Here's an interesting stat from last night's Penn-St. Joe's game that wasn't in the box score: both teams recorded 67 possessions. You might remember that in last week's Crunchy Numbers, I noted that Penn averaged 69.8 possessions per game and St. Joe's averaged 62.2 possessions per game (or, to be truer to the definition, per 40 minutes).
The halfway point between those two numbers is 66. I thought watching the game that Penn was playing at a pace slower than what it usually does, which turned out to be the case. But the Quakers were able to get St. Joe's to at least play somewhat faster than normal.
By the way, the formula for computing the number of possessions in the game is this: Field goal attempts minus offensive rebounds plus turnovers plus 0.475 times the number of free throw attempts.
It makes sense, in that a second-chance basket comes on the same possession as the first shot, and a possession with no shot resulted in a turnover. As for the 0.475, I understand that a bunch of people researched it for a while and settled on that number. I'm certainly not going to bother arguing.
