bdance

I like Farrell, but I think Esho is going to end up the better player. As strong as Sean Carter finished last season, a healthy Lalanne is an upgrade. And Sampson Carter will be back. This team on paper is shaping up to be noticeably stronger than last seasons. Anything less than the Big Dance is going to be a disappointment, and the questions about Kellogg will reappear. He gave the keys to Chaz, and it worked. Probably saved his job. But to take it to the next level he's got to coach better than what we've seen so far.

res

A long time ago there used to be a poster named bdance whose contributions were nearly legendary. I haven't seen him for a long time. Might you be related to him?


(I guess this is all the evidence we need that the UMass fans really are optimistic this year. I expect a post from the Chief soon.)

agoo101284

There's Tyrone Garland. Not really sure where Barley came from.

WH

J Watters

I’ll break down my responses in several posts.

I am sure I am underestimating VCU and Butler. Less familiarity. I actually saw both teams at least five times last year – VCU probably more – but I wasn’t paying close attention like I would an A-10 team. I didn’t think these teams would be in the A-10 this year!

By the same token, I think VCU and Butler fans are underestimating A-10 teams. Again, lack of familiarity.

I’ve been getting up to speed on VCU and Butler over the past week. I’ve read all of last year’s game summaries in order, player bios, latest news, stats, sketches of new recruits, etc.

Still, these teams are admittedly hard to judge. I am making a semi-educated guess.

So naturally I resort to some formulas, based on more than 30 years of following the A-10. These formulus are, well, formulus, and they are not always an accurate predictor.

The best A-10 teams:

*Have at least five and preferably six “core” players with two or three years of extensive playing time.

*Have at least one very good bigman.

*Have at least three very good wing players, two of whom can shoot the treyball. Good three-point shooting is almost always a must.

*Have one of the top point guards in the league.

*Have the ability to score in the halfcourt when the game slows down. A-10 teams that run and gun have rarely had sustained success at the highest levels. The best teams slow the game down against such foes and pound them with a halfcourt game.

*Have the ability to play lockdown defense.

There are exceptions, of course. Bonaventure won the league tournament last year with a dominant center and strong frontcourt, even though the backcourt was ordinary at best. And Temple under Dunphy has done exceedingly well without a system that requires a true point guard.

All in all, though, guard play is the decider. I always rate teams with three very good guards high because teams with that kind of talent and experience in the backcourt are overwhelmingly successful in the A-10. That’s no surprise in a league in which good bigmen are less plentiful.

I am sure this dovetails with VCU’s experience in the Colonial, btw.

Not sure about Butler. My sense is the Dogs have been bigger and more talented in the frontcourt than most teams it played in the Horizon. Obviously, though, its guard play has also been a differentiator.

Knobby

I am not a Farrell fan by and large. He plays solid D but Umass is playing 4 on 5 when he is on the floor on offense. That being said I was never really thirilled with Sampson Carter's offense either. One could argue that Carter's offensive game was a derivative of that retarded offense they were running until last year and he was not around long enough to get into sync before he got hurt - So I will give him a pass for now.

Farrell on the other hand may be addition by subtraction. I think Esho has a much bigger upside and he made huge improvements as the season wore on. He is long, he has plenty of energy and he can play on both ends of the court effectively.

I still say the biggest question mark will be if Riley can get his head out of his arse and play at a consistent level. He showed flashes of brilliance at times and he showed flashes of the entire Steve Lappas era at times. Umass will be a solid team without contributions from him but if he can put it together, I think this team can challenge for the league championship. I will put our starting five and first off the bench with anyone in our league - the differentiator will be 7 through 9.

__________________
Well, we were smaller, but at least we were slower!

WH

I stand by my comments. Butler has only one frontcourt player 225 pounds or more who saw a lot of minutes last year - Smith. Marshall is somewhat undersized.

The A-10 is more physical than the Horizon, so I see a problem here unless Fromm surprisingly breaks out. Jones is a big for guard (225 lbs), and he will help, but Butler is fairly thin based on the roster weights I see.

