Throw Your V's UP!

Throw Your V's Up Wildcast - 1.2

2018-11-01T00:45:00.003-04:00

Episode 1.2 - Team Preview

Mike and I discuss our thoughts about our offense and defense, different possible lineup combinations, and our overall outlook and record.

In the podcast we referenced a couple of articles: The Ringer - Jay Wright Took a Page Out of the NBA’s Playbook to Build College Basketball’s Modern Dynasty

UPROXX - Former High School Hoops Star Taylor King Took A Long Road Back From The Brink

Villanova Wildcast Episode 1.1

2018-10-26T00:10:00.000-04:00

Innaugural podcast episode of the Villanova Wildcast. I'm joined by my fellow Villanova alum Mike Matscherz to talk about the new Finneran Pavilion and our player preview for the upcoming season. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1x0Jb-9cihkByhGWKH6j73W5m8bGyLldG

Three For the Championship

2016-04-21T00:21:00.000-04:00

It’s been three weeks, and I still get the urge to go running around in public screaming, “Number 1 in all the land!” Luckily I have been able to keep myself somewhat together and productive. I’m just glad I haven’t run into a UNC fan yet because I’m not sure I would be able to stop myself from laughing and yelling at them. Hell, I’m still so excited I had to write a blog post.

But where to start. Since the first piece of confetti hit the floor there has been more Villanova basketball content written and produced than in the last three years combined. Look at the Google Trends for searches of Villanova University. Except, it really isn’t hard to figure out where to start. I’m starting exactly where the season ended, with Kris Jenkins taking a three.¹

I’ll let our old friend Dana O’Neil, “Heeeyyyy Danaaaa!!” get you up to speed². Nice work Dana. In a nutshell, after consulting with ex-Assistant coach and apparent stat guy Billy Lange, Jay came to the conclusion that he needed to do two things. Recruit guys who can shoot threes and take a lot more of them. And wouldn’t you know, that is exactly what has happened.

The chart above shows the percent of total minutes allocated to players who take greater than a 1/3^rd of their shots from three. Since 2013, minutes for 3-point shooters have increased and in this past season a whopping total of 80% of minutes where given to players who shot threes. The simplest way to think about this is that at pretty much all times, Villanova had four players on the court who shot threes.³

As you might expect, now with more players getting minutes who shot threes, the team as a whole took a greater amount of shots from three. In the past three seasons Villanova teams have taken the highest percentage of shots from three in the program’s history.⁴

Nothing here is groundbreaking. Jay had a theory about how he wanted to play and he executed it. So far I’m just adding a little heft to Dana’s single stat backing of Jay’s philosophical paradigm shift. Dana treats Jay’s epiphany like he is deciding to only have one sugar instead of two in his coffee, when in reality this subtle change has some rather large ramifications.

The result of this shift in shooting distribution is that Villanova went on a shot diet. We cut out the easy empty calories. They started bringing our lunch three days a week, and they bought the 8 oz. cans of soda. They cut out the mid-range two, the least efficient shot in the game. The closer to the rim the more likely a team is to make the shot, so eliminating the shots further from the rim that aren’t worth an extra point like a three, is a pretty good idea.

In 2012, our shot distribution was rather equally dispersed between shots at the rim, 33.7%, jumpers, 32.9%, and threes, 33.4%. In 2016 compared to 2012, Villanova’s shots at the rim stayed relatively the same, 32.4%, while they shot far fewer jumpers, down to 25%, and kicked up their three point attempts, 42.7%. As you can see in the graph above, the light blue stays roughly the same while the share of the dark blue cuts into the ugly fatty grey.

Importantly, the change in shot distribution not only impacted how many shots Villanova was taking at each location but the type of shot as well. Three point field goals generally are assisted field goals, and for Villanova this didn’t change even though they started taking a lot more of them. In 2012, 87.3% of their threes were assisted on while in 2016 85.6% were. Instead of running a play where a guy ran around screens to get a mid-range two or running a pick and pop with a big guy, think Yarou here, the two point jumpers they did take were because that’s just what the situation ended up calling for. They were shots that happened at the end of a shot clock, which suck anyways, or because someone pump faked at the three point line and took two steps in for a wide open shot. This is all a long winded way of saying Villanova stopped planning for and taking shots that had a lesser chance of success without the extra payoff of a three. Instead they looked for shots with more bang for the buck, either threes or at the rim.

The end result being that Villanova’s FG% on shots at the rim jumped from 58.6% to 68.9%. Just look at the change in % assisted. Higher percentage of shots assisted on means a higher percent of shots go in the basket.

I know I make it all sound so simple, but it really isn’t. The hard part is trying to disentangle scheme and philosophy from personal, but in college they really are one in the same. Bridges perfectly exemplifies this. Even though he shot just 30% from three, he didn’t start taking mid-range jumpers. Only 10% of his total shots were from mid-range.

But the player who really makes all of this work is the guy who fittingly took the last shot. Having a real stretch 4 that can knock down threes just completely changes the spacing on the floor. It opens up passing and driving lanes and forces the defense to stretch itself in ways that leave it especially vulnerable. And for those of you who still think that Jenkins wasn’t that good last year, let me put that to rest.

Dude just had one of the all-time 3-point shooting seasons in Villanova history. With that final shot, Jenkins became the third ever Wildcat to make 100 threes in a season, and he brought home the mother&%$#*&^ ship!

WHO’S BETTER THAN US?....NOBODY!

1 Of course everyone else was important, but I’m trying to keep this post short and focused.
Look, Ochefu when healthy was a bad man. He drastically cut down on his turnover rate, 16.2 from 22.4, while increasing his role in the offense, 20.1% of shots up from 17.4%, and maintained his efficiency, 62.7% eFG% down slightly from 64.4%. On the defensive side of the ball, Ochefu was a one man monster. He was 6^th in defensive rating, and 3^rd in defensive box plus/minus. Overall Ochefu was 15^th in win shares per 40 and freaking 4^th in box plus/minus. Just to clarify, those are national ranks.

Hart was an absolute force this year. He took and made big shots every single game. He finished 5^th in kenpom’s player of the year rankings. He was 10^th in defensive win shares and 18^th in overall win shares. He made 100 more 2-point field goals this season compared to last, and he somehow improved his 2-point FG% almost four percentage points from 55.8% to 59.5%.

Mr. Arcidiacono improved in basically every single category. He took more shots, 20.1% from 18.8%, improved his shooting, 54.7 eFG% from 49.3%, improved his passing, 24.1 ARate from 22.1, turned it over less frequently, 14.1 TORate from 14.6, and created more steals, 2.5 stl% from 2.2.

As for the other dudes, they were a’ight. Reynolds was great coming off the bench, and after going 11-30 (36.7%) from the free throw line his first two years, he went 47-65 (72.3%) this season. Brunson, rather quietly, had a very good freshmen season, shooting 38% from three and 51% from two. Booth sucked, but he was the leading scorer in the Championship game, so let’s all forget about this year, ok? On opposite side of the shitty-insane spectrum, Bridges was flat out ridiculous. He finished 3^rd in 2-point FG% and 13^th in the country in box plus/minus. ^↩

2 Anyone else get caught up on that first sentence, “burdened with a less than talented shooting team a few years ago…?” I always think of Villanova as a good shooting team, so it took me a second, but he is obviously talking about the Cheek and Wayns era…er catastrophe. And they sucked. That 2012 team posted the worst eFG% of any Jay Wright Villanova team, and Wayns and Cheek both sucked at shooting threes. Wayns for his career shot 29.1% on threes and Cheek shot 31.5% while at Villanova. Trash.^↩

3 What I find most surprising is that it always seemed like we had a bunch of guys who shot threes, but that really wasn’t always the case as the chart shows Fisher only qualified as a 3-point shooter in two of his four years as an example. ^↩

4 I’m just gloating/pointing out that I went and dug up data from the 80’s which you don’t see every day. The college basketball sports-reference pages are awesome, and more and more of the old stats are starting to get digitized.^↩

Flipping the Switch

2014-02-13T13:37:00.000-05:00

[talesofagarlicandonionlover]

If the season ended today, Villanova would likely get a 2 seed in the bracket, according to Joe Lunardi. Villanova is also currently ranked in the top 10 by basically every single ranking out there (AP – 6^th, USA Today Coaches – 6^th, RPI – 5^th, ESPN Power Rankings – 6^th, Kenpom – 6^th, ESPN’s BPI – 5^th, Sagarin – 2^nd, and TeamRankings – 4^th). There are currently only 6 teams who are in the top 10 for all of these rankings, and if you believe in the wisdom of crowd’s theory, these teams should represent the consensus Final Four picks at the moment. In alphabetical order: Arizona, Duke, Florida, Kansas, Syracuse, and Villanova. Other teams coming close are Wichita St. – 6/8, Michigan St. – 5/8, Creighton & Iowa – 3/8.

So, you don’t go from an unranked team picked to finish fourth in the New Big East to a 2-seed without substantial improvements and contributions from everyone on the team. Already this year, I have covered the individual contributions of almost everyone except for Ochefu and Bell. So it’s about time.

After a pretty dismal start to the season, Ochefu has been on fire since the start of conference play and overall compared to last season. Go ahead, pick a category. Shooting? Improved – 61.8% up from 45.9%. Rebounding? You betcha. Without Yarou around to take away rebounds, Ochefu is grabbing 21.1% of the available defensive rebounds up from 15.6% a year ago. Blocks, you ask. Absolutely. Ochefu is blocking 8.6% of opponents’ 2-point field goals up from 4.7% in 2013. And if you have been watching games recently, you have probably noticed that Ochefu’s assist numbers are also pretty damn good for a big man. He is assisting on 12.9% of his teammates baskets while he is on the floor compared to 7.4% last season, a rate that would place him as the best passing big man of the Jay Wright era.

Finally, those early season foul troubles also seem to be going by the wayside. In the out of conference slate of games Ochefu was fouling 7.2 times per 40 minutes, but in New Big East games that number is down substantially to only 4.9 times per 40 minutes. As a result he has seen his minutes increase from 18.5 min/game to 23.3 min/game.

However, turnover issues continue to haunt Ochefu. His turnover percentage has increased from last season and his 28.1% of possessions used ending with a turnover are a team worst. While they are not completely out of control, it is something to watch. But make no mistake, Ochefu has improved across the board and has been a big part of our success this season.

But how about James Bell, huh? Bell is having a hell of a season. Jay constantly praises his effort, leadership, and affectionately calls him “our rock.” Defensively he has not only been tasked with playing multiple positions and guarding bigger guys when we play small – meaning when JVP plays center and Ochefu is on the bench – but he has entered what I call the Dante Cunningham club. Players who block more than 2% of opponents’ 2-point field goals, and who create steals on over 2.5% of opponents’ possessions. As one might guess, Dante is a 3 time member of the club (2006-2008), and the only other players to join him in the last 12 seasons are Ochefu (last year) and Dwayne Anderson (2008 & 2009). Bell, if he continues at his current pace, will become the 4^th member of this club by season’s end, as he currently has a 2.5 stl% and blk%.

And while the comparison to Dante may seem a little odd considering position and skill set, there is another reason it is apt. Dante for his first three seasons was little more than the 3^rd option. But as a Senior, Dante’s role increased substantially. He took 27% of the team’s shots while he was on the floor up from 17.7% as a Junior, the largest increase from a Junior to Senior season in the Jay Wright era. Second on that list of greatest increases is none other than James Bell. Who took 19.7% of the team’s shots last season, but who is now taking 28.8% of the teams shots while on the floor this year, the most on the team.

Bell has taken on this increased role while getting even more efficient, as his 2-point shooting and 3-point shooting are better than last year and his turnovers are way down. Incredible. But let’s try and put his efficiency as well as everyone else’s from this year in better context.

I really like this graphic from Regressing, a Deadspin side blog that is quickly becoming one of my favorite sites, so I decided to put together a couple of scatter plots of my own. In this first chart you will find all Villanova individual player seasons from 2003 through the 2014 season to date. The y-axis represents a player’s offensive rating, a single number that encapsulates how many points per 100 possessions a player accounts for. On the x-axis is the % of possessions used, which illustrates how involved and critical a player is to a team’s offense. This chart will show us who contributes the most offensively, in all ways, with those players who do the most for the team.

So out of 110 individual player seasons since 2003, Villanova has had only four players with an offensive rating greater than 120 points per 100 possessions - Sheridan, Mr. Hart, Ennis and Stokes. Two of those guys are obviously on the team this year. Not too shabby, but in all of those seasons the four players had usage rates less than 20%. So while they were extremely efficient, their workload was that of a role player. So what we want to look at are those players with high efficiency (offensive rating) and high usage (% possessions used). That would be those seasons inside the red box in the upper right quadrant of the chart. The following scatter plot is just that, only those seasons where a player had an offensive rating greater than 100 while also using more than 20% of the team’s possessions.

And there you have it. These are the best offensive seasons in the Jay Wright era. These are the guys (34 of them) who had a very large role offensively but who were also efficient. Because of the trade-off between efficiency and usage – being that as usage increases efficiency decreases – it’s hard to point out which season is the absolute best by these measures. Let’s just say that we are witnessing three of the top 20 individual seasons of the last 12 years.

Taking this another step further, because I really like these scatter plots and decided to do another one, let’s take a look at just the best shooting seasons in the last 12 years. So instead of offensive rating on the y-axis, the next chart has eFG% - which is a weighted shooting percentage that accounts for 3-pointers being worth more than 2. On the x-axis we have our % possessions used number again.

Once again you see that we have had only four players who have had an eFG% of over 60%, and once again two of those players are on the team this year. So based on this chart and the first one, we see that any way you slice it Mr. Hart is having a really, really good season. Ochefu, as mentioned earlier, is also having a great season, but did anyone expect Fraser to be that high up? It makes sense on one hand because big guys who only shoot around the basket generally make shots at a higher percentage, but on the other hand Fraser was so often on the bench and never seemed to reach his potential that it’s hard to believe he was actually that good. However, just like the last series of charts we really should be looking at those players who shoot well AND play the biggest roles in the offense. So inside the little red square we go once again to look at those players who had an eFG% > 50% and those who also used more than 20% of the teams possessions.

Hello Bell, JVP, and Hilliard. So there you have it. We are witnessing an insane offensive team with several guys putting up some of the best numbers in recent Villanova history. I think it is safe to say that Bell, Ochefu, and the rest of the team have flipped the switch from last year to this year, and are far past due for praise as great offensive players.

Chin Up

2014-01-24T12:31:00.001-05:00

[csnphilly,com]

/slow clap, slow clap, slow clap. That’s all one can really do or say about Creighton’s insane performance Monday night. And this past week Creighton has rightfully received a great deal of attention and speculation about how far McDermott and company can go in the tournament. It is never fun to get drummed like that, especially on your home floor, but it still is only one game.

Let’s also not forget some of the facts. Creighton lost to Providence the Saturday before in a classic trap game, thus giving them even more incentive to bring the noise. They were also picked in many circles to win the New Big East in the pre-season, and they happen to have the front runner for player of the year = they are a very good team. But here is the kicker for me: since 2003 there have only been five teams ranked in the top 10 in both 3FG% and % of shot attempts from 3 – Samford, Air Force, Eastern Kentucky, Denver and Creighton. I don’t think you need me to tell you that Creighton also happens to be light years better than any of them.

