Sweating Some Small Stuff

[Villanova]

Everyone has favorite quotes that they like to pretend they live by.  Maybe some people actually do, who knows.  In any event, one of my go to stock movie quotes that I use in these situations is from the movie Ghost dog: The Way of the Samurai.  If you haven’t seen it, it’s got Forrest Whitaker as a modern day samurai living in New York City.  It’s awesome.  Anyways, Ghost dog, aka Forrest Whitaker, reads this maxim at one point: “Matters of great concern should be treated lightly.  Matters of small concern should be treated seriously.”

And that’s what Part II of the mid-season review is all about, a couple of small things.  In Part I, I covered the big ticket items: overall offense, defense, and my MVP so far.  Now it’s time to take a look at some of the little things that will make all the difference in the end.

Arcidiacono is starting to figure it out.  At the beginning of the season, I talked about how I felt Arcidiacono would become the secondary ball handler at some point during the season.  I didn’t realize that Hilliard would be the guy usurping him, but them are the breaks.  The first slew of games were tough sledding for him though, which is understandable.  It was probably the first time in his life that he played any basketball game where he didn’t have the ball in his hands every single possession.

His biggest problem has always been forcing 3’s off the dribble.  Unless your name is Steph Curry, this isn’t a sound strategy by any means.  Almost all players shoot better when they are stationary with their feet set, or they are coming off of screens and moving into their shot to take it in rhythm. 

Over at VUHoops, Jordan Sperber did an excellent post about Villanova’s 3 point shooting.  In it he noted that Arcidiacono had attempted 26 of his 62 attempts from 3 off of the dribble, yikes.   While I haven’t tracked Arcidiacono’s 3 point attempts since that post, I did go back and look at how many of the 3’s he has made since were assisted on.  It’s not perfect, but looking at how many 3’s are assisted works as a pretty good proxy for catch and shoot 3’s.  So small sample size aside, over the four New Big East games thus far, Arcidiacono made 9 of his 17 attempts –good for 52.9% shooting  – and 8 of those have been of the assisted variety – 88%.

So yeah, it’s only a handful of games, but Arcidiacono looks a little more comfortable in his role.  Depending on your expectations heading into the year, Arcidiacono has had somewhat of a down year.  It’s true Arcidiacono is shooting less this year, but even with his sub-par 3 point% he has a better eFG% from last year, due to the fact that he is shooting 61.5% from 2 this year.  Last year he shot 38% from 2.  That is real improvement, and if his 3-point shooting improves then his narrative should change.

You know what else is a small thing that is really important for a basketball team?  It’s the bench.  And Mother of God, has our bench been awesome so far.  The question I want to ask though is if this bench is the best one we have ever had?

There are two ways to classify a ‘bench.’  One is to simply pick the 5 guys who have the most starts at their position and then classify everyone else as the bench.  The second is to assume that the 5 guys with the most minutes are the starters, and thus the other guys make up the bench.  I am going to cheat and use the minutes or second definition of a ‘bench’ for all of the prior Villanova teams, and use the first definition for this year’s team.  Why?  A) because I can, as this is my blog & b) until recently Hart would have been classified as a bench player, but he now has played more minutes than Ochefu.  That’s why.  So for 2014 our bench for this exercise consists of: Hart, Jenkins, Ennis and Chennault.

Let’s just get this out of the way.  Yes, our bench this year is the best bench Jay has ever had, and let me count the reasons.

Every single player has an offensive rating over 100, never happened before.  Two players, Hart and Ennis, are shooting over 40% from 3, never happened before. Two players, Chennault and Ennis, are dishing assists on over 20% of their teammates’ baskets while they are on the floor, never happened before.  Three bench guys, Hart, Ennis and Jenkins, have TO%’s less the 15, never happened before.

About the only thing our bench is lacking is rebounding, but outside of that, this bench has been flat out great because each guy has and knows his role.  Chennault is the assist man posting an ARate of 26.6.  He now either knows he can’t shoot or is tired of Jay/JVP/Arcidiacono/Bell yelling at him every time he does take a shot, because he has taken only 8.4% of the team’s shots while he is on the floor and he has taken exactly 0 3’s.  I think he gets the picture of what his role is, and while he has some turnover issues he has done a very nice job.

Jenkins has received the fewest minutes so far, and while his shooting numbers are starting to dip he provides size and toughness with the occasional 3 sprinkled in for good measure.  His minutes will probably wane as the competition improves but every now and then he may get extended minutes, and that doesn’t really bother me. 

Ennis has been nothing but solid.  He is assisting on 23.8% of his teammates baskets while on the floor while having a TO% of 11%, which is damn good clean efficient basketball.  But he is a little bit of a chucker and has semi-frequent lapses defensively.  However, he provides some much needed 3 point snipping and is shooting 41% so far this season.

And last but not least, there is Mr. Hart.  Mr. Hart is shooting 68.8% from 2 and 43.9% from 3, both are team best marks.  He also has the best FTrate on the team – Ftrate measures how frequently you draw fouls = FTA/FGA and anything over 50 is pretty good – with a 70.8 rate, while also posting a team best TO% of 8.4.  Basically, the guy is an efficiency monster, and I don’t even really know how to describe how crazy those numbers I just threw out there are.  He is athletic, smart, and doesn’t force things, and even if the rest of our bench was garbage, his play alone would put us near the Villanova ‘benches’ of the past.