Pistol Pete's Offense vs. UVa 2019 or Jordan's Defense; 96 Great Teams Calculated for Game

After using modern tempo-free stats to create player cards for 48 great 21st century teams, the focus turned to estimated the tempo played by 20th century teams to create accurate cards for Value Add Basketball Game. Click here for playing cards for the 48 great 20th century teams.

The defenses of Michael Jordan's 1982 UNC title team (average score 67-55) and last year's UVa champions (71-56) were obviously much better than the defense of Pistol Pete Maravich's 1970 LSU team (93-89 average score). While Pistol Pete is the only player in the game to get the ball half the time he is in the game and the offense was elite, based on the number of shots taken we know LSU went up and down the court many more than the "average" 66 trips for each team in VABG and the team's LSU faced that year were not nearly as good as the opponents faced by UVa and UNC.

For fellow wonks, the complicated math appears below the list of teams in the game. For everyone else, if all teams played 66 possessions in the game (rather than a clock) against the same competition in the average year, we would expect 1970 LSU's elite offense with Pistol Pete to average a 80-74 win. That would give them a better offense than 1982 UNC or 2019 UVa, but playing the same competition in the same era we would expect those two to average winning by 73-55 and 71-56 respectively.

In the game, after each team's players ability to steal, block shots, avoid fouling and turnovers, rebound and hit various shots after getting open for three-pointers, two-pointers, draw fouls, and hit each or drawing fouls, a "dunk/layup" and "adj/opp. dunk layup" range is established for the whole team to adjust for tempo and strength of schedule. In early years, we estimate the number of shots were three-pointers, and the number of steals and blocks - but the dunk adjustments make the cards for each team as good as they should perform in real life.

We believe the game is as accurate as you can get playing teams from various eras. However, this does NOT mean we actually believe a team from 1950 would get in a time machine and stand a chance against a modern team, any more than Babe Ruth could step into a time machine and hit modern sliders. However, if we treat each eras as equal, we believe the teams will perform very close to how the would over the course of a season - with the normal ups and downs from game to game that occasionally mean Evansville can beat Kentucky and Stephen F. Austin can beat Duke.

For fellow math geeks, the math is below the tables - but here is the score we would expect each team to average if all played the same competition. The first score is how many points they would average scoring, then allowing, and then the difference. The teams are grouped in six modern conferences for the game, but the final column shows the conference in which they actually played.