So yeah, the game and loss hurts, but there is every reason to believe that this team can bounce back. This team is built on toughness, and I believe this Saturday we will come to play. For me the key is all about defensive pressure. I wrote before about the aggressive 1-2-2 trap that Villanova has used a lot this year. While there are many positives of using the trap, one critical one is the ability for the trap to create turnovers.

For the season, Villanova has caused teams to turn it over on 21.1% of their possessions, good for 45^th in the country. However, in the last three games our opponents TO’s are way down. In fact, the last three games are also the three worst games we have had all season in terms of creating turnovers (11.4% - St. John’s; 12.7% - DePaul; 12.1% - Creighton). Better teams obviously take care of the ball better, so it is entirely normal for our TO% to go down during conference play. Additionally, it isn’t that unusual for any team to experience a couple of games where certain numbers aren’t in line with their season averages. The point is that I don't think there is some underlying issue at play. Fatigue is about the only thing I can think of, and while that may be the case, it is also something that rest and time off can fix.

So let's be clear. Our next two games – Saturday @Marquette and Monday @Georgetown – are important games. Everyone will be curious to see how we bounce back from a game like the one we had against Creighton, but it’s only one game and I believe that Jay and the whole team are eager to prove that we will not be pushed around like that again.

Sweating Some Small Stuff

2014-01-17T13:49:00.001-05:00

[Villanova]

Everyone has favorite quotes that they like to pretend they live by. Maybe some people actually do, who knows. In any event, one of my go to stock movie quotes that I use in these situations is from the movie Ghost dog: The Way of the Samurai. If you haven’t seen it, it’s got Forrest Whitaker as a modern day samurai living in New York City. It’s awesome. Anyways, Ghost dog, aka Forrest Whitaker, reads this maxim at one point: “Matters of great concern should be treated lightly. Matters of small concern should be treated seriously.”

And that’s what Part II of the mid-season review is all about, a couple of small things. In Part I, I covered the big ticket items: overall offense, defense, and my MVP so far. Now it’s time to take a look at some of the little things that will make all the difference in the end.

Arcidiacono is starting to figure it out. At the beginning of the season, I talked about how I felt Arcidiacono would become the secondary ball handler at some point during the season. I didn’t realize that Hilliard would be the guy usurping him, but them are the breaks. The first slew of games were tough sledding for him though, which is understandable. It was probably the first time in his life that he played any basketball game where he didn’t have the ball in his hands every single possession.

His biggest problem has always been forcing 3’s off the dribble. Unless your name is Steph Curry, this isn’t a sound strategy by any means. Almost all players shoot better when they are stationary with their feet set, or they are coming off of screens and moving into their shot to take it in rhythm.

Over at VUHoops, Jordan Sperber did an excellent post about Villanova’s 3 point shooting. In it he noted that Arcidiacono had attempted 26 of his 62 attempts from 3 off of the dribble, yikes. While I haven’t tracked Arcidiacono’s 3 point attempts since that post, I did go back and look at how many of the 3’s he has made since were assisted on. It’s not perfect, but looking at how many 3’s are assisted works as a pretty good proxy for catch and shoot 3’s. So small sample size aside, over the four New Big East games thus far, Arcidiacono made 9 of his 17 attempts –good for 52.9% shooting – and 8 of those have been of the assisted variety – 88%.

So yeah, it’s only a handful of games, but Arcidiacono looks a little more comfortable in his role. Depending on your expectations heading into the year, Arcidiacono has had somewhat of a down year. It’s true Arcidiacono is shooting less this year, but even with his sub-par 3 point% he has a better eFG% from last year, due to the fact that he is shooting 61.5% from 2 this year. Last year he shot 38% from 2. That is real improvement, and if his 3-point shooting improves then his narrative should change.

You know what else is a small thing that is really important for a basketball team? It’s the bench. And Mother of God, has our bench been awesome so far. The question I want to ask though is if this bench is the best one we have ever had?

There are two ways to classify a ‘bench.’ One is to simply pick the 5 guys who have the most starts at their position and then classify everyone else as the bench. The second is to assume that the 5 guys with the most minutes are the starters, and thus the other guys make up the bench. I am going to cheat and use the minutes or second definition of a ‘bench’ for all of the prior Villanova teams, and use the first definition for this year’s team. Why? A) because I can, as this is my blog & b) until recently Hart would have been classified as a bench player, but he now has played more minutes than Ochefu. That’s why. So for 2014 our bench for this exercise consists of: Hart, Jenkins, Ennis and Chennault.

Let’s just get this out of the way. Yes, our bench this year is the best bench Jay has ever had, and let me count the reasons.

Every single player has an offensive rating over 100, never happened before. Two players, Hart and Ennis, are shooting over 40% from 3, never happened before. Two players, Chennault and Ennis, are dishing assists on over 20% of their teammates’ baskets while they are on the floor, never happened before. Three bench guys, Hart, Ennis and Jenkins, have TO%’s less the 15, never happened before.

About the only thing our bench is lacking is rebounding, but outside of that, this bench has been flat out great because each guy has and knows his role. Chennault is the assist man posting an ARate of 26.6. He now either knows he can’t shoot or is tired of Jay/JVP/Arcidiacono/Bell yelling at him every time he does take a shot, because he has taken only 8.4% of the team’s shots while he is on the floor and he has taken exactly 0 3’s. I think he gets the picture of what his role is, and while he has some turnover issues he has done a very nice job.

Jenkins has received the fewest minutes so far, and while his shooting numbers are starting to dip he provides size and toughness with the occasional 3 sprinkled in for good measure. His minutes will probably wane as the competition improves but every now and then he may get extended minutes, and that doesn’t really bother me.

Ennis has been nothing but solid. He is assisting on 23.8% of his teammates baskets while on the floor while having a TO% of 11%, which is damn good clean efficient basketball. But he is a little bit of a chucker and has semi-frequent lapses defensively. However, he provides some much needed 3 point snipping and is shooting 41% so far this season.

And last but not least, there is Mr. Hart. Mr. Hart is shooting 68.8% from 2 and 43.9% from 3, both are team best marks. He also has the best FTrate on the team – Ftrate measures how frequently you draw fouls = FTA/FGA and anything over 50 is pretty good – with a 70.8 rate, while also posting a team best TO% of 8.4. Basically, the guy is an efficiency monster, and I don’t even really know how to describe how crazy those numbers I just threw out there are. He is athletic, smart, and doesn’t force things, and even if the rest of our bench was garbage, his play alone would put us near the Villanova ‘benches’ of the past.

Halfway Home

2014-01-10T14:05:00.001-05:00

[Bleacher Report]

This Saturday against St. John’s marks the halfway point in Villanova’s season. Pretty hard to believe if you ask me, but after playing 15 games we have a fairly good grasp on this particular Villanova team. And man, are there a lot of interesting numbers out there. So without further ado let me present Part I of this mini halftime series by taking a look at our overall offense and defense.

Let’s start with probably the biggest surprise so far this season: our continued excellence on defense. There are many different components to a successful defense, but at its core there a couple of overarching principles and theories of a great defense:

Forcing opponents to shoot poorly, is the factor that correlates the most with winning
A defense has a much greater ability to influence how opponents shoot from 2 as opposed to the 3 point line.
Height is king, and translates to generally holding opposing teams to shoot poorly from 2.

Therefore, in the simplest terms possible, arguably the most important statistic for a defense is how well they defend shots from 2. Last season, our defense carried us and ranked 23^rd in the country in defensive efficiency. The biggest reason for our success was, you guessed it, we forced teams to shoot poorly from 2 to the tune of a measly 42.5%, good for 16^th in the country.

But the biggest difference between this year’s team and last year’s is height at the two front-court positions. Last season we always had at least one guy 6’10 or taller on the floor at all times, and we often had two of the three – Yarou, Ochefu, or Sutton – playing together at the same time.

This is all a long winded way of saying that despite having less height than we had last year, we are even better at defensive efficiency and even better at defending the 2 point shot. So how is this possible? First, we still have Ochefu, who might suck on offense, but none the less is an outstanding defender standing at 6’11. But, what we lack in size in the front-court we make up for with length at the other positions and great defensive pressure.

This year we have run the 1-2-2 press more than anytime over the last 3 seasons. As a result we have forced teams to cough up the rock on 22.8% of their possessions good for the 17^th best mark in country, and the best Villanova rate since the 2008 season. The thing I like most about the 1-2-2 press though is its overall aggressiveness. It forces us defensively to move, get our hands up and in passing lanes, and overall unleashes a certain sense of urgency that makes our defense have swagger and toughness.

This is why I believe we also have been awesome at defending 2 point shots, holding opponents to a shooting percentage of 41.5% good for 11^th in the country. If our opponent beats the press and gets into its half-court offense, the shot clock has ticked down already, our defensive pressure is high and ready for anything, and the offense is already flustered and way more likely to take a bad shot. It also doesn’t hurt that that our two most frequently used lineups have 4 players 6’5 or taller. So while we don’t have the size at the two front-court positions as we did last year, we make up for it by having height and length at all of the positions and an aggressive approach to defense that ramps up our intensity and forces opponents to take hurried shots.

While the defense has stayed the same and even improved, our offense has taken a gigantic leap forward. Last year the offense was often stagnant, and our most notable skill was drawing fouls, as we led the entire country in FTrate (FGA/FTA a measure of how frequently a team draws fouls). This year, we are an efficiency machine. What I mean by this is that we only take the best kinds of shots, those at the rim and 3’s, while avoiding the worst shot in all of basketball: 2 point jump shots.

Last season 29.3% of all of our shots on offense were classified as 2 point jumpers, while this year only 17.6% of our shots come from the same range. That, friends, is a drastic change and it is the 11^th best rate in the country. Part of why that is happening is simply because Yarou isn’t around anymore, as last season he took 20% of the shots while he was on the floor and 55.3% of his shots were 2 point jumpers, the highest on the team. The result of this change in shot location is that as a team we are shooting 55.9% from 2 this season which is the 9^th best rate in the freaking country.

No one illustrates this change on our team better than Mr. Hilliard, who at the halfway mark of the season is the team MVP in my eyes. Last year, 22.4% of Hilliard’s shots were 2 point jumpers. This year that number is down to just 7.4%. That is staggering, and as a result of his new shot selection Hilliard has shot 58.2% from 2 this season, 11% better than last year.

But that isn’t the only thing nor is it the most important change for Hilliard this year. No, the biggest improvement in his game has come through the distribution of the basketball. Last season, Hilliard’s role was not to create but just to score. He assisted on only 13.4% of his teammate’s baskets, low for a ball-handler and it was only the 4^th best on the team. This year Hilliard is assisting on over 21.9% of his teammates baskets which is a higher mark than Arcidiacono, and indicates that he is the primary creator when the two are on the floor.

The bottom line is that while JVP continues to score and be JVP, and Bell has become much more aggressive finding his shot, the real key has been Hilliard’s ability to assume his new role as creator while also improving his shooting and scoring numbers. He has been flat out awesome, and so far there is little reason to believe that he isn’t up to the challenge as the season progresses.

The Construction of a Winner

2013-12-20T12:21:00.000-05:00

[riot and frolic]

This season has been pretty damn good so far hasn’t? It’s not even the end of December, and after being picked virtually unanimously to finish 4^th in the New Big East, Villanova has beaten a top 10 team, won a pre-season tournament, jumped to 8^th in the AP poll, and beat the pants off of our Big 5 rivals thus far by an average of 24.6 points per game. What stands out though isn’t the accolades or the wins, but the type of team that we are and the way we play. Villanova is a team in the traditional sense of the word, where everyone plays hard, the stars stand out, and the role players play their part to a T. But the thing I can’t stop thinking about is the way in which this particular team and these particular players fit perfectly together; the way in which this team came to fruition. Throw in the uncertainty and problems of the last couple of years, and this my friends, is one of the most overlooked storylines of the season. So allow me to eschew my normal amateur statistical ramblings, and with all apologies to Dana O’Neil, this is my story of how Jay constructed a winner.

The best place I can think of to start this little story, and put everything in context, is sometime in the fall of 2009. Villanova and Jay Wright finally made a Final 4, and all was good in the world. Jay had snagged arguably his most talented recruiting class ever – ranked 3^rd nationally with Yarou, Cheek, Wayns, & Armwood - and with Scottie and the two Corey’s still around, plus the addition of Duke transfer and McDonald’s All-American Taylor King, anything seemed possible.

So things aren’t just good they are great at the beginning of 2010. In case you forgot, Villanova started out 20-1, with our only loss coming to Temple at Temple. Then the Big East schedule got a little tougher, we dropped a couple of games, lost in the first round of the Big East Tourney, and held on just enough to earn a 2-seed. Now we will never know what happened between Fisher and Scottie before the first tournament game that year, but both were benched to start it. (We do know that the stupid story that went around was bullshit, but in case you are inclined to believe it, do you also remember the one last year about Jay and the cheerleader? Yeah, both are a crock) We barely beat Robert Morris in OT, and then lost to Saint Mary’s in the second round.

It’s difficult, and generally a fool’s errand, to look back and pin point the exact moment when things started to go south, but this was the first sign that all was not well at Villanova. In the subsequent off-season Taylor King was kicked off the team and left the school. Additionally, the two incoming recruits didn’t even make it to next season’s opening tip unscathed. James Bell had surgery on both of his legs and played sparingly throughout the 2011 season, while JVP got caught up in an unfortunate off campus incident that got him suspended. On the court, the season started well enough (16-1) before Villanova dropped six of their last eight games, lost to lowly USF in the BE tourney, and finally were put out of our misery by George Mason in the first round of the NCAA. Down the stretch there was no spark and no chemistry, and the careers of Stokes, Fisher, and Pena ended without too much of a fight.

While there were a handful of small seemingly innocuous and unrelated incidents, no one really seemed too worried about the future of the program yet. Mostly because the best recruiting class in the school’s history was about to take the reigns as Wayns, Cheek, Yarou and Armwood were rising Juniors. Bell, who was largely a footnote, was finally healthy, and JVP was about to play his first ever game for Villanova. Also, Jay had landed another supposedly decent recruiting class in Ty Johnson, Marcus Kennedy, and Darrun Hilliard.

But then right before the season started Armwood decided he wanted to transfer. In case you forgot, he was our goddamn captain! What the hell is going on here? Even when it happened it didn’t seem too terrible, as most people were expecting Armwood to at best be the third banana behind Wayns and Cheek. But after the total and complete disaster of the 2012 season, Armwood’s transfer as the team’s captain stands out as the moment everyone should have realized that something was clearly screwed up.

Here is Jay talking about Armwood when he transferred:

"He’s the greatest kid in the world," Wright gushed. "He’s our hardest-working guy, our captain. We started him every game on our trip. I love him to death…I just want to see him achieve his goals”

The hard part comes when trying to explain what exactly was screwed up, what was the problem. I don’t think there is a real answer to this, and as outsiders we will never know. Hell, I don’t even think Jay really knows what exactly it was that caused such internal turmoil and for many talented players to not live up to expectations the last couple of years. I think he has his theories, however, and I think it changed they way he recruited, the way he coached, and the way in which he went about constructing a team.

The reason I feel that this situation changed Jay as strongly as I do, even though to remind you I know nothing, is what happened next. By mid-June after the end of the season that shall never be talked about again, 4 underclassmen decided to leave the team. I repeat 4 underclassmen – Wayns, Cheek, Johnson, and Kennedy. That’s more players departing then when new coaches come on board.

