I keep seeing a similar statement pop up: "We are an athletic team."

So, i got to thinking...are we? We may be athletic in the sense that we have guys who can run fast and jump high, but does being athletic equate to being good at basketball?

Because I am in an endless deathloop of Teams meetings here on Friday morning, I decided to see what the stats say. I went to the official NCAA stats page and pulled up all major team stats.

NOTE: Before everyone goes ballistic with "yeah, but injuries," I get it. I do. Each team/game/season has its own context and stats don't always tell the full story.

But, they do say a lot...and not good either.

Assist/Turnover Ratio: 338th in the country...BAD.
Assists per game: 186th...AVERAGE.
Bench Points per game: 6thth...YAY!
Blocks per game: 247th...BELOW AVERAGE
Fastbreak points per game: 91st... ABOVE AVERAGE
Field Goal percentage: 95th...ABOVE AVERAGE
Field Goal percentage defense: 49th...PRETTY GOOD
Fouls per game: 351...DEAD ASS LAST
FT per game: 16th...YAY
FT percentage: 186th...AVERAGE
Rebound margin: 26th...PRETTY GOOD
Scoring defense: 150th...SLIGHTLY ABOVE AVERAGE
Scoring offense: 89th...ABOVE AVERAGE
Steals per game: 21st... YAY
3-pt percentage: 251st... BELOW AVERAGE
3-pt percentage defense: 333rd...BAD
Turnover margin: 172nd...AVERAGE
Turnovers per game: 351st...DEAD ASS LAST


Again, the stats don't always tell the full story. But this isn't good.

We may be "athletic" but we are a "completely average/below average" basketball team.

The new seeding rankings have not come out yet, but if I have done the math right (maybe) we're probably going to be 6, thanks to the UVU win and our loss.

There may some strange world where we finish maybe 9th in the standings but somehow our mathematical resume keeps us 8th, as there is a seemingly large resume math gap between us and the currently 8/9 teams, even though the WAC website standings has us 7th.

And, breaking: Ryan Ivey going to LaTech...so our super fun athletic year continues.

When does volleyball start? #volleyballschool

Keller's time at SFA needs to come to a close. Our program is regressing, not progressing. #PressU is a joke, and its obvious that the players aren't bought in to the system he's got in place, and I don't blame them. I've never seen someone so quick to pull someone after making one mistake in a game and sit them for 10 minutes to the detriment of his own team. It's cutting off your nose to spite your face.

There's a lot of our fans that want to look through rose colored glasses at Keller because they see one side of him, but it should be obvious that there's rot under the surface. Only one player has stayed for four years under him in all the time he's been here (Nana will make two). He's restocking basically the entire roster each season with transfers because he either can't get players to stand playing for him for more than a year or two, or he decides that he doesn't want them to. Beyond that, there are personnel issues at play that highlight some very serious character issues with him. He's not the right person to be leading this program.

I want the whole program to succeed. When things go wrong it's easy to point fingers and some of that may be true. I would bet Keller wants to win as bad as anyone. I don't know what the answer is. From what I can see(which may be wrong) we don't have what it takes to compete at the top end of the WAC. We have some really good players but not enough as a whole. We don't have THAT GUY. Example: Seattle's Cam Tyson, Grand Canyon's Gabe McGothlan and Grant Foster. The list goes on.

No-look said:

---

I want the whole program to succeed. When things go wrong it's easy to point fingers and some of that may be true. I would bet Keller wants to win as bad as anyone. I don't know what the answer is. From what I can see(which may be wrong) we don't have what it takes to compete at the top end of the WAC. We have some really good players but not enough as a whole. We don't have THAT GUY. Example: Seattle's Cam Tyson, Grand Canyon's Gabe McGothlan and Grant Foster. The list goes on.

---

Excellent points. Cam Tyson stuck it to us last night. The list goes in of "killers" that just go off when they play us.

