Shot Attempt Differential

I had been updating my conference-only stats earlier today when I noticed something disturbing...

NCSU FGA: 819
Opp FGA: 972

Borrowing from some of Ken Pomeroy's work, I'm going to look at shot differential in conference play for all of the ACC schools. To calculate the differential for each team, I'm going to take the shots portion of the possession equation (FGA + (0.475 x FTA)), divide that by total possessions and then multiply by 100. That gives me the shot differential per 100 possessions. A positive number means a team had more attempts than its opponents, while a negative number means a team's opponents got more shots at the basket.

Conf games only:

                    Shot_Diff
1) Miami               8.4
2) Clemson             7.1
3) UNC                 5.3
4) Ga Tech             5.1
5) Duke                1.8
6) Wake                0.0
7) FSU                -0.8
8) Maryland           -0.9
9) Va Tech            -3.3
10) Virginia          -3.8
11) Boston College    -5.1
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12) NC State         -14.7

-- Miami is interesting. They had 989 FGAs in conference play, compared to 817 for their opponents (opponents shot 174 more free throws). But the Hurricanes shot so poorly and their opponents shot so well that the Canes made a grand total of six more field goals (411 to 405) than their opponents despite the 172 extra attempts.

-- Clemson used theft to build its advantage--the Tigers were +55 in the turnover department.

-- Wake Forest had exactly as many field goal attempts (900) and free throw attempts (377) as its opponents. Weird.

-- When you consistently get pounded on the glass and don't force turnovers, you get the deficit that's staring at NC State. If you'd prefer the number in per game terms rather than per 100 possessions, here you go: -9.8 shots per game. Talk about diggin' yourself a hole.

NC State committed 58 more turnovers than its opponents did, so that's part of it. The rest can be attributed here:

        OR%    OR
NCSU   26.2   124
Opp    39.3   225

We're both the worst offensive rebounding team and the worst defensive rebounding team in the ACC. That's kinda not good.