to fit. It is an energetic, pass first, dribble if you have to or to probe a defense's seam, rebound like hell, defend like a wasp defending its nest and run full force for the time you are on the floor. It is how they can defeat a team in the first 5-10 minutes of a game or at least psych the opponent out.

NDWBB is a dribble first, pass if you have to but lob if it will make the ESPN sports reel type of offensive game. This leads to a lot of standing around and a crowded key. Their defensive game can be energetic but often they forget to box out for rebounds or let too many players drive by them.

UCONN is about being efficient on offense, which is why passing is stressed over dribbling. Passing requires understanding basic geometry to get the best angles to pass to the player with the best chance to score.

If a player does not conform to his style of basketball, he will bench them. This usually happens in their Freshmen and Sophomore years. By end of Sophomore to beginning of Junior year, the players either decided to get with the program or leave UCONN.

If "NDWBB is dribble first, pass if you have to" and Geno's philosophy is "an energetic, pass first, dribble if you have to" then Uconn would greatly top ND in assists per game. ND would be driving, UConn passing.

Notre Dame, in fact, tops Uconn (slightly) in assists per game 19.6 to 19.4.
Both offenses are pass first.

If there is a difference, in my humble opinion, you are correct in saying Geno forces the team to play his way, while Muffet modifies her approach depending on the players, but it's always teamwork, high energy, and "pass first".

(By the way, I completely agree with your post on Jess.)

disproves his assertion.

Not that I'm asking you to try to come up with these numbers, but a simple comparison of two teams' average assists per game doesn't directly address a number of things, including: assists per baskets made; baskets made as immediate put-backs following offensive rebounds; assists on fast-break baskets (particularly since much of this conversation seems to focus on halfcourt offense); passes that aren't recorded as assists (comparable to secondary assists in hockey).

I'm sure there are more.

I can tell you, without any of that data, that UConn's offense, year-in and year-out, doesn't bear much resemblance to Notre Dame's 2018-2019 halfcourt offense.

to make the assertion, especially when frustration sets in over losses. A few weeks prior to our losses, Notre Dame was "a well oiled machine" "firing on all cylinders" and analysts talked about how they loved to watch the ND offense with all the selfless passing. How everything changes when you lose a couple of games. We tend to think in extremes.

As to your specific stats, I'm not sure what you mean by assists per baskets made (I believe that is what I used.). I'm not sure how "baskets made as immediate put-backs following offensive rebounds" are relevant to whether a team is passing or not. Would you expect them to be greater or lesser for a passing team? However, "assists on fast-break baskets" would be extremely relevant, as you say. That is why I asked FightingIrishRadio if he had such stats. I don't. Likewise, passes to passes that lead to baskets I think would be relevant.

But even those stats probably wouldn't go far enough. There is passing and there is effective passing. Many teams, including UConn, like to rapidly pass the ball around the exterior in hopes that they will find an open man or, at least, tire the defense. We would have to check how many of those passes were ineffective by wasting shot-clock time or resulted in turnovers. Watching a team rapidly pass the ball around can be fool's gold. The key is not just passing, but "effective passing". I think that is what Muffet's modified Princeton offense is all about.

I understand what you are telling the board, and I agree we need better stats. What we have shown thus far doesn't lend evidence that ND is dribbling more and UConn is passing more. Different people have different perceptions. Recently, few BoneYarders would agree that UConn had an efficient offense.

Statistics surely are not the last word, but they're helpful in clearing up perceptions when fans are overly jubilant or overly downhearted.

correctly, you're using a single statistic (assists per game for both teams) to (1) refute Terry's observation ("it's not true") and (2) support your claim that the Notre Dame and UConn offenses are substantially similar ("Both offenses are pass first").

I don't want to speak for Terry, but I'm of the opinion that the two offenses are materially different, at least in their execution over the past few years. Without the benefit of supporting data, my observations lead me to conclude that Notre Dame's offense involves much more dribbling and much more dribbling that doesn't involve attacking the basket than does UConn's.

As I did originally, I acknowledge that I don't have any data at my immediate disposal to support (or undermine) my claim. You offered a single data point, which is certainly a step in the right direction.

However, I remain of the opinion that the data point you offered is insufficient in and of itself to declare Terry's observation "not true," and to definitively conclude that both offenses operate as "pass first."

To elaborate on the questions I previously posed, I think the raw number of assists (average assists per game) fails to take into account a number of factors that are relevant to the discussion at hand.

For starters, the percentage of teams field goals which are the product of an assist would be somewhat helpful. An average of 19.6 for a team that averages 100 field goals per game would paint a different (partial) picture than an average of 19.6 for a team that averages 20 field goals per game. (Obviously, those field goal numbers are made up for the purpose of illustrating my point.)

Further, for the purpose of this discussion, it's reasonable to exclude from the number of field goals examined those which are the immediate result of an offensive rebound (rarely an opportunity for a pass/assist) and also those that are the product of transition/fast breaks (assists are certainly important in that context, but that doesn't speak to the nature of a team's halfcourt offense).

At the end of the day, you've offered more data than Terry and I (infinitely more, I think). But we're all a long way from having enough data to make such definitive statements, as far as I'm concerned.

Someday, we'll have data like number of passes per possession; number of dribbles per possession; we'll be able to gauge productive possessions vs. non-productive possessions (interesting debate about those definitions) and compare passing volume and dribbling volume between those possessions; etc., etc., etc.

And I suspect we'll still want to hold on to "the eye test," no matter how much data we get.

I suppose the ultimate eye test is winning!