I posted the below in another thread several days back; it was a tad off the original topic of the thread and kind of got buried, so I'm sharing it again:
I posed this before the IU game, which most certainly didn't improve Purdue's turnover margin ranking. It is absolutely shocking to me that IU had only 1 turnover in the 1st half of that game - and even that was a charge. I think they only had 4 or 5 on the game. How Purdue can have such a good defense in terms of PPP but be so dreadful in forcing turnovers is just unbelievable. A lot of people here dislike Dakich, but his comment on the defense in the first half was spot-on: "Purdue's defense is not making IU uncomfortable... at all". Went on to say that if you make IU's offense uncomfortable, they'll just give the ball away, which has been evidenced all year long; they're one of the NCAA's worst teams in terms of turnover %.
I don't get it. It makes no sense to me how a unit that produces such good defensive results can force turnovers at such a paltry rate. Anybody have thoughts on this?
...But since we're on the turnover topic, turnover margin is a HUGE problem. Through games played yesterday, Purdue is ranked 311th in turnover margin (-2.2/game). Significantly contributing to this is that Purdue is 336th in forced turnovers per game. Now the 336 is determined based on "per game" and doesn't take into account pace like "per possession" would, but still. This is absolutely staggering given that Purdue has a top-10 defense in terms of points per possession (Kenpom). So yes, turnovers are a bit of a problem (ranked 123rd at 12.4/game), but they are completely inept at turning over the opponents.
EDIT: except as noted with the Kenpom reference, info is from stats at ncaa.com.
EDIT: except as noted with the Kenpom reference, info is from stats at ncaa.com.
I posed this before the IU game, which most certainly didn't improve Purdue's turnover margin ranking. It is absolutely shocking to me that IU had only 1 turnover in the 1st half of that game - and even that was a charge. I think they only had 4 or 5 on the game. How Purdue can have such a good defense in terms of PPP but be so dreadful in forcing turnovers is just unbelievable. A lot of people here dislike Dakich, but his comment on the defense in the first half was spot-on: "Purdue's defense is not making IU uncomfortable... at all". Went on to say that if you make IU's offense uncomfortable, they'll just give the ball away, which has been evidenced all year long; they're one of the NCAA's worst teams in terms of turnover %.
I don't get it. It makes no sense to me how a unit that produces such good defensive results can force turnovers at such a paltry rate. Anybody have thoughts on this?
