Welcome back old friends.
It seems we find ourselves once again at the beginning of a new season
of Villanova basketball. Well,
technically, the season already began, but you get what I mean. Hopes are high, predictions abound, and as
usual I pledge to post more frequently or at least more regularly, but we know
how that goes.
Now with the pleasantries out of the way, let’s get down to
business. Head on over to the Mid-Rang Jumpers page to check out some off-season news and my look at our out of conference schedule if you want. Otherwise, without further ado here are my top 10 issues to think about for the upcoming season.
10. WE WILL HAVE TO PAY ATTENTION TO OUR RPI RANKING FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER
This sucks. I hate the RPI. It is a really flawed tool to use, and it fingerprints are all over the selection committee process.
Here’s the thing. In
the old Big East you could ink 7-10 conference games a year against top 25
ranked opponents and even more games against the RPI top 50. This meant our out of conference schedule
didn’t have to be tough, and it also meant that we had multiple opportunities
for quality wins. 6 of the 8 teams that
left the conference were perennially ranked in the top 25. The other kicker is that now other
conferences like the ACC are even better.
While there is nothing that we can do this year, it seems likely that in
the future we are going to have to schedule tougher out of conference games in
order to boost our RPI. So get used to
hearing about and looking up our RPI ranking cause it’s going to matter come
March.
9. CAN OCHEFU STAY OUT OF FOUL TROUBLE?
This is probably the most obvious storyline for the season if you have taken at least one peek at the roster. With Yarou and Sutton gone, Ochefu is the only big guy left with any college experience.
Last season, Ochefu actually did a very good job as a
Freshman at avoiding fouls. He averaged
4.6 fouls per 40 minutes. To get a sense
of how good that number really is here is a list of other Villanova big men and
their fouls committed per 40 minutes for their Freshman seasons.
| FC/40 | This bodes very well for Ochefu, as usually younger big men really struggle with foul trouble early on. The biggest reason we need Ochefu to play isn’t his rebounding (he wasn’t that good last year but again that was probably because Yarou was a great rebounder) but his defense. Opponents shot only 42.5% from 2 against us (16th best in the country), and we know after watching Yarou for 4 years that he wasn’t doing much to alter shots in the paint. Throw in the fact that Ochefu is only the 3rd Villanova player in the last 10 years to have a Blk% greater than 2 and a Stl% greater than 2.5, and you can see how much his defense will mean this year - the two other guys were Cunningham and Anderson. | |
| Sheridan | 4.5 | |
| Ochefu | 4.6 | |
| Cunningham | 5 | |
| Pena | 5 | |
| Fraser | 5.7 | |
| Yarou | 6.3 | |
| Sutton | 7.8 |
8. THE NEW BIG EAST WILL BE BETTER THAN EXPECTED AND WILL GET AT LEAST 5 TEAMS INTO THE TOURNAMENT
First, I think there will be some latent sympathy for the
Big East this year by the selection committee come March. While everyone is sort of OK with
realignment, no one wants to see a conference with the history like the Big
East fade into complete obscurity. Also,
you have to ask yourself if a team like Virginia (who didn’t make it last year
but had 20+ wins) is now going to still get 20+ wins in a tougher ACC and thus
go from the bubble to being in? No.
I think what is lost in all this reshuffling is that the Big
East still has 3 tournament teams from last year (Georgetown, Marquette,
Villanova), and both Creighton and Butler made it too. Xavier didn’t make it but prior to last year
they had made 7 straight trips to the dance.
So we have 6 tournament level teams even if we don’t throw in St. John’s, who everyone is high on and is two years away
from a tourney birth, and Providence,
who has had several top 20 recruiting classes the last couple of years.
For my final piece of evidence consider this. The A-10, which we got Butler and Xavier from, had 5 teams in the
tourney last year. The Mountain West
also got 5 teams last year. If you think
either conference is getting more than 3 teams in you are crazy.
I think I just talked myself into predicting we will get 6
teams. Ok, let’s stick to 5.
