Here's a little historical look at Wake's kenpom rankings, updated earlier when we were ranked #30, down one spot to #31 now.
Currently, this team's rankings are very similar to the 2002 rankings (when Wake was a 7-seed and lost in the second round to Oregon). This got me thinking about how good this offense is and which Wake teams of the past were similar to how this team plays now. I know these charts are a little large, sorry about that, didn't know how readable they'd be if I shrunk them, but here is a scaled cluster map comparing Wake offense since 2002.
In case it isn't clear, each column is scaled with 1 being the highest, 0 the lowest, and I just kept the kenpom category names. So Dino's teams were the lowest in Assist% and Bz teams wouldn't offensive rebound. And this is compared to Wake's history, not the rest of the country, like we aren't a bad offensive rebounding team this year compared to the nation, but compared to Wake's past this year is on the lower end.
Interestingly, the previous three coaches all had their own distinct cluster. Looks like Dino was the most distinct of our coaches, not necessarily bad as the first chart shows that Bz years were terrible and Dino had reasonable offensive ratings, but he certainly had his own style (no shooting threes, decent offensive rebounding, no passing to teammates).
Manning's first year resembled the last year of Bz, his second year was close to 2007 Prosser (his worst year), and this year has so far stood alone, although closer to Prosser than anyone else. Looking at Manning's numbers though, it appears he's cultivating a higher assist rate than previous Wake teams, along with a lot more 3 point shooting, lower turnover rates, and less offensive rebounding. So it seems like he may be developing a new identity for Wake, but this year the shooting percentages are finally justifying it. Personally, I enjoy watching this style of play, especially when we get to watch a dominant post player to go along with the much improved 3 point shooting. If there are any questions or someone notices something that doesn't make sense just let me know, been doing random Wake data visualization stuff for myself but figured I'd share in case anyone else would find it interesting.
TLDR: Wake's offense is fun to watch this year and it looks like Manning may be developing his own offensive philosophy.