Team Performance Awards

Welcome back to the Blue Devil Hoops Award Season. We'll start with teams, and then cover players tomorrow. Team "awards" are broken into two categories - single-game performance and deviant season performance. All awards are based on conference games only.

Best Single Game Performances

Offensive Rating: Boston College against Wake Forest - 146.60. The Eagles had an astounding day from the field, shooting .771 efg% and 1.591 PPWS. Boston College went 26-40 from 2, 13-19 from 3, and even chipped in 21-24 from the line on the way to 112 points in 76 possessions. Surprisingly, BC had the second-worst offensive performance on the season, scoring just 48 points in 70 possessions against Virginia Tech. So that's 64 more points in just 6 more possessions between these two games.

Defensive Rating: North Carolina against Virginia Tech - 66.00. The Hokies missed 40 of 54 shots, and Carolina gathered up over 80% of Tech's misses and forced turnovers on 25% of possessions. It was a game that could have broken their season, but they promptly went on a four-game winning streak before losing a heartbreaker to Clemson.

PPWS:
Best - Boston College against Wake Forest - 1.591. See above.
Worst - Clemson at Florida State - 0.724. Clemson shot an awful 3 for 27 from 3 (and a typically poor 12 for 23 from the line) on its way to a 64-55 loss.

EFG%:
Best - BC, again - 0.771.
Worst - Virginia Tech against UNC - 0.296.

Free Throw Rate
Best - Virginia Tech against Florida State - 95.92. The Hokies shot 47 free throws against 49 field goals on their way to an 89-80 win.
Worst - Clemson at UNC - 7.87. Clemson shot just 7 free throws against 89 field goal attempts, and they made just 1 of those. UNC's double-OT comeback at home was fueled by never giving the Tigers freebies.

Rebounding
Offensive - Clemson against Boston College - 60.00. The Tigers gathered up 21 of the 35 chances on their own end of the court, turning an average shooting day into a 132.77 offensive rating and picking up a 22 point win.
Defensive - Florida State at NC State - 87.50. FSU gathered 21 of the Pack's 24 misses. It's not surprising NC State is the victim here, as they were the worst offensive rebounding team in the conference. The Noles used the control of the defensive glass to propel themselves to a 72-62 victory.

Assist Rate
Best - Virginia Tech at UNC - 78.57. Just goes to show you that a high assist rate is not really indicative of good offense. The Hokies made only 14 buckets, and 11 came off of assists.
Worst - Georgia Tech at Duke - 13.04. Georgia Tech recorded only 3 assists on their 23 made field goals on their way to a 71-58 loss.

Turnover Rate
Best - Duke against Boston College - 8.26. Duke had the lowest turnover percentage in the conference this season, and this game helped, as the Devils coughed up just 6 turnovers in 72 possessions on the way to a 90-80 win.
Worst - NC State at Clemson - 36.02. NC State had the highest turnover percentage in the conference this season, and this game helped (hurt?), as the Pack coughed up 23 turnovers in just 64 possessions on the way to a 70-54 loss.

Steal Rate
Best - Virginia against NC State - 22.05. The Cavaliers took advantage of NC State coming to Charlottesville and racked up 16 steals in 72 Pack possessions on the way to a 78-60 victory.
Worst - Boston College against Virginia - 1.43. The Eagles recorded just 1 steal and got blown out at Virginia, 84-66.

Block Rate
Best - UNC against Duke - 19.74. The Heels blocked 15 of Duke's attempts in the season's final game, helping the Heels to a 76-68 win and a regular season first-place finish.
Worst - Virginia against Boston College - 0.00. No steals by one team, no blocks by the other. There were actually 8 zero block games on the season, 4 of which were by Virginia. Can you say, no inside presence?

DEVIANT PERFORMANCES
Here, we look at which teams had areas in which they really stood out (either for good or bad) as compared to the rest of the conference. I use standard deviation as the measure for determining excellence (or futility).

North Carolina Offensive Rating - 2.02 better than the mean. Carolina's offense ran on all cylinders all season, and out-paced the average by about a point every 11 possessions.

Duke Two Point Scoring Rate - 2.04 lower than the mean. Duke got a substantially smaller portion of its points from 2 than anyone else in the league, picking up just 44.63% of the offense from inside the arc.

NC State Opponent Assist Rate - 2.06 better than the mean. Again, assists and offensive performance are not correlated at all. The Pack were standouts in denying assists, and were dead last in defense.

Virginia Tech Defensive Rebounding - 2.08 better than the mean. The Hokies cleaned up on the glass, and were even more proficient than even the Tar Heels in cleaning up opponents' misses.

Virginia Tech 3FG% - 2.15 worst than the mean. The Hokies shot just 29.7% from 3, contributing to the league's worst offense.

Virginia Tech Free Throw Rate - 2.21 better than the mean. The Hokies rely heavily on scoring from the line, shooting almost one free throw for every two field goal attempts, and getting over 1/4 of their points at the line. The fact that the Hokies have multiple deviant performances shows just how unique a team this is. The other evidence of this - they paired the worst offense in the conference with the best defense in the conference. Lots of free throws, lots of missed threes, and lots of defensive rebounds - it's Hokie basketball!

Virginia Block Rate - 2.26 worse than the mean. As noted above, the Cavaliers had four full games without recording a block, and didn't have big numbers in any of their games. By the way, opponents shot .537 efg% against Virginia - that's the worst field goal defense in conference.

Clemson Free Throw Scoring Rate - 2.34 lower than the mean. Clemson didn't go to the line a lot (12th in conference in free throw rate) and didn't score well when they got there (58.6%). Those two combined to give the Tigers substantially less scoring from the line than any other conference team. (If this looks familiar, it's exactly the same entry as last year - only the numbers were changed to reflect this particular season's free throw futility.

And the winner for the most deviant performance is ...

Duke Opponent Two Point Scoring Rate: 2.35 greater than the mean. The Devils insist that teams beat them from 2. 62.5% of opponents' scoring game from inside the arc. Duke made 452 field goals. Their opponents made 444. That's not a big discrepancy. But they outscored opponents 1057-960 from the field. Duke pushing opponents inside the arc (and the Devils own desire to shoot from 3) turned an 8 field goal difference into a 97 point (6/game) advantage. Forcing teams inside, inside, inside is smart strategy.