What happened to scoring in the B1G?

[SpiderRico]

25 years ago, the B1G was known as a scoring league. Teams like Michigan, Illinois, Indiana and Iowa routinely averaged in the 80's. Iowa even averaged 94ppg in 88-89 (not to mention averaging over 100ppg in 1970). The league as a whole averaged between around 78ppg up to the 93-94 season. Then the 94-95 season saw the average dip to 73.9. A year later, it was down to 70.7. By the 96-97 season, the league average dipped below 70ppg and, with the exception of one year, has never been above 70 since. It bottomed out at 65.1 in the 08-09 season and has gone up a few ppg since then, but still hasn't reached the 70ppg barrier.

My question is.....what happened? Was it an influx of defensive minded coaches into the league like Dick Bennett, Bo Ryan, Tom Izzo, Todd Lickliter, etc? Was it because good talent started going to the NBA instead of college? Was it the lack of skill development of college players, i.e. unable to hit the mid-range jumper anymore? A combination?

What's weird, at least to me, is that there wasn't a slow slide downward. Basically in a 3 year period we went from nearly 80ppg to under 70ppg and never recovered.

My hope is that Fran and his philosophy of running and pressing and uptempo basketball will be something to differentiate us from the rest of the league and pull in some good players that may not have looked at us before. In addition, hopefully Fran will do for basketball in this conference what the hiring of Hayden did for football in this conference in that he brought it from a stodgy, antiquated style of play to a more uptempo style of play. I certainly hope so because B1G basketball, for the most part, is boring as all get out.

 

[Tskinner]

Big Ten Basketball: Grueling Display of Bumping, Bashing - WSJ.com

 

[JHHawk]

Keady and Heathcote/Izzo started dominating the league in the mid-90's...after the Fab Five left Michigan. Bennett also got Wisky to the FF in the late 90's. These programs really amped up the rugged,physical play,and the referees like Teddy Valentine embraced it. The more the refs let go, the more rugged the play became.
Bennett and Izzo made the FF with tall defensive end frontcourts, and the league gravitated to it. Bo Ryan stepped in and continued it at Wisky with success.

Time to break out of this syndrome. First step...new referees. In the BTT game last Sunday when the MSU guard was able to trip/clip Aaron Craft from behind in the open court as they chased a loose ball right in front of Valentine and he let the MSU guy jump over the tripped Craft to recover the ball and lay it in the basket, it reached its nadir.
Big Ten bb had officially become rougher than Big Ten football,as that play certainly draws a yellow flag in football. But no whistle from Teddy.

 

[DodgerHawki]

It's an interesting question..

Keady and Heathcote/Izzo started dominating the league in the mid-90's...after the Fab Five left Michigan. Bennett also got Wisky to the FF in the late 90's. These programs really amped up the rugged,physical play,and the referees like Teddy Valentine embraced it. The more the refs let go, the more rugged the play became.
Bennett and Izzo made the FF with tall defensive end frontcourts, and the league gravitated to it. Bo Ryan stepped in and continued it at Wisky with success.

Time to break out of this syndrome. First step...new referees. In the BTT game last Sunday when the MSU guard was able to trip/clip Aaron Craft from behind in the open court as they chased a loose ball right in front of Valentine and he let the MSU guy jump over the tripped Craft to recover the ball and lay it in the basket, it reached its nadir.
Big Ten bb had officially become rougher than Big Ten football,as that play certainly draws a yellow flag in football. But no whistle from Teddy.

and one that CBS Sports looked at a bit earlier this year.

Offense on pace for historically low season - CBSSports.com

I'm not sure there is one single answer. Yes, MSU is physical, but they like to push the pace when possible. Most of Izzo's years in the B1G, Spartans have averaged more than 70 points per game.

Saw something recently that credited Bob Knight with slowing up the overall pace of games in the Big Ten. Knight came in, and by his second year was winning the conference title by valuing every possession and getting a good shot. Others followed suit and scoring took a dip down. Of course Knight also had teams (like his 1987 championship team) that weren't afraid to score a lot of points.

