COLUMN: Hoops: It's all about numbers

Jordan Smith, Commentary That's become something of official dogma during the Internet age, but it hasn't always been the case in the realm of sports. At least not until recently. Last year, the NCAA joined the cyberspace hit parade in impressive fashion with a website at http://www.ncaa.org. Stats, links, news releases -- it's all there for the dedicated fan. All of this information has been available for years, just never in one place or at the click of a button. There are other places for stats on the World Wide Web, like Statman's site, but many of these have the drawback of being crashed 23 hours a day. The upshot of all this is that one can understand the game of basketball (or any sport) by spending some time with the numbers. For example: · Really good teams win by a lot. On the surface, this seems pretty obvious. Still, you always hear coaches, players and especially sports writers talk about winning the tight ones. It's great to win at the buzzer, but no one can make a season of it -- although a team like North Carolina State in 1983 was able to make a short run of it during a tourney situation. In fact, of all stats (other than winning percentage, obviously) the most closely correlated with winning is scoring margin. The 10 best teams in this category -- squads like Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland and Wake Forest -- largely coincide with the AP top 10. The 10 leaders in scoring margin have an obscene group winning percentage of 88 percent, with many of the losses coming to each other, and the worst record of the group belongs to Duke (15-4). · Defense isn't everything. "Good defense will beat good offense every time" is an expression as old as sports. This is a tough one to quantify since much of what we call "offense" is just shooting a lot, a la the Western Athletic Conference. On the other hand, defense can come in the form of stubbornly refusing to shoot until the shot clock reads one -- take the case of a certain team from a certain town in New Jersey. Still, the big scorers seem to fare better than the defensive-minded. The 10 leaders in scoring, led by Xavier (Ohio) with 89 points per game, have an aggregate winning percentage of 75 percent, as opposed to the 10 dominant defenses' 70 percent. · If you rebound, you win. After scoring margin, the best indicator of a good team is rebounding margin. Ruling the boards is a benchmark for great teams. Look at the leaders -- Iowa, Cincinnati, Kansas and Villanova are just a few of the showpiece programs on the list. On a smaller level, take a look at the season of Penn's men's basketball team. Against Villanova, Temple, Maryland and other teams with distinct height advantages, Penn has been subjected to some of its worst beatings in recent memory. But when the Quakers play similarly-sized non-scholarship opponents, their record is a very reasonable 3-1. · The three-pointer is overrated. The absolutely least useful stat provided by our friends at the NCAA is three-point field goals made per game. The 10 leaders -- the squads that live off of the long bomb most -- are a collective nine games over .500. Two of them (Columbia and Morehead State, both 5-11 as of last Friday) have no hope of breaking even this season. Things improve if we concentrate on three-point field goal percentage per game, irrespective of attempts. This group wins 73 percent of the time. Interestingly, none of the 10 leaders in the two three-point categories coincide, leaving us with the interesting conclusion that teams that shoot threes once in a while, but do it well, are substantially better. To his credit, Penn coach Fran Dunphy seems to know this. He frequently shunts aside questions about Penn's three-point artillery, preferring to concentrate on rebounding and defense. Has the coach traded in his game film for a calculator?