Fred's Teams: How Does the 2014-15 Version Compare?

March is finally here.  Conference tournaments are looming, awards are being handing out and every good little girl and boy is awaiting presents under the tree.  Will this be the year that March-Madness-Santa brings us a Final Four?  Or will there be nothing but dashed hopes and a first round upset awaiting us?  It's all so exciting, which makes these final days seem to drag on ... so let's look at some stats!

As in my previous article, I will only be using raw statistics and ranks, no advanced metrics here.  I do appreciate them, and understand their usefulness, but I'll avoid them all the same, mostly on account of laziness.

The Hoiball Comparison

With apologies to the "Flying Diantes" of the 2010-11 season, I've focused this only on the teams that Fred has led to an NCAA berth (which is 80% of them by the way).  All rankings are Big XII conference only ranks.

Scoring

The most sadly obvious thing when it comes to looking at scoring statistics is that there is a marked trend downward in even just the last four years among conference teams.  Thankfully we have the anti-drug in Hoiball, which is largely bucking that trend.  This year's team scores similar to the last two seasons and a helluva lot more than the slower paced Royce team of 2011-12.

2014-15: 1st (77.3 ppg)

2013-14: 3rd (78.8 ppg)

2012-13: 1st (78.7 ppg)

2011-12: 4th (71.4 ppg)

Scoring Margin

I decided to skip scoring defense, suffice it to say that we give up a lot of points every year.  But in the the end Scoring Margin is the important part anyway - are you scoring more points than your opponents?  Surprisingly, last years team led by Melvin Ejim & DeAndre Kane was very average in this regard, but this years team returns to normal form.

2014-15: 4th (4.7 ppg)

2013-14: 5th (1.3 ppg)

2012-13: 4th (5.1 ppg)

2011-12: 3rd (5.1 ppg)

Free Throw Percentage

The conventional thinking is that this year's team is terrible at free throws, Georges Niang and Bryce Dejean-Jones both choked after stellar non-conference play and no one else really stepped up to fill the void.  Is that accurate?  Maybe, but hell, we've been worse.

2014-15: 7th (65.6%)

2013-14: 8th (68.1%)

2012-13: 2nd (75.1%)

2011-12: 10th (65.4%)

Field Goal Percentage

All of Fred's tournament teams have shot well from the floor, largely attributed to the elimination of the long two.  This year's team is the best of all of them by over 2.5%.

2014-15: 1st (47.9%)

2013-14: 2nd (45.1%)

2012-13: 2nd (45.7%)

2011-12: 4th (44.5%)

3 Point Percentage & Makes

Hoiball makes it rain.  I have to admit, I had forgotten how incredible the 2012-13 team was, they took 3 point shooting to another level, hitting an amazing 51 more threes in conference play than any other Big 12 team.  This year's team percentage has gradually improved throughout conference play to land a very respectable second place only to Baylor's 40% clip.  That compares very favorably after last season's dip in shooting from distance.

2014-15:  38.6% (2nd), 141 makes (1st)

2013-14: 31.8% (7th), 135 makes (4th)

2012-13: 39.1% (1st), 191 makes (1st)

2011-12: 38.5% (1st), 164 makes (1st)

Rebounding