No-look said:

---

I want the whole program to succeed. When things go wrong it's easy to point fingers and some of that may be true. I would bet Keller wants to win as bad as anyone. I don't know what the answer is. From what I can see(which may be wrong) we don't have what it takes to compete at the top end of the WAC. We have some really good players but not enough as a whole. We don't have THAT GUY. Example: Seattle's Cam Tyson, Grand Canyon's Gabe McGothlan and Grant Foster. The list goes on.

---

I think the THAT GUY issue is 100% on coaching. Not one player can play long enough to be A GUY.

I looked at our Minutes Per Game and:

Jossell leads at 25 per. So, the guy who is probably our best player, gets just over 1/2 a game. But, in a road game we really need...plays 19.

We have most of the team in that 14-20 minute per game range, so at no point does anyone really get any significant stretch of time in the game.

There are lots of failures this year (in a year that isn't even over) but towards the top is the coaching staff's inability to find consistent lineups and rotations that. work.

This is not new news, and I'm not the first one saying it, but it does lead to the "why don't we have one (or two guys) who can be THAT GUY?"

And Hall is a THAT GUY type of player. There's a reason why he was a pre-season all conference selection and talked about for player of the year.

He averaged 20 minutes a game this year. 50% of the game our best player didn't play (technically less, when you count overtimes games...where he didn't play a single minute).

There's a reason why the best teams in the country, big or small, have a starting 5 that average the most minutes with 3-4 guys that can come in and fill roles and contribute. Instead, we're trying to find 3 different lineups to play at any given time during a game.

Whatever.

And since MasterAxe played the stat game, I will too on a Friday. To add on to my point about minutes per game.

Under Keller, the teams that had more players average over 12 Minutes Per Game, were our worst teams.

23-24: 11 players (currently 14-12)
22-23: 11 players (19-13, first round WAC exit)
18-19: 10 players (didn't qualify for the SLC Tournament)

21-22: 8 players (WAC Champs)
20-21: 9 players (COVID year but 16-5)
17-18: 9 players (NCAA Tournament birth)

The only anomaly was the 19-20 team that went 28-3. 10 players averaged over 12 MPG, but was by far our most talented team.

Maybe I'm wrong, but seems to check out. Grand Canyon currently has only 8 players averaging over 12 MPG, with their top 3 averaging over 30 MPG.

JHard said:

---

And Hall is a THAT GUY type of player. There's a reason why he was a pre-season all conference selection and talked about for player of the year.

He averaged 20 minutes a game this year. 50% of the game our best player didn't play (technically less, when you count overtimes games...where he didn't play a single minute).

There's a reason why the best teams in the country, big or small, have a starting 5 that average the most minutes with 3-4 guys that can come in and fill roles and contribute. Instead, we're trying to find 3 different lineups to play at any given time during a game.

Whatever.

---

. I feel bad for Day Day and AJ. Both were in the preseason chatter. Losing them was big.

.

JHard said:

---

And since MasterAxe played the stat game, I will too on a Friday. To add on to my point about minutes per game.

Under Keller, the teams that had more players average over 12 Minutes Per Game, were our worst teams.

23-24: 11 players (currently 14-12)
22-23: 11 players (19-13, first round WAC exit)
18-19: 10 players (didn't qualify for the SLC Tournament)

21-22: 8 players (WAC Champs)
20-21: 9 players (COVID year but 16-5)
17-18: 9 players (NCAA Tournament birth)

The only anomaly was the 19-20 team that went 28-3. 10 players averaged over 12 MPG, but was by far our most talented team.

Maybe I'm wrong, but seems to check out. Grand Canyon currently has only 8 players averaging over 12 MPG, with their top 3 averaging over 30 MPG.

---

Excellent analysis. I think depth is a nice selling point for a team and can be useful if its used correctly, but you need to have "the guy" and some of the same faces around him every night to really get the most out of your team, and I don't know any player that can consistently be "the guy" playing so few minutes per game. Guys need time on the court to get into the flow of the game. Pretty impossible to do if you get a quick hook every time you throw a bad pass, miss one shot he didn't like, give up one backdoor cut, etc.