Dave Sez

Assist Info

Ken Pomeroy has emerged from his postseason hibernation to throw up a post today. Today's post is about assist average and Ken says that according to his numbers, Boston College was the best passing team in the country last year.

I didn't see them play nearly enough to comment on that, but it does make some empirical sense. They are a team that was widely believed to overachieve - your classic "total greater than the sum of their parts" team. To be a team that achieves more than their talent would let you feel is possible, they would need to play together extremely well - good team defense, good team rebounding and good team passing. Well, Ken shows that the passing part of that was certainly true.

BTW, I wish Ken had published his numbers!

One last point, and actually the real reason I'm posting about this. Ken quotes an excerpt from the NCAA Basketball Statistician's Manual that an official assist "should be more than a routine pass" and that "[i]t is not even necessary that the assist be given on the last pass." Wow! I've never heard that second part before. I bet you could win a lot of bar bets with that little nugget.