I am pretty sure the message was crystal clear. Anyone who doesn’t want to play defense, anyone who doesn’t want to work their ass off, anyone who doesn’t want to be a team player, and anyone who doesn’t want to play when and how I tell them to should leave right now because I will bench your ass.

After the alleged ultimatum by Jay here is who was left: Yarou, Sutton, JVP, Bell and Hilliard. That’s it, and after Yarou and Sutton graduated, the guys who accepted Jay’s coaching and attitude are the current stars of the team – JVP, Bell, and Hilliard.

So with that core group of players to build around Jay needed to fill in the surrounding pieces. With a 2-guard, a small forward, and a power forward on board, Jay went out and recruited a point guard in Arcidiacono and a center in Ochefu. Players that are smart and tough.

But filling out the bench with players who have those same qualities and willing to accept their roles has been the biggest reason for Villanova’s ultimate success. Chennault has accepted his role as facilitator beautifully this year after transferring to Villanova a year ago and struggling offensively. Ennis had to sit out a year while he transferred and he provides good defense and badly needed outside shooting.

The two incoming Freshmen this year have fit in perfectly as well. Jenkins is an undersized big in the Villanova tradition like Cunningham, Pena, and JVP before him. And Hart who dealt with a fairly severe injury his Junior year of High School, but who Jay and Villanova continued to recruit due to him 'fitting' our team, has been nothing short of awesome. Playing defense and unselfish basketball while and adding some much needed raw athleticism.

And that brings us to where Villanova basketball is today. After a couple of down years with chemistry issues and players never fully blossoming, Jay has put together the pieces for a complete team 1 through 9. A team built on defense, chemistry, and toughness with enough talent and offensive firepower to make a deep NCAA tournament run. And from the fan's perspective, damn fun to watch.

Come Get Some: A Handful of Notes, Observations, & Numbers

2013-11-30T10:43:00.002-05:00

[keepcalm-o-matic.co.uk]

What a big time win last night. Even though we didn’t face the finished product in Kansas, we still played a really, really good version. This win should put us under the spotlight now, and if we want to get recognition nationally we have to follow up with a win or a strong showing against Iowa tonight. Iowa, while not getting the national recognition itself, has quietly put together a great start and is a very good basketball team – ranked 7^th per kenpom, where we are ranked 19^th. But let’s talk about last night.

On the night, we held Kansas overall to .89 points per possession. For the season Kansas’ adjusted ppp is 115.7.

While turnovers and pressure were keys to Villanova’s first half lead, the biggest story was on the defensive glass. Kansas missed 19 shots but only collected 2 offensive rebounds. That’s an OR% of 10.5%, and Kansas on the season has been collecting over 30% of its missed shots.

After we battled and arguably dominated down low all game against a front line that features a 7 footer and two first round picks in the upcoming NBA draft (Embiid and Ellis), I don’t want to hear any announcer talk about us being thin or small up front anymore.

Bell, Hilliard, and JVP were the MVP’s last night. In the first half Hilliard was great, but he seemed fatigued in the second half. Bell and JVP struggled offensively a little bit, but they kept fighting and were both tough as hell on the defensive side of the ball. Numbers aside it was the effort, confidence, and determination from all three of them that kept us in this game.

Our bench was also awesome last night.

o Ennis continued to show that he can provide the necessary offensive spark for us, and especially some necessary outside shooting, as he went 4-5 from the field, 3-3 from deep, with 2 assists, 4 rebounds, a block, and only 1 turnover in 20 minutes.

o Chennault added hustle and the ability to create shots for others in his limited minutes, chipping in 2 assists, 3 rebounds, and 2 steals in only 10 minutes of action.

o Hart was strong defensively and added in 2 threes and 6 rebounds in a little over 20 minutes.

o Jenkins might not look terribly big, but he played really well down low in limited minutes showing that in a pinch he can help out up front if Ochefu gets in foul trouble again.

Ochefu continues to struggle. After I pointed out that he had a rather low fouls committed per 40 minute number as a Freshman, he has fouled at an alarming rate. For the season he is now fouling 7.5 times per 40 minutes, up from his 4.8 number a year ago. He bites on almost every pump fake and goes for the block on every shot. Offensively, he is quickly becoming a liability. He needs to understand that the reason teams are not guarding him, and the reason they are forcing him to make plays offensively is because he just isn’t very good on that side of the ball. He has taken 18.9% of the teams shots while he is on the floor, way too high for a poor offensive player, but the worst part is that he is turning the ball over on 34.9% of his total possessions. That has to stop.

Arcidiacono came up big when it counted, but otherwise struggled. He was 0-5 from the field before he took and made the final 3 to win the game. Of those 5 attempts prior to the final shot, he did not have a single attempt from 2. I continue to believe that against the better and in particular more athletic teams, Arcidiacono needs to play off the ball more. He is simply not quick enough to get around his man or a high ball screen to penetrate and initiate the offense. Hopefully with Ennis now getting playing time can share that role with Hilliard come crunch time. But Arcidiacono is tough as nails, and his confidence in his ability is why he is actually playing at this level, and he showed it last night.

Early Results and the Battle 4 Atlantis Thanksgiving Tournament

2013-11-27T13:43:00.000-05:00

Depending on your families’ preference for timing of Thanksgiving dinner, Villanova’s 1:00pm EST game against USC in the Battle 4 Atlantis Tournament will most likely start your 8 hours of eating and watching TV on Thanksgiving. That makes me happy, especially because do to prior obligations I have watched way too little of any Villanova game so far this season. It really is a shame. But Thursday is just the appetizer to the main dish served on Friday at 9:30pm EST, a likely match-up against Kansas and Andrew Wiggins, the Maple Jordan.

Again that match-up only comes to fruition if we beat USC, which in all likelihood should happen. No matter what happens however, we will play 3 games, and with the exception of Kansas we should be favored in the other two matchups.

With four games down against shitty competition, there are some interesting early season trends and numbers that I am interested in seeing how they shake out when the competition over these next 3 games improves. So let’s dig in.

Is Ochefu really this bad offensively?

Through the first four games as a team, Villanova is shooting 60.6% from 2. Currently that ranks 7^th in the country, and is largely do to the fact that we haven’t played anybody. Despite being the tallest player on the court in 3 of our 4 games so far Mr. Ochefu is shooting just 28.6%. According to hoop-math.com, an absolutely fantastic database, Ochefu hasn’t hit a jump shot yet this season and is only shooting 37.2% on shots at the rim, which overall the team is making 65.7% of and the D1 average is 60.0%.

Look, Ochefu is in there to challenge and block shots and rebound, but we need him to be able to score a little bit. While this is just a sample size of four games, the numbers are pretty incredible, and I am interested in seeing how he moves forward.

3 Point Shooting

I talked about both offensive and defensive 3-point shooting in the season preview, and well, the early results are not too pretty. As a team we are shooting 25.5% from 3 so far. Bell and Hilliard are almost exactly at their averages last year, 36% and 32% respectively, but Arcidiacono has made only 3 of his 19 attempts thus far. JVP, who really knows better than to take a lot of threes, is only 1 of 11 to start. Arcidiacono is the key as last year he attempted the most threes – I will get to his struggles in a minute – but we need to shoot better than 25.5% if we are going anywhere this year.

Defensively, our opponents are shooting at an average rate of 34% from 3, but we are once again conceding way too many 3 point attempts. Opponents are taking a whopping 41.1% of their shots from 3 this year, good for 331^st in the country. Maybe this is a result of them being down for long stretches of the game, and so they are jacking more threes to get back in it. Let’s see what happens in closer games against better teams.

James Bell is killing it

Bell has been on fire so far. I neglected Bell in the season preview because over the last two seasons his numbers were almost identical, which made it hard for me to believe and or predict that Bell’s impact would change. In the four games this year Bell’s %shots while he is on the floor has jumped significantly. In 2012 he took 18.2% of Villanova’s shots. In 2013 that number rose slightly to 19.7% of our shots, 4^th on the team. But in 2014 thus far that number is 29.5% and just a tick below JVP’s team leading 29.6%.

The difference it seems is that Bell is taking a lot more shots at the rim to go along with his 3 point shooting. In his previous 3 seasons Bell has never taken more than 20% of his shot attempts at the rim, but this year that number has jumped up to 32.1%. It seems as if Bell’s off the dribble game has improved, and that is likely the reason for his increased shot attempts from close range. Again let’s see what happens against a good team first.

Struggling Arcidiacono is adjusting to a new role

Two years ago when Wayns decided to get paid and Ty Johnson was absolutely awful in his one season and decided to transfer, Jay knew he was in trouble at the point guard spot. Arcidiacono was already coming to the Main Line, but we had no one else. That’s when Jay brought on board the two transfers in Ennis and Chennault. If you read between the lines in the quotes from Jay in the Chennault piece about hardship transfers, it’s pretty clear that Chennault was only really intended to be a stop gap backup for one season. Ennis was the guy Jay had in mind to run the point alongside Arcidiacono, and that’s why Chennault almost transferred this season.

Moving along to this season, here is a nice quote from Arcidiacono on media day before the season started:

“It really doesn't matter who brings the ball up, because someone is going to have to get us into the offense... It could be Dylan, it could be Taj [Bell]. There's no point guard, shooting guard”

Allow me to translate. We are going to play more ball handlers at once, and Arcidiacono is going to more or less play like a shooting guard. This is essentially what happened with both Scottie and Nardi in years past, ball handler in the early years and more of a scorer in the later years.

With Ennis hurt – his cast is off by the way and he is likely to get a tiny, tiny bit of playing time in the tournament – Hilliard and Chennault have assumed his role as main ball handler while Arcidiacono is adjusting to playing more off the ball. That change is seen in the fact that his ARate of 23.6 from a year ago is way down to only 13.4 this year. Conversely Chennault and Hilliard’s have increased a lot.

It’s not easy for a guy who has played his entire life with the ball in his hands on every possession to suddenly have to give it up so someone else runs the show. In the long run this will help our team as Arcidiacono is a very capable second ball handler, but it will take time for him to adjust. I think he will bounce back nicely in this tournament and he will continue to improve throughout the year.

2014 Season Preview: 10 Things to Watch For

2013-11-15T15:04:00.001-05:00

Welcome back old friends. It seems we find ourselves once again at the beginning of a new season of Villanova basketball. Well, technically, the season already began, but you get what I mean. Hopes are high, predictions abound, and as usual I pledge to post more frequently or at least more regularly, but we know how that goes.

Now with the pleasantries out of the way, let’s get down to business. Head on over to the Mid-Rang Jumpers page to check out some off-season news and my look at our out of conference schedule if you want. Otherwise, without further ado here are my top 10 issues to think about for the upcoming season.

10. WE WILL HAVE TO PAY ATTENTION TO OUR RPI RANKING FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER

This sucks. I hate the RPI. It is a really flawed tool to use, and it fingerprints are all over the selection committee process.

Here’s the thing. In the old Big East you could ink 7-10 conference games a year against top 25 ranked opponents and even more games against the RPI top 50. This meant our out of conference schedule didn’t have to be tough, and it also meant that we had multiple opportunities for quality wins. 6 of the 8 teams that left the conference were perennially ranked in the top 25. The other kicker is that now other conferences like the ACC are even better. While there is nothing that we can do this year, it seems likely that in the future we are going to have to schedule tougher out of conference games in order to boost our RPI. So get used to hearing about and looking up our RPI ranking cause it’s going to matter come March.

9. CAN OCHEFU STAY OUT OF FOUL TROUBLE?

This is probably the most obvious storyline for the season if you have taken at least one peek at the roster. With Yarou and Sutton gone, Ochefu is the only big guy left with any college experience.

Last season, Ochefu actually did a very good job as a Freshman at avoiding fouls. He averaged 4.6 fouls per 40 minutes. To get a sense of how good that number really is here is a list of other Villanova big men and their fouls committed per 40 minutes for their Freshman seasons.

	FC/40	This bodes very well for Ochefu, as usually younger big men really struggle with foul trouble early on. The biggest reason we need Ochefu to play isn’t his rebounding (he wasn’t that good last year but again that was probably because Yarou was a great rebounder) but his defense. Opponents shot only 42.5% from 2 against us (16th best in the country), and we know after watching Yarou for 4 years that he wasn’t doing much to alter shots in the paint. Throw in the fact that Ochefu is only the 3rd Villanova player in the last 10 years to have a Blk% greater than 2 and a Stl% greater than 2.5, and you can see how much his defense will mean this year - the two other guys were Cunningham and Anderson.
Sheridan	4.5
Ochefu	4.6
Cunningham	5
Pena	5
Fraser	5.7
Yarou	6.3
Sutton	7.8

8. THE NEW BIG EAST WILL BE BETTER THAN EXPECTED AND WILL GET AT LEAST 5 TEAMS INTO THE TOURNAMENT

First, I think there will be some latent sympathy for the Big East this year by the selection committee come March. While everyone is sort of OK with realignment, no one wants to see a conference with the history like the Big East fade into complete obscurity. Also, you have to ask yourself if a team like Virginia (who didn’t make it last year but had 20+ wins) is now going to still get 20+ wins in a tougher ACC and thus go from the bubble to being in? No.

I think what is lost in all this reshuffling is that the Big East still has 3 tournament teams from last year (Georgetown, Marquette, Villanova), and both Creighton and Butler made it too. Xavier didn’t make it but prior to last year they had made 7 straight trips to the dance. So we have 6 tournament level teams even if we don’t throw in St. John’s, who everyone is high on and is two years away from a tourney birth, and Providence, who has had several top 20 recruiting classes the last couple of years.

For my final piece of evidence consider this. The A-10, which we got Butler and Xavier from, had 5 teams in the tourney last year. The Mountain West also got 5 teams last year. If you think either conference is getting more than 3 teams in you are crazy.

I think I just talked myself into predicting we will get 6 teams. Ok, let’s stick to 5.

7. THE IMPACT OF THE NEW RULES

This past year the NCAA adopted several new rules that are intended to create more fluid offense play. Basically, you can’t put more than one hand on a ball player and using an arm bar in the post is out. So far the result has been an incredible amount of foul calls in the early going.

On its face, rules that will lead to more foul calls should really help a team like Villanova, who was the BEST team in the country at drawing fouls last year. While the new rules should benefit us, I am not 100% sure they will. For one, we already get to the line a ton. JVP is a foul drawing machine, and for a guy who really only shoots 3’s (70% of his shot attempts last year were 3’s) Arcidiacono was crazy good at drawing contact. The problem as I see it is that our opponents may end up getting more calls than normal, and because we draw so many fouls already how many more can we get called?

All that said, get used to long games with lots of fouls because Villanova is great at drawing them, and the refs this year are going to blow the whistle a lot.

6. WHAT’S THE DEAL WITH DARRUN HILLIARD

I have never really had a firm grasp on how good or what type of player Hilliard is or can be. In his first 15 games as a Freshman he played over 20 minutes in 13 of those games. After that point, he only cracked 20 minutes once in the remaining 17 games, and he had 11 games where he played less than 10 minutes. What happened there? I have no idea.

Then last year Hilliard started every game and averaged 29.9 minutes a game. He also took the second most shots while he was on the floor after JVP, and overall put together a pretty decent season. He improved his 3-point shot, but he is unlikely to become a very good shooter as he only hit 31.5% of his threes after hitting only 29% the year before.

