Virginia Basketball: Numerical Nuggets Revisited

Back at the end of January, with the Cavaliers sitting at 7-1 in the conference, we took a look at the statistics for Virginia and saw that they compared quite favorably to the conference and indeed the rest of the nation.

So today, five wins later and still sitting in second place in the conference, we wanted to revisit those numbers and see if they had improved. Let's take a look:

We are on the third second longest win streak in the ACC.

Syracuse is still in first since they haven't lost to anyone all season. But with their win over Duke and our continued winning ways, we've moved into second on that list with nine wins in a row. The next closest is North Carolina with six in a row.

In ACC contests, we are tied for the best home record.

This is still true, though the list of teams tied has slimmed down just a tad. Syracuse (7-0), Duke (6-0) and Virginia (6-0) are all undefeated. Wake Forest fell out of the running with three home losses since we last looked at this.

In ACC contests, we have the second best road record.

Yep, still true. Syracuse, being undefeated, is still first at 5-0. The Cavaliers are 6-1. Pitt fell away from the tie with us when they lost at North Carolina this weekend.

Without adjusting for pace, we have the fourth best average margin of victory so far this season.

This one is still true as well, though the numbers have changed a bit. Duke leads at 14.3ppg. Pitt is next with 11.9ppg, then Syracuse at 11.8ppg. Virginia is the last in double-digits at 10.5ppg. Adjusting for pace, we've actually slid ahead of Pitt.

Without adjusting for pace, we have the best average margin of victory in conference play.

Once again, still true. The numbers have gotten closer, but Virginia (12.2ppg) still leads Duke (12.1ppg) at the top of the conference.

And adjusting for pace, we have the best average margin of victory in conference play.

Noticing a trend here? Still true. Our adjusted average margin of victory is 20.9. Duke, who is in second place, is at 19.2.

We lead the country in scoring defense when not adjusting for pace.

This has barely moved since we last talked about it. Still allowing an average of 56 points per game across the whole season. Still tops in the country.

We're 4th in the country in scoring defense when adjusting for pace.

This is almost getting a little boring. My bad. Still 4th in the country in adjusted defensive efficiency at 88.9. That's the best mark in the conference. The next closest is Clemson in 9th at 92.4. Arizona (86.5), Saint Louis (87.4) and Ohio State (88.4) are the three ahead of us.

We rank first in the conference in two five of Ken Pomeroy's defensive statistics during conference play...

This has definitely gotten better. We've moved into first in three more categories. We now lead the conference in Defensive Efficiency, Effective Field Goal % Defense, Turnover % defense, Offensive Rebounding % Defense and Two-Point % Defense.

... and second in three one more.

Not sure you can say this one got worse, since the reason the number went down is because some of them moved into the above paragraph. We're now second in Three-Point % Defense.

Our non-AP, non-Coaches rankings are quite nice

These have changed, for the better. We are now 15th in the RPI, 16th in the BPI, 13th in the ESPN.com Power Rankings, 7th in Ken Pomeroy's rankings and 12th in Sagarin's rankings. We're 3rd in the ACC in all of those.

Our 7-1 12-1 ACC start is our best since the '82-'83 '81-'82 season

We moved past the '82-'83 team with our win over Pitt and we've now tied the '81-'82 season's start. As I mentioned last time, the '81-'82 team lost their 14th game of the season. So if we beat Virginia Tech on Tuesday, we'll move past them and into a tie with the '80-'81 team, which finished 13-1. No Virginia team has ever won 14 conference games in a season. So two more wins this season will make history. Of course, that's a tad misleading. The conference season was only 14 games through all of Terry Holland's years and into the Jeff Jones era ('91-'92 was the first 16 game slate). Last season was the first 18 game slate.

Tony Bennett is just the second UVA coach to have a winning record in the conference.

Tony is now 44-35 (55.7%) in the ACC and 97-58 (62.6%) during his five seasons as the head coach of the Cavaliers. The same caveat as last time applies here - he's still in the prime of his coaching career so its not exactly a fair comparison. But there are a few interesting nuggets. Virginia has won as many road games in his 4+ years as Pete Gillen did in his seven years. If we beat the Hokies on Tuesday, he'll have as many conference wins as Gillen as well.

Two more for good measure:

We now rank in the top five in the country in three of Ken Pomeroy's statistics

As mentioned earlier, we are fourth in Defensive Efficiency. We are also third in Offensive Rebounding % Defense and fifth in Two-Point % Defense. Interestingly our highest offensive statistic ranking is 49th in Offensive Efficiency.

We are finally once again ranked in both polls.

As of last Monday, we check in at 16th in the Coaches Poll and 17th in the AP Poll. Those numbers might change a little bit this week as eight of the teams ahead of us in the AP Poll and seven of the teams ahead of us in the Coaches Poll lost during this last week. Not likely to change too much, though as I doubt the pollsters pay enough attention to us to recognize how big of a win the game at Clemson was.

Edit: The new polls are out: We're now 13th in the Coaches Poll and 14th in the AP Poll.