Sometimes It’s Just Hard To Score

Readers will recall the recent changes made to the college game to increase scoring and freedom of movement on offense. These appear to have largely worked, although of course there are games and entire programs that are outliers. Some clubs are trying to push the ball, and are incapable. Others are learning how to master offensive play, and will improve the efficacy as the season progresses.

Then there’s Virginia, which prefers to prosper by slowing tempo with the result that scoring in its games is depressed. This effect will become manifest anew as the Cavaliers run through the ACC, choking down opposing attacks even as they throttle theirs down and up.

Before we embark on ACC play, however, we might do well to see how league teams did in the nonconference action when the opposition was generally less formidable. We confined our examination to first halves, both because it limited the universe of possibilities to a reasonable number and because in virtually every instance teams that scored poorly in the opening period rallied to do better in the second.

Last season there were 11 games in which league teams scored two dozen points or fewer in the first half. This season there were but seven, and most of the opposing defenses were mounted by power conference teams.

A 19-point output led (or trailed) the field each year. In 2017-18 it was Miami against LaSalle in a road victory. In 2018-19 it was Georgia Tech losing to archrival Georgia at Atlanta. Miami finished tied for third in the ACC and was 22-10 in ’18.

Only Notre Dame suffered a low-scoring result on the road, while Tech, Syracuse and Miami endured similar, imposed parsimony at home.