Perceived rebounding issue

[Bpositive]

As with most stats, it is usually best to look at tempo-free versions to see the real picture. Pomeroy's site is the best place I'm aware of to see these stats.

Bradley was indeed very lacking at both offensive and defensive rebounding (243rd and 224th in the nation, respectively), but I'd argue that the offensive rebounding really wasn't an issue, since the offense is perimeter-oriented by design. The team shoots a lot of threes and hits them at a good rate, so you don't really need offensive rebounding to have a good offense. Indeed, under Jim Les, Bradley has consistently put good offensive teams on the floor.

The defensive glass is where Bradley is really hurting. In my view, this is a nasty side-effect of the style that Jim Les likes to play - he gives the vast majority of minutes to perimeter players that are almost nonexistent on the defensive glass. Four of the top five players in terms of minutes are terrible rebounders (Crouch, Maniscalco, Warren, and Ruffin). Wilson is a decent rebounder, and Salley is actually good, but those two guys can't do it alone.

There are big men on the bench who have shown the ability to rebound (Singh, Austin, and Collins), but Les doesn't play them very much for various other reasons (turnovers being a huge one, as all three guys have ridiculously high turnover rates for guys that don't handle the ball that much).

The bottom line is that Bradley will have to give up some of the perimeter-based offense if they hope to solve the defensive rebounding issues. Playing Wilson at the 3 along with two big men would certainly help in this area, but the catch-22 is that the offense would likely suffer with that lineup. It will be up to Les to find the balance that results in the most wins.

Some good points by mportsch.

Was bored so I thought I'd do some number crunching. Since most of the bigs will see an increase in PT next year, I wanted to see what their numbers looked like for games in which they played 10 minutes or more.

(Games with 10+ minutes played)
Def. Rebounds
MS - 4.5
TW - 4.1
WE - 3.5
DC - 2.8
SS - 2.4
RA - 2.1

Off. Rebounds
MS - 2.5
TW - 2.1
DC - 1.7
RA - 1.1
SS - 0.8
WE - 0.5

Points
TW - 11.7
DC - 6.8
MS - 6.1
SS - 5.4
WE - 4.5
RA - 3.9

Blocks
MS - 0.9
DC - 0.8
WE - 0.5
RA - 0.4
TW - 0.4
SS - 0.3

Steals
TW - 1.4
MS - 0.8
WE - 0.5
DC - 0.3
SS - 0.3
RA - 0.2

Turnovers
WE - 0.8
RA - 1.1
SS - 1.4
MS - 1.6
DC - 1.7
TW - 1.8

A little silly, but taking those averages from the games they played 10+ minutes and projecting them over 40 minutes looks like this:

Def. Rebounds
WE - 10.0
DC - 7.6
MS - 7.5
SS - 6.9
RA - 5.6
TW - 5.4

Off. Rebounds
DC - 4.4
MS - 4.1
RA - 3.1
TW - 2.8
SS - 2.5
WE - 1.4

Points
DC - 18.2
SS - 15.6
TW - 15.6
WE - 12.9
RA - 10.6
MS - 10.1

Blocks
DC - 2.2
MS - 1.5
WE - 1.4
RA - 1.2
SS - 0.9
TW - 0.5

Steals
TW - 1.9
WE - 1.4
MS - 1.4
SS - 0.9
RA - 0.6

Turnovers
WE - 2.1
TW - 2.4
MS - 2.7
RA - 3.1
SS - 4.0
DC - 4.4