Friday, November 15, 2013

2014 Season Preview: 10 Things to Watch For


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


I have never really had a firm grasp on how good or what type of player Hilliard is or can be.  In his first 15 games as a Freshman he played over 20 minutes in 13 of those games.  After that point, he only cracked 20 minutes once in the remaining 17 games, and he had 11 games where he played less than 10 minutes.  What happened there?  I have no idea.

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.

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


I have to admit I was pretty upset/disappointed to hear that Ennis broke his hand the day before Hoops Mania.  Can you imagine sitting out an entire season, and then on the eve of the kick-off party for the next season you get injured?  That has to suck.  But hey, at least he got voted one of the "Hottest Guys in College Sports!"

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.

No comments:

Post a Comment