Franalysis: Digging Into the Stats Behind Iowa MBB in 2023-24

The performance of the Iowa men’s basketball team has been mixed through the first 16 games of the season. While they generally haven’t been terrible, this does appear to be the weakest team since the disastrous 2017-18 season when Iowa finished 14-19 overall and 4-14 in the Big Ten. The defense is poor once again but this time, the offense has been merely good and not great -- which hasn't been enough to overcome a poor defense. However, there have been some interesting statistical trends that suggest some potential tweaks that Fran McCaffery could make to get a more competitive team on the court.

I have been keeping track of all of Iowa’s player combinations as well as the outcome of each offensive and defensive possession for eleven of Iowa’s games. Specifically, the games against Creighton, Arkansas State, Oklahoma, Seton Hall, North Florida, Purdue, Iowa State, Michigan, Wisconsin, Rutgers, and Nebraska. That includes all eight of Iowa’s games against high major opponents plus two of the cupcakes.

I have also tracked the type of defense that Iowa plays on each possession, whether they press, and whether each offensive possession is a transition or half court possession. Today's focus is entirely on the players and what happens when specific players or combinations are in the game. NOTE: these data omit the last few possessions of a game if it’s out of reach and players are just running around fouling or jacking up threes. Those possessions tell us nothing relevant.

The four statistics that will be analyzed are the number of points per possession that Iowa scores (“O PPP”) and allows (“D PPP”) as well as how much these rates change when a player is in the game versus on the bench (“O Diff” and “D Diff”). A high O PPP and a high O Diff are good while a low D PPP and low D Diff are good. If the defensive outcomes are better when a player is in the game, D Diff will be a negative number.

For reference, an Iowa game typically has around 75 possessions so an O PPP increase of 0.2 corresponds to 15 more points over the course of a full game.