7. THE IMPACT OF THE NEW RULES
This past year the NCAA
adopted several new rules that are intended to create more fluid offense
play. Basically, you can’t put more than
one hand on a ball player and using an arm bar in the post is out. So far the result has been an incredible
amount of foul calls in the early going.
On its face, rules that will lead to more foul calls should
really help a team like Villanova, who was the BEST team in the country at
drawing fouls last year. While the new
rules should benefit us, I am not 100% sure they will. For one, we already get to the line a
ton. JVP is a foul drawing machine, and
for a guy who really only shoots 3’s (70% of his shot attempts last year were
3’s) Arcidiacono was crazy good at drawing contact. The problem as I see it is that our opponents
may end up getting more calls than normal, and because we draw so many fouls
already how many more can we get called?
All that said, get used to long games with lots of fouls
because Villanova is great at drawing them, and the refs this year are going to
blow the whistle a lot.
6. WHAT’S THE DEAL WITH DARRUN HILLIARD
Then last year Hilliard started every game and averaged 29.9
minutes a game. He also took the second
most shots while he was on the floor after JVP, and overall put together a
pretty decent season. He improved his
3-point shot, but he is unlikely to become a very good shooter as he only hit
31.5% of his threes after hitting only 29% the year before.
Hilliard though excels at two things. First his defense last year was
excellent. He had a 3.3 Stl%, and finished
with 56 steals, which was good for the 18th best season in Villanova
history. Second, Hilliard was also the
only player outside of JVP who could actually create his own shot.
But his ability to create his own shot is also what has
bothered me about him, because why can’t he create for others too? An ARate of 20% or better is generally
considered ok for a ball handler (Arcidiacono had an ARate of 23.6, meaning he
assisted on 23% of the teams baskets while on the floor). Hilliard has posted ARates of 10.8 (2012) and
13.4 (2013). It’s not Corey Stokes low,
but it’s down there.
It’s possible that Hilliard’s role last year was to simply
score, and that Jay did not want to burden him with that type of play making
responsibility. But an interesting thing
happened in the first game, Hilliard had 7 assists. It’s likely that Hilliard is currently
playing the role meant for Dylan Ennis who is out with a broken hand, but if it
is the case that Hilliard does have the ability to create for others, which we
haven’t seen him do before, then watch out.
Adding another ball handler who can create shots for his teammates will
make us a significantly better offense.
5. 3-POINT SHOOTING OFFENSE
In the Jay Wright era Villanova has been an above average
3-point shooting team but never a great one.
2010 was the best year and we hit 37.3% of our 3’s good for 50th
in the country. Over that time we have
ranked in the top half of college basketball, except for the last 2 years. I don’t think I need to explain to anyone in
2013 that being able to shoot 3’s at a good percentage is important. So can we do it? Well, maybe.
Bell is our best 3 point shooter. He has improved each year, and last year he
shot 36.4% from deep. I’m not too sure
how much more improvement we will see from him this year, but it’s always a possibility
that he will. We just talked about
Hilliard who again is likely to improve, but in reality the 3-point shot will
never be his strong suit. So that leaves
us really with Arcidiacono and Ennis.
Ennis shot 35% from 3 in his Freshman season, but he is
coming off a hand injury and a year of rust.
In all likelihood he will be a very good shooter, but we will talk more
about Ennis later.
Last season Arcidiacono was a chucker. He attempted 217 3-point attempts which
accounted for 70% of his total shot attempts.
That 70% is the highest in the last 10 years for a Villanova player,
even more than the extremely 3-point happy Stokes. He shot 32.7% from deep, which while not
great, isn’t awful for a Freshman. Stokes
as a Freshman shot 29.6% and finished as a Senior shooting 43%.
In the Big East last year, there were 28 players who took
more than 50% of their shots from 3. The
player who attempted the most unassisted 3’s in that group was Arcidiacono at
63%. The average for that same group was
89.5%, so he took a lot more off the dribble unassisted 3’s that not many
people other than Stephen Curry can make with regularity.
