4-FACTORS: How do NC State and Virginia match up in the games most important metrics?

NC State and Virginia are pretty evenly matched across the board.

But let’s zero in on the ‘4-factors’, which are the 4 stats that Dean Oliver, a basketball analytics pioneer and author of the 2004 book “Basketball on Paper”, came up with to determine on-court success. This idea was later made popular by Ken Pom, who tweaked these stats to be a little more advanced.

Now we look at:
– Effective FG%
– Offensive Rebounding %
– Turnover %
– FT Attempt Rate

I know the stats are at the top but let’s look at them again, and talk through them….

eFG% (Effective Field Goal Percentage) is a basketball statistic that measures shooting efficiency more accurately than traditional field goal percentage (FG%) by accounting for the extra point value of three-pointers.

Standard FG% treats all made field goals the same, whether they’re worth 2 or 3 points. eFG% adjusts for this by giving extra weight to made three-pointers, reflecting their higher scoring value.

For NC State, you can see that their eFG% is elite, only rivaled by. Miami and Duke. However, they let their opponents shoot one of the highest percentages in the ACC.

This stat, however, is trending in the right direction for NC State. Over the past 6 games, NC State has held its opponents to a 38.1% from the field, which would be best in the ACC. This coincides with NC State’s defense being one of the best in the nation over that span.

Virginia, in true Virginia form, is holding their opponents to one of the lower eFG%’s in the ACC. And they are in the Top 5 in their own eFG%.

Offensive Rebounding Percentage (ORB%) is a basketball statistic that measures how effectively a team or player secures rebounds on missed shots at the offensive end (i.e., their own missed shots). It shows the percentage of available offensive rebounds that the team/player actually grabs.

NC State doesn’t get a lot of offensive rebounds, but they also don’t give up a lot of offensive rebounds. That might seem counterintuitive, but remember that NC State likes to find the team’s weakest shooter and bait them into shooting 3s. Obviously, that has cost them a few times, but overall it’s won them more games than it’s lost, and it also goes into this ORB% number. Going under screens and sagging off shooters helps you with an offensive rebounder crashing the boards.

Virginia is an elite offensive rebounding team (best in the conference), but they also give up the 5th most.

Turnover Percentage (TOV%) measures how often a team or player loses possession of the ball relative to the number of possessions they have. It estimates the percentage of possessions that end in a turnover.

NC State and Virginia turn the ball over at about the same rate. Both are decent at taking care of the basketball, but NC State has a big advantage in creating turnovers.

Free Throw Attempt Rate (FTR ) measures how often a team or player gets to the free-throw line relative to their field goal attempts. It shows the ability to draw fouls and generate “free” points from the charity stripe.

NC State is one of the worst teams at getting to the line, and they put their opponents to the line a lot. This is an area of concern as the season progresses and the ACC refs start to clamp down control, as we know they always do. Sometimes these guys ref to your reputation, so coming into conference play with these number isn’t great.

That said, NC State is shooting a ton of 3s, so this might be expected. And with their defense being more aggressive, they are putting teams to the line more. But again, defensively they’ve sured things up since Wade’s ‘Hostile Takeover.’

Meanwhile, Virginia isn’t much better here.

NC State shoots the 3rd most 3s in the conference with 392 attempts already, while UVA issn’t too far behind with 363. Both teams shoot around 38%.

As you can tell, this is an evenly matched game that will come down to matchups and who can get hot at the right time (and maybe who has more morning people since this is a 11am tip).