One Stat that Makes Liberty a Dangerous March Madness Team

There are lots of metrics and data available to help determine which teams could make for a tough out in the upcoming NCAA men's tournament.

For example, our Reed Wallach wrote up how in 19 of the last 21 seasons, the team cutting down the nets has ranked in the KenPom top 20 for both adjusted offense and defense efficiency.

But there's another scouting evaluation that tends to be overlooked, and that's how well a team is able to adjust not just from half to half, but out of timeouts as well.

Enter the discussion on Liberty men's basketball coach Ritchie McKay.

Over at Shot Quality, they have a metric designed to measure the success of overall quality of shots taken after timeouts. The metric ATO SQ PPP (after time-out Shot Quality points-per-possession) does just that.

At the top of the list was McKay and the Liberty Flames.

According to the research, McKay does the best job in drawing up opportunities for his best backcourt players to get open looks out of a timeout. In Liberty's case, that belongs to Darius McGhee. The 5'9" senior guard has averaged 24.7 points per game this season, ranking in the 100th percentile in points per game and points/40 minutes.

But what McKay does so effectively is set up McGhee quality shots despite every opponent knowing the ball is going his way.

The SQ PPP score ranges from 0.80 or less (considered awful), to .95 (average), and then 1.10 or higher (excellent). McGhee's rating of 1.11 is in the elite category of college hoops, ranking in the 92nd percentile, but out of timeouts, his number goes up by .07.

Simply put, his numbers, which are already amongst the best in the sport improve to an even higher level over a near full-season sample.

Where Is Liberty Projected to go in the NCAA Tournament

The Flames entered as the favorites and No. 1 seed in the ASUN Tournament, which is currently underway. They rank 115th in KenPom's overall rankings, but would likely be a 13 or 14 seed in the tournament should they win their conference tournament.

While they'd be fairly large underdogs regardless of who they play, they might make for a sneaky upset and potential dark horse team to make it to the Sweet 16 with Coach McKay diagraming their way to success.

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