Basketball: Money for nothing, stats for free

I love it when I get to point at someone else's content and claim it as my own. Valley Hawk over at Hawkeye Hoops has posted an interesting (if somewhat unattractive) graph of the Big Ten's various teams' offensive and defensive efficiency ratings. In a word... ugh. Michigan occupies a spot best described as about halfway between Penn State and Northwestern, which is somewhere you do not want to be in college basketball.

The graph also makes a decent case for Iowa improving next year in the win column, which will make Michigan's attempt to climb over them more difficult.

Let's tuck this graph away and compare about midway through the conference season next year. Michigan will have to be improved in offensive efficiency. It is inconcievable that they won't be. But the defensive efficiency number is extremely disturbing. Michigan had far less cause to suck on defense than offense this year. Was it due to turnovers? Walk-ons being as inelegant on the defensive side of the ball as they clearly were on the offensive side of the ball? Or was it just crap defense? I think the answer to the above is a little of all three.