We seem capable of playing very good defense for long stretches or even full games. Are we really a good defensive team though? St f,Concordia, and others seem to be torching us on the regular. Turnovers forced are good but teams are seemingly shooting very high percentages against us.
Analyzing defense is not easy. FG% may or may not be a helpful stat. Are we good at forcing the type of shots we want the other team to take? Are we forcing a lot of contested shots that are falling, or do we allow a lot of open looks? I don't shell out several thousands for Synergy, so I don't know those answers.
So let's look at what I can find out. We're good at forcing turnovers, but opponents generally shoot a high percentage against us. In the aggregate, this is working for us; we're one of the better defensive efficency teams in the country. There's gonna be a games we don't win the turnover battle, though.
On defense, 37% of shots taken against us are three pointers and 63% are two pointers. San Diego allows the fewest three point attempts (24%) and Syracuse the most (51%!). We're 131st, solidly above average. The question is, are opponents taking more shots inside the arc because that's a choice we've made or because we're bad at defending the two?
35% of total shots against are at the rim. 28% are jumpers. Generally, two point jumpers are what we want to see more of. We're not good at this; that 28% is 262nd nationally. Teams are making 45% of them (356th). We're decent at blocking shots at the rim (10%), but if we don't block the shot, it's probably going in (66%- not good). On the bright side, opponents are shooting 31% on unblocked three point attempts.
I don't think these numbers answers the question of why we're seeing better success defending the three, although I think we've gotten unlucky with opponent two point jumpers. Even if we're allowing too many open looks, I expect that to regress to the mean. I also expect the unblocked shots at the rim to improve as we move into MAC play and don't have to deal with potential future NBA bigs. The part that worries me is transition defense. 23% of opponent shots are in transition, and they're making 54% of those. If we have a true weakness, there it is.