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 340th in terms of 3 points attempts), USF
(ranks 120th), and Syracuse (ranks 242nd) 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 13th), USF (ranks 41st),
and Syracuse
(ranks 96th).
If you haven’t noticed it yet, check out our OR%
improvement. At 42% we would rank, gulp,
5th 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 2nd 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.
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