If I had to take a guess, there are a few factors:

Defense being taught and emphasized more, at every level. From youth leagues on up, there is better teaching of defensive fundamentals. Coaches (even when out-talented) see defense as a way to stay in a game against a stronger opponent.
Fewer teams pressing. Fewer and fewer teams employ full-court press as part of their package. Coaches have realized that pressing against talented teams just opens up the floor for your opponent to dunk and shoot open 3-pointers against you. Lousville and a few other teams use the press, but not to the level we saw in the 1980s.
Success of teams that limit possessions. Teams like Wisconsin and Butler have been very successful playing low-possession games where a premium is placed on not turning the ball over and taking good shots.
I don't dispute that refereeing plays a factor. But people were complaining about rough play back in the 1980s when scoring was much higher than it was today.
Overall, it seems as if coaches just put a greater emphasis on limiting easy baskets on defense and taking a good shot on offense. That drives down the total number of possessions in a game, which in turn drives down raw scoring averages.

 

[SpiderRico]

Big Ten Basketball: Grueling Display of Bumping, Bashing - WSJ.com

The part of the article blaming Knight is just flat out wrong. If you look at the scoring avg's of the teams in the Big 10 when Knight was there, his Indiana teams were historically near the top.

In 86-87 they were 4th in the league at 82.5ppg and won a NC, in 88-89 they were 4th at 78.5ppg, in 89-90 they were 4th at 78.1ppg, in 90-91 they were tops in the league at 84.8ppg, in 91-92 they were again tops in the league at 83.4ppg and made the Final Four, in 92-93 they were tops in the league for a 3rd straight year at 86.7ppg.

I could go on and on, but once again, this is a case of a journalist not doing any homework whatsoever and just going by his "gut" apparently. Because the facts certainly don't support his assertion that Knight's inclusion in the Big 10 brought the scoring down at all. If anything, his team's scoring avg actually INFLATED the scoring avg of the league.

In my opinion, Keady, Bennett, Heathcote, Izzo and Ryan are much more to blame than Knight is.

 

[1977Hawkeye]

This is totally off the top of my head here, and have nothing to back this up, but just wondering: The 1970 Iowa team averaged 100 PPG without a 3 point shot. Maybe the fact that teams are jacking up alot more 3's than they used to has an effect.. I'd be curious to see what the overall FG% (average of all teams) today is compared to 20-30 years ago. Shooting more 3's would equate to a lower shooting percentage as opposed to getting in the paint more, or taking more mid-range shots. Is a lower shooting percentage enough to lower the PPG totals despite more 3 point shots being made? I don't have any stats, but am just speculating.

But I'm sure that's not the only factor. Maybe also the following:

1. More talent going to the NBA early rather than staying in college 3-4 years like it used to be. Just lower quality of play in the college game.

2. Maybe teams are more defensive minded than they used to be, as opposed to looking to score more

3. I see fewer teams looking to push the pace as opposed to years ago, but the 80's is a long time ago now, so my memory is getting pretty foggy

But yeah, I'm not surprised to hear that this year is a historically low season for offense. Back in the late 80's or early 90's, if a game was only in the 20's at halftime, I thought "Wow! What a low-scoring game!" Actually, if teams didn't get to 40 by halftime, I still thought it was a somewhat low-scoring game.

Today, scores in the 20's at halftime are commonplace. I'm even seeing more games where one team fails to even reach 20. That was almost unheard of 25 years ago.

 

[BryceC]

This is totally off the top of my head here, and have nothing to back this up, but just wondering: The 1970 Iowa team averaged 100 PPG without a 3 point shot. Maybe the fact that teams are jacking up alot more 3's than they used to has an effect.. I'd be curious to see what the overall FG% (average of all teams) today is compared to 20-30 years ago.

I bet the effective FG% is just as high as it ever was.