The Plus & The Minus

(My quick thoughts on re-alignment the blatant selfish money grab and the 7 basketball schools breaking away from the Big East, in this order:

1)      Enough already.  Whatever happens just needs to happen.  I want my life back.
2)      From a basketball fans perspective – if we pick up some A-10 teams (Xavier, VCU, Butler?) & coax Gonzaga and St. Mary’s into our little conference of irrelevance, then we would have a fun league to watch.
3)      Our presence on the national scene is going to fade, finding our games on TV will be a pain in the ass, and the school’s reputation will suffer.
4)      Father Peter needs to go to confession, immediately
5)      Jay just got some crazy job security out of this whole mess.  If I was him, I would take us to the cleaners because if we lose him now (or fire him) who the hell are we going to get? First, we would have to actually give a shit about athletics so scratch that last one.)

Tuesday marked the first time this season where I actually found myself enjoying watching Chennault play.  I was initially down on Chennault because even though he is new to our program, he already has two years of college ball under his belt; only up till recently he has played like a senior in high school.  Conversely, I am starting to worry a little about Arcidiacono.  It was easy to give him a pass to begin with as he was a pretty accomplished youth player and he was only a freshman, however, his lack of athleticism is frankly shocking.  It is apparent on so many offensive possessions where he is unable to utilize the high screen to get into the paint, and I don’t even want to talk about his defensive shortcomings.  In short, I’m higher on Chennault than I was, and I’m cooling on Arcidiacono.

What’s interesting is that the strengths of each player are the weakness of the other.  Chennault is quick, athletic and likes to attack the rim.  Arcidiacono shows signs of being an above average outside shooter, is tough, and has good court vision.  The question though is whether they can play with each other and compliment each other’s game.  More importantly even, does Jay think they can compliment each other?

Plus/Minus ratings should almost never be taken at 100% face value.  They are noisy and often struggle with sample size issues.  However, numbers are always fun to look at and talk about, so below is a table of plus/minus ratings from the last 4 games (St. Joe’s, UPenn, Temple, & Vandy).

	+/-	Min	%Min
Yacoubou	16	65	40.6%
Bell	15	121	75.6%
JvP	13	94	58.8%
Hilliard	8	113	70.6%
Sutton	6	65	40.6%
Ochefu	6	59	36.9%
Yarou	5	100	62.5%
Arcidiacono	3	125	78.1%
Chennault	-8	58	36.3%

I’ve been slowly turning into a huge Yacoubou fan over the course of the past couple of games, and this now solidifies my affection.  The guy has great energy and has shown he can be a competent offensive player – he is quietly hitting 40% from 3 & 50% from 2!

But look at the bottom of this list, and you will find our two aforementioned ball handlers.  As a point of reference we are +12 as a team over this time frame.  That is not good, but it is good to see that we have two main playmakers, Bell & JvP, at the top as well as at least one role player, Yacoubou.

Digging a tiny bit deeper into the play by play data, we can answer the original question that was posed: does Jay feel as if Chennault and Arcidiacono compliment each other?  The answer seems to be no he doesn’t and no they do not necessarily compliment each other.

Chennault and Arcidiacono have shared the floor for only 28 minutes over the last 4 games, which is only 17.5% of the total minutes.  The 28 minutes accounts for almost half of Chennault’s minutes but only 22.4% of Arcidiacono’s minutes (as he plays way more minutes obviously).  The result of these two being on the court together is a -12.  Again, NOT GOOD.  I do not unfortunately have +/- numbers for other pairings, but maybe in the future that is something I can look into.

For now, we have 3 out 4, and although Chennault’s +/- rating stinks I believe he has started to play better.  JvP and Bell are playing well enough and Yacoubou is providing some quality minutes and may even start taking away some time from Hilliard.  As for the minus, we need better play from out point guards and somewhere along the line I believe that will be the case.  Until then, we have to hope that our other players are doing enough to compensate for our weakness, and over the last 4 game stretch that worked 75% of the time.  With all the craziness going on with re-alignment, beating the Hawk will keep the frustration in check for the time being.

Death By 3's

Fact: We are not a good defensive team.

Fact: We are ranked 343 our of 343 teams in giving up 3FGA

Fact: We have 0 good, let alone elite defenders

Fact: Our defense, more than our struggling offense, is our biggest problem so far this year

Watching the games, the thing that jumps out the most is that we cannot stay in front of anyone defensively.  It is astonishing.  The result is that we are allowing our opponents to take over 44.3% of their shots from 3.  And in EVERY SINGLE GAME this season our opponents have attempted more 3’s, as a percentage of their shots, than they average for the season.

