Underlying Data Delivers Harsh Truths About IU Despite 7-2 Start
[Full article unlocked!] Indiana is roughly a quarter of the way through the 2023-24 season. What do the analytics say about these Hoosiers?
It’s hard to believe the college basketball season is roughly a quarter of the way complete.
While teams are still trying to figure out their identities, there is enough data to identify some emerging trends.
These trends aren’t set in stone, of course. As any coach will tell you: your team in March will hopefully look a lot different than your team in December.
But all we can know right now on December 14th is what we’ve seen through nine games. So let’s take a look at what the current trends are for Indiana, both from a team and individual respect.
As you might imagine if you have watched this team play, there is some good … and some not-so-good.
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Predictive Metrics Rankings
To say the computers don’t like Indiana would be a bit of an understatement.
It’s important to note that these metrics still have a lot of sorting out to do, which I explained in my post last week about why KenPom doesn’t like Indiana.
The five sites I look at for computer rankings are KenPom, Bart Torvik, Haslametrics, Evan Miya, and the Net Rankings.
Indiana’s rankings on those sites (as of 12/14):
Taking the average of those five computer rankings, Indiana is 87th in the country.
I suggest reading the post linked above if you want a deeper dive into why computer rankings don’t like the Hoosiers, but the condensed version is this:
Indiana hasn’t beaten bad opponents by as much as they should have, and they have gotten blown out twice by their two highly regarded opponents. Essentially, they’re not playing as well as the computers predicted they would in individual performances, so the rankings have continued to drop from their preseason levels.
A win against Kansas and blowout wins against Morehead State, North Alabama, and Kennesaw State would be a nice counter-weight to the Hoosiers’ early-season results before heading into the Big Ten slate.
The bad news about the Big Ten slate is that the conference is rated poorly overall, thanks to a number of conference teams having similar ups and downs to Indiana’s.
The rest of the conference’s Net Rankings as of 12/14:
Purdue - 3rd
Illinois - 18th
Wisconsin - 19th
Ohio State - 34th
Michigan - 64th
Iowa - 69th
Nebraska - 70th
Rutgers - 76th
Michigan State - 79th
Northwestern - 84th
Minnesota - 101st
Penn State - 136th
Maryland - 152nd
What this means is yet to be determined, but it seems to suggest that there will be less margin for error in Big Ten play. Losing to a team like Penn State or Maryland could be detrimental for a resume, unlike in years past when such a loss was just a loss and not a “bad” loss in bracketology terms.
Team Identity
While the rankings are mediocre, what do the advanced analytics say about Indiana’s team identity?
Efficiency Metrics
Most computer rankings are based in some way on net efficiency rankings. These metrics look at how Indiana’s offense and defense perform, then adjust that number based on the strength of the opponent.
Much like Indiana’s rankings, their offensive and defensive efficiency metrics are mediocre.
According to KenPom, Indiana’s adjusted efficiency numbers are:
Offense: 109.3 points per 100 possessions (ranked 84th)
Defense: 99.7 points given up per 100 possessions (75th)
The difference between those two numbers is Indiana’s net efficiency (9.64). For context, the number one team in KenPom is currently Houston, with a net efficiency of 31.5.
On an individual game basis, Indiana’s best offensive efficiency performance was the game against Harvard. The Hoosiers scored 123.1 points per 100 possessions in the contest.
Conversely, their worst offensive performance was against UConn, as they only scored 85.6 points per 100 possessions.
Indiana’s best defensive performance came against Maryland. They gave up just 79.9 points per 100 possessions to the Terrapins.
Their worst performance was this past Saturday against Auburn, giving up 139.9 points per 100 possessions.
Data Trends
What else can we surmise about this Indiana team by looking at the analytics?
The Good
First, let’s take a look at trends that are in IU’s favor.
Free Throw Rate - This is the rate at which IU attempts free throws as compared to field goal attempts. The Hoosiers are currently 7th in the country with a FTA/FGA rate of 48%.
2 Point Percentage - Inside the arc, the Hoosiers are shooting 56.4%, good for 30th in the country.
Offensive Block Percentage - This is the percentage of Indiana’s field goal attempts that get blocked. The Hoosiers are 34th in the country with only 6.3% of their shots being blocked.
Defensive Block Percentage - Indiana’s defense is blocking shots at a 13.2% clip, which is good for 49th in the country.
Post Offense - Indiana posts the ball on 18% of its possessions, which is more than most teams in the country. However, their 1.15 points per possession on post ups puts them in the 96th percentile in the country.
Transition - Indiana doesn’t get out in transition often (18th percentile in terms of how often they do), but they’re effective when they’re able to. They’re in the 92nd percentile in transition offense at 1.21 points per possession.
The Bad
On the flip side, let’s look at where things are trending poorly for the Hoosiers.
Offensive Rebounding Percentage - This is the number of missed shots that the Hoosiers are getting an offensive rebound on. They’re ranked just 262nd at 26.2% despite having the third tallest average height in the country.
3-Point Percentage - I don't think it’s a secret that Indiana has struggled from deep. On the season, they’re just 27.2%, which is 336th in the country.
Offensive 3 Point Rate - This is the ratio of 3 pointers attempted to total field goals attempted. Indiana takes just 23.7% of their field goals from deep, which is 359th in the nation. Given their 3-point percentage discussed above, it may not be a bad thing they’ve not attempted many threes.
