At roughly the midpoint of the regular season, I think we can draw a few conclusions about this team.
The good:
This is Mick Cronin's best shooting team, by a wide margin so far. They are hitting 35.7% from 3 and have an eFG% of 54.3%. Their prior bests under Cronin are 34.8% (last year) and 49.5% (two years ago).
They are very, very good at defending shots. Opponents are hitting just 30.9% from 3 (2nd best under Cronin, and a massive improvement over the 35.7% a year ago) and their eFG% is a paltry 41.9%, easily the best under Cronin.
Shooting is King. At the end of the day, no single factor is a better predictor of team success than the ability to hit shots, and prevent your opponent from doing the same (Dean Oliver's Four Factors weighs shooting at 40%, TO at 25%, rebounding at 20%, and FT at 15%). The Bearcats' eFG% margin is a whopping 12.3 percentage points this year - more than double their previous best in the past 11 years (5.4, two years ago). From 2007 on, their cumulative margin is just 2.1 percentage points - this year it is nearly six times that.
The rise in shooting & the improvement in field goal defense add about 5 points per game to the bottom line, compared to last year. Reduce our margin by 5 points per game, and we lose to Iowa State, SMU, Marshall, and possibly Temple, depending on how things break at the end of the game. It is not just good fortune that is allowing us to win close games; no team in the last decade has been this good at stopping shots or making shots, and that is just huge.
This team takes care of the basketball. The TO% is just 13.1%, an improvement over last year's 13.8%, which was the best Cronin team at taking care of the ball. The 2014-15 team was actually his worst at 17.9%, so it appears there has been some emphasis placed here.
They are not putting opponents on the line much, just 15.31 opponent FTA per game (3rd lowest in 11 years) and .257 FTA per FGA (lowest rate under Cronin). Good thing, too, because teams are shooting an eye-popping 75.1% from the line; you would have to go back many years to find a season where the bad guys converted at such a rate - they have not topped 70% since 2010-11 (70.3%). We are losing about 1 PPG on opponent FT compared to last year, despite sending teams to the line less often.
The OK:
Defensive Rebounding % of 69.6% is the best in 5 years, but about the same as last year (69.4%) and similar to the average of the past 11 (68.5%) . The 16.9% defensive turnover rate is also pretty standard (17.4% last year, 17.6% since 2007).
The bad:
This is Mick's worst offensive rebounding team, just 34.3%. However, I'm not sure I mind this so much. Offensive rebounds are a gamble - the harder you hit the glass, the harder it is to be back and set on defense. It is hard to say how much of the decline is due to focusing on getting back on D, and how much is personnel related - the team is a bit smaller this season, but in any event it is a more than acceptable trade off.
The free throw shooting. Good gravy. They are on pace to be the worst FT shooting squad at UC since 2010, and they get to the line less often than any team since 2012. They have got to figure out a way to make some tweaks at the line, because it is going to cost them a game somewhere if they don't.
