Mailbag 195: Auburn Basketball and the Art of the "Kill Shot"
This week: Quad 1 records, fast starts, Johni Broome's injury, small ball, Jahki Howard, rule changes, Hugh Freeze's seat and sandwiches
(Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)
ATHENS, Ga. — If you’ve been following our coverage of Auburn basketball the last several seasons, you’ve come across a term I like to go back to often: “Kill Shot.”
A “Kill Shot,” as coined and tracked by college basketball analytics guru Evan Miyakawa, is a run of 10-0 or better. Being able to go on big scoring runs — and prevent them — is a good way to win in modern college basketball. In 2023, Miyakawa posted these findings about Kill Shots:
A team with at least one 10-0 run wins 71% of the time
A team with more Kill Shots than the opponent wins 81% of the time
A team with 2 Kill Shots in a game wins 88% of the time
A 15-0 run leads to a win 86% of the time
A 20-0 run leads to a win 91% of the time
Earlier this week, Miyakawa posted one of his most popular charts: Breaking down the Kill Shot ratios for the top 75 teams in college basketball.
A lot of squads, as you see, float toward the middle — recording or giving up these big runs around the same amount.
But the fun is in the outliers. There are “suspect” teams that concede more than they produce, “streaky” teams that feature a high number of Kill Shots in both directions, “least streaky” teams that have games with low numbers of these runs and “strong” teams that create high rates of Kill Shots while allowing a select few of them.
(EvanMiya/Twitter)
Auburn, as you might expect for an elite team ranked either No. 1 or No. 2 in almost every predictive metric in the country, is in that “strong” category. According to Miyakawa’s data, the Tigers have generated 18 Kill Shots this season while allowing just six of them. Iowa State and Houston, Auburn’s two best wins of the season, are in this group. It also includes Texas, Texas A&M and today’s opponent, Georgia.
(Evan Miya/Twitter)
Kill Shots were in the front of several subscribers’ minds this week, and for good reason. Auburn opened and essentially closed its impressive 22-point win over Mississippi State without Johni Broome with Kill Shots. It’s a hallmark of an elite basketball team, and Auburn has been able to dominate in this category with the nation’s top offense and a usually great-to-excellent defense.
Our first two questions in this special Saturday edition of the mailbag are all about Auburn’s Kill Shots. We’ve also got questions in here about Quad 1 metrics, looking ahead to the postseason, Broome’s health, the Tigers’ lineups without their All-American center, a hypothetical dunk contest and rule changes I would make in college basketball. We’ve also got a little bit of football and random topics at the end.
Thanks as always for supporting The Auburn Observer. We’ll have Observations from Auburn’s tough-looking road test at Georgia in Athens later today. (Check out our game preview here, if you missed it Friday.) Until then, here’s the mailbag.