Hilliard though excels at two things. First his defense last year was excellent. He had a 3.3 Stl%, and finished with 56 steals, which was good for the 18^th best season in Villanova history. Second, Hilliard was also the only player outside of JVP who could actually create his own shot.

But his ability to create his own shot is also what has bothered me about him, because why can’t he create for others too? An ARate of 20% or better is generally considered ok for a ball handler (Arcidiacono had an ARate of 23.6, meaning he assisted on 23% of the teams baskets while on the floor). Hilliard has posted ARates of 10.8 (2012) and 13.4 (2013). It’s not Corey Stokes low, but it’s down there.

It’s possible that Hilliard’s role last year was to simply score, and that Jay did not want to burden him with that type of play making responsibility. But an interesting thing happened in the first game, Hilliard had 7 assists. It’s likely that Hilliard is currently playing the role meant for Dylan Ennis who is out with a broken hand, but if it is the case that Hilliard does have the ability to create for others, which we haven’t seen him do before, then watch out. Adding another ball handler who can create shots for his teammates will make us a significantly better offense.

5. 3-POINT SHOOTING OFFENSE

In the Jay Wright era Villanova has been an above average 3-point shooting team but never a great one. 2010 was the best year and we hit 37.3% of our 3’s good for 50^th in the country. Over that time we have ranked in the top half of college basketball, except for the last 2 years. I don’t think I need to explain to anyone in 2013 that being able to shoot 3’s at a good percentage is important. So can we do it? Well, maybe.

Bell is our best 3 point shooter. He has improved each year, and last year he shot 36.4% from deep. I’m not too sure how much more improvement we will see from him this year, but it’s always a possibility that he will. We just talked about Hilliard who again is likely to improve, but in reality the 3-point shot will never be his strong suit. So that leaves us really with Arcidiacono and Ennis.

Ennis shot 35% from 3 in his Freshman season, but he is coming off a hand injury and a year of rust. In all likelihood he will be a very good shooter, but we will talk more about Ennis later.

Last season Arcidiacono was a chucker. He attempted 217 3-point attempts which accounted for 70% of his total shot attempts. That 70% is the highest in the last 10 years for a Villanova player, even more than the extremely 3-point happy Stokes. He shot 32.7% from deep, which while not great, isn’t awful for a Freshman. Stokes as a Freshman shot 29.6% and finished as a Senior shooting 43%.

In the Big East last year, there were 28 players who took more than 50% of their shots from 3. The player who attempted the most unassisted 3’s in that group was Arcidiacono at 63%. The average for that same group was 89.5%, so he took a lot more off the dribble unassisted 3’s that not many people other than Stephen Curry can make with regularity.

So the theory goes something like this. Even though every defender knew Arcidiacono took a crap load of 3’s, and even though he took a ton of unassisted 3’s (which are obviously much harder) he still shot a semi-respectable 32.7%. So with a year under his belt, improved shot selection, and maybe less pressure to score, it follows that his 3FG% should improve rather significantly. We are about to find out if that’s true.

4. THE CASE FOR JVP AS BIG EAST PLAYER OF THE YEAR

There is a 98.3% chance that Doug McDermott of Creighton wins this award. In fact I am probably All I am saying is that JVP should be in the discussion, and it is absolutely insane that he only made 2^nd team all Big East in the preseason coaches’ poll, especially considering they picked 4 guards.
underestimating these odds, but crazier things have happened.

So in case you haven’t realized it from the first two games, JVP is going to have a monster season. First, his season last year was really under appreciated. The two biggest reasons for this were a) he didn’t play enough minutes, so his per game numbers were pretty underwhelming and b) his ‘best’ offensive skill is also the most underrated – getting fouled. Everyone knows Villanova as a team drew fouls a lot last year – we ended with the best FTRate in the country – but less people know that JVP personally had the 8^th best rate in the country.

But JVP will get his minutes this year. He is also our undisputed best offensive player – although Hilliard is putting up an argument in the first two games – and so he will get the attention and shots to put up a good fight in this race. Throw in the fact that I believe we are likely to exceed expectations – we were picked to finish 4^th – and JVP will be in this discussion.

For my final piece of evidence, I present you with a table of the 2013 Big East teams sorted by the national rank of their effective height. Effective height is a calculation of a team’s big men based on how much taller that group is than the national average.

TEAM	Eff.Height Rank	Blk%
Pitt	27	12.1
Syracuse	30	18.5
USF	34	9.8
Notre Dame	43	8.4
Cincinnati	45	15.2
Villanova	70	9
Georgetown	73	10.4
UCONN	86	10.1
Rutgers	98	9
Louisville	111	13.2
Providence	122	7.5
Seton Hall	144	5.6
Marquette	163	10
DePaul	174	8.1
St. John's	181	15.9

Creighton	136	5.4
Butler	74	6.5
Xavier	50	10.6

Long story short, the Big East got a lot shorter and no one left is any good at blocking shots outside of St. John’s. So you think JVP had a good year last year banging bodies down low with the likes of Pitt, Syracuse, and UCONN? Wait till this year when he goes against the relatively shorter new Big East.

3. 3-POINT SHOOTING DEFENSE

While there are many facets of the game where ‘traditionalists’ and ‘stat nerds’ disagree, 3-point defense is probably the area where the disagreement is the starkest. Ken Pomeroy made it his mission last year to discuss 3-point defense, see here, here, and finally here.

The long and short of it is a team has a much stronger influence on 2-point FG% than on 3-point FG%. A couple of teams, most notably Syracuse, can generally depress 3FG% but by only 2-3%, and for everyone else there isn’t too much evidence that they can do all that much about 3FG%.

One of the more interesting little theories in Ken’s look at 3-point defense is that if an offense faces a team that is good at defending 2-point shots, then the offense lowers its threshold for what it considers a good 3-point shot and will take more of them. Taking a look at Villanova’s history of 2-point FG% and 3-point shot attempts on defense, the numbers fit with the theory. Since 2003, Villanova has ranked in the top 100 in 2FG% defense every year except for 2008. Conversely, for 3-point field goal attempts we have ranked 274 or worse (worse meaning we give up more attempts) for the last 8 years.

But over that time, opponents have never shot that well against us from 3 as they did last year. I was curious so I went back to the game logs last year to see if we there was a trend connected to the percent of 3-point shots that were assisted against us last year. If the percent of assisted shots against us was low, say 75%, that would indicate we were pretty unlucky as teams hit a decent amount of shots against us off the dribble. If it was high it means we allowed way, way too many open looks. In the end, 85.6% of the 3 made against us last year were assisted which is pretty damn normal.

What I am trying to say is that I hope we close out a little harder this year, and I hope we catch a few more breaks and the ball bounces our way. That’s about all you can do.

2. THE KEY TO VILLANOVA’S SEASON: DYLAN ENNIS

I have to admit I was pretty upset/disappointed to hear that Ennis broke his hand the day before Hoops Mania. Can you imagine sitting out an entire season, and then on the eve of the kick-off party for the next season you get injured? That has to suck. But hey, at least he got voted one of the "Hottest Guys in College Sports!"

His injury also sucks because it seemed as if finally having Ennis meant that Jay could play the style that he always prefers and that we have come to know as fans. In his lone season at Rice, Ennis was very, very good. He shot 35% from 3, had a FTRate of 50, an ARate of 30.6 (Arcidiacono the best on the team last year was 23.6), and had a DR% of 14.9 (Ochefu last year had a DR% of 15.6, so yeah that’s good for a 6’2 PG).

But more than Ennis’ ability, his simple presence in the lineup would alter the way we played on offense. Since 2003, we have had at least 2 players play over 40% of available minutes and have an ARate of 20 or greater, except for 2012 and 2013. 2012 was the third worst offense by points per possession numbers, and last season’s team was the worst points per possession offense since Jay has coached at Villanova.

The only thing that kept us afloat was the fact that we got fouled all the time. We had our worst TO% under Jay, our second worst 3-point FG%, and surprisingly our worst OR%. By simply adding another ball-handler to our lineups, we will be a much better offensive team.

So far in the early going, you can see that this is the plan. Hilliard has assumed a lot more ball-handling responsibility so far, and Arcidiacono has moved off the ball. While it’s encouraging to see Hilliard play well in this role, I already covered why it is somewhat a surprise; it’s good to remember we have only played two games against two bad teams. Adding Ennis to this mix will only help, and if he is as good as advertised then our offense should take several steps up.

1. SEASON FORECAST

Congratulations are in order for those of you who read this whole thing. I appreciate it.

If you were to look around the web for other season previews that involve Villanova, most of them have us as an above average team that will make the tournament, but not much more. I don’t blame them for underselling us because in reality our ceiling is probably a Sweet 16 with a very outside shot at an Elite 8. That only happens if the pieces come together, we have favorable match-ups, and the requisite luck bounces our way. Looking the other way, our worst case scenario is grabbing a 7-10 seed and getting bounced in the first round.

The questions for this team are really on the offensive end. Defensively we should be very good. We have above average defenders at each level (Ochefu-on the inside, Bell- on the wing, Hilliard- wing/guard), and Jay has a pretty strong track record defensively. The only issues for us on this end are foul issues with Ochefu, and in recent years we have struggled to handle quicker guards. Ennis should help with that, but we don’t really know how he is going to fit in.

Offensively, the key is having better ball handling and putting two players on the court at the same time who can create shots for themselves and for others. Here is where Ennis' presence looms large, and while Hilliard has done well in this role, his track record suggests that as the competition gets better he may not be as successful.

The Big East this season is going to better than people think, but it is not particularly loaded at the top. Creighton, Marquette, Georgetown, us and Xavier are all pretty good teams but none are great. I feel strongly that if all the pieces fit together we can win the conference this year, and I have a hard time believing we will finish worse than 3rd and at the very worst 4th. So, we will easily make the tournament.

A Sweet 16 birth gets the program back on track after missing the tournament only two years ago, and there are way more reasons to believe that this is possible than there are reasons to bet against it. So let the games begin.

Let’s Review Part II: The 2012-2013 Villanova Season In Retrospect

2013-03-13T12:58:00.000-04:00

Associated Press

In Part I, we saw our hero (the Villanova basketball program) stumble out of the gates to a relatively disappointing 9-4 start to the season. With the debacle that was the 2012 season still on everyone’s minds, the final Big East regular season was about to begin and no one really knew what was ultimately going to happen.

THE LAST HURRAH

St. John’s (W)

Just like in his first game at the Pavilion, Ryan Arcidiacono brought the noise. He finished with 32 points including a 7-13 effort from 3. While JVP dropped 26 on 9-13 from the free throw line. In case you really have missed this season, Villanova has the best FTrate in the country. This is largely because JVP gets fouled on almost every single shot attempt, and we are absolutely the best team in the nation at pump faking. The game did go to OT, but a win is a win, especially at this point.

@USF (W)

And then it happened. Freshmen big man Ochefu replaced Senior Mo Sutton in the starting lineup. Since this time, Sutton has barely seen the light of day, and he has played only 10% of the available minutes in Big East play, while Ochefu plays 46%. The swapping of Ochefu and Sutton’s minutes is probably the key to the entire season. Maybe Jay was looking ahead to next year when both Yarou and Sutton will be gone, or maybe he was simply waiting for Ochefu to understand the basic offensive and defensive principles better. Either way, since the change was made we have been a completely different team on the defensive end. Sure, everyone has improved and our rotations are much crisper but Ochefu’s presence simply makes everyone else’s job easier.

With Ochefu getting more minutes we have held opponents to 41.6% shooting from 2 during Big East play, the 2^nd best mark in the conference. But the often overlooked aspect of Ochefu’s game is his ability to get steals as well. On the season he ranks second on the team in stl% at 2.7, and his increased minutes has helped us accumulate the 3^rd best conference mark for creating turnovers on defense.

@Syracuse (L), Pitt (L), and @Providence (L)

After winning 7 games in a row and our first two big east games, it seemed as if everyone had some quiet excitement about this team. We got out to a 2 point lead at half, but Syracuse pulled away in the 2^nd and won by 11. It was a classic strong first half showing coupled with a second half meltdown, where you could tell it just hadn’t quite clicked for us.

In our next game, Pitt just beat the crap out of us. We collected only 1 offensive rebound off of 30 missed shots. That’s literally insane. I think for this reason alone, I may or may not have made a bet with someone saying that Pitt will make the Elite 8. They scare me and since it’s Pitt so does that bet.

We then traveled to Providence where it always seems like we lose. Turnovers killed us, as we coughed it up on over 30% of our possessions. But while we held them to only 40% shooting from 2 and 14% shooting from 3, we allowed them to rebound over 40% of their misses – granted they are the 29^th best team in the country at that.

THE BEST WEEK IN A LONG, LONG TIME

Louisville (W)

Before the Louisville game, we had a record of 11-7 overall with a 2-3 mark in the Big East. Our last win against a top-5 team probably happened when W was still President. But everything kind of fell into place against Louisville, and we held Russ Smith to just 8 points on 2-13 shooting. There was no stand out statistic; it was simply a well rounded, complete game where we came up with key plays when in the past we have fallen apart.

Syracuse (W)

I don’t know about you, but I just can’t stand Syracuse anymore. I used to like Boeheim, and I disliked Calhoun. Then I realized that Syracuse produces easily hated players like: Erick Devendorf, Scoop Jardine, and Rick Jackson; while UCONN produces a lot of guys who are likable: Rudy Gay, Kemba Walker, Jeremy Lamb, or my personal favorite growing up Khalid El-Amin. In any event I’m now in the Calhoun camp and in the anti-Boeheim camp, even though Calhoun is now gone. Throw in the whole realignment mess and Syracuse’s role in it, and I cant remember a regular season game I have been happier to win. It felt absolutely fantastic, and totally validated our victory against Louisville at the same time.

While Arcidiacono hit the game tying 3 to send us into overtime, I would be remiss if I didn’t take a second to acknowledge the work of someone who I have been pretty hard on. Stand up and take your bow Mr. Hilliard. He finished with a game high 25 points on 5-5 shooting from 2, 3-6 from deep, 7 rebounds, 6 assists, and 0 turnovers. (clap, clap, clap).

THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD

@ND (L), Providence (L), @DePaul (W), USF (W), @Cincinnati (L)

After two court storming worthy efforts, Villanova was staring at the meat of our schedule. A stretch of 5 games that all seemed winnable, but were stuck right in the middle of the grueling Big East regular season. It’s the time of year when Conference play is beating you up, the season could go either way, and the finish line seems an eternity away.

A loss at Notre Dame is nothing to be ashamed of, but it still would have been a good game to have. A 2^nd loss to Providence on the other hand really hurts in retrospect. We even turned the tables on them in the rebounding department as Providence only brought down 29% of their misses while we grabbed 40% of ours. However, our little 3 point defense problem reared its ugly head again, as Providence went 10-15 from deep and won by 3. Oh irony.

After taking care of business on the road against DePaul and at home against USF, it was time once again to face a top tier team in Cincinnati. And we feel flat on our face, surrendering yet another remarkable effort from 3 by the opposing team, as Cincinnati made 12 of their 25 3 pointers in a rout. Seems like a trend to me.

