NCAA Men’s Basketball Trends Over Time

---

Background

One of the phrases that I hear quite often surrounding the professional, or even collegiate, sports environment goes like, “the game isn’t the same as it was back when I played or when I was a kid”. I know that is a phrase that I have used on occassion.

Reporters, fans, and players argue that the game of basketball has fundamentally changed after people like Michael Jordan, Lebron James, and Stephen Curry entered the game. Watching it myself, I would agree that this claim seems to hold true. But is there any statistical evidence to back up these claims that the game has fundamentally changed? That is the question that I wanted to investigate at the collegiate level, since that is what I watch primarily.

I think it is important to note that the changes I am investigating are not necessarily associated with any rule change, though there have been some rules. I am interested in the changes in style over the last 20 years. For a complete list of rule changes, please visit this site: http://www.orangehoops.org/NCAA/NCAA%20Rule%20Changes.htm.

The Data

In order to begin my investigation into various NCAA trends over time, I needed data that tracked key statistics over time.

Fortunately, https://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/ does just that. Dating back to the 1892-1893 season, various statistics are kept for teams playing in the college basketball sphere. As time goes on, more statistics are added. I am specifically interested in trends since 2000, so that is the data that I collected from their website.

The data that I have collected comes from 2 primary sources within Sports Reference, School Stats and Opponent Stats.

School Stats details the teams own statistics. It ranges from total points to pace of play to effective field goal percentage. This data goes back all the way to the beginning of the period that I am interested, so I have collected this information since 2000.

On the other hand, Opponent Statistics details primarily what their opponent does when playing the specific school. Suppose we are looking at School X. The opponent statistics will show all of the opponents statistics, such as what opponents effective field goal percentage was against school X, or even how many turnovers the opponents had when playing Team X.

The Analysis

There are 5 primary statistics that I was interested in examining over time, the majority of them related to a offensive trends. Those 5 categories are:

• Three-point Attempts Per Game
• Pace of Play
• Turnovers Per Game
• Field Goal Percentages
• Free Throw Attempts Per Game

My working hypothesis is that these 5 statistical categories will give a detailed understanding if the game has changed over time.

Three Points Attempts Per Game

First up, I wanted to examine Three-point Attempts Per Game. Following is a chart of a Three Points Attempts Per Game from 2000 to 2023. From 2000 to 2015, 3-point Attempts Per Game stayed relatively the same throughout college basketball. But in 2016, we see a climb in overall attempts per game, going from about 18 shots per game to 22 shots per game. That is a large jump. While I can draw no conclusions as it relates to causation, I can point out that the Golden State Warriors, with Stephen Curry (a prolific 3-point shooter, averaging 11.2 attempts per game in the 2015-2016 season), won the NBA finals in 2015, 2017, and 2018, which is an interesting correlation.

After some further investigation, it is also important to note that the shot clock was reduced from 35 to 30 seconds in the 2015 to 2016 season leading to a faster game play and the need for quicker shots.

Pace of Play

Next, I wanted to look at pace of play over time. I was curious to whether the game was moving slower or faster than it was previously. Unlike the 3-Points Attempts Per Game, we see a lot more variety in overall pace of play. But overall, from 2010 through 2015, the pace of game play was lower than what it was after 2015. In the 2015 to 2016, the overall pace of play increased, and has stayed relatively higher. This could also be due to the decreased shot-clock from 35 seconds to 30.

Important Note: pace was not tracked until the 2009-2010 season on the Sports Reference website.

Turnovers Per Game

Thirdly, I wanted to look at Turnovers Per Game. I wanted to see if there was a significant difference especially in comparison with pace of play. From 2000 onwards, there is a consistent decrease in turnovers per game. There is a slight decrease from 2015 to 2021, but it is again decreasing from 2021 onwards.

Coupled with Turnovers Per Game, I wanted to look at the Turnover Percentage, which is the ratio of a team’s turnovers and their opponent’s turnovers. Overall, there isn’t another significant trend found in the Turnover Percentage that differs from the turnovers per game analysis.

Field Goal Percentages

Nearing the end, I wanted to look at the Field Goal Percentages, meaning at what rate, shots are actually falling through the hoop. Across all seasons that I am analyzing, I see there really isn’t a major change over time. Field Goal Percentage seems to move up and down routinely with no significant changes.

Free Throw Attempts Per Game

Finally, I wanted to see if there was an overall trend as it relates to Free Throw Attempts Per Game. The following chart shows this information: Up until the 2015-2016 season, Free Throw Attempts per game stayed relatively the same. After 2016, we do see an overall decrease in Free Throw Attempts Per Game. This could be due any number of factors including an increased pace of play, a less aggressive form of the game play, etc.

Conclusion

Wrapping up this exploration in NCAA trends over time, we were able to see that there were significant changes in the majority of the statistics explored:

• 3 Point Attempts Per Game increased dramatically following the 2015-2016 season.
• Pace of play also increased following the 2015-2016 season
• Turnovers Per Game and Turnover Percentage also decreased over time.
• Free Throw Attempts Per Game have fallen following the 2015-2016 season.

There are a number of reasons that these changes could be explained, but a large reason might be that the shot clock was decreased from 35 seconds to 30 seconds.

No matter the reason, we are seeing a faster moving offense, shooting more three points per game, while playing a cleaner, more efficient game. I think it is safe to say that the game of college basketball has changed into a more offensive-centric game since 2000.