Racers playing at unprecedented pace
MBB: It's early, but Murray State is playing faster than at any point in the last 30 years
From the moment he was hired as Murray State’s head coach, Ryan Miller has talked extensively about his ‘pace and space’ offense. Through the first three games of the season, ‘pace’ has been the operative word around the Racers.
In the last 15 years, a Murray State team has played in a game with at least 79 possessions eight times — two of those have already happened this season.
Adjusted tempo is one of those advanced statistics you may have glossed over in the past. For the uninitiated, it measures how fast a team plays, showing the number of possessions they’d have in a standard 40-minute game after adjusting for the pace of their opponents. In short, it tells you how quickly a team typically gets up and down the court, independent of who they play.
This season, Murray State’s adjusted tempo possession number is 74.4, which currently ranks 27th in the country. The KenPom.com website has tracked adjusted tempo back to the 1996-97 season. So far this year, the Racers have a faster adjusted tempo than any Murray State team in the last 30 years. Here are the only five seasons in the last three decades where Murray State’s adjusted tempo has been north of 70:
74.4 (2025-26)
72.4 (1997-98)
71.7 (2000-01)
70.9 (1998-99)
70.5 (1999-00)
We have not seen this kind of pace from the Racers in a generation. Miller has been on the coaching staff of multiple teams that have objectively played fast. Now that he’s running his own program, he’s trying to ramp it up even more.
“I’m putting my little spin on everything,” Miller said. “Offensively, we play a lot like (Creighton) Coach (Greg McDermott’s) teams: space, pace, movement, cutting, screening, ball-screen offense, on-ball double screens, off-ball double screens, all that stuff. We try to execute at the highest level with pace and tempo. Defensively, we want to play more 94-foot full court man-to-man defense, where our opponent feels us all game long. Whether it’s just on a dead-ball out of bounds play going the whole way, or after a make or a miss, we just want them to feel us. We want nothing to be casual, nothing to be not urgent. We want to be right there.”
The 94-feet of defensive pressure is a staple of Miller’s philosophy we’ll see throughout the year. Against Mississippi Valley State, we saw the Racers become a little more active in their press, almost blitzing the Delta Devils with traps that helped force 23 turnovers. How often we see that run-and-jump defense will be dependent on the opponent, but that doesn’t mean Miller’s Racers won’t be aggressive at every opportunity.
“We don’t want to be crazy by scrambling and trapping all over the place,” Miller continued. “We want to be steady, but in your face. We believe over the course of the game, we can do one of two things: We can wear you out, or we can get the tempo where we want where we get multiple attempts at field goals. That’s what we’re trying to do, both offensively, defensively — creating a tempo. We have the guys, we have the personnel, we have 10 or 11 guys that can really play. Guys are going to get tired. It’s a challenging job. It’s 94-feet of full court basketball. Then when the shot goes up, it’s a dog fight for rebounds, both offensive and defensively, and that’s what we are trying to do here. It is taxing and you’re going to need multiple bodies to be able to accomplish it.”
The Racers will be back in action on Saturday afternoon when they host Nicholls at 4:30pm at the CFSB Center.