THE REBOUND

The loss to Cincinnati put us at 16-10 overall and 7-6 in Big East play. The idea of us making the tournament was there, but our up and down season so far left it really in doubt.

@UCONN (W), Rutgers (W)

The win at UCONN and the lack of a let down against Rutgers meant that our tournament hopes actually held water. Arcidiacono led the way with 25 points, while JVP did his usual JVP things, putting up 14 points and 7 offensive rebounds. We rebounded over 50% of our misses against UCONN, which still seems weird to write on paper. While not a great team this season, UCONN is still pretty good and a road win with one of weirdest and craziest fanbases is good enough for me.

Marquette (W)

While most people will point to the Louisville and Syracuse games as the signature victories of the season, it’s this win that really turned the season downhill in the direction we are currently in. For one, the pressure was on, as everyone knew that we pretty much needed this game if we were going to go dancing; and because of our earlier wins there was no way Marquette was taking us for granted. We executed our game plan to perfection, and played about as clean of a game as is possible for this team, turning over the ball on only 15% of our possessions.

But most of all, the characteristic that has defined this team showed through: we just flat out, outworked them. We forced turnovers on just shy of 30% of their possessions, and we lifted our season average on winning 50/50 balls to 73.2% - that’s not a real stat, but Arcidiacono leads the country in diving after loose balls and is literally on the ground for 35% of our possessions. Ok, that’s not a real stat either.

REMEMBER WE ARE A BUBBLE TEAM FOR A REASON

@Seton Hall (L), @Pitt (L), Georgetown (W)

A lot of people were upset about our loss at Seton Hall, and I think Joe Lunardi even knocked us out of the bracket for a whole 27 minutes before putting us back in – they do those stupid bracket updates too frequently. But people forget the reason we are a bubble team and not a 4 seed is because of these silly losses. They happen because we are not a finished product. Remember our little defensive problem from earlier? Yeah still there, as the Hall shot 13-21 from 3.

I’m not ready to talk about the Pitt game yet. I just can't. We had that game, and Pitt is right up there with Syracuse on my “Hate” list.

We will never know if we really had to win against Georgetown to get into the tournament. Most people will say yes, but I’m not so sure. In any event, we did beat Georgetown, holding the unanimous Big East player of the Year Otto Porter to 6 for 16 shooting. But the real story was the turnovers we caused on defense, forcing G’Town to cough it up on 35% of their possessions.

WE ARE BETTER THAN WE THOUGHT WE WERE

Anyone who tells you that they knew/thought we would make the tournament at the beginning of the season, is a person you should cut out of your life. That person cannot be trusted. So, yeah we have greatly exceeded expectations, but the best part is how we did it. We have gotten better every week, and we are one scrappy team. Jay has gone from on his way to getting run out of town, to maybe his best coaching job since he developed Foye et al.

The final ‘real’ Big East tourney awaits, and in all likelihood so does the NCAA Tournament. That just sounds good to say, doesn’t?

Let’s Review: The 2012-2013 Villanova Season in Retrospect, Part I

2013-03-12T10:46:00.001-04:00

(AP Photo/Matt Slocum)

The regular season is finally over. Now all that is left is the Big East Tourney, and then if all goes to plan the Big Dance. But first, I think we should take a look back and see how we got here. For those of you who haven’t been paying attention, this is your chance to get caught up.

THE PREAMBLE

16 October 2012

The Big East media conducts its worthless pre-season poll. Villanova is picked to finish 12^th with only Providence, Seton Hall, and DePaul picked to finish worse. Frankly, I can’t find too much fault looking back on it; well maybe a little. In any event, the message was: “Everyone was so disappointed in Wayns and Cheek that we all collectively forgot that Jay is one of only 4 coaches in this conference with a Final Four. And now we don’t think he can coach or recruit anymore, so we are going to pick you to finish behind Rutgers.”

27 October 2012

HOOPS MANIA! I only have memories of 2 Hoops Mania’s from my time at school, my sophomore (’04) and senior (’06) years. Maybe I went to the other two and don’t remember them, a strong possibility. All I do remember was that the event was largely set up to introduce the incoming big recruits to the Villanova fans. And Dylan Ennis did not disappoint. Wait, he’s not playing this year? Crap maybe we will finish 12^th.

8 November 2012

I bet most of you don’t remember this. Ty Johnson decides to transfer after only 1 season. If you are counting at home we now have lost 4 players from last year’s team. Wayns and Cheek left early, while Kennedy transferred to go play at SMU under Larry Brown, who probably won't be there next judging by his track record. Ty Johnson’s one year included 23% shooting from 3, 65 assists, and 58 turnovers. We call this addition by subtraction.

INTRODUCTIONS

Marshall (W)

In our first real game of the season, Villanova threw up an 80 spot with freshman Ryan Arcidiacono going 4-9 from deep and 9-10 from the line in route to a game high 25 points. For reference, Ochefu only played 6 minutes, and JVP had only 6 points after going 6-14 from the free throw line. What? But in retrospect this game highlighted our season long, and continuing, fight with our opponents 3 point shooting. Marshall was 12-27 from 3 on the day (44%).

Purdue (W)

Villanova traveled to the Garden to take on Purdue in the 2K Sports Classic. After being up 35-29 at half, Purdue took control mid-way through the second stanza. With under a minute to play they were up 4 (75-71) with :43 seconds left. Then this happened: Flagrant I, 2 shots and the ball. We end up tying it up and went on to score 14 points in OT to take the win. Crazy. Hilliard led all scorers with 22, and no one is sure if Yarou is even alive at this point, as he put up a measly 4 points. All in all things aren’t going too bad so far.

Alabama (L), Columbia (L), @La Salle (L)

And just like that 12^th place in Big East seems awfully generous of the media members. Our next game in the 2K Sports Classic saw Alabama just kick the shit out of us. They shot over 50% from 2 and over 60% from 3. That would have been fine, if it wasn’t for the fact that just four days later Columbia came into the Pavilion and beat us by 18. Hilliard and Arcidiacono were a combined 5-21 from the field. Columbia would go on to finish just 4-10 in the Ivy League this year. Five days later, we lost in OT to La Salle (who is a bubble team). Arcidiacono threw up only 6 points in 41 minutes, and looked like he had just run a marathon as he was playing 92% of the minutes on the season thus far. Hilliard had only 7 points in 34 minutes, but JVP put up 19 and Yarou had 20.

At this point, I’ll paraphrase an actual conversation.

Me: “So how many games do you think we are going to win in the Big East this year?”

Friend: “Go look at that schedule and tell me who we are going to beat.”

Me: “Alright, I think we can get to 5 wins.”

Friend: “Don’t do this to me. We aren’t going to win a game.”

Me: “Seriously? Do you think Jay should be fired?”

Friend: “We just lost to Columbia by 18 f*&&^^%( points at home!”

Me: “I’ll take that as a maybe.”

THE GAMES THAT QUIETLY DECIDED OUR SEASON

@Vanderbilt (W)

With a week off, Villanova then traveled to Vanderbilt. It’s not that Vandy was or is any good, but getting a true road win at this point was a huge get. Yarou and JVP led the way with 16 and 13 respectively, showing the inside game that would lead us the rest of the year. Arcidiacono was still looking tired and went only 1-5 from 3, and there were some serious questions about his ability to defend more athletic guards come Big East play.

Temple (L)

Although we ended up losing this game, there were some signs that things weren’t all bad. However, at the time it was hard to see any silver lining. Temple would go on to win by 16, but we actually had the lead at half 36-32. Bell finally had somewhat of a break out game with 15 points, and we got to see a little Chennault action as he was our 2^nd leading scorer with 10.

@Penn (W)

Villanova led wire to wire in this game. We had an 8 point lead at half, and eventually won by 13. Yacoubou finally got some extended minutes (I am an unabashed Yacoubou supporter, as he is an absolute monster on the defensive glass for a guard) and led the team with 13 points. This was a game we should have won and did. Not too much to say other than after the Columbia game anything seemed possible.

St. Joe’s (W)

At this point in the season St. Joe’s was 5-2, but one of those wins had come against Notre Dame. Bell and JVP led the way with 12 points a pop, but the key was offensive rebounding. For the second straight game we rounded more than 35% of our misses on the offensive end. Oh, and this little late game inbounds defense by Sutton didn’t hurt either (go to the 4:38 mark).

Going 3-1 during this stretch definitely gets lost in the narrative of the season. But it showed a couple of things: a) unlike last year, this team had fight and was actually interested in improving and winning and b) Jay was slowly making some adjustments (like playing a big line-up for extended minutes) that was going to lead the way for a change later in the season.

THE GAMES NO ONE WATCHED

Delaware (W), @Monmouth (W), NJ Institute of Technology (W)

There really isn’t much to report about these games, as all of the opponents were terrible, but there are a couple of things that stand out. Against Delaware we rebounded over 50% of our misses. Against Monmouth we shot 15-22 from 3, and against NJIT we played like crap but held them to just 37% shooting from 2. We still hadn’t put anything together at this point, but these 3 stats have been the key to our season. We are an above average rebounding team, we are a GREAT 2 point FG% defensive team, and our outside shooting comes and goes with the wind.

At 9-4 and with no really good wins and a terrible loss, the specter of last season loomed large. With the final Big East regular season all that was left on the schedule, a .500 overall record was about the best anyone could hope for. And even that seemed like a really big stretch.

Check back tomorrow for Part II: The Final Big East Regular Season.

The Best Game of the Year

2013-02-21T15:25:00.001-05:00

www.wallpaperweb.org

Maybe it is because I’m from the mid-west and because I applied to Marquette. Maybe it is because Marquette is both very similar to us in terms of style and also in record, year after year. Maybe it is because every game is always close. Or maybe it is because the first Villanova game I ever attended was against Marquette AT Madison Square Garden. A game in which Jason Fraser teased us with what could have been with a 13 point, 13 rebound, 2 block effort – it was also his first ever collegiate game. And a game in which Dwyane Wade glided all over the court effortlessly in route to a 17 point, 5 rebound, 4 assist, 2 steal, and 1 block game himself, which is the most Dwayne Wade stat line ever. In any event, the Marquette game is the one game I always look forward to. So much so that when I have been asked over the past two weeks who Villanova’s next opponent is, my response has been “I think it’s Marquette.” Even though I have been wrong about who we were going to play for the past 3 games.

This year the game should not only be fun to watch, but its importance is abundantly clear. As we sit just inside the bubble for now – Lunardi has us as one of the last four teams IN the tourney at the moment - a winnable game at home against a very good opponent is about as loaded with significance and meaning as a game can have.

Taking a step back however, this game provides us with an opportunity to analyze an interesting philosophical basketball question. What happens and who wins when one team is really great at stopping what the other team is outstanding at executing? Basically it’s a situation where an unstoppable force meets an immovable object.

While our offense continues to show signs of improvement, it should be no secret that our defense has carried us to our 8-6 record in Big East play, where we are tied for 7^th with Pitt and St. John’s. Overall we have the 3^rd best defensive efficiency in the conference, and the key to our defensive improvement has been our 2 point FG% defense & our defensive rebounding. In those categories we rank 1^st and 2^nd respectively in the Big East. Hello unmovable object.

On the flip side, Marquette comes in with a 10-3 record in the Big East, tied for 1^st in the conference alongside G’Town and Syracuse. They have gotten to this point by having the 14^th best offense in the country and the 2^nd best offense in Big East play. And wouldn’t you know it, but the reason for Marquette’s success on offense has been due to their Big East BEST 2 point FG% shooting and the 3^rd best Big East offensive rebounding. Good afternoon, unstoppable force.

Adding to the intrigue is that in other important categories neither team seems capable of exploiting the other’s weaknesses. Take turnovers for example. Villanova ranks 14^th offensively – meaning we cough the ball up a lot – but Marquette only ranks 10^th defensively at forcing turnovers. Both teams also excel at getting to the line on offense as Villanova ranks 1^st in the Big East and Marquette ranks 2^nd. Marquette does have a slight advantage here as Villanova ranks 11^th in terms of fouling defensively - so as with many Villanova games this year expect to hear the whistle a lot.

The final piece of this matchup puzzle left to explore is 3 point shooting. For all of Marquette’s offensive ability, the suck from 3, but they also don’t take a lot of 3 point shots. They rank 13^th in terms of 3 point FG% at 28.7%, but as I mentioned they rank only 10^th in terms of attempts – taking only 29% of their shots from deep. But for Villanova, WE suck at 3 point defense. Opponents shoot 35.7% against us from 3 during conference play, and we are middle of the road in terms of the number of attempts we surrender, ranking 13^th in % and 7^th in yielding attempts. However, we do have an advantage on offense where we rank 5^th and 4^th in terms of 3 point FG% and % of 3 point shots taken. While Marquette is equally sucky as we are at 3 point defense. They allow 33% shooting from deep, 12^th in the conference, and allow opponents to take over 37% of their shots from 3, 14^th in the conference. I am not sure how the slight advantages will play our, nor am I sure whose best attribute – defense for us and offense for Marquette – will prevail. But seeing how it all shakes out will be entertaining and interesting.

In the end, I am all parts excited and nervous for this game. With a win our path to the tourney is fairly straightforward – beat Seton Hall and 1 Big East tournament win gets us 20 wins, a 10-8 Big East regular season record, and 3 wins against top 25 teams. A loss and the road becomes very dark with pouring rain. But so far this season the ride has been fun, and with an intriguing matchup ahead against my favorite Big East opponent; I’m going to enjoy Saturday.

How Does Your Back Feel Defense?

2013-02-12T10:44:00.002-05:00

http://autoaccidentlasvegas.com

What if I asked you the question, “Is Jay an offensive coach or a defensive coach?” What would you say? How would you respond? Frankly, I can’t say I have even thought about this before. I think most people would say however, that Jay is an offensive coach who prefers a guard dominant offense paired with athletic (by this I really mean undersized, but athletic is a nicer way to put it) bigs who develop effective 15 foot jump shots. Note: no one ever says, “Nova usually has a pretty damn good defense.” In reality though, our defense has usually been equal to our offense. Since 2003 (10 seasons) we have had exactly 5 years when our offense had a better ranking than our defense, and exactly 5 years when we have had our defense better ranked than our offense. (Per kenpom’s adjusted points per possession)

In 2013, the answer is clear. We have a borderline, almost there, but not quite, elite defense. And we are getting better, which is the crazy part. Here is a breakdown of our defensive 4 factors for the season and for the 11 Big East games so far.

	Season	BE
eFG%	46.0%	43.6%
TO%	20.5%	18.8%
OR%	28.8%	28.6%
FTA/FGA	43.3	43.3

With the exception of forcing turnovers (TO%) our numbers have either stayed exactly the same or have improved, despite the fact that it has been against a drastically superior competition. Not included in this little breakdown is the fact that we are holding our opponents to only 40.0% shooting from 2 during BE play. If that was our number for the entire season we would rank 5^th in the country in 2pt. FG% defense. Awesome. And our current national rank for OR% is 59^th. Not too shabby and overall we have the 35^th best defense in the country.

The reason I considered us only borderline elite, is that our TO% and our FTrate’s are pretty bad as we rank 12^th and 13^th out of 15 conference teams respectively. While these numbers definitely have room for improvement, (and hopefully they will as we gain more experience) the core defensive basics of rebounding and contesting shots are excellent.