Year	ACC	Adj Pts	Allowed	Net/66 pos	Actual Conf
1974	North Carolina State	81.0	62.9	18.1	ACC
1982	North Carolina	73.3	55.4	17.8	ACC
2005	North Carolina	79.3	62.8	16.5	ACC
2011	Duke	75.4	60.8	14.7	ACC
1992	Duke	75.8	61.7	14.1	ACC
2002	Maryland	76.3	62.5	13.8	ACC
2019	Virginia	66.2	52.5	13.6	ACC
2009	Pittsburgh	73.1	60.0	13.0	Big East
2003	Syracuse	75.2	62.9	12.4	Big East (West)
1981	Virginia	70.5	58.2	12.2	ACC
2004	Georgia Tech	72.2	60.0	12.2	ACC
1987	Syracuse	74.2	62.7	11.5	Big East
2005	Wake Forest	77.1	66.0	11.1	ACC
1980	Louisville	72.6	61.7	10.9	Metro
1996	Wake Forest	65.4	54.7	10.7	ACC
1970	Notre Dame	79.3	69.1	10.2	Ind
Year	Big 12	Adj Pts	Allowed	Net/66 pos	Actual Conf
1960	Cincinnati	81.6	60.9	20.8	MVC
1968	Houston	79.0	60.9	18.1	Ind
1957	Kansas	74.6	57.5	17.1	Big 7
2008	Kansas	74.6	58.1	16.6	Big 12
1946	Oklahoma St	76.1	62.2	14.0	MVC
1982	Missouri	72.4	59.2	13.2	Big 8
1985	Oklahoma	81.4	68.7	12.7	Big 8
2004	Oklahoma State	71.5	59.2	12.3	Big 12
1959	West Virginia	80.3	68.4	11.9	Southern
2019	Texas Tech	66.8	54.9	11.9	Big 12
2004	Saint Joseph's	71.8	60.0	11.8	A-10 (East)
1966	Texas-El Paso	68.9	57.9	11.0	Ind
2003	Texas	73.9	63.0	11.0	Big 12
2016	Oklahoma	72.4	61.5	11.0	Big 12
2008	Kansas State	73.1	63.9	9.2	Big 12
2011	West Virginia	68.2	59.1	9.2	Big East
Year	Big East	Adj Pts	Allowed	Net/66 pos	Actual Conf
2018	Villanova	75.9	60.2	15.7	Big East
2013	Louisville	73.0	58.1	14.9	Big East
1999	Connecticut	72.1	57.3	14.7	Big East
2002	Cincinnati	72.0	57.6	14.4	CUSA (American)
1984	Georgetown	71.4	57.7	13.7	Big East
2004	Connecticut	73.9	60.4	13.5	Big East
1985	St. John's (NY)	73.8	61.0	12.8	Big East
1977	Marquette	65.9	54.0	11.9	Ind
2007	Georgetown	67.7	56.4	11.3	Big East
1989	Seton Hall	70.8	59.6	11.2	Big East
2014	Creighton	72.7	62.1	10.6	Big East
2003	Marquette	72.6	63.4	9.2	CUSA (American)
1985	Villanova	68.9	60.1	8.8	Big East
1965	Princeton	70.0	61.6	8.4	Ivy
1945	DePaul	67.2	59.1	8.1	Ind
2011	Butler	67.9	61.7	6.1	Horizon
Year	Big Ten	Adj Pts	Allowed	Net/66 pos	Actual Conf
1976	Indiana	76.6	54.5	22.1	Big Ten
1960	Ohio State	83.6	63.1	20.4	Big Ten
1979	Michigan State	73.9	56.5	17.4	Big Ten
1963	Loyola (IL)	81.8	64.9	16.9	Ind
1969	Purdue	82.6	65.7	16.8	Big Ten
1989	Michigan	76.5	60.9	15.7	Big Ten
2015	Wisconsin	70.9	56.7	14.2	Big Ten
2005	Illinois	71.9	58.2	13.7	Big Ten
2018	Purdue	72.7	59.1	13.6	Big Ten
2007	Ohio State	71.6	59.0	12.6	Big Ten
2013	Michigan	73.4	60.8	12.6	Big Ten
2002	Indiana	68.0	57.0	11.0	Big Ten
1954	La Salle	72.2	61.3	11.0	Ind
2009	Michigan State	71.2	60.5	10.7	Big Ten
1979	Indiana State	75.1	64.5	10.7	MVC
2002	Iowa	69.1	62.6	6.5	Big Ten
Year	Pac-12	Adj Pts	Allowed	Net/66 pos	Actual Conf
1972	UCLA	81.7	56.8	24.9	Pac-8
1991	Nevada-Las Vegas	79.7	61.4	18.3	Big West
2008	Memphis	73.7	59.2	14.5	CUSA
2015	Arizona	72.7	58.7	14.0	Pac-12
1956	San Francisco	68.4	54.6	13.9	CBA
2017	Gonzaga	71.4	57.8	13.6	WCC
1997	Arizona	76.9	63.4	13.5	Pac-10
1959	University of California	68.0	55.1	13.0	PCC
1958	Seattle	78.5	67.0	11.4	Ind
2006	UCLA	67.5	56.7	10.8	Pac-10
2017	Oregon	69.2	58.5	10.7	Pac-12
2011	San Diego State	68.0	57.6	10.4	MWC
1998	Utah	66.2	56.5	9.7	WAC (Mountain)
1943	Wyoming	75.8	66.2	9.6	MSAC
2013	Wichita State	68.1	59.9	8.2	MVC
2018	Loyola (IL)	64.6	59.6	5.0	MVC
Year	SEC	Adj Pts	Allowed	Net/66 pos	Actual Conf
1996	Kentucky	80.9	61.0	19.9	SEC (East)
2012	Kentucky	74.1	58.9	15.2	SEC
1994	Arkansas	77.6	63.6	14.1	SEC (West)
2006	Florida	73.5	60.7	12.7	SEC (East)
2006	Louisiana State	71.2	60.2	11.0	SEC (West)
1977	Tennessee	76.0	65.2	10.8	SEC
2019	Auburn	71.5	60.9	10.6	SEC
1977	Alabama	73.9	63.6	10.3	SEC
1984	Auburn	73.8	64.0	9.8	SEC
2017	South Carolina	66.4	57.9	8.5	SEC
2008	Davidson	70.4	62.4	8.0	Southern (South)
1982	Georgia	70.6	62.6	8.0	SEC
2006	George Mason	66.6	59.3	7.4	CAA
1986	Navy	69.7	62.9	6.8	CAA
1970	Louisiana State	79.7	74.1	5.6	SEC
2011	Virginia Commonwealth	68.6	64.4	4.2	CAA

