Going Small For the Big Win

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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?

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^th in 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.