Tulsa Primed to Make Noise After Beating Wichita State
Posted by Jared Kotler on November 19th, 2015In only its second season in the American, Tulsa scored a significant early victory in beating #9 Wichita State. Last year, despite a 21-9 regular season record which included only four conference losses, Tulsa was left outside of the NCAA Tournament’s field of 68. One reason for that snub was the lack of quality wins on the Golden Hurricane’s resume. They had played a relatively tough schedule but couldn’t seem to find a way to win the big games, whiffing on non-conference opportunities against Wichita State, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State (also of note from last year’s pre-conference slate: an embarrassing loss to Division II Southeast Oklahoma State). Heading into this year, Tulsa knew it had an opportunity to redeem itself in this early-season meeting with the Shockers. Frank Haith’s squad cashed in this time, and Tulsa fans have plenty of reasons to be optimistic given how the team has performed so far this season.
So what seems to be the difference-maker for this year’s team? For one thing, the Golden Hurricane have come out firing on all cylinders, particularly on the offensive end. Although we are looking at an extremely small sample size, examining the effective field goal percentage as a team gives an interesting look into Tulsa’s early success. According to KenPom, Tulsa had a team effective field goal percentage of 47.1 percent a season ago, ranking among the worst groups in the country (241st nationally). This number has jumped dramatically over two games this season, to 61.7 percent, giving Tulsa the 19th-highest effective team field goal percentage in college hoops as of today. Read the rest of this entry »