Can a team succeed on offense alone?

We recently had the question posed as to whether or not a team that was an amazing force on offensive but decidedly mediocre defensively could succeed. I thought that would be really interesting to find out, so I set about to determine if it was possible. My basic thought is that we are currently reasonably successful and very reliant on offense. What I want to determine is if it is possible to remain similarly successful without hving the defense start pulling its weight a little.

First, I had to define success. For the purposes of this study, I've done so fairly loosely: a top-50 KenPom rating at the end of the year. I felt that fit because it contains just about every team that has a reasonable chance at an at-large bid while not opening up the data set to a team that bolstered its numbers feeding on the MEAC or whatever.

Second, I had to define reliance on offense. For that, I took the team's rank in adjusted defense and subtracted the team's rank in adjusted offense. For instance, if your favorite team was 10th in the nation in offense but 134th in defense (Xavier's rankings when the question was asked.), the resulting number would be 124. You can call this number whatever you like; I called it gunnery because I like to have headers to my columns. Just know that it measures how much better a team's offense is than its defense.

With that number of 124 as a frame of reference, I decided to take every team with a gunnery number of 90 or above and a final KenPom ranking in the top 50 from the last ten full seasons and see how the fates treated them. For your perusal, here is the list of teams.

Rank	Year	Team	W	L	AdjO	Rank	AdjD	Rank	GNRY	Seed	NCAA W	NCAA xW	Delta
34	2006	Gonzaga	29	4	118.0	1	103.3	186	185	3	2	2
35	2012	Creighton	29	6	116.6	6	102.2	190	184	8	1	1
40	2008	Oregon	18	14	117.1	7	102.9	180	173	9
42	2010	Cornell	29	5	117.2	4	101.9	174	170	12	2		2
35	2009	Arizona	21	14	116.9	5	101.2	155	150	12	2		2
24	2014	Creighton	27	8	122.8	3	104.1	152	149	3	1	2	-1
8	2012	Missouri	30	5	123.9	1	100.5	146	145	2		3	-3
28	2006	Notre Dame	16	14	116.4	5	101.0	143	138
7	2005	Wake Forest	27	6	124.0	1	100.4	134	133	2	1	3	-2
49	2006	Vanderbilt	17	13	113.4	14	101.0	145	131
30	2013	Colorado St	26	9	116.4	7	99.3	135	128	8	1	1
27	2013	Iowa St	23	12	116.6	6	99.2	133	127	10	1		1
31	2010	Notre Dame	23	12	116.8	7	99.8	131	124	6		1	-1
26	2005	Gonzaga	26	5	117.0	8	100.3	132	124	3	1	2	-1
34	2012	Belmont	27	8	114.1	12	99.8	135	123	14
41	2008	Baylor	21	11	114.5	11	100.6	129	118	11
50	2011	Northwestern	20	14	114.2	19	101.0	137	118
41	2011	Vanderbilt	23	11	115.1	12	100.4	129	117	5		1	-1
28	2012	Purdue	22	13	114.8	9	99.1	125	116	10	1		1
32	2009	Baylor	24	15	115.7	11	99.8	127	116
28	2014	Iowa	20	13	119.8	5	102.7	120	115	11
49	2007	Boston College	21	12	114.7	16	100.9	130	114	7	1	1
13	2014	Duke	26	9	123.5	2	102.3	116	114	3		2	-2
30	2009	California	22	11	115.7	13	99.7	125	112	7		1	-1
10	2014	Michigan	28	9	124.1	1	102.1	109	108	2	3	3
50	2006	Alabama	18	13	112.2	20	100.1	126	106	10	1		1
44	2008	Florida	24	12	113.8	17	100.5	123	106
44	2007	Nevada	29	5	115.2	12	100.3	117	105	7	1	1
35	2005	Pacific	27	4	113.3	15	99.7	120	105	8	1	1
45	2012	Saint Mary's	27	6	112.0	22	99.1	126	104	7		1	-1
34	2013	NC State	24	11	114.1	9	98.4	112	103	8		1	-1
23	2006	Boston College	28	8	116.1	6	99.0	108	102	4	2	2
47	2008	Saint Joseph's	21	13	113.2	23	100.5	125	102	11
24	2007	Texas	25	10	117.5	6	99.8	106	100	4	1	2	-1
20	2010	California	24	11	117.1	5	98.3	101	96	8	1	1
15	2008	Drake	28	5	119.5	4	99.0	99	95	5
41	2007	BYU	25	9	115.5	10	99.8	105	95	8
16	2005	Washington	29	6	119.4	5	99.1	99	94	1	2		2
42	2009	Florida	25	11	113.3	20	99.2	113	93
29	2005	West Virginia	24	11	113.9	11	99.1	102	91	7	3		3
32	2006	Michigan St	22	12	113.3	16	99.0	107	91	6

A total of 41 teams fit the bill here, or about 4 teams a year. They averaged a record of basically 24-10 (.705 winning percentage), with 35 of them making the tournament. They earned an average seed of 6.914, which we're going to call functionally a 7. I'm hoping we can all agree on that rounding.

Four times the top offense in the nation was accompanied by a bad enough defense to make the chart here. These teams earned three 2 seeds and a 3 seed. Twice they underperformed their seed, with Missouri dropping in the first round in 2012 and Wake Forest failing to make the second weekend in 2005. Gonzaga's 2006 squad - with a staggering 185 gunnery number - picked up a couple of wins and Michigan made it all the way to the regional final last year before losing to Kentucky.

More fun than looking at who underperformed is looking at who made a Cinderella run. Cornell in 2010 (gunnery 170) and Arizona in 2009 (gunnery 150) each rode their offensive prowess to the Sweet 16 as 12 seeds, and 2005's West Virginia team made it all the way to the Elite 8 before falling to a certain killjoy team you might remember.

Before we put a bow on this, let's take one more sort and look through the teams with the gunnery numbers closest to Xavier's. Five teams in the past ten years have finished seasons in the 120s in this made-up metric. Their average record was 25-9, and their seeds averaged an 8, ranging from 2005 Gonzaga's 3 to 2012 Belmont's 14. From their seeds they would have been expected to win four games, but they only won three. I'm not sure what that tells us, but I suspect it's nothing.

To wrap all the way back around to the initial query, is it possible to stay successful while relying on a high-powered offense to carry a mediocre defense? Yes it is. These teams have marginally underperformed their seeds in the tournaments, but I don't think they've done so in a statistically meaningful manner. On the whole, they won just over 70% of their games and earned an average of a 7 seed in the NCAA tournament. If I offered you a 23-10 post-Big East tournament record for Xavier on the way to a 7 seed in the tourney, would you take it?