The Four Factors: Marquette vs Arizona State

If you're not familiar with the Four Factors as featured on KenPom.com, the concept is very simple: There are four main parts of a basketball game that contribute to a team's success. They are:

• effective field goal percentage, or FG% with a bonus for made three pointers
  
• turnover rate, or the % of possessions that end in a turnover
  
• offensive rebound rate, or the % of possible offensive rebounds that the team grabbed
  
• and free throw rate, or the ratio of free throws attempted to field goals attempted expressed as a percentage

We'll look at the numbers for Marquette and their opponent in both categories for each game. The opponent number doubles as Marquette's defensive numbers, since it's what they're allowing. Along side each of the individual game numbers, you'll see two numbers after that labelled "Season." The first number is Marquette's either offensive or defensive totals for the year, the second is Marquette's national rankings in those statistics. Both season long numbers are provided by KenPom.com.

Effective Field Goal Percentage (eFG%)

Marquette: 46.4% (Season: 42.3%, #329)
Arizona State: 63.0% (Season: 44.9%, #61)

If Marquette shoots better than their season long number, I'm not going to complain about it, mostly because it's bordering on being statistically impossible to go lower as the national ranking shows. As for the defensive number, WOW, that's a breakdown. Of course, Jahii Carson is making more than half of the threes he attempts this year, and the Sun Devils are a top 40 three point shooting team, so I suppose it was bound to happen. But 63% is still REALLY AWFUL.

Turnover Rate (TO%)

Marquette: 6.2% (Season: 16.4%, #82)
Arizona State: 12.6% (Season: 20.1%, #93)

Road game with 6% of possessions ending in turnovers? Can I sign up for that for the rest of the season right now? Where do I sign? SOMEONE GET ME A PEN. As you can see, both teams were keeping good track of the ball last night, which also probably explains why we never got an under-4 media time out, either. Perhaps if we can get noted pass jumper Jajuan Johnson into the lineup a bit more, we can get that defensive TO% up a little bit going forward.

Offensive Rebounding Rate (OR%)

Marquette: 39.5% (Season: 36.7%, #69)
Arizona State: 21.4% (Season: 28.7%, #95)

This is all awesome, and made even more awesome by taking into account that Jordan Bochynski had 11 rebounds in the game and half of Arizona State's six offensive rebounds all by himself. Marquette wasn't hitting, but manufactured themselves some luck along the way by getting more tries at the rim and stopped ASU from doing the same.

Free Throw Rate (FTR)

Marquette: 27.5% (Season: 54.1%, #45)
Arizona State: 29.6% (Season: 33.3%, #64)

So, not much in the foul shooting department, huh? Both teams combined for just 28 fouls in the entire game, which helped the game be all kinds of fun to watch. Kind of surprised that Marquette's rate isn't a little higher, but Derrick Wilson was doing a lot of business on floaters in the lane, and that's not going to get you very many fouls, nor is the 12 three point attempts by Jake Thomas. Suddenly I'm trying to figure out how Jamil Wilson fouled out of the game when the rest of the Golden Eagles accrued nine fouls combined.