Redbirds Making the Extra Pass

(St. Louis, MO) – The ‘good book’ says ‘it’s better to give than to receive’ and Illinois State is just one of the teams in the Missouri Valley that is learning that lesson. The Redbirds (17-11, 11-4) struggled with the idea of making that extra pass early in the season, but Dan Muller’s team is starting to learn the secret of sharing the basketball.

ISU has won five straight games and eight of their last nine contests. One of the key ingredients to their hot streak has been the collective growth of a bunch of young athletes learning to trust their teammates to make a play.

In Wednesday’s win over Northern Iowa the Birds handed out 14 assists. During the nine game surge, they are averaging 13.7 assists per game after averaging under 12 helpers in the previous six Valley games. Better passes, means better shots and often leads to a success on the scoreboard.

Three of the Valley’s four best teams rank one through three in the league’s team assists list. Evansville (21-7), Wichita State (19-7) and ISU are the top three. Southern Illinois Carbondale at 21-7 (9^th) is the only outlier.

We find the same story over in the Ohio Valley Conference where perennial power Belmont (18-9) is 16^th in the nation in handing out assists at 17.1 per game. Belmont’s assist attack is led by guard Austin Luke who hands out 6.1 per game. Four of the top five teams (record-wise) are in the one, three, four, five spots in the league assist race. Belmont is a even a tad better in league play with 17.6 helpers per OVC game.

When I asked Redbird Head Coach Dan Muller about his team’s unselfish nature he said getting his team to ‘learn to share’ has been a very intentional lesson his coaching staff has been trying to teach.

 

 

Not so coincidentally those teams at the top of the assist list are also three of the top four teams in shooting percentage and assist-turnover margin. Better shots and fewer turnovers usually leads to growing numbers in the ‘wins’ column.

Since scoring is up across the college basketball it is hard to compare numbers, but assists are up throughout the league. Evansville’s outstanding 18.2 per game leads to a shooting percentage of over 50% and they are scoring approximately six more points per game than last season.

With two weeks to go before Arch Madness 2016, the teams that hold on to those lessons our mothers taught us about sharing, could be the most successful.

Do Good