Halfway Home

[Bleacher Report]

This Saturday against St. John’s marks the halfway point in Villanova’s season.  Pretty hard to believe if you ask me, but after playing 15 games we have a fairly good grasp on this particular Villanova team.  And man, are there a lot of interesting numbers out there. So without further ado let me present Part I of this mini halftime series by taking a look at our overall offense and defense.

Let’s start with probably the biggest surprise so far this season: our continued excellence on defense.  There are many different components to a successful defense, but at its core there a couple of overarching principles and theories of a great defense:

• Forcing opponents to shoot poorly, is the factor that correlates the most with winning
• A defense has a much greater ability to influence how opponents shoot from 2 as opposed to the 3 point line. 
•  Height is king, and translates to generally holding opposing teams to shoot poorly from 2.

Therefore, in the simplest terms possible, arguably the most important statistic for a defense is how well they defend shots from 2.  Last season, our defense carried us and ranked 23^rd in the country in defensive efficiency.  The biggest reason for our success was, you guessed it, we forced teams to shoot poorly from 2 to the tune of a measly 42.5%, good for 16^th in the country.

But the biggest difference between this year’s team and last year’s is height at the two front-court positions.  Last season we always had at least one guy 6’10 or taller on the floor at all times, and we often had two of the three – Yarou, Ochefu, or Sutton – playing together at the same time.

This is all a long winded way of saying that despite having less height than we had last year, we are even better at defensive efficiency and even better at defending the 2 point shot.  So how is this possible?  First, we still have Ochefu, who might suck on offense, but none the less is an outstanding defender standing at 6’11.  But, what we lack in size in the front-court we make up for with length at the other positions and great defensive pressure.

This year we have run the 1-2-2 press more than anytime over the last 3 seasons.  As a result we have forced teams to cough up the rock on 22.8% of their possessions good for the 17^th best mark in country, and the best Villanova rate since the 2008 season.  The thing I like most about the 1-2-2 press though is its overall aggressiveness.  It forces us defensively to move, get our hands up and in passing lanes, and overall unleashes a certain sense of urgency that makes our defense have swagger and toughness. 

This is why I believe we also have been awesome at defending 2 point shots, holding opponents to a shooting percentage of 41.5% good for 11^th in the country.  If our opponent beats the press and gets into its half-court offense, the shot clock has ticked down already, our defensive pressure is high and ready for anything, and the offense is already flustered and way more likely to take a bad shot.  It also doesn’t hurt that that our two most frequently used lineups have 4 players 6’5 or taller.  So while we don’t have the size at the two front-court positions as we did last year, we make up for it by having height and length at all of the positions and an aggressive approach to defense that ramps up our intensity and forces opponents to take hurried shots.

While the defense has stayed the same and even improved, our offense has taken a gigantic leap forward.  Last year the offense was often stagnant, and our most notable skill was drawing fouls, as we led the entire country in FTrate (FGA/FTA a measure of how frequently a team draws fouls).  This year, we are an efficiency machine.  What I mean by this is that we only take the best kinds of shots, those at the rim and 3’s, while avoiding the worst shot in all of basketball: 2 point jump shots.

Last season 29.3% of all of our shots on offense were classified as 2 point jumpers, while this year only 17.6% of our shots come from the same range.  That, friends, is a drastic change and it is the 11^th best rate in the country.  Part of why that is happening is simply because Yarou isn’t around anymore, as last season he took 20% of the shots while he was on the floor and 55.3% of his shots were 2 point jumpers, the highest on the team.  The result of this change in shot location is that as a team we are shooting 55.9% from 2 this season which is the 9^th best rate in the freaking country.

No one illustrates this change on our team better than Mr. Hilliard, who at the halfway mark of the season is the team MVP in my eyes.  Last year, 22.4% of Hilliard’s shots were 2 point jumpers.  This year that number is down to just 7.4%.  That is staggering, and as a result of his new shot selection Hilliard has shot 58.2% from 2 this season, 11% better than last year.

But that isn’t the only thing nor is it the most important change for Hilliard this year.  No, the biggest improvement in his game has come through the distribution of the basketball.  Last season, Hilliard’s role was not to create but just to score.  He assisted on only 13.4% of his teammate’s baskets, low for a ball-handler and it was only the 4^th best on the team.  This year Hilliard is assisting on over 21.9% of his teammates baskets which is a higher mark than Arcidiacono, and indicates that he is the primary creator when the two are on the floor.

The bottom line is that while JVP continues to score and be JVP, and Bell has become much more aggressive finding his shot, the real key has been Hilliard’s ability to assume his new role as creator while also improving his shooting and scoring numbers.  He has been flat out awesome, and so far there is little reason to believe that he isn’t up to the challenge as the season progresses.