OFFSEASON NEWS & NOTES
14 November 2013
- Tony Chennault decided to transfer, then decided to come back, and Dana O’Neil wrote a cool piece about hardship transfer waivers using Chennault’s heartbreaking story
- JVP had MRSA over the summer and he thought he was going to LOSE HIS LEG. But he’s fine now don’t worry.
- Incoming transfer from Rice PG/SG Dylan Ennis broke his shooting hand the day before Hoops Mania and will be out till around December, hopefully.
- We obviously lost Yarou to graduation, and he ended up signing with Radnicki KG in Serbia. Yarou finished his career at Villanova with 1,068 points (52nd in school history), 836 rebounds (10th), and 101 blocks (10th). Not too shabby at all.
- We also lost, I guess lost is the best way to put it, Mo Sutton to graduation. Sutton is currently in training camp with the Tulsa 66ers of the Oklahoma Thunder D-League affiliate. Here is an interesting tidbit. As I noted above Yarou ranks 10th all-time in blocks at Villanova. The 11th on that list? Mo Sutton with 100 blocks even.
- Baker Dunleavy is now the Associate Head Coach, and Curtis Sumpter left the Villanova staff (Student-Athlete Development Assistant) and took a job with the 76ers as a Player Development Coach/Video Intern
- Finally, this year’s team welcomes 3 Freshmen to the fold. SG/SF Josh Hart (ESPN Top 100 #92), SF/PF Kris Jenkins (#73), PF/C Darryl Reynolds (unranked). I don’t pay a whole lot of attention to recruits, so I will talk more about these guys later on in the season. However, of the three Reynolds may have the biggest impact, either positive or negative, since he is going to have to play minutes as the only other big man on the roster after Ochefu.
Did I miss anything?
Oh yeah, this is the season the new Big East starts. Good-bye: Pitt, Louisville,
Syracuse, Notre Dame, UCONN, Cincinnati,
Rutgers, and USF. Hello: Creighton, Butler, and Xavier. Also good-bye unbalanced schedules, and hello
home and home series’. Also, you should
take the time and program your remote to FOX Sports 1 because every single game
is pretty much on it.
2014 Out of Conference Schedule
14 November 2013
While Villanova is certainly not known for its tough out of
conference scheduling, this season seems to be the weakest out of conference
schedule I can remember – more on this issue in the next section. We have a total of 13 out of conference
games, and with one already under the belt we have 12 remaining games before
the Big East starts.
- Big 5: PENN, La Salle, @St. Joe’s, @Temple
- Battle4Atlantis Tournement: 3 games total. First game is against USC, and if we win we play Kansas
- 5 home games against bad teams: Lafayette (W), Mount St. Mary’s, Towson, Delaware, and Rider
- 1 trip to the Carrier Dome to remind Syracuse why they should be happy not to be in the Big East anymore. We are 4-4 there since 2003.
The Big 5 is pretty down this year. Everyone was high on La
Salle after their Sweet 16 run a year ago, but they lost Galloway
who was their best scorer, assist man, 3-point shooter, and leading steals
guy. St.
Joe’s is halfway decent, and while Big 5 games are tough, these games are all
winnable.
USC has Andy Enfield from Florida Gulf
Coast fame, but they
probably won’t be good yet. Kansas, on the other
hand, has the consensus top pick in next year’s NBA draft who has been the most
hyped prospect since LeBron – translation: loss.
Coaches & Final Fours
13 November 2012
Does making a Final Four mean you’re an elite or a 2nd
Tier coach? Is there anyway to tell if a coach who makes one Final Four will
eventually make another?
Since 1990 there have been 23 Final Fours with 92 teams
playing in those Final Fours. Of those
92 spots, 34 teams have been coached by a coach making his first Final
Four. So during this stretch of 23 years
and 92 teams, 63% of the teams that made a Final Four were coached by someone
who has already made at least 1 appearance. Additionally, of the 34 coaches who made their
first Final Four, 13 (or 38%) have since made a return trip; and that leaves 21
coaches during this period who have made only 1 Final Four, of which Jay is a
member.
For the coaches who made multiple Final Four trips, it took
them on average 4.8 seasons to make their first and another 4.7 seasons to make
their second. For the 21 coaches who
made only 1 appearance, it took them on average 5.9 seasons to reach the promise
land, and they stuck around at their respective schools for only 4.6 years
following the Final Four appearance – which is LESS than the average time it
took for the other guys to make their second.
It took Jay 8 seasons to get there, and he is now entering his 4th
season post-Final Four.
There are two other interesting facts. First, as coaches return to the Final Four
they generally have better seeded teams.
I don’t think this is too surprising, as a coach should be able to
recruit better players, but one would think that a coach with a Final Four
pedigree would also be able to advance to the Final Four with a lesser team
more frequently – think Izzo but even though he has taken two 5 seeds he also
took three 1 seeds and a 2 seed.
Here is how it breaks down by average seeds:
1st App: 3.3
2nd App: 2.9
3rd App: 1.5
4 or more Apps: 2.0
Breaking down the 1st App a little bit we see a
diverging picture between those who returned later and those who made only one
trip.
