Plastered In The Paint (?)

As far as I can tell, there aren't many (read: any) stat sites which list national, college stats for points in the paint or shot selection by court location.  (Can somebody get Santa to forward my list to Ken Pomeroy, please?!) 

However, I was able to pull the P.i.P. info from the IU box scores, and discerned some interesting info on some of my preconceived notions on our post play.  The Hoosiers have outscored their opponents 287-276 on the season in the paint.  (Huh, no shit, says I.)

Okay, we'll take out the powder-puffs (Howard, USC Upstate, & NW St.): IU- 166, Opponents- 208.  Not quite the statistical prison raping I'd expected to see there either.  Perhaps our startling, inside ineptitude against Kentucky (44-26), Maryland (38-18), and George Mason (42-20) has just burned that perception into my mind (giving up 50 in the paint to Ole' Miss was only marginally offset by putting up 42 ourselves).

Add into the mix the fact that we've been out-rebounded by more than 20 twice this season (UK-25 & Boston-20), and it's easy to see how some can feel as though our post play leaves us at a significant disadvantage (read: FUCT), particularly with the physical conference season right around the corner. 

Since even the best of 'em can't coach tall (or teach Tijan to alley oop at least once a game), I'd suggest we work more dribble-drives & mid-range jumpers into the offense to create some more space for our bigs to operate in the paint.  (A note on dribble-driving: if Jeremiah has the ball, every motherfucker on the court needs to be prepared to catch a pass.  He'd drop more dimes than a chicken-wire change purse if dudes would just be prepared for the pass.) 

One bright spot I noticed: we've outscored our opponents on points off turnovers 147-134 on the season.  Even if you remove the softies from the mix, we're still ahead 86-80.  Considering last year's pummelling in this category, I'd say there's hope for Crean's guard-driven philosophies. 

With the traditional holiday turkeys coming into the Hall over break, I'm not expecting much in the way of statistically significant outcomes.  However, I'd recommend keeping a close eye on the P.i.P. stats once the Big 10 starts to determine whether or not our lack of contributing bigs will continue to haunt us for the foreseeable future.  And with that, I'm off to catch up with some dear, old IU friends for the weekend in the region & plan on doing my part to keep John Jameson & Sons well capitalized throughout the holidays.