The Plus & The Minus

(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.