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| [talesofagarlicandonionlover] |
So, you don’t go from an unranked team picked to finish
fourth in the New Big East to a 2-seed without substantial improvements and
contributions from everyone on the team.
Already this year, I have covered the individual contributions of almost
everyone except for Ochefu and Bell. So
it’s about time.
After a pretty dismal start to the season, Ochefu has been on
fire since the start of conference play and overall compared to last
season. Go ahead, pick a category. Shooting? Improved – 61.8% up from 45.9%. Rebounding? You betcha. Without Yarou around to take away rebounds,
Ochefu is grabbing 21.1% of the available defensive rebounds up from 15.6% a
year ago. Blocks, you ask. Absolutely.
Ochefu is blocking 8.6% of opponents’ 2-point field goals up from 4.7%
in 2013. And if you have been watching
games recently, you have probably noticed that Ochefu’s assist numbers are also
pretty damn good for a big man. He is
assisting on 12.9% of his teammates baskets while he is on the floor compared
to 7.4% last season, a rate that would place him as the best passing big man of
the Jay Wright era.
Finally, those early season foul troubles also seem to be
going by the wayside. In the out of
conference slate of games Ochefu was fouling 7.2 times per 40 minutes,
but in New Big East games that number is down substantially to only 4.9 times
per 40 minutes. As a result he has seen
his minutes increase from 18.5 min/game to 23.3 min/game.
However, turnover issues continue to haunt Ochefu. His turnover percentage has increased from last season and his 28.1% of possessions used ending with a turnover are a team worst. While they
are not completely out of control, it is something to watch. But make no mistake, Ochefu has improved
across the board and has been a big part of our success this season.
But how about James Bell, huh? Bell is having a hell of a season. Jay constantly praises his effort, leadership,
and affectionately calls him “our rock.”
Defensively he has not only been tasked with playing multiple positions
and guarding bigger guys when we play small – meaning when JVP plays center and
Ochefu is on the bench – but he has entered what I call the Dante Cunningham
club. Players who block more than 2% of
opponents’ 2-point field goals, and who create steals on over 2.5% of opponents’
possessions. As one might guess, Dante
is a 3 time member of the club (2006-2008), and the only other players to join
him in the last 12 seasons are Ochefu (last year) and Dwayne Anderson (2008
& 2009). Bell, if he continues at
his current pace, will become the 4th member of this club by season’s
end, as he currently has a 2.5 stl% and blk%.
And while the comparison to Dante may seem a little odd
considering position and skill set, there is another reason it is apt. Dante for his first three seasons was little
more than the 3rd option. But
as a Senior, Dante’s role increased substantially. He took 27% of the team’s
shots while he was on the floor up from 17.7% as a Junior, the largest increase from a Junior to Senior season in the Jay Wright era. Second on that list of greatest increases is
none other than James Bell. Who took
19.7% of the team’s shots last season, but who is now taking 28.8% of the teams
shots while on the floor this year, the most on the team.
Bell has taken on this increased role while getting even
more efficient, as his 2-point shooting and 3-point shooting are better than
last year and his turnovers are way down.
Incredible. But let’s try and put
his efficiency as well as everyone else’s from this year in better context.
I really like this
graphic from Regressing, a Deadspin side blog that is quickly becoming one
of my favorite sites, so I decided to put together a couple of scatter
plots of my own. In this first chart you
will find all Villanova individual player seasons from 2003 through the 2014 season to
date. The y-axis represents a player’s
offensive rating, a single number that encapsulates how many points per 100
possessions a player accounts for.
On the x-axis is the % of possessions used, which illustrates how
involved and critical a player is to a team’s offense. This chart will show us who contributes the
most offensively, in all ways, with those players who do the most for the team.
So out of 110 individual player seasons since 2003,
Villanova has had only four players with an offensive rating greater than 120
points per 100 possessions - Sheridan, Mr. Hart, Ennis and Stokes. Two of those guys are obviously on the team this year.
Not too shabby, but in all of those seasons the four players had usage
rates less than 20%. So while they were
extremely efficient, their workload was that of a role player. So what we want to look at are those players
with high efficiency (offensive rating) and high usage (% possessions
used). That would be those seasons
inside the red box in the upper right quadrant of the chart. The following scatter plot is just that,
only those seasons where a player had an offensive rating greater than 100
while also using more than 20% of the team’s possessions.
And there you have it. These are the best offensive seasons in the
Jay Wright era. These are the guys (34
of them) who had a very large role offensively but who were also efficient. Because of the trade-off between efficiency
and usage – being that as usage increases efficiency decreases – it’s hard to
point out which season is the absolute best by these measures. Let’s just say that we are witnessing three of
the top 20 individual seasons of the last 12 years.
Taking this another step further, because I really like these
scatter plots and decided to do another one, let’s take a look at just the best
shooting seasons in the last 12 years.
So instead of offensive rating on the y-axis, the next chart has eFG% -
which is a weighted shooting percentage that accounts for 3-pointers being
worth more than 2. On the x-axis we have
our % possessions used number again.
Once again you see that we have had only four players who
have had an eFG% of over 60%, and once again two of those players are on the
team this year. So based on this chart
and the first one, we see that any way you slice it Mr. Hart is having a really, really
good season. Ochefu, as mentioned earlier, is
also having a great season, but did anyone expect Fraser to be that high
up? It makes sense on one hand because
big guys who only shoot around the basket generally make shots at a higher percentage, but on the
other hand Fraser was so often on the bench and never seemed to reach his
potential that it’s hard to believe he was actually that good. However, just like the last series of charts
we really should be looking at those players who shoot well AND play the
biggest roles in the offense. So inside
the little red square we go once again to look at those players who had an eFG%
> 50% and those who also used more than 20% of the teams possessions.
Hello Bell, JVP, and Hilliard. So there you have it. We
are witnessing an insane offensive team with several guys putting up some of
the best numbers in recent Villanova history.
I think it is safe to say that Bell, Ochefu, and the rest of the team
have flipped the switch from last year to this year, and are far past due for
praise as great offensive players.