While we have improved on both sides of the ball during Big East play, our offense is not nearly as consistent as our defense has been. And in looking ahead and thinking about the likelihood that we make the tournament or not, our offense needs to pick up the slack. Here is how both our offense and defense has fared, broken down in wins and losses during Big East play.

	OFF		DEF
	Win	Loss	Win	Loss
eFG%	54.5%	38.9%	43.5%	42.7%
TO%	21.0%	27.0%	18.1%	21.1%
OR%	33.0%	30.5%	25.2%	33.3%
FTA/FGA	53.1	46.6	38.7	51.7

3FGA%

37.0%

33.9%

32.0%

29.9%

As you can see, our defense is almost the same during wins as it is during losses, while our offense is simply awful in our losses. The turnover issue has been a problem for us all season and again it stands out in this breakdown. 2 things. First, the problem is not going to go away. We have really only 2 point guards, and one plays rather sparingly while the other is only a Freshmen. But more importantly, I don’t think they are the reason why our offense struggles. I believe they are a result of guys not playing within themselves and trying to make a play when the ball is bouncing the other way.

We are not the strongest shooting team. We have only 1 player who hits better than 40% from 3 (Yacoubou) and both of our 2 big men shoot less than 50% (Yarou & Ochefu). As a result, when games start to get away from us and when our shots are not falling our guards try to force the issue. Look at the decline in 3 point attempts between wins and losses. I think the fact that we take less 3’s when we are losing is a result of us ‘putting our heads down’ and forcing drives into the paint.

In fact both Hilliard and Arcidiacono are guilty of this, as they attempt 7.2% and 9.3% less 3 point attempts in losses while both players also take more % of the team’s shots during losses than they do during wins – Hilliard in particular goes from taking 22% of shots during wins to 28% of shots during losses.

I do not believe that either of these players are the reason why we have lost the games we have. It is absolutely a team effort, as we only have one player playing significant minutes who actually shoots better during losses than during wins, JVP.

Looking ahead to tonight and to our remaining games, its pretty clear that our defense is going to be there. It will keep us in games, and it may even straight up win some games for us. With 7 games left – 4 of which are away – and needing 4 wins to be better than .500 in conference play (which I believe we need in order to make the tourney), our offense needs to be more consistent. As a young team, and a team that has so far shown great grit and exceeded expectations, the want to is there. Now we just have to put it all together.

Going Small For the Big Win

2013-01-23T11:08:00.002-05:00

collegebasketballtalk.nbcsports.com

We put together 40 minutes of very good basketball against a really good team; and it felt GREAT. In the biggest win of the season, and probably the biggest win since the 2009 Elite 8 game, Jay made two critical lineup adjustments, which was the key to our success. For almost the entire season, we have been playing with only 1 real point guard on the court. In the other guard slot, Hilliard has been asked to guard quicker players, create shots for others on offense, and take and make a good amount of shots for our team. I have been hard on Hilliard in this space, and that is primarily because he has been asked to do things that are above his abilities. So maybe I should have been harder on Jay. But the real problem had been Chennault. He hasn’t shot well at all – shooting 32% from 2 and 33% from 3 – and he has turned over the ball a lot for a ball handler – 28% of his possessions end in a TO which is the worst mark on the team. Because of this, Jay has been reluctant to increase his minutes and instead he has generally used Chennault to give Arcidiacono a breather.

That changed in a big way last night. Below is a table showing the %minutes played for both Arcidiacono and Chennault for the season, in Big East games NOT including L’ville, and then the game last night.

%Min	Season	BE	L'Ville
Arcidiacono	80.9%	82.5%	90.0%
Chennault	44.0%	36.6%	57.5%
Total	124.9%	119.1%	147.5%

So in last night’s game, Arcidiacono and Chennault played almost 50% of the game on the floor at the same time, which is very different from the 25% that they average on the season. But as you might guess, the fact that Chennault got more minutes means that those minutes must be subtracted somewhere else, and that somewhere else was from our big men. Hilliard, Bell, Yacoubou & JVP all played MORE minutes last night than they average on the season. And for as well as Yarou and Ochefu played it was them – and Sutton who was a healthy? scratch – who saw their minutes reduced. Yarou and Ochefu accounted for only 37 minutes combined between them, so the result was that the 4 position on the floor was exclusively played by JVP, Bell, and maybe Yacoubou. Much different from our lineups during Big East play thus far.

Jay went all in last night for the small ball approach. He could have easily hedged his bet by playing Chennault more with Arcidiacono and then playing Yarou, Ochefu and Sutton more minutes. But if you are going to win a game as the underdog, you need to take some risks. Playing small up front and with two real point guards allowed us to do the following: better able to handle Siva and Smith defensively, a much more dynamic offense from our front court, and relieved play making duties from our wing players who were being asked to do too much.

The key numbers that stick out to me are our rebounding numbers and turnovers. While we did turn the ball over on 25% of our possessions – on the season we average 23.4% - L’ville is second in the country at creating turnovers, doing so on over 28% of their opponents’ possessions. We did just fine on the turnover side of things because we did a great job of balancing the whole reckless vs aggressive line. But more importantly was how we did on the glass since we went small up front. We held L’ville to rebounding only 28% of their misses, when on the season they corral 37.9% of their offensive rebounding opportunities.

It was a hug win last night for everyone from Jay, the players, and for the fans. Seeing how happy everyone was during that last minute of the game when we knew we were going to win, was pretty damn cool. For today, I’m not worried about how we will play moving forward. Whether or not Jay stays small up front or if he plays Chennault more with Arcidiacono, I don’t care. All I wanted was for us to beat 1 team that was significantly better than us, and we did it.

Is it Time to Recalculate Our Expectations?

2013-01-16T14:21:00.000-05:00

After winning 7 games in a row, including against St. Joe’s and our first two Big East games, Nova finally lost against highly ranked/yet still equally unlikable Syracuse. After leading at halftime, Syracuse found its legs and pulled away. Going into the game, it seems as if Nova fans were, for the first time in about two years, actually getting excited about this team. Believing we might make the tournament wouldn’t land you on a no fly list. Our strong first half showing probably increased our expectations, and even with the end result of a 12 point loss, emotions are still riding high. So is it finally time to officially get excited and recalibrate our expectations?

I think the answer is yes….but maybe not for this year. I am not saying that we can’t or won’t make the tourney this year, but if we don’t make it, this year will still be a success. The improvement this team has made so far shows that this group should come closer to reaching its potential when the teams our past seasons haven’t come close.

THE TEAM

Instead of looking at all the games in our little 8-1 run, I think its best to focus on our 3 Big East games only, as the teams we played were really, really bad outside of St. Joe’s. Another reason why I don’t want to include those games in this analysis is that I believe Jay coaches very differently in Big East play. So, the minutes and lineups in our last 3 games are going to be much closer to reality moving forward than what was done in the prior games, at least in theory anyway.

Here is a look at the 4 factors for both the season and for our first 3 Big East games and our Assist and 3 point field goal attempt percentages. Light green to dark green indicates areas of improvement, where as light red to bright red indicate factors where we haven’t done as well.

Season	OFF	DEF	BE	OFF	DEF
eFG%	46.8	48	eFG%	44.5	47.4%
TO%	22.4	21.2	TO%	21.9	17.6%
OR%	35.4	28.9	OR%	42.0	28.2%
FTA/FGA	52.6	42.1	FTA/FGA	52.3	37.6
%Ast	56.3%	64.5%	%Ast	56.7%	52.8%
3FGA%	37.8%	39.9%	3FGA%	40.1%	31.2%

Its pretty obvious from this perspective that our defense has improved drastically. I believe a lot of this has to do with simply our young players getting better at understanding their defensive responsibilities – like how to play the pick & roll, when to help, and overall better defensive rotations. While we are giving up less 3 point attempts – a huge issue for us early on – I need to see that number continue to improve since St. John’s (ranks 340^thin terms of 3 points attempts), USF (ranks 120^th), and Syracuse (ranks 242^nd) are not teams that take a bunch of 3’s anyways. The one negative stat to point out is how low our defensive turnovers have been. But like the 3 point attempt number, we have played 3 teams who protect the basketball well – St. John’s (ranks 13^th), USF (ranks 41^st), and Syracuse (ranks 96^th).

If you haven’t noticed it yet, check out our OR% improvement. At 42% we would rank, gulp, 5^th nationally. This did come against sub-par defensive rebounding teams, but the significant improvement coupled with our improved DR% makes me believe that although the 42% will come down, we are rebounding better.

THE PLAYERS

During our little 8 game run, and in Big East play especially, there have been 3 players who have been the most discussed. The players and their story lines are as follows: Yarou is actually alive and playing markedly better than he did at the start of the season; Ochefu is a physically athletic big man who everyone is getting their panties in a bunch over (For the record I LIKE Ochefu, I’m just not going to get too excited over a young Villanova big man yet- see Fraser, Drummond, Kennedy); and JVP is our best offensive player, yet why is he playing so few minutes?

If we were to create storylines for all the remaining players, here is what I believe they would be: Arcidiacono is playing more controlled and is a pretty good PG already despite his lack of athleticism; Yacoubou is a solid role player off the bench who everyone seems NOT to dislike, but he has yet to become the fan favorite I believe he should be; Bell is playing OK yet finds a way to be forgotten or non-existent for long stretches; Sutton is getting pretty much benched in favor of Ochefu; Chennault still isn’t very good; and no one is talking about Hilliard, but we should be because he is shooting UNDER 70% from the line, UNDER 40% from 2, and UNDER 27% from 3 while playing almost 70% of possible minutes and attempting the 2^nd MOST shots while he is on the court for the entire season. Did I make myself clear on where I stand with Hilliard? Ok, moving on.

But let’s go back to the first 3 players and storylines. The big change that has been made by Jay has been increasing Yarou and Ochefu’s minutes while he has reduced Sutton’s and JVP’s.

	Season	Big East
Yarou	58.8%	78.3%
Ochefu	42.6%	52.5%
JVP	58.9%	52.5%
Sutton	37.1%	22.5%

Combined	197.4%	205.8%

And in case you do not believe for some reason that JVP is playing the 4/power forward instead of playing the 3/small forward then take a look at those combined percentages. Yarou’s minutes + Sutton’s = 100.8% & JVP’s + Ochefu’s = 105%. (500% of minutes accounts for all 5 positions so 200% of minutes equals 2 positions, in this case the 4 & 5) I think it’s safe to say JVP is being grouped together with the ‘bigs’, and that is the biggest question mark we face in the forthcoming games. Here is the issue, along with each respective players eFG%, OR% & DR% over our first 3 Big East Games/then over the season.

1. Yarou (50/44 eFG%; 15/11 OR%; 24/19 DR%) is our “best” big man, who can score, rebound, and defend & he is our most experienced player = big minutes

2. Ochefu (47/47 eFG%; 18/14 OR%; 12/17 DR%) is the future, and with Sutton and Yarou leaving next year he will be the only true big man returning = needs increased/big minutes to develop

3. Sutton (29/53 eFG%; 11/10 OR%; 16/22 DR%) is a senior who is a quality defender and rebounder who has improved his offensive game this year = has to play some minutes; whatever that is, is anyone’s guess

4. JVP (55/50 eFG%; 8/9 OR%; 4/11 DR%)is our best offensive player who operates much better in the paint/post area. We need his scoring, but we give up defense and rebounding from a big man when he is on the court as a 4 (take the Syracuse game as example, even though he scored 12 points in 18 minutes, he had a plus/minus of -9 for the game) = ???????

So Jay is left with 3 choices really.

1. He can opt to continue the recent trend and hope that while the defense and rebounding will be strong, he gets enough scoring from JVP while he is in and enough from everyone else when he sits.

2. He can elect to go big for some chunk of time every game, where he has JVP paired with 2 of the other 3 guys on the court. The problem here is spacing, where we would have 3 guys who all operate in the low post area at the same time. However, maybe JVP proves more capable on the perimeter than he has in the past, where he ends up turning over the ball like crazy (25.8% of his possessions last year were TO’s when he definitely had the ball on the perimeter more)

3. Play JVP at the 4, sacrifice some minutes from Yarou in order to keep Ochefu’s minutes high enough to be meaningful, and basically tell Sutton to go pound salt. Hopefully, JVP’s defense and rebounding improve while his scoring stays the same.

THE SCHEDULE

A couple of weeks ago I took a look at our remaining schedule, and I broke it down into games I felt we should win, could win, maybe win, and only if you are crazy do you think we are going to win. Here is the breakdown. Home games are in bold, green highlight indicates games we already won, and red indicates the game we just lost.

Should	Could	Maybe	Just if you are crazy
St. John's	USF	Marquette	Syracuse
Providence	Providence		Syracuse
USF	DePaul		Pitt
Rutgers	Seton Hall		Louisville
			Notre Dame
			Cincinnati
			UCONN
			Pitt
			G'Town

I definitely feel like we can rename column 4 from ‘Just if you are crazy’ to ‘Optimistic,’ right? Otherwise here is how I would categorize the schedule now after our first 3 Big East games.

Should	Could	Maybe	Optimistic
St. John's	USF	G'Town	Syracuse
Providence	Providence	Cincinnati	Syracuse
USF			Pitt
Rutgers			Louisville
DePaul			Notre Dame
Seton Hall			Marquette
			UCONN
			Pitt

I know we are playing Pitt tonight, and I also know that I would love to see us kick the shit out of one of the schools that had the most to do with the whole re-alignment mess…but I can’t quite do it. Maybe I just don’t want to jinx us.

In any event, this new chart now gets us to 8 ‘pretty damn winnable games’ 2 ‘winnable games’ and 8 ‘upset specials.’ I moved Cinci & G’Town over to ‘Maybe’ because a) I just hate Georgetown and b) count me as one of the non-Cinci believers even though the numbers suggest they have an elite defense. Marquette could have stayed in the ‘Maybe’ category, but they are playing well at the moment and we don’t play them till the end of February, which is 11 games away from now.

Here is the rub. So if we are going to make the tournament, which I think is possible but not likely, can winning just the ‘pretty damn winnable games’ and 1 of the ‘winnable’ games get us there? That would get us to a 9-9 Big East record with a mark of 20-14, not including anything that could happen in the Big East tourney.

My final conclusion is that we are going to have to knock off at least 1 team from the ‘optimistic’ group, if we are going to have a shot at the tourney. Even if that means we lose 1 more game from the other easier categories. And frankly, that is all I want to happen this year. I want us to step up against a very good opponent, play above our heads for 40 minutes (or 45 I guess), and show that we as a team can actually realize our potential. We almost did it against Syracuse, but almost isn’t enough. Tourney or not, a win against even 1 of the optimistic group – outside of Marquette would be best - will mean that we will have had a successful year in my opinion.

Mid-Season Player Rankings

2012-12-31T16:15:00.001-05:00

Photo: Mark Jones

It’s been a pretty damn exciting season so far, has it not? We have had the Big East fold, we suffered our worst lost in the history of the Jay Wright era, and we are no long guard u (although next year when we have Ennis join us we will again have 3 capable point guards). Yet it seems that most people I talk to are semi-optimistic about this year’s team. Either there really is something to look forward to, or we really did hate last year’s team way more than I thought was even possible. Even though it’s a little of column A and a little of column B, let’s stick to the former and keep this positive.