So the theory goes something like this. Even though every defender knew Arcidiacono
took a crap load of 3’s, and even though he took a ton of unassisted 3’s (which
are obviously much harder) he still shot a semi-respectable 32.7%. So with a year under his belt, improved shot
selection, and maybe less pressure to score, it follows that his 3FG% should
improve rather significantly. We are
about to find out if that’s true.
4. THE CASE FOR JVP AS BIG EAST PLAYER OF THE YEAR
There is a 98.3% chance that Doug McDermott of Creighton
wins this award. In fact I am probably All I am saying is that JVP should be in the
discussion, and it is absolutely insane that he only made
2nd team all Big East in the preseason coaches’ poll, especially
considering they picked 4 guards.
underestimating these odds, but crazier things have happened.
underestimating these odds, but crazier things have happened.
So in case you haven’t realized it from the first two games,
JVP is going to have a monster season.
First, his season last year was really under appreciated. The two biggest reasons for this were a) he
didn’t play enough minutes, so his per game numbers were pretty underwhelming
and b) his ‘best’ offensive skill is also the most underrated – getting
fouled. Everyone knows Villanova as a
team drew fouls a lot last year – we ended with the best FTRate in the country
– but less people know that JVP personally had the 8th best rate in
the country.
But JVP will get his minutes this year. He is also our undisputed best offensive
player – although Hilliard is putting up an argument in the first two games –
and so he will get the attention and shots to put up a good fight in this
race. Throw in the fact that I believe
we are likely to exceed expectations – we were picked to finish 4th –
and JVP will be in this discussion.
For my final piece of evidence, I present you with a table
of the 2013 Big East teams sorted by the national rank of their effective
height. Effective height is a
calculation of a team’s big men based on how much taller that group is than the
national average.
| TEAM | Eff.Height Rank | Blk% |
| Pitt | 27 | 12.1 |
| Syracuse | 30 | 18.5 |
| USF | 34 | 9.8 |
| Notre Dame | 43 | 8.4 |
| Cincinnati | 45 | 15.2 |
| Villanova | 70 | 9 |
| Georgetown | 73 | 10.4 |
| UCONN | 86 | 10.1 |
| Rutgers | 98 | 9 |
| Louisville | 111 | 13.2 |
| Providence | 122 | 7.5 |
| Seton Hall | 144 | 5.6 |
| Marquette | 163 | 10 |
| DePaul | 174 | 8.1 |
| St. John's | 181 | 15.9 |
| Creighton | 136 | 5.4 |
| Butler | 74 | 6.5 |
| Xavier | 50 | 10.6 |
Long story short, the Big East got a lot shorter and no one left is any good at blocking shots outside of St. John’s. So you think JVP had a good year last year banging bodies down low with the likes of Pitt, Syracuse, and UCONN? Wait till this year when he goes against the relatively shorter new Big East.
3. 3-POINT SHOOTING DEFENSE
While there are many facets of the game where ‘traditionalists’
and ‘stat nerds’ disagree, 3-point defense is probably the area where the
disagreement is the starkest. Ken
Pomeroy made it his mission last year to discuss 3-point defense, see here,
here,
and finally here.
The long and short of it is a team has a much stronger
influence on 2-point FG% than on 3-point FG%.
A couple of teams, most notably Syracuse, can generally depress 3FG% but
by only 2-3%, and for everyone else there isn’t too much evidence that they can
do all that much about 3FG%.
One of the more interesting little theories in Ken’s look at
3-point defense is that if an offense faces a team that is good at defending
2-point shots, then the offense lowers its threshold for what it considers a good
3-point shot and will take more of them.
Taking a look at Villanova’s history of 2-point FG% and 3-point shot
attempts on defense, the numbers fit with the theory. Since 2003, Villanova has ranked in the top
100 in 2FG% defense every year except for 2008.
