Pace Notes: Is There a Comfort Zone?

I came across the notion of a comfort zone while reading pace threads over at the APBRmetrics Board a few years ago. The idea is very commonsensical -- a team will play better at a pace (number of possessions) which matches its rhythm of play. A team will get into a flow for example, that will complement the style of play of the coach and players. Remembering the Rollie Massamino teams of the 1970s through early 1990s, the idea seemed plausible. Game announcers were fond of quoting a won-loss stat for Villanova teams when opponents were held to less than 70 points in the game. The stat was pretty impressive, a winning percentage in the .700s as I recall. And it made sense. The pace would allow the team to operate at optimum efficiency while the opponent may well feel uncomfortable playing at a more deliberate pace. I decided to start by looking at all the Big East teams, and calculating a "zone" that would be within 5% + and -, of each team's raw pace. I used Ken Pomeroy's Efficiency Stats Page to determine each team's raw pace. I then gathered the pace of each game each team played from his "Game Plan Page" for each team. A link to each team's Game Plan Page is given in the Overall Record table below:

		Overall Record
Team	Games	W	L	Pct	Pace
Georgetown	37	30	7	0.811	59.2
Pittsburgh	37	29	8	0.784	62.4
West Virginia	36	27	9	0.750	63.1
Notre Dame	32	24	8	0.750	70.1
Louisville	34	24	10	0.706	65.4
Marquette	34	24	10	0.706	67.3
Syracuse	35	24	11	0.686	71.0
Villanova	32	21	11	0.656	65.9
DePaul	34	20	14	0.588	62.8
Providence	31	18	13	0.581	69.6
Connecticut	31	17	14	0.548	68.7
St. John's	31	16	15	0.516	64.2
Seton Hall	29	13	16	0.448	70.0
South Florida	30	12	18	0.400	65.8
Cincinnati	30	11	19	0.367	64.5
Rutgers	29	10	19	0.345	61.5

The table is sorted by winning percentage. Teams which played 50% or more of their games within 5% (+ or -) of their raw pace are highlighted with lime green. It turned out to be about ½ of the conference (8 teams). The average raw pace for all D1 teams was about 66.9, so the fact that Louisville, Villanova, South Florida and Connecticut all had raw paces within 5% of the average may explain why they played 50% or more of their schedule within their comfort zone...but that begs the question of why Marquette, with a pace of 67.3 (the closest of all Big East teams to that D1 average), played only 41.2% of their schedule within that 5% zone. The table confirms there is no trend between a team's ability to "hold it's pace" and win its games. The table below marks the boundaries of each team's 5% zone, the number of games played within the zone, the percentage of that team's schedule and each teams won-loss record (with winning percentage) for games in that 5% zone

		Comfort Zone
		Range		# of Sched		Record
Team	Pace	High	Low	Gms	Pct	W	L	Pct
Providence	69.6	73.1	66.2	17	0.548	10	7	0.588
Connecticut	68.7	72.1	65.2	16	0.516	10	6	0.625
Syracuse	71.0	74.5	67.4	18	0.514	13	5	0.722
Georgetown	59.2	62.2	56.3	19	0.514	14	5	0.737
Pittsburgh	62.4	65.5	59.2	19	0.514	15	4	0.789
Louisville	65.4	68.7	62.1	17	0.500	15	2	0.882
South Florida	65.8	69.1	62.5	15	0.500	8	7	0.533
Villanova	65.9	69.2	62.6	16	0.500	10	6	0.625
Seton Hall	70.0	73.5	66.5	14	0.483	8	6	0.571
Cincinnati	64.5	67.7	61.2	14	0.467	7	7	0.500
West Virginia	63.1	66.2	59.9	16	0.444	11	5	0.688
Notre Dame	70.1	73.6	66.6	14	0.438	10	4	0.714
Marquette	67.3	70.6	63.9	14	0.412	12	2	0.857
Rutgers	61.5	64.6	58.4	11	0.379	5	6	0.455
DePaul	62.8	65.9	59.7	11	0.324	8	3	0.727
St. John's	64.2	67.4	61.0	10	0.323	6	4	0.600

The winning percentages for Providence and Pittsburgh were virtually the same within the 5% zone as they were overall. Those teams highlighted in burnt orange (Georgetown, Villanova, West Virginia and Notre Dame) had 5% zone winning percentages less than their overall winning percentages. For those teams the comfort zone was not, apparently, very comfortable. For Georgetown, the team with the largest percentage difference, this would have translated into a -3 margin in wins. Those teams (Connecticut, Syracuse and St. John's) whose 5% zone winning percentage was greater than their overall winning percentage are highlighted in yellow. Those teams whose difference exceeded .100 percentage points (a 10% or greater margin), are highlighted in aqua. This > 10% group is the largest subset in the conference, including not only teams with winning overall percentages, but teams like Cincinnati, Seton Hall and South Florida, whose winning percentages were less than 0.500. The team who seemed "most comfortable" in their zones (as measured by the difference between their 5% zone winning percentage and their overall winning percentage) were Louisville (+17.4%), Marquette (+15.1%) and South Florida (+13.3%). For Louisville and South Florida, teams who played ½ their schedule within the 5% zone, the effect is pretty clear. That 10 of 16 schools had a higher winning percentage of games within their 5% zone suggests there may be some value to the notion.