Drake 60, Texas Southern 46

FOUR FACTORS ANALYSIS OF LAST NIGHT'S GAME

If you need any more detail on what these figures mean, a pretty good explanation from Dean Oliver himself can be found at: http://www.rawbw.com/~deano/articles/20040601_roboscout.htm

Factor #1: Effective Field Goal Percentage

• Texas Southern: 40.2%
• Drake: 42.2%

I found it interesting that we basically created the same amount of points from the field goals we attempted. Reason being that the Bulldogs got their work done from the three (DU 9-25 vs. TS 1-12) while the Tigers got their work done within the arc (TS 15-29 vs. DU 11-33). All said, both teams really struggled to shoot the basketball last night.

Factor #2: Ballhandling (Turnover %)

• Texas Southern: 34.4%
• Drake: 14.1%

This was the story of the game. Our defense harassed the Tigers into an astounding 22 turnovers, while the Bulldogs themselves kept their turnovers to single digits at 9 (which I am sure made Coach Phelps proud). We were creating turnovers by the boatload. It was truly a team effort, especially when you consider that eight Bulldogs recorded a steal last night. Jordan Clarke led the way with 4 steals, despite only playing 22 minutes due to foul trouble. I would say it was a successful night when we forced their primary ballhandler Kevin Galloway into 10 turnovers.

It's fairly remarkable that they are already showing so much potential on defense considering how poor of a defensive team we were last year. It's early, but it sure is looking like the switch to the M2M was the right call. We'll see if that trend continues.

Factor #3: Offensive Rebounding (OR %)

• Texas Southern: 25.9%
• Drake: 25.0%

Now, I know a lot of people are going to look at the box score from last night and criticize the Bulldogs for getting outworked on the boards, but a word of warning to be careful. You might draw the wrong conclusion.

In actuality, Drake really held their own on the boards, especially when you look at things on a possession neutral basis via Offensive Rebounding %. This metric essentially looks at how many offensive rebounds were given up for each time a rebound was available. You tell how we did on the offensive boards by looking at our number (25%) and you look at how we did on the defensive boards by looking at the other teams number (25.9%), and vice versa for Texas Southern. Average in MVC conference games last year was 29.3%, so I'd say that we were slightly below average on the offensive boards but not horrible.

Back to the main issue at hand, getting outrebounded 37-30 isn't great, but it's slightly misleading if you don't also consider that Texas Southern turned the ball over 22 times. Because of all of those turnovers, there were a ton of possessions where they didn't hoist up shots that turned into missed field goals, offering us our fair share of rebounding opportunities.

Altogether we certainly held our own. There's more room to grow, but also keep in mind that Jordan Clarke sat a lot with foul trouble and Kraidon Woods didn't play. I'm excited to see the potential of our ability to grow.

Factor #4: Free Throw Rate

• Texas Southern: 43.9%
• Drake: 27.6%

People do this different ways, here FTA / FGA is shown. Again, free throw attempts were actually just 18 to 16 (Texas Southern with the 18), but since they turned the ball over so much, when they actually ended a possession "on their own terms", they were getting to the line at a fairly decent rate.

This shouldn't be too much of a surprise if you were able to see last night's game. For stretches, Drake really fell into the lull of hoisting up a lot of threes. Fortunately for our part, Ryan Wedel and Aaron Hawley were hitting their threes at a 50% rate last night. Everyone else wasn't so lucky.

Still, a lot of our success from the three last night were from penetration and kicks to a wide open Ryan Wedel. We were struggling to find our rhythm early, and were shooting way too many threes. In the first half, 15 of our 27 shots were from beyond the arc. Once we got more penetration and got the ball inside to Seth way more in the second half, that ratio became way more balanced at 10 of 31 shots being from beyond the arc. I'd sure like to see that aggressiveness continue in Ames.

Overall, I think it's clear that our defense won us last night's game. We were relentless at forcing turnovers which really flipped the tide into our favor. We were pretty unbalanced early on, but got better penetration and really turned it on in the second half.

THE GOOD... THE BAD... THE UGLY FROM LAST NIGHT

The Good: Ryan Wedel and Sharing

Ryan Wedel was huge last night, shooting 6 / 12 from the field (all from three) and hitting numerous big shots en route to a 20 point performance. His bombs really seemed to get things going in the second half to allow us to open up our lead, and we never looked back.

Also important was how strongly we shared the basketball. We had 16 assists on 20 made field goals, absolutely fantastic to see. I don't want to take anything away from Wedel's performance (because he was fantastic), but he's even better when he can straddle the arc and catch and shoot. Like Ryan, many of our scorers are going to be even more efficient as we keep sharing the ball.

The Bad: Falling in Love with the three

I won't rehash the points made above, but it was bad to see us so stagnant early on, and hoisting up 15 threes out of our first 27 field goal attempts.

The Ugly: NBA Jam Session

Boy, we gave up a lot of dunks last night, huh? Two backdoor alley-oops really stick out in my mind. Don't sleep on Texas Southern's athleticism, for a SWAC team, they sure brought some hops.

LOOKING AHEAD

We're right back on the horse Wednesday night at Ames. Don't look now, but Iowa State is 2-0 going into our matchup. More details to come...

OFF TOPIC: Top 50 Dunks of All Time.

One last item I thought was awesome. I don't agree with the order, and some "honorable mentions" really should be in the list. But, holy cow, there are some pretty insane dunks in this video. Check it out if you have some time to kill:

http://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/blog/?p=178