The analytics suggest BYU Basketball should not have the record they have.
Ugly basketball is probably the best description to describe BYU Basketball at the moment. The second word would be winning. Somehow those two are both true in the same sentence. Now when I say ugly, I’m not referring to ball hogging, bad shot selecting and lazy defense, rather just not overall great statistics.
For example, the Cougars are averaging a turnover on 16% of their offensive possessions. That ranks 134th in the country. The Cougars are also 170th nationally in shooting percentage at a mere 43.5%. They also rank 194th in free throws per offensive play, a stat that often gets overlooked yet, teams who shoot the most free throws are normally the ones winning games.
And it isn’t like the defense is elite either.
The Cougars are 89th nationally in opponent shooting percentage and 248th nationally in defending the two.
So how is BYU winning? It goes beyond the stats.
Despite not having a tall forward, or speedy wings, the Cougars are ranked No. 26 in the NET rankings and are projected to be a seven or eight seed in the NCAA Tournament. Both of those rankings are much higher than just about any other team statistic you could find.
When looking at BYU Basketball’s games, I noticed a trend in the games that BYU wins, clutch shooting and defending.
Clutch shooting isn’t really a stat that is measured. This is partly because the world “clutch” is not a definable moment in a game. Sure everyone would agree the final minute is a clutch moment, but what about the final five minutes? What about the last minute of the first half? That is where things get a bit tough to quantify.
But hear me out .
BYU has scored the final basket of the first half in 14 of their 19 games. That is nearly 75% of the time, an anomaly in basketball terms.
In games decided by less than ten points, BYU is 6-2. In games decided by two possessions, BYU is 4-1. That is outstanding. In fact, in those five games, BYU outscored their opponents in the final five minutes by 22 points, or they are on average +4.4 in the clutch time.
In other words, BYU doesn’t need to be great statistically, they just need to hang around. And if they do that, come clutch time, they’ve got literally a good shot.