Defensive stats

But is this a good stat? It's easy to juice this stat - just pull everyone back and abandon any effort to get second-chance points. There are some good teams on this list, but Lamar, Alcorn State, and St. Joe's are terrible. (But maybe it's just that those schools are completely bereft of talent.)

I think that this is *usually* a good stat, but not so much because it translates directly to the scoreboard on a possession-by-possession basis. I think this is a reasonable proxy for "pace control" - it's hard to blow these teams out. I look at St. Joe's, for example. They finished the season 3-13 in conference, but never gave up more than 67 points and almost all of their losses were by less than 10 points. They were only truly blown out once, in the last game of the season.

In sum - these teams are effective at executing a strategy that will at least make almost every game competitive. This is how Rueck keeps OSU in the Sweet 16 and the top-third of the Pac year-after-year, whether it's Marie Gulich or Jo Grymek in the key or whether we have any real point guard at all.  Which is cool.

It means that instead of giving up two (2.0) or three (3.0) points per transition possession, OSU is giving up less than one point (0.714) per transition possession.

To elaborate, in 100 transition possessions (to pick a number), OSU would allow 71 points. A team with a 1.13 ratio would give up 113 points in 100 transition possessions.

I probably should wait for HS to reply...but I'd guess a transition possession occurs anytime the ball changes hands without the offensive team scoring...

If so, what precisely is it that the Beavs do so well that reduces the opposition scoring during a "transition."
The simple answer, of course, is that they "get back on defense."

I would be interested what exactly the Beavs do so effectively in their transition defense..After all, every time works hard to get back on defense.

As an aside: over the years I have watched many games in which the Beavs go 4 or 5 possessions without scoring a single bucket, yet at the end of this scoring drought the point spread remains the same. In other words, the opponent did not score on any of their transition possessions.
GO BEAVS!!

I think it's a good stat, kind of a subset of the 'opponents field goal percentage' stat. In that category, the Beavs national ranking the last 7 seasons has been 4th, 13th, 1st, 7th, 8th, 19th, and 16th. As illustrated above, some teams in less competitive conferences put everything they've got into the defensive side of things because it's the only way they can hope to stay in the game. Since they're generally playing against less skilled teams to begin with, they can achieve a great deal of success with this approach.

Playing at the level the Beavs do, against the best conference in the nation, it's quite a testament to the coaching staff that they can add and subtract players year after year, and still produce such excellence and consistency every season in this category.

In short, transition defense is switching from Offense to defense because of a missed shot, turnover, etc. Normally, teams have one person assigned to be the person who "stays back' to prevent the other team from scoring easily in transition, while the other team members "hustle back and stop the fast break" as stated in the tweet above. I won't necessarily address how the Beavs handle these situations, but I have been particularly interested in how the Beavs slow down UCLA in transition, because the Bruins often send one person down court. I know from re-watching the 2018 games, UCLA failed in most of their attempts against the Beavs because the pass had to be perfect to beat the Beavs player down the court. They were successful a time or two, but failed most often.