Turnovers Forced - On the year, Indiana’s opponents are turning the ball over on 16.5% of their possessions, which is just 249th in the country.
Defensive 3-Point Rate - The Hoosiers’ opponents are attempting 41.6% of their field goals from deep, which ranks the Hoosiers at 288th in the land.
Unguarded Catch and Shoot Jump Shots - On the year, the Hoosiers are just 14/52 on unguarded jump shots. That means they are shooting 26.9% when they are wide open. This is in the 2nd percentile in all of college basketball. (That’s almost ludicrously bad, and it may actually be a perverse reason for hope if you believe Indiana can’t possibly shoot that badly across a larger sample size moving forward.)
Ball Screen Offense - Something Indiana fans were excited about coming into the year was their ability to give defenses different looks with their ball screens. Instead, the ball screen offense has been really poor. The Hoosiers’ ball screen offense is in the 22nd percentile in the country and scoring just 0.79 points per possession.
In a nutshell, the macro trends show that on offense Indiana is good when it posts the ball up, but their shooting has been very poor.
On defense, Indiana isn’t going to turn its opponents over but is good at protecting the rim. While the rim protection is good, teams are finding openings outside the arc.
Will these trends sustain throughout the year? Time will tell.
It’s important to remember that nine basketball games is not a particularly larger sample size. So while it’s fair to assume year-over-year trends will continue — like Indiana pounding the ball inside on offense and giving up a lot of 3s on defense — other numbers (like the shooting efficiency numbers) may be prone to future fluctuations.
Individual Analytics
My favorite site for individual analytics is Evan Miya. He does the best job of finding a player’s true value to their team on both sides of the floor.
One way he does this is by computing player’s offensive and defensive Bayesian performance rating. It sounds like a fancy word, but essentially these ratings incorporate individual efficiency stats along with on-court play-by-play impact. The ratings take into account the strength of the other nine players on the floor, too.
The values for the offensive and defensive Bayesian performance ratings tell you the number of points per 100 possessions above D1 average that is expected by the player’s team if the player were on the court with nine other average players.
As noted, there are numbers for both offensive and defensive Bayesian performance ratings. Those numbers summed together make the ultimate measure of a player’s overall value to his team when he’s on the floor.
Indiana’s offensive, defensive, and overall Bayesian performance ratings.
Remember, 0 constitutes an average D1 player. The first column is the offensive value, the 2nd column the defensive value, and the third column is the overall value to the team.
As you can see, Indiana’s ‘starting five’ are easily their most valuable players, according to Evan Miya’s computer calculations.
The eye test, for me, has confirmed these ratings to be true. When Indiana has put their bench in the games, things typically don’t go well.
wrote a great piece on Indiana’s lineup data, so I won’t dive into that here.What’s somewhat surprising is that CJ Gunn is far and away bringing the least value to the team according to the computer rankings. For somebody who came into the season with high expectations, and who has had a few encouraging moments, he simply needs to be a more consistent contributor.
Should Indiana be okay with these numbers?
In a word, no.
What the data tells us about these nine games is that Indiana is mediocre.
On offense, IU is better than average playing through the post, but far below average shooting the ball. When they attack the basket, they’re scoring or getting fouled often. Yet although they typically have large size advantages, they’re below average at offensive rebounding.
On defense, they’re able to use their size to protect the rim, but they have holes in their perimeter defense that allow teams to get off 3s at alarming rates. They’re not going to turn their opponents over, so they’re relying on poor shooting nights from them instead.
That’s what the numbers say, not me.
To me, that’s not the identity I’d covet if I were IU.
We all expected the start of the season to be rocky, and it has been. But fortunately, there is still 75% of the season yet to play, the Hoosiers are 2-0 in conference play at at least avoided any disastrous non-conference loss, and Indiana has enough talent to beat anyone remaining on its schedule.
Hopefully the good trends continue, and the Hoosiers find a way to turn some of the negative ones in their direction.
Do you think they’ll be able to? Paid subscribers can comment below!
Tony, really good stuff as always. I am probably more skeptical that we will have some epiphany and see a major change in the team. There are too many indicators that we are a poorly constructed roster. Unfortunately, our style of play on offense and defense is not going to give this roster the best chance for victories against better teams. In some ways, it lays open our problems and allows teams to take advantage of our weaknesses. Better teams like St. Mary's, Arizona, Kansas, UConn, Miami, etc. have demonstrated how to take advantage of us in the past. In the last Inside the Hall pod, Ryan said we can probably hang with everyone but the top 25% of the teams and that sounds and seems about right. Unfortunately those better teams can really make us look bad. As you said, there is a lot of the season yet to play but the analytics point to a team that is playing at a very mediocre level. I expect Kansas to do a lot of what Auburn did and make it really tough on our bigs. In some ways it feels like a return to the days of when Justin Smith, Joey Brunk and TJD were fighting sagging defenses while our opponents begged our outside players to shoot.
I am not taking issue with your well organized information, but I also see a positive future in the long run. The long run being the next two years. Sometimes we get so lost in the negative that we are blinded from the positive. Just one of the examples is this: Purdue has clearly been the best team in the Big Ten over the last two years as well as one of the three best teams in the country over the last two years. Mike Woodson's two Hoosier teams have played Purdue four times over the two year period. Mike Woodson's record against Purdue over those four games is 3-1. If not for a missed three pointer at the buzzer their record against Purdue over the four games would be 4-0.