Conversely, for 3-point field goal attempts we have ranked 274 or worse
(worse meaning we give up more attempts) for the last 8 years.
But over that time, opponents have never shot that well
against us from 3 as they did last year.
I was curious so I went back to the game logs last year to see if we
there was a trend connected to the percent of 3-point shots that were assisted
against us last year. If the percent of
assisted shots against us was low, say 75%, that would indicate we were pretty
unlucky as teams hit a decent amount of shots against us off the dribble. If it was high it means we allowed way, way
too many open looks. In the end, 85.6%
of the 3 made against us last year were assisted which is pretty damn normal.
What I am trying to say is that I hope we close out a little
harder this year, and I hope we catch a few more breaks and the ball bounces
our way. That’s about all you can do.
2. THE KEY TO VILLANOVA’S SEASON: DYLAN ENNIS
His injury also sucks because it seemed as if finally having Ennis
meant that Jay could play the style that he always prefers and that we have
come to know as fans. In his lone season
at Rice, Ennis was very, very good. He
shot 35% from 3, had a FTRate of 50, an ARate of 30.6 (Arcidiacono the best on
the team last year was 23.6), and had a DR% of 14.9 (Ochefu last year had a DR%
of 15.6, so yeah that’s good for a 6’2 PG).
But more than Ennis’ ability, his simple presence in the
lineup would alter the way we played on offense. Since 2003, we have had at least 2 players
play over 40% of available minutes and have an ARate of 20 or greater, except
for 2012 and 2013. 2012 was the third
worst offense by points per possession numbers, and last season’s team was the
worst points per possession offense since Jay has coached at Villanova.
The only thing that kept us afloat was the fact that we got
fouled all the time. We had our worst
TO% under Jay, our second worst 3-point FG%, and surprisingly our worst OR%. By simply adding another ball-handler to our
lineups, we will be a much better offensive team.
So far in the early going, you can see that this is the
plan. Hilliard has assumed a lot more
ball-handling responsibility so far, and Arcidiacono has moved off the
ball. While it’s encouraging to see
Hilliard play well in this role, I already covered why it is somewhat a surprise;
it’s good to remember we have only played two games against two bad teams. Adding Ennis to this mix will only help, and
if he is as good as advertised then our offense should take several steps up.
1. SEASON FORECAST
Congratulations are in order for those of you who read this
whole thing. I appreciate it.
If you were to look around the web for other season previews
that involve Villanova, most of them have us as an above average team that will
make the tournament, but not much more.
I don’t blame them for underselling us because in reality our
ceiling is probably a Sweet 16 with a very outside shot at an Elite 8. That only happens if the
pieces come together, we have favorable match-ups, and the requisite luck
bounces our way. Looking the other way,
our worst case scenario is grabbing a 7-10 seed and getting bounced in the
first round.
The questions for this team are really on the offensive
end. Defensively we should be very
good. We have above average defenders at each level (Ochefu-on the inside, Bell- on the wing, Hilliard- wing/guard), and Jay has a pretty strong
track record defensively. The only
issues for us on this end are foul issues with Ochefu, and in recent years we
have struggled to handle quicker guards.
Ennis should help with that, but we don’t really know how he is going to
fit in.
Offensively, the key is having better ball handling and
putting two players on the court at the same time who can create shots for
themselves and for others. Here is where
Ennis' presence looms large, and while Hilliard has done well in this role, his
track record suggests that as the competition gets better he may not be as
successful.
The Big East this season is going to better than people think, but it is not particularly loaded at the top. Creighton, Marquette, Georgetown, us and Xavier are all pretty good teams but none are great. I feel strongly that if all the pieces fit together we can win the conference this year, and I have a hard time believing we will finish worse than 3rd and at the very worst 4th. So, we will easily make the tournament.
A Sweet 16 birth gets the program back on track after
missing the tournament only two years ago, and there are way more reasons to
believe that this is possible than there are reasons to bet against it. So let the games begin.
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