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And looking over NCAA stats, I’m lead to believe that it’s GOT to be an issue with fundamentals – boxing out, etc. Our number of total rebounds isn’t good, but our opponents rebounding numbers are appalling. Bucky serves as a good reference here. Similar overall team rebounding numbers, but they prevent opponents from getting a ton. Less missed shots maybe? I dunno. They’re actually very high in the rankings of opponents rebounding totals – #19 in D1 as of this morning.
Regarding rebounding stats: total rebounds, opponent total rebounds, and even rebounding differential are IMO flawed stats. Total rebounds and opponent totals are affected by the pace of play (number of possessions and shots) as well as philosophy. Bucknell is a good example on both. They play at a slower pace, so there are less shots in their games over the past few seasons than a typical Lehigh team over the past few years. Therefore, if they corral the same raw # of rebounds in a game as Lehigh does, the percentage of missed shots that Bucknell is getting (and keeping from their opponents) will be significantly larger than the percentage that Lehigh is getting. This is the reason the numbers I have been using to show Lehigh’s rebounding issues are total rebound % and off/def rebounding %. Right now Bucknell is 99th in the country, grabbing 52.3% of available rebounds. Lehigh is #321 and grabs 44.3% of available rebounds. Raw numbers are what they are, but Bucknell grabs more than half of available rebounds and Lehigh grabs signicantly less than half. The reason Bucknell is so high in opponent rebound raw #’s is because they play at a moderate pace and grab an outstanding 76.8% of available defensive rebounds. This is partly due to a conservative defensive philosophy in which they do not gamble and go for steals, and instead do their best to maintain good defensive position which in turn leads to being in good rebounding position once a shot goes up.