The Sun Also Rises

I have been a little weak on content these past couple of weeks, but I promise next week you will not be disappointed.  In honor of keeping my personal goal of at least 2 posts a week, I am here to provide you with a sneak preview of the content in the week ahead.  And of course some random musings and stats.

Saturday at 2:00 we take on St. John's.  Quick note on St. John’s: They take only 23% of their shots from 3 & their opponents take almost 40% of their shots from 3.  That difference is absolutely amazing, and frankly I really don’t know what the hell it means, do you?  So combine that number with the pace St. John’s plays 66.6 possessions a game (pretty much exactly the D1 average – so not that fast) and the difference in shot attempts becomes even more startling.  If the pace was really high, I could imagine St. John’s running down the court creating TO’s and the other time being rushed and just chucking it (which is what 40% of shots from 3’s really is).  But I just don’t know.  I guess we will find out Saturday.  End quick, err medium note.

So, judging from a lot of the reactions going on in the comment threads on the other Nova blogs, the fan base is clearly circling this game as a must win, a season saver, and or a measuring stick for our overall progress.  I have to agree, but like me I also disagree.  There are no real must win games, except for the obvious one and done games like the tourney.  It always feels like it, but you know what? Let's just say we lose on Sat.  Guess what?  We are still going to play the rest of the games on our schedule.  We are still going to get into the Tournament.  As far as our seeding is concerned, all of these games are must wins and important games, but life and the season will continue.  The sun also rises.

Currently, Joe – I hate Villanova – Lunardi has us as a 4 seed.  I think that is about right, but I could see us currently as also a 5 seed.  Right now I think we are better than the 6 seeds (West Virginia, St. John’s, Missouri, Texas A&M), but we could slide down to one of those spots with a less than stellar finish to our season and a poor showing in the BE tourney.  The only way I see us sliding lower/worse than a 6^th seed would be if we lose out, and also lose to a Rutgers type in the opening game of the BE tourney.  I personally do not think that will happen, but the rest of you are entitled to your opinions.

Speaking of opinions, back to the comment boards.  The last couple of days there have been 2 much discussed topics.  End of game execution & playing time/rotation/and distribution of minutes.  I thought both of these would be excellent topics for me to research and write about.  Problem is they happen to be very in depth researching topics, and I have failed to finish them in time.  That’s why there is next week, and the sun also rises.

End of game execution:  A lot of NBA stats blogs/websites talk about clutch minutes, points, shots, %, etc.  They define it generally as something like this: clutch minutes = less than 3 minutes to go in a game when you are either up or down by so many points – 3 maybe 5? (I’m too lazy to actually look it up right now, and it’s not really important for our discussion)  I thought that approach would be a) too narrow – the NBA has longer games and more games which makes these stats more relevant & b) way too time consuming. 

So, I choose to look at the 9 games in which our margin of defeat or victory was less than or equal to 5 points.  We are 4-5 in these types of games.  W’s = La Salle, Temple, DePaul, Seton Hall.  L’s = Pitt, G’Town, UCONN, Syracuse, Rutgers.  Sorry for bringing that last one back into your memory, by the way the stats for Rutgers in the last 5 minutes are retarded.  They had an offensive rating of 263.93!!!!  So in 100 poss they would score 263 points.  On the season Rutgers rating is 106.6.  There are some very, very interesting stats from these games.  By the way I am looking at how we do as a team and as individuals in the last 5 minutes of these games.

Lineups/Rotation/Minutes Played:  First, now that Stokes is back you are going to see a much more steady rotation from Jay.  Last game was his first game back, so the minutes were all out of sorts.  So, what I plan on doing with this post is figuring out who I want to play how many minutes a game.  Then I am going to figure out who I want to play with whom and for how long (rotation).  Once I have my minutes and rotations set, I can then create a hypothetical team, and I can take a look at how they will produce.  This is a much more subjective post, and I know from the comment threads that there is a lot disagreement about who should be playing more minutes, etc.  And as you can tell, I haven’t fully developed this idea, and I may even scratch it.  Hopefully Saturday will give me some inspiration.

Villanova University Master Plan:  Last Tuesday, sorry two Tuesdays ago, I attended an Alumni event in DC where I live.  Father Donahue presented the Villanova University Strategic plan, well he talked about unveiling it and really just gave a heart pulling plea for money.  That’s fine, that’s what these event are all about.  And I thoroughly enjoyed the open bar and food, along with the good company.  However, in the presentation he showed some renderings of some of the proposed buildings and development that the University WANTS to do. (I want to stress that because this is a long way off, and there are many hurdles that must be jumped, ahem Radnor’s blessing) This got me curious, so I checked out the Villanova University Master Plan.  I am in the progress of getting my master’s in Urban Planning, so I obviously enjoy this stuff.  I plan on posting my thoughts about the Master Plan and the proposed development on our campus.  But for those who do not know, the big proposed development is… housing, specifically senior housing (who knows how many seniors will have to live there, ex: if 50% of the rooms are occupied by seniors, does that count as senior housing?  Or do all the rooms have to be occupied by seniors?) ALL ALONG THE SOUTH SIDE OF LANCASTER.  Yeah, that’s right, where the parking lots are.  I still don’t know exactly how I feel about it.  It will also include a performing arts center, and some shops, and stores and a completely retooled streetscape along Lancaster.

There it is: your week ahead preview.  For the record, I am really feeling pretty good about the game Saturday.  Maybe I’m naïve, or a homer, but I still feel like this team is growing.  We are in a rough patch, for sure, but we are young and talented.  The key is for us is to make sure everyone knows what role they are and then to execute it.  We have the pieces to the puzzle but they are not in the right place at the moment.  And for all of you who think the sun has set on this team (you probably would have stopped reading this lousy blog then), well you know what I would tell.