For the first time since 2013, the Georgetown Tigers were NAIA D1 Men’s Basketball National Champions. They dominated the national title despite scoring less than 70 points for just the third time all season. Of course it helped to hold their opponent, Carroll College, to under 50 points. Just the second time all season that happened. Let’s look at how this group stacks up to the most recent champions.
Scoring in bunches
The Tigers were the third highest scoring champion of the last 11 seasons, with 87.8 points per game but you would have to go back to Pikeville in 2011 to see a higher scoring team. The way they did it was unique given the recent scoring trend. Georgetown had the most made field goals of any of the last 11 champions and the 2nd highest effective field goal percentage at 56.1%. However, only about 28% of their 1200 made FGs were 3-pointers. A low number for the last five champions. That was in no small part to 6’7″ Chris Coffey, who made just 15 three-pointers out of over 200 made field goals, averaging 14.5 ppg and had monster semi-final game, scoring 32 out of the team’s 94 points. So while the Tigers scored a lot, they weren’t three-point dependent like some other recent champions.
Super Efficiency
I already mentioned the effective field goal percentage. Here are two other numbers that stood out: a 13.39% turnover percentage – the lowest of the last 11 champions and 1.19 points per possession, the 2nd highest of the most recent champions. We saw this in our review of NW Missouri State a couple of weeks ago, if a team is not turning the ball over and scoring well over one point per possession, it leaves their opponents with very little margin for error.
Add to all that the highest total rebounding percentage of the last eleven champs, 57.3%. Part of that is the second lowest offensive rebounding percentage for their opponents, 23.1%. That means their opponents weren’t getting second chances or turnovers so if you’re not just shooting a very good percentage, it’s difficult to stick around a team like this and it’s really hard to rally against them.
They didn’t necessarily dominate defensively, but their offensive efficiency and their ability to rebound put pressure on the opposing offense to be close to perfect in order to hang around a game. A few teams were able to knock off the Tigers and there were a couple of tough tests along the way but in the end, Georgetown was able to secure another national championship.