has always been bizarre to me. Thanks to Michigan State bloggers' insatiable desire to scatterplot things, here's a visual representation of that. Rightward is faster, higher is more variation within the conference:
![Conf_pace[1]](http://mgoblog.com/sites/mgoblog.com/files/images/Whats-The-Big-Deal-About-Pace-Anyway_BA2/Conf_pace1.png "Conf_pace[1]")
This is a tightly bunched random assortment on a scale that essentially goes from 65 to 69. Most of the conferences to the right are small outfits, and there's barely any differentiation to get worked up about anyway. The slowest major conference in the country is the Big Ten, yeah, at about 65.6 possessions. The fastest is the Pac-12 at about 67.6 possessions.
That difference is beyond negligible. The average Pac-12 fan sees a shot ending in a make, free throws, or defensive rebound every 17.7 seconds. The average Big Ten fan only enjoys this experience every 18.3 seconds. Take a fan from a Pac-12 team and give him a blind taste test between the two leagues and he won't comment on the pace, he'll ask "where is all the writhing incompetence?" and "why is this fun?" about one of the games before deciding he cannot possibly be watching the Pac-12. (Readers are not encouraged to try a similar experiment in football.)
For the Maryland fans still drunk on Gary Williams telling his guys to scream down the court, the difference was larger. Significantly so? Well. The fastest Terp outfit I could find in Kenpom roared up and down the court for 75.5 possessions a game, second in the country, which meant Maryland fans saw a shot go up every 15.9 seconds. (They did this en route to the NIT, FWIW). I'll grant that on a team level things can seem a lot different…
![BG_off[1]](http://mgoblog.com/sites/mgoblog.com/files/images/Whats-The-Big-Deal-About-Pace-Anyway_BA2/BG_off1.png "BG_off[1]")
…but even there you have a couple of major outliers amongst a pack in which the differences in fast break opportunities are small enough to chalk up to chance. That looks like a normal distribution to me.
The differences here just aren't that large. Tempo free stats are excellent for parsing out the outliers like that Maryland team and correctly diagnosing things like rebounding that regular stats are hilariously wrong about, but when it comes to aesthetics, no conference pushes the ball up the floor enough for there to be significant differences. Except the WAC, because WAC is gonna WAC even if they don't play football anymore. Viva WAC.
Anyway, the next time someone garrumphs at you about how boring the Big Ten is, wait 0.6 seconds and scream at him, then tell him that's how much longer you have to wait to see a possession end. Bonus: he will probably stop being friends with you at this point so you won't have to have more annoying hot-sprots-take conversations with him.
December 13th, 2012 at 1:23 PM ^
Brian posits that:
Anyone who's listened to fans from conferences other than the Big Ten has probably heard the refrain about how the league is like watching Charles Oakley and Ben Wallace headbutt each other to death.
Like that's a bad thing? I would love to see Charles Oakley and Ben Wallace headbutt one another to death. I mean, who wouldn't pay to see that? Especially if Wallace won - which is the result I'd expect.
Brian's overall point that bemoaning the "lack of pace" in the Big Ten is much ado about nothing seems spot on to me, since a team's pace is subject to so many variables (including that team's size, that team's opposition) that it starts to render the pace differential meaningless.
For all of that, having Nebraska and notoriously ponderous Wisconsin in your league will always push the conference's overall pace down. Watching Wisconsin reminds me of Cartman trying to kill Kyle on Stark's Pond with a plastic bat (in the Godfather II send-up scene).
December 13th, 2012 at 12:57 PM ^
As someone who grew up a maryland fan and a current student at michigan it comes from a couple things. One is wiconsin, everybody hates watching wisconsin basketball and a lot of people just associate that with the big ten. Also, and this is just a perception thing I can't say if its true but most maryland fans think there is more physical talent in the acc. You see a lot more guys do cool impressive physical things and the big ten is seen as a more outside shooter uncordinated big man league. This leads to less transition basketball, so while on average a half court possession takes the same amount of time you see acc teams get out and run in transition a few more times a game and thats where the difference is pace comes from. Since transition baksetball is more exciting those 4 or 5 extra times a game makes the game more exciting.
On a side note a lot of acc fans hate duke for turning into a mini mid major that just jacks a lot of threes for some of the same reasons. Its not about how succesful a team is, nobody is arguing wisconsin hasn't made being more boring than watching paint dry work for them, there just aren't or weren't historically a lot of 58-56 type games in the acc and those seem to happen kinda frequently in the big ten. So maybe its not how often shots go up but how often the shots go in that make people think the big ten is boring.
December 13th, 2012 at 1:33 PM ^
Everyone hates watching Wisconsin.
I see your Wisconsin, and raise you a Virginia.
December 13th, 2012 at 2:53 PM ^
I don't think UVa has that kind of reputation (even if it's deserved). Wisconsin and MSU played that incredibly slow-paced Final Four game in 2000 and the Badgers (and Big Ten) have never lived it down.
December 13th, 2012 at 1:14 PM ^
"That looks like a normal distribution to me." Yup:
Shown is the fit of pace data to a cumulative normal probability distribution function with average pace 30.66% of shots taken in the first 10 seconds, and standard deviation 7.97%. The r-squared correlation coefficient is 0.9971. I'd say that fits a normal distribution pretty damn well. Good eye, Brian.
December 13th, 2012 at 1:15 PM ^
We need to convert the "That's Racist" ani-gif to a "That's Pacist"
December 13th, 2012 at 1:20 PM ^
Excellent conclusion paragraph and suggestion. I will be doing this to all the Maryland fans in the DC area.
December 13th, 2012 at 2:23 PM ^
Relying on this one major statistic alone does not tell the whole story in this case. A couple points:
- Not all shots are equal and there is nothing that charts this. Two different teams can put up shots in 16 seconds. Let's say one has good player and ball movement and just misses an open shot. Let's say the other has their point guard pound the rock for 14 seconds and then wildly drive the lane and throw up crap hoping to get fouled. Both went up in 16 seconds, one looks far slower than the other.
- What you see is perception and perception is reality. For the past 10+ years, Michigan State, Wisconsin, Ohio State, and Purdue have been the leading teams in the B1G. Those teams have the most national air time. Of those 4, MSU, Wisconsin are clear bangers, OSU sometimes is, and even Purdue has been known to play a little rough D. So for the past 10+ years, the majority of games being seen as representative of the B1G have been slower banging games.
- Even Michigan has some fault in this. As Beilein has been building Michigan back over the past 6 years, his nationally televised signature wins (Duke, UCLA, and close losses Kansas and UConn) have been by slowing it down and shortening possessions.
So, yes, all the signs point towards the the B1G being a slower conference across the board. The data even supports this. Throw in the additional info and it is really hard to refute this claim. The good news: a few more years of Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois winning will change that perception thanks to the style they play.
December 13th, 2012 at 2:14 PM ^
is that a scatterplot? That should not be a scatterplot Sparty. It doesn't make any sense as a scatterplot.
Try a box and whisker plot. Or, better yet, let's look at some CDFs (rather than summary data) like WolverBean did. I mean, it would be pretty easy to answer a question like are the tempo differences between the B1G and the Pac12 significantly different?
December 13th, 2012 at 2:20 PM ^
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