Notes on the math:

Tempo Free Stats - When we calculated the 21st Century cards, we used the tempo free team ratings and stats at www.kenpom.com.

However, we switched to the incredible Simple Ratings System (SRS) at basketball reference for development of the 20th century player cards and then updated the other cards to make the all one system.

We started with the offensive and defensive ratings from SRS, however we noticed rules changes such as freedom of movement allowed the better teams in modern eras and other times to distance themselves by greater margins that teams in more "grind it out" eras.

To address this, we adjusted the Offensive SRS so that the Net Average each year for the 10th best team would be +16.6.

We did not allow any team who did not win the title (e.g. 1991 UNLV) to have a net rating higher than +25.0, so a few were adjusted down a couple of points but still very strong.

On the flip side we improved a couple of elite championship teams by a couple of points - including the undefeated 1976 Indiana champions.

However the vast majority of teams have the exact calculation that also results in the 10th best team the season they played at +16.6.

These numbers are then converted back to www.kenpom.com equivalent ratings based on adding the adjusted SRS Offensive number to 100 to get the estimated offensive efficiency rating, and subtracting the adjusted SRS Defensive number from 100 to get the estimated defensive efficiency rating - even for the modern teams where the calculated number was used rather than the www.kenpom.com number to adjust for eras.

The numbers that appear above are that number multiplied by .66, to calculate the number of points the team would score in a 66 possession Value Add basketball game (the game actually assumes a 20-20 tie after 22 possessions, and then dice are rolled to play out the final 44 possessions of each game.

The best defensive teams do not necessarily have the best "Adj opp Dunk/layup" range. If a team were to have a great rating, but also have a very high number of dice rolls resulted in steals, blocked shots and defensive rebounds, then all of those things might take away so many points from the opponents that the actual "Adj opp Dunk/layup" range would need to ADD points.

However, normally the best defenses have the best dunk range - making the cards accurate against an average defense in an average era.

A "Adj opp Dunk/layup" of -2 for a team would mean that 2 numbers were taken off the numbers on the opponent's "dunk/lay-up" range.

Likewise, the best offensive teams do not necessarily get the highest dunk range. A team that avoided turning the ball over, drew a lot of fouls, dominated offensive rebounds, and hit a high percentage of shots could calculate as scoring so many points that their actual dunk range was lower, perhaps 51-51 instead of the average 51-53.

However, normally the best offenses have the best dunk range - making the cards accurate against an average defense in an average era.

If an offense's dunk range is 11-57,and the opposing defense's adj opp dunk range is -3, then the dunk range for the game would be 11-54.

However, if at least one of the teams calculated dunk range is higher than 51-56, or lower than 51-50, then it works best to adjust both team ranges the same number.

For example, if one team's calculated dunk range was 51-64 and one was 51-61, you could lower the ranges to 51-53 and 51-50.