Ahem, Columbia, jesus.  The problem I believe is largely rooted in personal.  Arcidiacono is playing 84.8% of possible minutes so far this season, and he is our worst on ball defender.  His minutes may dip some, but he is our only real ball handler, so he has to be on the court.  Looking around at our other players, does anyone really stand out as an above average defender?  Sure, Sutton does, but Jay still keeps him on the bench for most of the game.  Bell seems like he is an above average defender, but not when he is playing down low, which he has to do from time to time.

The only option really left is to change up our defensive methodology, something that Jay has rarely done over the years.  However, considering how awful we have been at giving up 3 pt. attempts it might behoove him to make some adjustments.  Generally the 2-3 zone results in opponents shooting outside shots more frequently than against man to man schemes, but at least they generally get a hand in the guy’s face.  For now we are left with watching Arcidiacono/Hilliard/Chennault get blown by, and as the help defense arrives the ball is getting kicked out and passed around till someone has a wide open look.  Get used to it, because its going to be there all season long unless we make some changes.

We Are No Longer Guard U

Last night’s loss, which IS the worst loss in the history of the Jay Wright era, illustrated the biggest problem we currently face as a program.  We are no longer guard u.  This does not have to be a problem, as programs tend to ebb and shift over time, but it is a problem because we, ahem Jay, refuses to adjust our offensive game plan.  What you saw last night was a combination of untimely poor shooting, inexperience, awful defending but more glaringly a lack of creative penetrating guard play.  The one required component needed in our offense.

Since 2005, every single year without fail, we have had exactly 2 players who have played more than 40% of available minutes while also assisting (ARate) on at least 20% of their teammates baskets.

Name	Year	%Min	Arate	Torate
Foye	2005	79.9	21.5	15.9
Nardi	2005	77.4	20.0	22.5
Foye	2006	86.1	21.3	12.6
Lowry	2006	72.7	25.9	19.6
Scottie	2007	74.1	30.6	22.3
Nardi	2007	74.3	27.5	18.5
Scottie	2008	81.4	20.8	21.5
Fisher	2008	53.1	25.8	20.5
Scottie	2009	80.2	20.4	19.3
Fisher	2009	60.7	22.6	19.7
Scottie	2010	75.2	21.8	18.0
Fisher	2010	67.1	27.5	17.3
Fisher	2011	83.1	32.0	15.8
Wayns	2011	75.0	32.4	19.8
Wayns	2012	75.0	32.5	18.9
Johnson	2012	43.6	21.7	35.8
Arcidiacono	2013	81.8	31.1	23.4
Chennault	2013	43.0	18.6	10.7

Let’s take this one step further.  If we assume that 1 of these 2 players MUST be on the court at all times, we can then figure out the maximum % of minutes possible for these players to be on the court together.  The point is to illustrate that we need to creators on the court together a good chunk of the time for our offense to run efficiently.  Below is the graph which shows the possible % of minutes our 2 playmakers could have been on the floor together each year since ’05.

Look at 2012.  We could have played a total of ONLY 18.6% of minutes with two ball handlers on the floor.  Let me also take a moment to point out just how awful Johnson was last year; did you see that TORate from the earlier list?  It is a whole 12% points WORSE than the next guy, who unfortunately happens to be Arcidiacono.  Translation: Wayns was forced to create way too many shots and opportunities for his teammates while at the same time trying to create for himself because Johnson should be playing DIII.

Over the years, the beauty of our offense HAS been that we have had multiple ball handlers and creators on the court at the same time.  It is what has allowed to us play a rather loose and seemingly unorganized offensive game that at the same time has performed at an above average rate.  As this graph adequately illustrates, that is not the case anymore.  Currently, we have only ONE guy who can be labeled a creator and he is a true Freshmen.  I don’t think you need me to explain anything more.

Wait, what’s that you say?  What about Hilliard, he can play the point can’t he?  NO HE CAN’T, well at least he’s shown he doesn’t want to.  Last year Hilliard was third in ARate with 10.8.  This year, when we could use another creator, Hilliard currently ranks 6^th on the team.  Yeah that’s right, 6^th as he is only ahead of Ochefu, Yarou and Sutton and his ARate is down at 8.2.  It’s so low it’s insulting.  And I’m not even mentally prepared to talk about how bad Chennault is.  He stinks, end of story.  The guy played 75% of his teams minutes last year, took over 20% of the shots while he was on the floor, and shot 43% from 2 and 25% from 3.  Even Cheek was better than that.

I’m at a loss for any positive takeaways from this post or from the game last night.  However, I do believe Hilliard CAN be an OK creative ball handler, but either Jay doesn’t want him to or he doesn’t want to.  At the end of the day, we have to do something different if we are going to have only one creator, and so far Jay has not been able to answer that question.  Let’s hope he can because frankly, I can’t keep caring this much when we suck so badly.