In Reply to: About shots clocks and pace. posted by mh on September 13, 2023 at 12:28:21
I have a lot of respect for Michael Miller, but I'm not sure I'm buying what he's saying here.
If a European team playing with a 24 second clock shoots with 4 seconds left, one might say they are playing deliberately, setting up the offense. If an American college team playing with a 30 second clock shoots with 10 seconds left, one might say they are rushing their shot with a third of the clock left. But in reality, they are playing at the same speed.
The only way to tell if the Euros play slower is to compare the pace of play, the number of possessions per game. Shoot quicker and you get more possessions. Luckily, we have those numbers.
The median pace for a DI NCAA team last season was just about 70 possessions per game. Here are those numbers for some of the top European leagues:
We can compare the pace for both NCAA and Euro since both play a 40 minute game. The mean pace is about 73 for all three European leagues. In fact none of the European teams have a pace less than 70.
Now it was also asserted that college teams like to jack up threes early in possessions. We also have data on this. Only about 7% of UCLA's shots were threes less than 10 seconds into the possession. Of the Elite Eight teams last season, that number ranged from 9-14%. That's one out of 7 to 11 shots. While we don't have these numbers for Euros, it's hard not to believe that one out of ten of their shots aren't threes with under 10 seconds on the shot clock considering we might assume are more likely to take a three in transition after a turnover or long rebound.