After writing a few, shall we say, exploratory articles trying to find a good statistical snapshot of team performance for Oregon’s basketball teams last summer, I think the best set of metrics I looked at was comparisons to NCAA Tournament Elite Eight teams. We’re in the heart of summer, so I thought it constructive to run the analysis again for the last five years of competition.

All of the numbers I use in this article come courtesy of sports-reference.com’s data portal Stathead to compile advanced statistics for players on these teams.

I’ll go over the summary descriptions for the metrics I chose to use, each of which is a rather involved formula. All of these definitions come courtesy of sports-reference.com.

Ortg — Offensive Rating; an estimate of points scored per 100 possessions.

Drtg — Defensive Rating; an estimate of points allowed per 100 possessions.

WS/40 — Win Shares Per 40 Minutes; an estimate of the number of wins contributed by a player per 40 minutes (average is approximately .100).

OBPM — Offensive Box Plus/Minus; A box score estimate of the offensive points per 100 possessions a player contributed above a league-average player, translated to an average team.

DBPM — Defensive Box Plus/Minus; A box score estimate of the defensive points per 100 possessions a player contributed above a league-average player, translated to an average team.

BPM — Box Plus/Minus; A box score estimate of the points per 100 possessions a player contributed above a league-average player, translated to an average team.

PER — Player Efficiency Rating; a measure of a player’s per-minute contribution adjusted so that the league average is 15.

Each roster was censored so that any player who appeared in fewer than 20 games in a season would not influence the results. After this, a mean for the various advanced stat categories was computed for each team that reached the round of eight in from 2021 through 2025. While the season that ended in 2021 was a bit wonky due to the trailing end of the pandemic, the post-season tournament was successfully held. Having computed these means for each individual team, I found the median and standard deviation of the resulting data set. The results are shown in the table below.

Elite 8 Team Advanced Stats Means 2021-2025

Statistic

Mean ORtg

Mean DRtg

Mean WS/40

Mean OBPM

Mean DBPM

Mean BPM

Mean PER

Statistic

Mean ORtg

Mean DRtg

Mean WS/40

Mean OBPM

Mean DBPM

Mean BPM

Mean PER

Median

113.944

99.739

0.152

2.765

3.045

5.656

16.863

Std Dev

5.637

4.793

0.026

1.136

0.914

1.667

1.516

Distribution of the mean advanced stats measures for Elite Eight men’s teams 2021-2025

Tristan Holmes and sports-reference.com

For most of these metrics, there isn’t much that can be gleaned from these distributions in isolation. An exception is the PER, which is always adjusted so that the mean league-wide is 15. Based on the information above, a team that makes the Elite Eight typically has an average rating of their contributors that is well above the league average. This may seem trivial, but in fact is important to note as it is evidence that PER may actually be useful rather than a random formula someone generated and sold as snake oil.

How do the means for Oregon’s last five men’s basketball teams compare to these elite team averages? Rather than display the means for the Duck squads in consideration and make you break out a calculator, I’ve gone ahead and computed the z-scores for the stats under consideration. Without going into “professor” mode, for each of the statistics under consideration a positive z-score means that year’s team measured above the Elite Eight mean (which is good for these metrics), while a negative score means the squad was below the average (which is bad in these cases). Scores between -1 and 1 are fairly typical, while scores outside of this should be considered exceptional.

Oregon MBB Comparison to Elite 8 2021-2025

Season

Mean ORtg

Mean DRtg

Mean WS/40

Mean OBPM

Mean DBPM

Mean BPM

Mean PER

Season

Mean ORtg

Mean DRtg

Mean WS/40

Mean OBPM

Mean DBPM

Mean BPM

Mean PER

2020-21

-0.801

0.591

-0.772

0.043

-1.160

-0.513

0.203

2021-22

-1.055

0.425

-1.306

-1.045

-1.533

-1.466

-0.504

2022-23

-1.072

0.201

-1.081

-0.691

-0.739

-0.795

-0.649

2023-24

-0.367

1.332

-1.291

-0.684

-1.226

-1.061

-0.355

2024-25

0.081

0.889

-0.918

-0.585

0.082

-0.256

-0.959

Z-scores for Oregon teams compared to Elite Eight teams from 2021 to 2025

Tristan Holmes and sports-reference.com

A few things pop out looking at this comparison. First of all: Dana Altman coached teams know how to play defense. The fact that the DRtg is consistently above the Elite Eight mean while the DBPM has often been well below it seems odd at first. The best explanation is that the formula for DBPM tends to favor “bigs” who record stats in the paint. The huge turnaround from 2024 to 2025 in this category is almost certainly due to the injury situation from 2024 thankfully not repeating in 2025.

Where Oregon teams are consistently below a typical Elite Eight team is on the offensive side of the ball, and in overall PER. The offense was better in 2025, due in large part to health but also to experience at the guard positions. There is some hope that the team can at least maintain this level in the coming season. What may be a more stubborn issue is the PER. As a measure of overall effectiveness on the court, PER measures raw talent as much (if not more) than experience and fit in a given line up. If the Ducks want to compete with elite teams, they need an overall bump in their talent level. What balance this should be between developing high school recruits and reaching into the portal is a more complicated question.

What do you think? How might the Ducks go about improving in these categories? Would you like to see a breakdown by position group (Stathead can filter by guards, centers, and forwards)? Share your thoughts in the comments.