Tobacco Road Report

By Michael

We'll have more on the BC-UNC game in a later post. Until then we wanted to show some interesting tempo-free stats for the Eagles.

When BC lost Sean Williams to disciplinary actions, the conventional wisdom said that Williams' shot blocking and defense were impossible to replace. Consequently, BC would suffer in the ACC standings.

Ignoring the conventional wisdom, BC went out and continued win in conference play. That is, until recently when BC took on Duke and North Carolina at home. The absence of Williams became large as both the Blue Devils and Tar Heels were able to get open looks and multiple attempts on the offensive end.

In the chart below, we plot the offensive and defensive efficiency for Boston College. Click on the link to open the chart. The undulating blue line shows the points per possession scored by the Eagles and the linear solid blue line is the trendline. The undulating orange line is the points per possession allowed by the Eagles and the linear solid orange line is the trend. The last game Williams played was against Miami and we note this game on the chart with an asterisk.

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Offensively speaking, the loss of Williams has had almost no impact. The trendline on offense has been consistent at around 1.10 points per possession. However, it's clear to see that Williams has affected the defense of the Eagles. Before losing Williams, BC only allowed more than one point per possession once. After losing Williams, the Eagles have only held the opponent under one point per possession once.

The latter part of the schedule has been tougher, but it's hard to argue against this trend. Bottom line is that the offense is working, but the defense isn't scaring anyone. Al Skinner has to correct this or the Eagles will be going home early in both the ACC Conference and NCAA Tournaments.