1st App for those who returned later: 2.5
1st App for those with only 1 trip: 3.8
Quick recap: Making a
Final Four is hard. Returning to a Final
Four is hard, but happens on a fairly regular basis and it can only happen if
the program allows the coach enough time to do it. The more trips your coach makes, the better
seeded and ultimately the more talented the team.
Nova vs. La Salle 5 Questions:
1. Yarou put up 20 & 10 last game. Are we feeding him in the post or are those buckets largely coming off of put backs and or penetration?
2. Cheek took 15 shots in only 28 minutes, meaning he took 32.4% of our teams shots while he was on the floor - he was also extremely efficient with a 76.6% eFG. Is this a case of simply being aggressive and playing an inferior defense, or is this going to be more of a trend as the season goes on?
3. Even with the "burn offense" - I hate that phrase, it's a lot like the "wide 9" defense we keep hearing about in the NFL today. How did we get to this point where a phrase can become so well known so quickly? - we had an above average offense, but our defense would come and go without any notice. Do we have the intensity and team commitment on defense this year?
4. Here is an easy one: How good are our Freshmen, and what skills do each bring to the table?
5. How is our chemistry? Towards the end of 2010 and through last year, there seemed to be something off with our team. I largely believe it was that several players did not fully buy into their roles. Who is our vocal leader, and are we going to enjoy playing with each other?
The Evolution of the College Landscape: From Small Towns to Mega Cities
In case you have either a) been living under a rock, b) avoided the whole re-alignment issue or c) just couldn’t keep up with all that happened; this will work as a quick and easy summary.
To begin here is a list of ‘required’ reading if you want to understand what the fuck is going on. Start with Tyler Branch’s long and excellent article from the Atlantic where he discusses the history of the NCAA and the concept of the ‘student-athlete’. It is long but worth it. From ESPN, Ryan McGee talks about the impact on the Big East’s decision to reject Penn State back in 1990 and how that one decision really left us where we are now. Jay Bilas gives his reasons for why he is down with the Mega Conferences, and Nate Silver, an ex-baseball statistician now political pollster blogger at the NY Times, wrote a piece looking at fan base size and market share of all the college teams. And since this is really all about money- TV revenue – and thus football it is very helpful in understanding the ongoing expansion. It is important to remember that football is simply the medium to get money. Also, check out VUHoops for all the shit the Big East has tried to do to stop the bleeding. Go ahead and read those, I’ll wait – especially Nate Silver’s & Tyler Branch’s since you need Insider to read the other two. Got it? Good.
Oh, where to begin? We will begin with the first round of re-alignment in the BCS era
1) In 2004 Miami, BC & Virginia Tech left for the ACC. Miami was the driving force behind this move, as they felt the BE was becoming too weak for them, and relished playing in a conference with FSU. Remember this is before FSU started becoming irrelevant. VT was riding high from the Michael Vick era, so I can only imagine they felt they needed to stay with Miami. BC just rode the coattails.
2) In response to this the BE decides to raid CUSA, and that is when we picked up: Marquette, Louisville, USF, DePaul, & Cincinnati. We also added UCONN football, but clearly you can see that as a football conference we took a hit. The table is set for re-alignment, but the question is what will be the catalyst.
3) TV deals start to happen. First, the Big10 feeling like ESPN low balled them, decided to start their own network. Guess what? It worked, and so now schools and conferences are really beginning to realize just how much money they are worth.
4) Texas signs a TV deal with ESPN, which pretty much destroys any easy revenue generating scheme the BigXII thought they could create. As a result, schools decide they might move on. Nebraska leaves for the Big10 and Colorado leaves for the PAC-10 – which also adds Utah. We are now left with an unstable situation, where no one really knows how the BigXII will respond or what the other schools in the BigXII are going to do.
5) Last year, the Big East was up to renew its basketball contract with ESPN. Guess what, Pitt’s AD who held a prominent position on the committee that decided this wanted to turn the deal down. Even though it was the largest contract ever! Why you ask? Oh simple, he wanted to test the open market. Great idea! Let’s say no to the biggest contract ever, with the biggest sports network that pimps it core content every 5 minutes, so that we can sign a slightly larger deal with another network that nobody watches sports on, with shitty announcers, and poor graphics. Hint: Pitt knew what they were doing all along and are the devil!
6) Texas A&M for whatever reason fancies itself as a top-10 program and feels slighted by Texas. However, if you read Nate Silver’s article you will see that they do indeed have the 6th largest fan base even if no one under the age of 60 living outside of Texas actually cares about them. Now, the BigXII was mildly stable at this point even with the loss of Nebraska and Colorado, but after A&M starts to leave the situation deteriorates quickly. This is important because the Big East is already THE weakest football conference. So we would most likely be raided in order to keep the BigXII somewhat afloat instead of taking on teams from the major conferences.
7) You know the story from here. Pitt & Syracuse probably fearing that the Big East would be gobbled up between the BigXII & ACC wanted to ensure their place at the big boy table. They bolt pretty much in the middle of the night, Baltimore Colt’s style. TCU gets invited to the BigXII – which of all the moves that happened actually makes sense - and here we are: fucked.
