One of the complaints about women’s basketball in general is that there isn’t enough offense involved in games to capture the public’s interest, and keep it. After the offensive slow down in men’s basketball after the last couple of seasons, I thought it would be interesting to compare the offensive outputs of the Pac-12’s basketball teams after conference play started. And the statistics are surprising to even me, a big fan of women’s basketball.

Women’s Basketball

Schools Points Per Game FG% 3pt FG% FT% Oregon 100.1 .399 .315 .741 Stanford 79.6 .477 .405 .650 Arizona State 77.4 .452 .386 .697 Oregon State 75.3 .431 .378 .656 Washington State 74.6 .410 .324 .688 Washington 73.5 .414 .330 .672 Colorado 72.7 .422 .314 .707 California 69.0 .387 .251 .661 USC 64.8 .415 .305 .664 Utah 63.5 .411 .362 .703 UCLA 62.9 .373 .285 .679 Arizona 60.7 .393 .355 .675

Men’s Basketball

Schools Points Per Game FG% 3pt FG% FT% Oregon 88.9 .490 .404 .770 UCLA 86.3 .518 .402 .745 Utah 83.6 .524 .347 .746 Washington 77.8 .450 .352 .764 Colorado 77.6 .455 .317 .727 Arizona State 77.6 .475 .391 .688 Oregon State 77.4 .497 .393 .730 Stanford 76.3 .480 .406 .706 California 75.7 .461 .341 .706 Arizona 75.1 .481 .367 .679 USC 73.9 .450 .300 .635 Washington State 66.0 .430 .324 .617

The interesting thing to note is that the conference’s women’s team are scoring a lot more than they did in the previous season; and it is also surprising that Lady Ducks are scoring over 100 points per game during the 2013-2014 season. That is an incredible amount of offense for a team that is hitting less than 40% of its field goal attempts. But the more interesting stat is the fact that there is such a large spread from the highest scoring women’s team to the Pac-12 to the lowest scoring team.

As for the men’s side, the scoring spread is a lot closer…but there is no clear dominate offensive team in the conference. That being said, the putrid offensive performance by WSU is kind of surprising considering the reputation that Ken Bone had when he was hired by Jim Sterk — it should be noted that this is one of the best defensive teams of the Ken Bone era in Pullman.

The uptick in scoring on the men’s side has a lot to do with the new rule that has sent the team’s players to the line to shoot more free throws than past seasons — an increase of 17.1% from the 2012-2013 season.

On the women’s side, the rule change was a little less dramatic (a 10-second back court rule and an expansion of monitor reviews by officials); but has led to an uptick in scoring anyways. Also unlike the men’s game, the uptick in scoring is generated because of less time being spent trying to set up a play in the back court..and more time spent on the offensive side of the court.

As a result, women’s basketball has become ultimately more entertaining…the only question is, will it have more appeal for a broader audience?

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