Working on this post was a stark reminder that timing is everything. I started gathering the data lask week and then on Friday night I decided I would wait till after the Villanova game to post this.
My original hypothesis was that opponents have been trying to slow Pitt down since the Notre Dame game as the burn offense had become the blueprint as to how to beat Pitt. Not exactly a given when you consider that Pitt’s schedule was back loaded with slower-tempo teams.
Of course, after I gathered most of my data, Jay Wright forced the Panthers into a 56 possession crapfest low-scoring game and then admitted that he was trying to force Pitt into a limited possession game.
So much for needing statistics to prove my theory. Let’s soldier on anyway.
For the purpose of this exercise I only used conference games. My reason for doing this was that as much as I would like a larger sample-size, teams experiment too much in non-conference play and are often more focused on trying to figure out a rotation than trying to implement a strategy to control tempo. This graph shows the number of possessions Pitt’s Big East opponents had versus Pitt as opposed to their other opponents.
