It is easy watching a game to focus in on one aspect of the game, and lose track of the "big picture." I can remember games where we gave up two offensive rebounds and two put backs in the first quarter. As a coach, I couldn't move on. In time outs, at half, and in post game, I was apt to be ranting,"We aren't blocking out." When the final stats became available, I realized we only gave up 3 offensive rebounds the entire game. My point is that our impressions of what happened during a game is not always accurate.
There are many stats that can be used to analyze games. Stats can be used to help the coach analyze why the team wins/loses, and also stats can be used to educate the players on how to analyze their performance.
POSSESSIONS
A stat to start with is to look at how many possessions did you have in the game. In other words, what was the tempo or the speed of the game. The way to figure this is to take FGA + TO’s + (0.44 x FTA) - Offensive Rebounds.
If you keep track as the season goes on, or you go back over last season, it is pretty easy to begin to see what is your normal pace.
Does your pace reflect how you want the game to be played? It might be that you want to be an uptempo team but you possessions per game don’t indicate that.
Does your pace (number of posessions) predict winning or losing? What are your average number of possessions in losses and in wins? (Note: You may want to throw out all the games that are won by more than 20 points or lost by more than 20 points.)
Does it look like you control the pace of game or your opponent controls the pace of game? In the some of your “big games” does your pace go up or down significantly because your opponent makes you play at a different speed.
POINTS PER POSSESSION
If you use Hudl, it may be that it has already been determined for you each game. To figure PPP manually, just figure possessions using the formula above, and divide your points scored by the number of possessions.
For me, coaching high school varsity girls basketball, I found that offensively we wanted to be at or above 1.00 points per possession offensively. If you go back thru last year’s stats, you can easily figure out what number represents good vs bad offense for you level. And defensively we wanted to have the opponents below 1.00 PPP.
If you have not used points per possession, I would recommend that you go back and look at your stats from the previous season or earlier games in the season to figure what is good offensively and good defensively for your team in terms of points per possession. Maybe you will find that you always win when your offensive points per possession is above 0.90. If you stat program does not figure points per possession, you can figure it out. The formula:
Offense Possessions= FGA + (FTA/2) - Off. Reb + Turnovers.
Defense Possessions= Opp FGA + (Opp FTA/2) - Opp Off Reb + Opp Turnovers
Then you simple divide your points by offensive possessions, and divide their points by defensive possessions.
Point per possession (both offensively and defensively) are quick ways to see how you played on both ends of the floor. Points per possession is a way of quickly being able to say that your offense or your defense may have been good or bad. For example if an opponent scored 1.15 PPP game, and you scored 1.05 PPP, you need to look at your defense to figure out what you did not do well.
PPP is a simple guide to tell you what to look at. Once coaches and players identify that they were inefficient defensively in a game, it is easy to look at particular stats to see the problem. The key defensive stats would be opponent's FG%, opponent's O-Reb, opponent's turnovers, opponent's FTA's.
The same process goes on for the offense. If the offensive points per possession was low- was it FG%, FTA's, FT%, O-Reb, Turnovers
Points Per Possession DOES NOT TELL YOU what went right or wrong.
Points Per Possession serves as a GUIDE to what to look at.
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