2020-21 Four Factors Study

With the 2021-22 season quickly approaching, let's take a few moments to review some data from the abbreviated 2020-2021 season.  Since presenting the Four Factors last season was a major point of Czar emphasis, that seems like a fabulous choice of data.  This will be familiar to some of you as I did a similar study in 2017 of 5 years worth of state tournament games (read that here).  If you need a refresher on the 4 Factors, read this.

This season lets turn the tables and focus on mostly regular season games and see what those results came out to be.  In this dataset I have 133 games from last season that I charted.  Not quite as many as the 172 in the other dataset, but enough to be interesting.  So here we go.

Number of Factors Won By The Winning Team
1: 5.3%, 10.4 MOV
2: 36.1%, 11.5 MOV
3: 48.1%, 13.4 MOV
4: 10.5%, 16.9 MOV

Winning Combinations
EFG% Only: 3%, 11.3 MOV
ORB% Only: 0.8%, 2 MOV
TO% Only: 1.5%, 13 MOV
FTR Only: 0%

EFG% and ORB%: 9%, 13.8 MOV
EFG% and FTR: 9.8%, 8.5 MOV
EFG% and TO%: 7.5%, 22.6 MOV
ORB% and FTR: 1.5%, 2 MOV
ORB% and TO%: 3.8%, 3.4 MOV
FTR and TO%: 4.5%, 4.8 MOV

EFG%, ORB% and FTR: 17.3%, 10 MOV
EFG%, ORB% and TO%: 14.3%, 19.2 MOV
EFG%, FTR and TO%: 8.3%, 17.3 MOV
ORB%, FTR and TO%: 8.3%, 6.6 MOV

All 4 Factors: 10.5%, 16.9 MOV

No surprise to me that Effective Field Goal Percentage won the day.  While the number here is slightly lower than the previous study, if you throw in the few games that I couldn't fully chart but look at the end outcome of a blowout, the number basically evens out.  I called this Czar's Law during the season.  Very simple idea, basket, ball.  Put ball in basket and win 4 times out of 5.  Czar likes his odds on that number in Vegas.  

Teams that won EFG% won by double figures 61.3% of the time with an average margin of victory of 14.8 points.  Only 18.9% of the those games were decided by 5 points or less.  In those close games, the winner lost the turnover battle 75% of the time

Czar's Law was violated 21.3% of the time.  That team ended up winning the turnover battle in 24 of those 27 games (88.9%, 8 out of every 9).  That's consistent with the 90.6% we saw in the state tourney study.  Unlike above, these wins were a struggle.  Average margin of victory in all those games won without EFG% was 5.6 PPG.  Only 3 of the 27 games (11.1%) were decided by double figures.  59.3% of those games (16 of 27) were decided by 5 points or less.  

Teams that won the game and the turnover battle had a margin of victory of 14.9 points.  Winning teams that lost the turnover battle saw their margin of victory drop to 10.1 PPG.  That ties in nicely with the data above.  Interesting to note that ORB% and FTR actually had reverse correlations.  When the winning team lost FTR they won by 16 points a game vs 10.9 points when they won FTR.  For ORB%, it was a MOV of 12.6 when winning it vs 13.6 when losing it.  In general, once again the more factors you win, the bigger you win.  That's no surprise.

Some differences between the 2 studies.  Free Throw Rate took a major dive of almost 15%.  Despite what was said above, turnovers came in last on this list at only 58.6% compared to 65.1%.  Very surprised that it was that low in these number based on the impact shown.  I think the talent difference between state and a random game strongly contributes to these numbers.  More closely matched talent magnifies mistakes. That talent difference also shows up in the number of factors won.  At state a team winning 1 or 2 factors only won 31.4% of the time.  That's compared to 41.4% in these regular season games.

Dean Oliver weighted the 4 Factors in the order of Shooting, Turnovers, Rebounding and FT Rate.  He did that with a mathematical analysis.  My eye test with this data makes me agree with the math.  Always a joy to see the theory match up with what you're seeing.