Marquette Basketball Four Factors: vs St. John's

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.  The first is Marquette's season long average in that category, and the second is their national ranking on KenPom.com.

Effective Field Goal Percentage (eFG%)

Marquette: 40.0% (Season: 49.3%, #159)
St. John's: 53.7% (Season: 48.7%, #159)

The headline on this game was "Johnnies' shooting dooms the Golden Eagles."  This isn't wrong.  SJU finished the game 12-24 behind the three point line.  But, and this is important, they sucked out loud inside of it, and even more importantly, they were only good behind the arc in the second half.  They were 8-11 from distance in the second half, which means that they were just 4-13 in the first 20 minutes.

Then there's Marquette's offense.  Matt Carlino was 5-9 behind the three point line.  That's good!  Duane Wilson, after going HAM against Providence in the previous game, was 0-6 from long range and 3-10 overall.  That's bad.  But it comes with a free frogurt!  That's good!  The frogurt is also cursed.  That's bad.  Luke Fischer was 5-9 from the field.  That's good!  But Fischer was 3-10 from the free throw line.  That's bad.

Turnover Rate (TO%)

Marquette: 21.7% (Season: 18.8%, #154)
St. John's: 20.9% (Season: 21.3%, #50)

That's pretty much the standard great defense from the Golden Eagles, so not much to say there.  Sir`Dominic Pointer had five of SJU's turnovers all by himself, so we can pretend that this caused him to be left off the all-BE First Team if you want.

Steve Taylor, Jr., had a fantastic rebounding day (we'll get to that next), but the rest of his 31 minutes wasn't great. 1-5 shooting, including a triple that he probably shouldn't have shot, 2-4 on freebies and a team high four turnovers.  Matt Carlino was right there with him, contributing three more of MU's 14 costly turnovers.

Offensive Rebounding Rate (OR%)

Marquette: 31.0% (Season: 28.8%, #257)
St. John's: 31.7% (Season: 36.9%, #343)

And now, the part of your show where I grit my teeth and come up with a new way to talk about Marquette's atrocious... wait.  Hey, this was better than the season averages on both ends!  And not just a fraction of a point or so!  Hey, nice job, everyone.

Steve Taylor, Jr., was the star here, grabbing SEVENTEEN rebounds, with game highs on both ends.  He had six on the offensive end, and 11 on the defensive glass.  Windex probably isn't a performance enhancing drug as it's likely toxic, right?  So that's not the explanation as to how Taylor snared more rebounds in this one as he did in his last five games combined.  Luke Fischer was pretty good here, too, grabbing three bounces off the offensive glass.

Free Throw Rate (FTR)

Marquette: 32.7% (Season: 35.8%, #213)
St. John's: 28.8% (Season: 30.8%, #46)

These numbers are exactly right for a game that had as much jump shooting as this game did.  Not much to say here, other than Marquette has to figure out a way to get to the free throw line more, jump shooting or no.