Marquette and Priorities - Part Four

This is a Five Part series looking more in-depth at Marquette and the Priorities on the court.

• Part One - What does it take to make the Final Four?
• Part Two - Which of the Four Factors is more important than the other three combined? (spoiler: it's eFG%)
• Part Three - Marquette is not good enough on eFG% to have a top 20 offense/defense
• Part Four - What goes into eFG% for Top 20 teams?
• Part Five - Are Paint Touches the root cause?

In Part One of this series, we presented the idea that a team needs roughly a top 20 offense and a top 20 defense to make the Final Four. In Part Two, we shared that eFG% is 63% of the total contribution to efficiency. In Part Three - we showed how #mubb has not been good enough at eFG% and argued that this was due to prioritization of the program.

Part Four - What goes into eFG% for Top 20 teams?

What goes into eFG%?

Here's the relative importance of factors contributing to eFG%.

By far, two point percentage is the most important (65%), three point percentage is 33%, and three point rate (3FGA/FGA) is 2%. This actually surprised me a bit. I had expected both the three point percentage and 3FGA/FGA percentage to be much, much higher. Also, note that Assist rate and how often your shots are blocked don't impact eFG%.

What does a top 20 eFG% team look like?

Below is the comparison of Marquette's offense over the past six years to the average rankings for the top 20 offensive eFG% teams.

First, of the top twenty eFG% teams, six of them are top ten overall. Eight out of twenty are top 20 offensive teams. Second, the average of the top 20 teams is #19 at two point percentage and #41 at three point percentage. What is really interesting is that Marquette has been better overall, because they are focusing on the other three Factors.

If we compare the top twenty defensive teams, the top profile is almost the same, except that Marquette's defense has not been better than the average.

Has Marquette ever looked close to a top 20 eFG% team?

Summary

In this post, we looked at the components of eFG%, showed what a top 20 eFG% profile looks like, and then had Lana kindly let us know if Marquette ever came close to being a top 20 eFG% team.

In the fifth and final post, we will ask if Paint Touches are the root cause of the issue.