Basketball: Men's
Basketball: Women's
Quick comparison of the men's and women's basketball teams
I was going through the stats for both the Nittany (9-10, 1-5) and Lady Lions (13-4, 3-2) tonight and came across some interesting stuff. Now I’m not writing this to hate on the men; they’re a very young team, they play in an excellent conference, and they’ve shown a lot of potential this year, with all that #ATTITUDE business and whatnot. They’ll have their day. I’m just pointing out that, for now, Penn State basketball is dominated by Coquese Washington’s squad.
- November 26 was quite the day for the teams in quite different ways. Both teams played on that day, and each of their opponents, Nevada (women) and St. Joseph’s (men), scored 65 points. Thing is, the women scored 103 while the men scored 47. The men’s leading scorer, Billy Oliver, dropped 12 points. The Lady Lions’ three leading scorers, Maggie Lucas, Alex Bentley and Zhaque Gray, scored 26, 23 and 21, respectively.
- The men have been outscored overall by their opponents by 12 points this year. The women have outscored their opponents by 282 points.
- If you were to remove Ross Travis from the men’s stat sheet, then the Lady Lions top ten performers in points per game all have a better number than their male counterpart (Maggie Lucas averages more than Tim Frazier, Alex Bentley than Jermaine Marshall, etc.).
- Both squads are 1-2 in the Bryce Jordan Center in Big Ten games. The only difference is, the women are 2-0 on the road and the men are 0-3.
- The women are first in the Big Ten in 3-point shooting percentage at a 37.2 percent clip. The men, on the other hand, are last in the Big Ten in 3-point shooting percentage defense, with a very similar rate of 37.0. The Lady Lions are also second in the Big Ten in scoring (76.8 PPG), while the men are second-to-last (63.8).
- I think this is a testament to how good the men’s Big Ten has been this year as a whole - The women and men have the exact same assist-to-turnover ratio (0.9) and practically the same turnover margin (the men are at plus-1.89 and the women plus-1.88), but the men are respectively 8th and 12th in those categories while the women are fifth in both.
- This is interesting: Nittany Lion guard Tim Frazier (18.2) and Lady Lion guard Maggie Lucas (20.4) are both second in the Big Ten in points per game.
- Here’s a solid finisher: The Lady Lions are 6-1 when they play on the same day or the day after a Nittany Lion loss.