We don't go for offensive boards because it denies the other team fast break points. Our half court defense is the best feature of this team. Bailing out on OREBS means that every possession the other team has to try and score in the half court set - which is a huge advantage to us, a bigger advantage than a few more offensive rebounds.

Agree, agree, agree and add to that it is a spot that also accumulates silly fouls....My guess is that if you have good position, inside defenders of the other team you can stay but other wise you are skedaddling it back ,,,and I am also guessing it is not a disorganized retreat but also the start of a well planned defensive attack and also for us the start of our offense because when when our regular offense starts out of transition and not a made basket from the other team, it runs way better. We do not give up the easy transition baskets.

This is true to an extent. But offensive rebounds are an important component of offensive efficiency. We have two really important skills that are making our defense good: defensive rebounding (4th in the country, Kenpom); and keeping the opponent off the foul line (6th; Kenpom).

By contrast, our offense could be a lot better if we got more offensive rebounds. I'm not even talking about selling out for them. We are 352nd in the country in offensive rebounding percentage. (That's second to last.) Our OR% is 18.7%. That's terrible. To get into the top 300, we would have to be closer to 25%.

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The real analysis of the Kenpom data would be to see which of these key points are correlated with winning....and something we cannot not know is If we traded, crashing the offensive boards, for making sure we were back on D and in good defensive position and not giving up easy transition points if it would improve our winning percentage......My thought is that if you have incredible athletes like the old Arkansas and Louisville teams where you could play 90 feet of hell, baseline to baseline,,,,then you might be able to do both.cuz you are starting your defense essentially at the same point you are going for offensive rebounds........but for us....seems like you have to figure out which of these best fits your team and gives you the best chance to win......kind of like baseball,,,,you would love to have 3 Ken Griffeys in the outfield.....but other wise do you take the guy who can hit it out of the park or the guy who saves (and doesnt lose) a few games with his glove.
This talk of offensive rebounding made me think of some of our past players who could really sky,,,,anybody remember Rodney Callahan?

I completely understand if there's a coaching decision that we won't try for offensive rebounds. It's an especially easy decision when you're shooting 52% from the field like we did last season, and shoot well from distance.

But we're shooting a lower percentage and making many more turnovers than last year. And I haven't looked at all the numbers, but I think we're worse on the offensive glassbthan last year, when we were something like 10th worst in the nation. And we actually have slightly more height and hops than last year, IMO. You'd think that even accidentally we'd get more than two offensive rebounds per game.

Our percentage is down from 22.1% last year to 18.7% this year. As you noted that put us 332nd, which is bad, but not crippling when other factors like shooting and turnovers were much better.

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