A review of the team stats so far leads me to the following conclusion: our optimism lies in the improvement we have seen in individual players because at the team level we still have a lot of work to do (I’ll tackle the team mid-season review later this week). In honor of the countdown that will happen tonight for New Years, I am going to rank and countdown the best Nova players so far this season. My parameters for the rankings are based on a combination performance to date, pre-season expectations, and my personal preference. If I were to rank, oh let’s say, Yacoubou above Arcidiacono it does not mean I think Yacoubou is an overall better player, nor do I want them to swap minutes. I just think Yacoubou has had a more impressive season so far. I’m also throwing in Jay into the mix since that will get us to 10 spots. Here it goes.

10. Mouphtaou Yarou – You know I think that is the first time I have ever written his first name all the way through. Anyways, to say that Yarou’s season has been disappointing is probably the understatement of the season so far. It’s not as if we/I had huge hopes for him, it’s just that I didn’t think he would be THIS bad. Here is all you need to know about Villanova big men and about Yarou in one nice simple graph.

Free throw percentage rises while FG percentage drops as he turns into a jump shooter instead of staying down low. This would be somewhat tolerable if it wasn’t for the fact that his TO% and rebounding numbers all are pointing in the wrong direction, and to clarify the graph Yarou is shooting 42.5% from 2 this year.

9. Tony Chennault – The hope was for Chennault to come in and be able to help out with the point guard duties. While he has shown that he is a somewhat able passer, posting the 2^nd best Assist rate on the team of 19.9, he has been a miserable shooter. Although he is shooting a respectable 78% from the stripe and 42% from 3 (on only 14 attempts), he is shooting 33.3% from 2, yuck. He is also leading the team in TO% at 26.1, which is not what you want from a distributor/creator. On the bright side he is one of our most athletic players, and if he can shoot a less pathetic percent from 2, say 40-43% then this story is different.

8. Darrun Hilliard – I’m just going to put it out there. I don’t really like Hilliard’s game. I mean, what is his game? He seems incapable of making a decent pass and is currently posting an Assist rate of only 9 – that puts him behind Arcidiacono, Chennault, JVP, Bell, & Sutton. In other words not very good considering he is usually the second ball handler on the floor. He is shooting a terrible 39% from 2 and only 66% from the line. Sure his TO% is the best on the team, but when you aren’t looking to create, having a low TO% amounts to simply not doing a whole lot. With all that being said, we need Hilliard to score and help us on offense, I just wish he was a little better at doing it.

7. Daniel Ochefu – I’m not sure what we should have expected from Ochefu. I don’t think he has really underperformed; so much as he hasn’t really stood out, to me at least. He currently leads the team in OR% and has a respectable DR%. Defensively, his Blk% should be higher than 5.7% but it’s not too bad either and he ends up getting a lot of steals for a big guy. He is besting Kennedy’s all-time awful free throw shooting by freshman bigs last year by shooting 43% from the stripe, but then again almost anyone can do better than Kennedy’s 1-16 – that is NOT a typo. I’m just not sure at this point why he is getting more minutes than Sutton, except for the fact that Sutton will be gone next year and he is only a freshman.

6. Jay Wright – Two weeks ago, I probably would have ranked Jay 25^th on this list. I had a long back and forth with a couple of friends and most of us agreed: it was probably time for Jay to leave, maybe. I know the thought is crazy, but with the underperforming and the terrible loss to Columbia I was actually agreeing with them. Two weeks later and Jay is showing his coaching chops. He has tinkered with the lineups and rotations, and it seems as if most players are showing signs of improvement. However, I feel as if time is slowly running out for Jay, and if we fade miserably in the second half this season and produce a mere 500 level campaign next year, he has to be out right? Luckily, he has done enough recently to quell the uprising for now.

5. Ryan Arcidiacono – Arcidiacono is hard to rank for the following reasons: a) he is a freshmen b) can you imagine where we would be without him? c) he really hasn’t played THAT well d) I have some pretty serious doubts about his ceiling. The good: he is our best ball handler and has the best Assist rate on the team at 24.3. He is making 31.8% of his 3’s (a number that should improve this year and the following) and he knows how to get to the line where he is shooting 81% - best on the team. Crazy stat: he has almost double the number of free throw attempts as he has 2 point attempts: 58 FTA – 30 2FGA. The bad: he might be the most unathletic player we have ever had. His lack of athleticism not only hurts us defensively – as he can’t stay in front of his man – but it also hurts us offensively as he can’t beat his guy off the dribble to create his own shot. Hopefully, he gets quicker as he works on his legs in the off season, and maybe with the addition of another point guard he can move over to the 2, where he would be more effective.

4. Achraf Yacoubou – You know how I said I don’t like Hilliard? Well, Yacoubou is the exact opposite of that. I love him. Every time he enters, the game gets more exciting and when he leaves we look slower and less athletic. He has the second best steal% on our team, but at 6-4 he is our second best defensive rebounder grabbing a whopping 18.6% of defensive rebounds while he is on the court, Sutton at 24.2% is the only player who is doing that better. Throw in the fact that he is shooting better than 36% from 3, and it’s easy to see that he has been a tremendous impact player off the bench. We need more Yacoubou. Say it with me Yahh-cooo-booo.

3. James Bell – Bell was a hard guy for me to place on this list. He is not a very good offensive rebounder at all and is an average defensive rebounder for a player of his size. His Assist rate is decent, but I can’t get the pictures out of my head where he puts his head and down, tries to beat his guy off the dribble, only to put up a ridiculously contested shot after working way too hard to get there. That being said the guy is clearly our best one on one defender and does a little bit of everything for us on offense. He is posting the 2^nd best eFG% at 54.1 – just slightly behind Sutton, and he is our best 3 point shooter. Was anyone surprised when he hit that shot at the end of the St. Joe’s game? No.

2. Mo Sutton – We also need more Mo. I just don’t understand why Sutton has never gotten more playing time. I mean, what else does the guy have to do? He has the best 2 point FG% on the team, the best defensive rebounding percentage, the 2^nd best offensive rebounding percentage, and he has an assist rate that is BETTER than Hilliard’s. Here is my favorite stat though, if Sutton gets more playing time he would be eligible for kenpom’s Blk% ratings. He would rank 10^th in the ENTIRE country at 14.8%! Next on our team is Ochefu at 5.7%.

1. JVP - If you want to point to one single player that has not only improved drastically but who is also the reason we are a) playing well at the moment and b) gives us great reason to be optimistic, I give you JVP. He has improved his offensive rebounding, his steal%, his free throw shooting and attempts, & he has raised his 2 pt. shooting% by over 7 percentage points. But the biggest improvement is in his assist numbers and in his turnovers. Last season he assisted on only 8.8% of his teammates baskets when he was on the floor, while he turned it over on 25.2% of the possessions he used. This season he is assisting on 18.7% (3^rd on the team and only a hair behind Chennault) of his teammates baskets while only turning it over on 19% of the possessions he is using. Both of those numbers are remarkable for a 6-6 guy playing power forward, who takes the MOST shots on our team!

The Plus & The Minus

2012-12-14T16:22:00.005-05:00

(My quick thoughts on re-alignment the blatant selfish money grab and the 7 basketball schools breaking away from the Big East, in this order:

1)      Enough already. Whatever happens just needs to happen. I want my life back.
2)      From a basketball fans perspective – if we pick up some A-10 teams (Xavier, VCU, Butler?) & coax Gonzaga and St. Mary’s into our little conference of irrelevance, then we would have a fun league to watch.
3)      Our presence on the national scene is going to fade, finding our games on TV will be a pain in the ass, and the school’s reputation will suffer.
4)      Father Peter needs to go to confession, immediately
5)      Jay just got some crazy job security out of this whole mess. If I was him, I would take us to the cleaners because if we lose him now (or fire him) who the hell are we going to get? First, we would have to actually give a shit about athletics so scratch that last one.)

Tuesday marked the first time this season where I actually found myself enjoying watching Chennault play. I was initially down on Chennault because even though he is new to our program, he already has two years of college ball under his belt; only up till recently he has played like a senior in high school. Conversely, I am starting to worry a little about Arcidiacono. It was easy to give him a pass to begin with as he was a pretty accomplished youth player and he was only a freshman, however, his lack of athleticism is frankly shocking. It is apparent on so many offensive possessions where he is unable to utilize the high screen to get into the paint, and I don’t even want to talk about his defensive shortcomings. In short, I’m higher on Chennault than I was, and I’m cooling on Arcidiacono.

What’s interesting is that the strengths of each player are the weakness of the other. Chennault is quick, athletic and likes to attack the rim. Arcidiacono shows signs of being an above average outside shooter, is tough, and has good court vision. The question though is whether they can play with each other and compliment each other’s game. More importantly even, does Jay think they can compliment each other?

Plus/Minus ratings should almost never be taken at 100% face value. They are noisy and often struggle with sample size issues. However, numbers are always fun to look at and talk about, so below is a table of plus/minus ratings from the last 4 games (St. Joe’s, UPenn, Temple, & Vandy).

	+/-	Min	%Min
Yacoubou	16	65	40.6%
Bell	15	121	75.6%
JvP	13	94	58.8%
Hilliard	8	113	70.6%
Sutton	6	65	40.6%
Ochefu	6	59	36.9%
Yarou	5	100	62.5%
Arcidiacono	3	125	78.1%
Chennault	-8	58	36.3%

I’ve been slowly turning into a huge Yacoubou fan over the course of the past couple of games, and this now solidifies my affection. The guy has great energy and has shown he can be a competent offensive player – he is quietly hitting 40% from 3 & 50% from 2!

But look at the bottom of this list, and you will find our two aforementioned ball handlers. As a point of reference we are +12 as a team over this time frame. That is not good, but it is good to see that we have two main playmakers, Bell & JvP, at the top as well as at least one role player, Yacoubou.

Digging a tiny bit deeper into the play by play data, we can answer the original question that was posed: does Jay feel as if Chennault and Arcidiacono compliment each other? The answer seems to be no he doesn’t and no they do not necessarily compliment each other.

Chennault and Arcidiacono have shared the floor for only 28 minutes over the last 4 games, which is only 17.5% of the total minutes. The 28 minutes accounts for almost half of Chennault’s minutes but only 22.4% of Arcidiacono’s minutes (as he plays way more minutes obviously). The result of these two being on the court together is a -12. Again, NOT GOOD. I do not unfortunately have +/- numbers for other pairings, but maybe in the future that is something I can look into.

For now, we have 3 out 4, and although Chennault’s +/- rating stinks I believe he has started to play better. JvP and Bell are playing well enough and Yacoubou is providing some quality minutes and may even start taking away some time from Hilliard. As for the minus, we need better play from out point guards and somewhere along the line I believe that will be the case. Until then, we have to hope that our other players are doing enough to compensate for our weakness, and over the last 4 game stretch that worked 75% of the time. With all the craziness going on with re-alignment, beating the Hawk will keep the frustration in check for the time being.

Death By 3's

2012-12-03T16:19:00.003-05:00

Fact: We are not a good defensive team.

Fact: We are ranked 343 our of 343 teams in giving up 3FGA

Fact: We have 0 good, let alone elite defenders

Fact: Our defense, more than our struggling offense, is our biggest problem so far this year

Watching the games, the thing that jumps out the most is that we cannot stay in front of anyone defensively. It is astonishing. The result is that we are allowing our opponents to take over 44.3% of their shots from 3. And in EVERY SINGLE GAME this season our opponents have attempted more 3’s, as a percentage of their shots, than they average for the season.

Ahem, Columbia, jesus. The problem I believe is largely rooted in personal. Arcidiacono is playing 84.8% of possible minutes so far this season, and he is our worst on ball defender. His minutes may dip some, but he is our only real ball handler, so he has to be on the court. Looking around at our other players, does anyone really stand out as an above average defender? Sure, Sutton does, but Jay still keeps him on the bench for most of the game. Bell seems like he is an above average defender, but not when he is playing down low, which he has to do from time to time.

The only option really left is to change up our defensive methodology, something that Jay has rarely done over the years. However, considering how awful we have been at giving up 3 pt. attempts it might behoove him to make some adjustments. Generally the 2-3 zone results in opponents shooting outside shots more frequently than against man to man schemes, but at least they generally get a hand in the guy’s face. For now we are left with watching Arcidiacono/Hilliard/Chennault get blown by, and as the help defense arrives the ball is getting kicked out and passed around till someone has a wide open look. Get used to it, because its going to be there all season long unless we make some changes.

We Are No Longer Guard U

2012-11-21T11:28:00.000-05:00

Last night’s loss, which IS the worst loss in the history of the Jay Wright era, illustrated the biggest problem we currently face as a program. We are no longer guard u. This does not have to be a problem, as programs tend to ebb and shift over time, but it is a problem because we, ahem Jay, refuses to adjust our offensive game plan. What you saw last night was a combination of untimely poor shooting, inexperience, awful defending but more glaringly a lack of creative penetrating guard play. The one required component needed in our offense.

Since 2005, every single year without fail, we have had exactly 2 players who have played more than 40% of available minutes while also assisting (ARate) on at least 20% of their teammates baskets.

Name	Year	%Min	Arate	Torate
Foye	2005	79.9	21.5	15.9
Nardi	2005	77.4	20.0	22.5
Foye	2006	86.1	21.3	12.6
Lowry	2006	72.7	25.9	19.6
Scottie	2007	74.1	30.6	22.3
Nardi	2007	74.3	27.5	18.5
Scottie	2008	81.4	20.8	21.5
Fisher	2008	53.1	25.8	20.5
Scottie	2009	80.2	20.4	19.3
Fisher	2009	60.7	22.6	19.7
Scottie	2010	75.2	21.8	18.0
Fisher	2010	67.1	27.5	17.3
Fisher	2011	83.1	32.0	15.8
Wayns	2011	75.0	32.4	19.8
Wayns	2012	75.0	32.5	18.9
Johnson	2012	43.6	21.7	35.8
Arcidiacono	2013	81.8	31.1	23.4
Chennault	2013	43.0	18.6	10.7

Let’s take this one step further. If we assume that 1 of these 2 players MUST be on the court at all times, we can then figure out the maximum % of minutes possible for these players to be on the court together. The point is to illustrate that we need to creators on the court together a good chunk of the time for our offense to run efficiently. Below is the graph which shows the possible % of minutes our 2 playmakers could have been on the floor together each year since ’05.

Look at 2012. We could have played a total of ONLY 18.6% of minutes with two ball handlers on the floor. Let me also take a moment to point out just how awful Johnson was last year; did you see that TORate from the earlier list? It is a whole 12% points WORSE than the next guy, who unfortunately happens to be Arcidiacono. Translation: Wayns was forced to create way too many shots and opportunities for his teammates while at the same time trying to create for himself because Johnson should be playing DIII.

Over the years, the beauty of our offense HAS been that we have had multiple ball handlers and creators on the court at the same time. It is what has allowed to us play a rather loose and seemingly unorganized offensive game that at the same time has performed at an above average rate. As this graph adequately illustrates, that is not the case anymore. Currently, we have only ONE guy who can be labeled a creator and he is a true Freshmen. I don’t think you need me to explain anything more.

