I’m not going to try to look it up, but my guess is UA Men’s Hoops has committed as much as 30 percent less fouls in 11 games than during any 11 game stretch in several years.
Players are playing more minutes but hardly any of our players have been in foul trouble the entire season.
We are playing great defense but playing it more with our feet and with less reaching and grabbing.
I wouldn’t have the foggiest idea how to find these statistics, but I will comment that from the games that I have seen I believe that these must be all new (but experienced) players on defense and when it comes to rebounding. Don’t know how much to attribute to the quality of the competition to this point, but I have to believe that what I have seen has something to do with the level of the coaching. Oh, and I can site you the play of Bailey (and several others) if you question improved offense from individual players also. Nowhere near what we have had in the past, and I look forward to each upcoming game. (I really liked Mike, but this guy appears to be a level above.)
It might be easier to look up the number of free throws shot (and made) against us than in previous years.
Again, my guess is, our opponents are scoring a lot fewer points on freebies.
We’ve committed 197 fouls in 11 games, 17.9 per game. Opponents have shot 190 FTAs, 17.3 per game. How many FTs they made is less important for this analysis than how many chances they got; you can’t defend a free throw.
Researching last year was a little tricky because two of the first 11 box scores are missing from the UA website, but I found those two on ESPN.com instead. Opponents had 260 FTAs on 230 PFs after 11 games. Interestingly the three lowest foul totals last year were against the three best teams we’d played at this point – Indiana, GaTech and WKU. We did commit 30 fouls against Texass in the opener, but that was a weird situation on an Army base.
Thanks for looking that up. The difference isn’t nearly as much as I thought.
That’s a pretty big difference.
The hogs were better from the free throw line this year until they had problems making them against Valpo! The late free throws we made in that helped win the game! I’ll look those up and post.