Going Small For the Big Win

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.