Wait, what’s that you say? What about Hilliard, he can play the point can’t he? NO HE CAN’T, well at least he’s shown he doesn’t want to. Last year Hilliard was third in ARate with 10.8. This year, when we could use another creator, Hilliard currently ranks 6^th on the team. Yeah that’s right, 6^th as he is only ahead of Ochefu, Yarou and Sutton and his ARate is down at 8.2. It’s so low it’s insulting. And I’m not even mentally prepared to talk about how bad Chennault is. He stinks, end of story. The guy played 75% of his teams minutes last year, took over 20% of the shots while he was on the floor, and shot 43% from 2 and 25% from 3. Even Cheek was better than that.

I’m at a loss for any positive takeaways from this post or from the game last night. However, I do believe Hilliard CAN be an OK creative ball handler, but either Jay doesn’t want him to or he doesn’t want to. At the end of the day, we have to do something different if we are going to have only one creator, and so far Jay has not been able to answer that question. Let’s hope he can because frankly, I can’t keep caring this much when we suck so badly.

Season Preview Part I: State of the Program

2012-11-13T13:34:00.003-05:00

Before we get into talking about our actual team, players and schedule, I want to try and figure out what the current state of the program is. Now entering his 12^th season, we have a pretty good picture about what it means to have Jay Wright as the head of your program. First, I want to be clear. I am a Jay supporter and defender, and I do NOT believe he should even be on the hot seat this season. Now if we fail to show promise and this year ends up as bad if not worse than last year, well then obviously I think he should start getting nervous. But for now, Jay is our coach and he should be. But, what does it mean to have Jay as your coach?

It means the following:

11 season: 231-115 .667%

9 winning seasons

99 – 69 record in Big East play; including 8 seasons at .500 or better

1 Conference Regular Season Championship (’06)

7 seasons posting 20+ wins

7 NCAA Tourneys

4 Sweet 16’s

2 Elite 8’s

1 Final Four

Ah, the Final four. Would Jay still have a job if he didn’t have that on his resume? I for one am glad we don’t have to answer that question, as Final Four coaches do not simply grow on trees.

That being said, we have frankly sucked the last two years. I felt my soul slip from inside of me every time I tuned in the last two years. We have had several blue chip recruits fail to pan out, and so this year we find the program in very uncertain territory. We have few upperclassmen, again, and a handful of sophomores who were less than impressive last year. We have also seen players leave early who were not ready for the next level (boy is that putting it mildly or what?) and players transfer who were once highly regarded recruits. It seems as if Jay wants to start over and clean house of any bad apples, which in light of the last couple of years seems like a sound strategy.

But taking a step back for a moment, I want to look at some broader trends and see if we can’t define the components of a Jay Wright Villanova team. I am using data from 2003-2012 as that data is the most easily accessible, and it gives us 10 solid years of information.

Looking at the Data

Anyone care to guess what our biggest statistical strength as a program has been over the last 10 years? 3 point shooting - clearly not. Steals - no. Assists - no. Defensive FG% - um, no. It is offensive rebounding percentage, OR%! Crazy, right? Here is a graph of our 4 factors over time and their respective national ranks, out of 347 D-I teams.

It looks harder to read than it is. Check out 2010 for example, and you can see how all of the data points are clustered together at the bottom. We were an offensive machine that year, as our national ranking in all the 4 factors was really solid. But overall you can see that OR% (in dark green) is always the lowest, meaning best ranked, out of all of the 4 factors. This is not something I ever would have expected, but clearly it is our teams best attribute on a consistent basis, as we were only ranked outside the top 50 three times and we were in the top 25 one 4 different occasions. The other positive trend shown here is our ability to get the free throw line. We have remained steady and we have even improved in this area over time, thank you Scottie and Fisher.

Now, here are the same stats but on the defensive side of the ball.

Several things stand out. First, we have improved our defensive rebounding over the years – which makes sense as we have also added size: Sutton, Yarou, etc. The second thing is look at how BAD we were at creating turnovers the last two years. Jesus, that is awful and trending in the wrong direction. Finally, look at the trends for our foul rate (FTA/FGA in orange) and also our TO% (shown in red). For the most part, we have fouled at a fairly high rate, but that has been offset largely by our ability to create TO’s. However, in the last two years that trend flipped, and you can see that we created far fewer turnovers while also fouling much less frequently. I think it reflects an overall lack of effort on the defense end, and it could very well illustrate the chemistry issues and effort issues over the last two seasons. Fouling a lot is never a good thing, but if you are being aggressive and creating turnovers as a result, I think you can stomach the foul rate.

Conclusions

Jay Wright has had success at Villanova over his last 11 years. We have won the Big East regular season once. We have gained a 1 seed in the tourney. We have made a Final Four. Short of winning the ship, I think he has done an excellent job.

Offensively over the years, we have been an above average offensive rebounding team despite our often lack of perceived height. Additionally, we generally have a knack for getting to the foul line, where as everyone knows we convert our attempts at a high rate. In our best seasons, ’05, ’06, ’09, & ‘10 we take care of the basketball, but outside of ’10 our eFG% fluctuates.

Defensively, we have steadily improved on the glass while also causing a good amount of turnovers – possibly a result of a guard heavy team which will improve one’s Stl%. Overall, we tend to foul at a high rate, but until the last couple of years this has been offset by our ability to create turnovers.

I think more than anything the declining TO% and the lower FTA/FGA are the most indicative of our teams struggles over the last couple of seasons. While our offensive numbers have shifted, it is our defense or lack thereof, which has hurt us the most. Getting back to being aggressive and causing turnovers should greatly improve our overall defensive numbers, while at the same time instilling that team mentality and chemistry which just simply hasn’t been there lately.

2012 Preview Coming Shortly

2012-11-12T17:10:00.000-05:00

After taking a year off because a) we were awful and not fun to watch or write about, and b) I was really really busy; I am hopeful that I can stick to a semi-regular schedule of posts. If all goes well, this upcoming Friday I will have Part I of my season preview ready to post.

Season Preview Part II: Sweating the Close Stuff

2011-11-15T10:34:00.001-05:00


Created by my good friend Eliot Zuniga. www.eliotzuniga.webs.com

Game number II is already here as Nova begins Big 5 play tonight against LaSalle, who played us really tough last year. Like most of you this will be the first time I will get a look at all of our Freshmen. There are a decent amount of question marks about this team. We know a good amount about our top 3 players, but the rest and how they fit in are obviously going to be crucial as the season progresses.

If you haven’t taken a look around at some of the new features of the site check them out. During the season I will update the player & team stats at least once a week, and I will have the game differential charts up shortly after every game. The Quick Hitters section (not sure I like the name, maybe Mid-Range Jumpers?) is a new section where I will add short little opinion rants or interesting stats about our team as the season goes on. The main page will continue with the longer more research oriented content, and as some of my more dedicated readers have suggested, I will put up a glossary of terms soon. For now though check out kenpom.com for all your stat definition questions.

If you missed the first part of the season preview, where I discuss the potential development of our 3 core returning players: Wayns, Cheek, & Yarou, here it is. Also, on the Quick Hitters page I have 5 questions I am hoping to begin to find answers to by watching tonight’s game.

**************

One of the biggest question marks for this upcoming year will be how we handle close games. As a team without any Seniors and a team that will rely on a lot of young players, we are probably going to be a little inconsistent. We have talent, but we have a lot of players playing together for the first time and many will find themselves in unfamiliar roles. In almost any season close games are important. How many times have you seen a team that was young and talented but not quite good enough and seen the stat flashed on the screen that they have lost 7 games by a combined 15 pts? At least 3 times a season. So, how we perform in those games WILL define our season. As usual let’s take a look at last season.

Here is how our win to loss breakdown based on where we stood with 5 minutes remeaining.

	Record	Home	Away
10+ pts @5	14-1	11-0	3-1
0 > 10 pts @5	6-3	2-0	4-3
0 > -10 pts @5	1-5	0-3	1-2
-10 pts @5	0-3	0-1	0-2

So we had only 1 come from behind win in the last 5 minutes, and we gave up 3 games when we were leading by less than 10. On its face this does not seem too bad. However, our point differential in games we were leading by less than 10 was -6, and our point differential in games we were losing by less than 10 was -5. In games when either leading or losing by 10, we were either outscored in the last 5 minutes, or scored equally with our opponent, or outscored our opponent by only 1 pt. (DePaul) in 10 of those 15 games. Wow, we sucked in close games last year, didn’t we?

The picture continues to get a little grimmer when you look at how we preformed in games where we were leading or losing by 5 pts or less.

	Record	Home	Away
0 > 5 pts. @5	3-3	2-0	1-3
-5 > 0 pts. @5	1-2	0-2	1-0

I took a look at the play in 10 of those 15 games – 5 wins & 5 losses - where we were either leading or losing by 10, and here is what I found.

These are our offensive numbers by the 4 factors for wins & losses, which is which?

	A	B
eFG	50.0%	61.3%
OR%	26.7%	53.8%
TO%	27.2%	18.9%
FTA/FGA	119.05	100

In both wins & losses we had an eFG% of above 50%, and also FTrate of above 100!!! That’s pretty f*ing good. Oh, did I forget to mention that column A are our wins? Could have been either, right?

And here is our defensive numbers in the 4 factors for wins & losses, which is which?

	A	B
eFG	33.9%	80.0%
OR%	31.8%	35.7%
TO%	14.9%	18.9%
FTA/FGA	74.19	93.33

Wow, do I need to point out which column are our wins and which are our losses?

So for all the talk about the offense and the “burn”, yuck – to be honest it did deserve our disgust - it was really our defense that let us down. Losing Stokes, Fisher & Pena will change and possibly hurt our offense, but all 3 were average to below average defenders who played a lot of minutes in crunch time – I may even be a little nice with calling them average. It is yet to be seen if the new comers are stalwart defenders, but they are long, should be full of enthusiasm and energy, and are most likely looking to please the coach to get extra pt. Close games define any season, and one with as much uncertainty as this season, will mean we will probably be doing a lot of sweating this year.

Season Preview Part I: What Do We Really Know About This Season?

2011-10-21T16:49:00.001-04:00

What happened these last 6 months? After completely mailing in the last 10 games of the season, we then had to sit through several months of chaos with the whole “I want as much money as possible and I don’t care about anyone else” ordeal. Otherwise know as college re-alignment.

But here we are. Big East media day for football in 2013, I mean for this upcoming basketball season, happened earlier in the week, and Hoops Mania is set for tonight. Wait, why is the annual Blue & White game on Saturday at 11:30 AM? Whatever, the times are a changin’, and so it is time to sit down and think about this upcoming season.

The last time I felt so unsure about an upcoming season was in 2008, when all we really knew was that Scottie had a good Freshman year and we had some young good recruits coming in, but we did not know what to really expect – this was before Dante became a machine. I think it is pretty clear right now at this moment that Wayns, Yarou & Cheek as the 3 elder statesmen are going to be the reason we succeed or fail. It’s time to take a closer look.

Why did it seem like Cheek, Wayns & Yarou all took a step back last year?

First I think it is important to point out that the whole team seemed to take a step back last year. A quick look back at the numbers from 2 years ago to last year shows that every single player not named Stokes or Armwood had a lower eFG% than the year prior. That’s crazy! Here take a look:

Fisher	eFG%	%Shts
'10	51.0	22.8
'11	48.5	26.1

Stokes
'10	54.0	19.4
'11	58.2	22.8

Pena
'10	57.7	18.1
'11	50.6	17.8

Wayns
'10	48.3	24.0
'11	44.5	25.9

Yarou
'10	58.3	12.9
'11	49.8	18.4

Cheek
'10	50.4	19.5
‘11	43.6	19.2

Armwood
'10	48.1	11.2
'11	49.1	7.4

I don’t think I would have ever guessed that Scottie’s impact on our team offensively was THAT great. But these numbers seem to suggest that he really allowed for everyone to get easier and better looks. Look closely at Yarou, Pena & Cheek. They had their eFG% drop by 7, 9, and 7 %pts. respectively. That is a huge drop-off. Why did this happen?

- Wayns carried a larger bulk of the offense last year, and so his dip stems from having to take more shots – he will shoot better from 3 this year I promise. He did also post an ARate of 32.4 which is the highest ARate in the Jay Wright era. At the end of the day, and at the end of the shot clock, we relied on him too much as a shooter.

- Yarou also took a larger role in the offense, increasing his shot output by almost 6%, so that explains some of the decrease in efficiency but not all. He either did not get as many quality opportunities as he had last year or he simply shot terribly and made poor decisions. Probably a little of both, but I’m siding on the lack of quality opportunities

- Cheek took almost the same amount of shots, but saw his eFG drop significantly. The reason for his drop-off is very simple. In 2010, only 33% of Cheek’s shot attempts were from 3 – which he hit at a 31% rate – and he also had a very respectable 40.6 FTRate. In 2011 he settled for jumpers pure and simple. 50% of his shot attempts were from 3 – which he hit at a 30% clip – and he had an FTRate of only 28?!?! Also, it is not hard to see that Cheek is much better in transition than in the half court. We all know how our offense slowed to a halt last year, and as a result, the slow pace highlighted the weaknesses in Cheek’s game. I think he CAN improve, but he has some work to do other than sprinting out for some easy fast break buckets.

What type of improvement can we expect?

This is such a loaded question, and one which is almost impossible to really tell. The big x-factor is how are the abilities of the other guys around them going to contribute to their improvement and relative efficiency. But there are some things we do know.

- First, Wayns really isn’t going to play that much more than he did last year. He played 75% of the possible minutes available, and he took 25.9% of our team’s shots while on the floor. His minutes will increase, but I just don’t see his %shots increasing by that much. In the Jay Wright era only 3 players have taken more than 30% of the team’s shots: ’06 Foye – 32.9%, ’06 Ray – 31.9% & ’07 Sumpter 30.2%. Even Scottie never took more than 30% of the team’s shots. So, in short I actually believe Wayns’ shot% will hold steady or even decrease. I really believe he is our most pure point guard we have ever had. If we pick up the tempo this year I believe Wayns will be looking to distribute more and more, but if we slow it down again than and only then will his shot% go up. That will not be good for our team.

- I think Yarou is our most important player this season, but I have no idea what to expect from him either. I think we all can agree that if Yarou has a good year, our team will have a good year. Even if Yarou seemed to struggle from the field he did make improvements. He improved both his offensive and defensive rebounding rates.

OR% DR%

’10 - 12.7% ’10 – 14.7

’11 – 13.4% ’11 – 20.7%

He greatly reduced his TORate from 25.6% to 16.0% of his possessions. Defensively, he had a lower fouls committed/per 40 minute rate: 6.3 – 4.9 & on the other side of the foul line equation he maintained his FTRate while increasing the number of shots he took – although his FTRate is ok, this is definitely an area for improvement. The biggest thing is that he needs more minutes. He played 60% of the possible minutes, and I think the magic number is 70%. I think he will continue to develop down-low, but as it stands we need all the other things he brings to the table.

- I talked a decent amount about Cheek earlier, so I am going to focus on the area outside of the numbers for him. It is not secret that I have been lukewarm towards Cheek thus far in his tenure. He frustrates me because I KNOW he can be better. The bigger question is what is his role going to be. Is he our number 2, 3 or 4^th option offensively? He has the talent to be the number 2, but he tries to play like the number 1 – which he isn’t mostly because he cannot create a shot for himself in the half court. I also, am unsure about his overall attitude. I don’t think he has a bad attitude, but how is he going to react to one of these Freshmen stepping up or even if Bell steps up. Cheek will improve his skills, but his bigger challenge is in figuring out what his role is and executing it.