How?

I keep coming back to this. What makes this team good? (We are not a great team, but I think we can say that so far we have been a good team.) That puzzles me more and more. We do have four players in double figures, but the scoring drops off pretty sharply after that, so we cannot claim that this is an outstanding offensive team. Our team shooting percentages are no better than average. We out-rebound our opponents, but not by a lot. Our A/TO ratio is actually a cause for concern. We block almost the same amount as our opponents, and we have exactly the same number of steals as the opposition. We out-score the opposition by only 2.5 points/game. We do not have outstanding size; in fact, we start a very under-sized team. We limit opposition to 40.8 FG%, which is pretty good, but our perimeter defense is 33.6%, which is decent but not notable. On top of it all, we have had some very key players out for several games with health/discipline issues.

What is it? I have said it before: I study a lot of stat sheets over the course of a year, and there is nothing about ours that makes me think this team would be anywhere near 16-6 for the season. It is almost like we just play well enough to win. I guess the only place you can see heart on the stat sheet is in the W-L column.