We Roll 9 Deep

As always, if you want a re-cap of the vomit session game check out Villanova by the Numbers for the stats breakdown and the Nova Blog or VU Hoops for your opinion pieces.  So, as I entered the box score info from Saturday’s defeat into my spreadsheet to update my season calculations I was shocked at what I saw.  Our Main 5 – Fisher, Wayns, Stokes, Pena & Yarou each individually had an eFG% of over 50%, while our bench, well let’s just say it was not one of their better games.  Here it is:

	%MIN	%Shots	eFG%	Ftrate
MAIN 5	76.0%	81.5%	53.4%	40.9
BENCH	24.0%	18.5%	10.0%	60.0

So our bench as a whole had an eFG% of 10%, which is beyond terrible.  To be fair to the rest of the bench, this was pretty much all Cheek.  He went 1-7. Yuck.  Bell did not play and Armwood and Sutton were a combined 0-3.  But we don’t really care about their scoring, but should we?  For a hint of positivity, look at their FTrate which is pretty good and better than our Main 5.  Finally for the record, I am no way suggesting our bench cost us the game, because we don’t count on them for that.

So what is the deal with our bench?  I feel as if this thought hasn’t really entered my mind until now.  Most of the focus this year, from what I can tell, has been about a couple of things: a)  how are Fisher & Stokes doing in their new roles?  b) what is up with Wayns & Yarou, ie. how good are they?  & c) you know as a program we really can teach undersized big guys how to hit open jumpers and play within themselves.  

What did we know to begin the year?  Cheek was somewhat of a question mark heading into this season for me.  I thought he was athletic and that he SHOULD be able to guard other athletic swingmen, but I was also unsure about his offensive capabilities.  Everyone I know really liked Armwood.  He has length, is athletic, hustles, and can defend several positions, but we all know that at this point in his career his offensive ability is limited, to say the least.  Sutton was always viewed as just some tall way too skinny guy who did not really do much for us other than pick up some minutes in our front court.  Bell as a freshman was an unknown.

Here we are 8 games into Big East play, so what have we learned?  Everyone still likes Armwood, but his lack of offensive ability, although it is not the reason we put him out there, it is the reason he doesn’t see even more minutes.  Sutton has actually shown some solid defensive ability, with an 11.7 block rate – puts him first on the team, Armwood is second at 6.7.  Bell has received only a handful of minutes each game, but it seems he is the most offensively talented out of our bench/role players.  I think Cheek has been the most disappointing, because it was clear after his freshman year he had the most upside after Yarou and Wayns.  For this season, he has a good OR% at 9.3% - ok makes sense he is an athletic, longer guard, but he has a low FTrate at 34.8.  He also has attempted 46% of his shots from 3 – thus probably the reason for his poor FTrate.  I don’t think he really gets it offensively yet.  I am not ready to toss him into the Reggie Redding category, but he is looking more like that than anything else.  He needs to get to the rim more and not settle for 3’s.  Really other than Stokes, Fisher, or Wayns on occasion, I don’t want anyone else taking a 3 unless they are wide open because their defender tore an ACL and is sprawled out on the ground.

Although I am interested in how each bench player performs, I am more interested in how they contribute to our team as a unit – I know they don’t play as a unit but still.  So here are some interesting stats about what our bench contributed in our 3 recent losses.

	%MIN	%Pts	%Shots	eFG%	%OR	%Asst.	%TO	Ftrate	%Blk	%Stl
Georgetown	24.0%	9.1%	18.5%	10.0%	16.7%	16.7%	22.2%	60.0	25.0%	20.0%
Providence	24.0%	23.5%	15.6%	41.7%	42.9%	0.0%	27.3%	66.7	100.0%	50.0%
UCONN	19.5%	5.1%	10.0%	16.7%	33.3%	0.0%	25.0%	50.0	100.0%	50.0%

So other than eFG% and FTrate – which you already know what those mean – the rest of the categories are pure percentages.  So for example, against UCONN our bench combined for 33% of all the offensive rebounds our team grabbed in that game.  Here are 3 examples of our bench during a couple of quality wins.

	%MIN	%Pts	%Shots	eFG%	%OR	%Asst.	%TO	Ftrate	%Blk	%Stl
Syracuse	17.0%	15.7%	10.0%	90.0%	57.1%	0.0%	10.0%	100.00	66.7%	0.0%
Cincinnati	29.5%	16.7%	16.7%	64.3%	50.0%	0.0%	26.3%	57.14	62.5%	25.0%
Louisville	17.0%	8.0%	10.3%	58.3%	18.2%	25.0%	16.7%	0.00	0.0%	18.2%

So it’s easy to see that our bench can be very up and down, but I think there is a clear take away.  Our bench provides effort and defense.  The % of OR for all games is pretty solid, and so is the FTrate.  The % of blocks is also high, while the % of TO’s, % of Asst. and % of shots show that offensively we do not count on this group for all that much.  This makes sense.  Our bench is comprised of freshman and sophomores, and we do not have a single junior who plays.  We know our bench can play defense and will do the dirty work, but we need some offensive production out of it if we are going anywhere.  This is best illustrated in the bench eFG% in our losses vs. our wins.  Who will step up and provide the offense to go along with the effort.  If we are looking at significant playing time numbers, it has to be Cheek.  He gets around 20 minutes every game. (Armwood is usually in the 15 min range, Sutton is a tad under 10, and Bell gets some cheap 5 mins)  We need him to contribute more offensively, but we do not need him to put up another 1-7 effort.  I would rather see any of our starters force more shots than see Cheek force anything.  Bell to me has shown he could be part of that solution, but so far Jay has not given him enough PT for him to really fit the bill.  Moving forward we are going to need some more efficient offensive production from our bench if we are going to remain in contention for the Big East title.