By the way, Smith had 27 blocks last season. That would have placed him outside the top 10 in the league. And Butler as a team would have finished 9th.

I am aware of Clarke. Not sure he is a better shooter than Brad Redford at Xavier, but yeah, he will help. Still, he has to work off a year of rust and he's kind of small. Like Redford he will need help getting shots off.

Butler still needs one or two more guys to find the range. Many young players do that in their second year, so it could easily happen.

If Butler doesnt have a problem with size and shooting, as you suggest, then I agree: The b-dogs will not finish 10th.

I suspect the things I flagged will be a problem, however. We'll see.

WH

bdance and knobby:

I see Farrell more as a guard than a forward. Not the case with Esho.

Farrell can back up both guard positions. I see his absence - and loss of his defensive ability - as a setback. Besides inconsistent shooting, Riley is an erratic defender. It's too much to expect Morgan to play both guard positions every game all season.

Jonathan Watters

You aren't sure the guy who averaged 15+ ppg in the SEC and made 42% of his 3's despite being the constant focus of every defense he went up against the entire season is a better shooter than Brad Redford?

That says everything that needs to be said about your perspective on Butler.

And I have no idea why you object to Kameron Woods being one of the top per minute shot blockers in the A-10 by going with his total number of blocked shots. The guy was a freshman, rail thin, and unless I missed somebody has the 3rd highest block rate of any returning player in the conference.

Are you going to dock Woods for moving up a level but discount Clarke's moving down?

WH

VCU does do a surprisingly good job of keeping control of the ball despite the pace the play. I suspect the numbers were partly inflated by the competition, but I am sure the Rams will have a strongly positive A/T ratio in the A-10.

I think Witchita State’s Greg Marshall is one of the best coaches in the country, so I have much respect. Yet Temple beat WSU in the regular season (OT) and I have no doubt that Bonaventure could have beaten the Shockers in the tourney. Third seed Fla State, after all, barely got past the Bonnies. SBU was terrific at year end – I saw their last six games and have an inkling.

VCU may very well finish higher. Only a game or two will likely separate the top five teams. However, I think UMass, SJU and SLU have more overall talent and experience. Temple has a great system and tends to excel against uptempo teams like VCU.

That said, VCU has the advantage of a terrific coach and system. I could see VCU surpassing UMass because of Smart. Martelli at SJU, however, is a tremendous coach when he has players. Little or no advantage for VCU there.

VCU might have more overall talent than Temple, but the Owls have the best coach in the league, in my view. I will take Smart in the postseason but Dunphy is a maestro in the regular season. Temple has gone 13-3, 14-2, 14-2, 11-5 and 11-5 in A-10 regular season play in the past five years.

I’ll put the team that’s actually done it in the A-10 ahead of the newcomer. Call it my A-10 bias.

WH

My, you sure do seem to be a surly type, Jonathan Watters. Something you ate for breakfast?

Clarke obviously is a great shooter – but so is Redford. The kid shot 43% and 45% on treys in his first two years – before a severe knee injury - with most of them at least 25 feet away. Teams often sent two defenders at him because he was so dangerous, so Redford often shot from way deep.

Redford did fall off as a junior, but I’d take him even odds against anyone in the country in a game of horse.

Is Clarke a better player? Yes. He’s bigger and stronger and that largely explains the difference.

No objections on Woods, but guys who are 6-8 and barely 200 pounds usually struggle in the A-10. They wear down over the season pushing and getting pushed against by more muscular players.

BTW, his 39 blocks still would have kept him out of the top 10 in the A-10 last year. I am sure he will get better and prove to be a good shotblocker in the A-10 too. More minutes will see to that. The A-10 often has lots of good shotblockers, though.

Lots of fans get offended by my remarks, but no offense is intended. I may be wrong, and often am, but I try to be civil and base my opinions on sound reasoning.

Reminder, I am at a handicapp with Butler and VCU. So are you concerning A-10 teams. I know them much better than you do.

hawkhill

Its all about winning on the road in the a-10. VCU's 1st game is at Bonnies 1/12 which is one of the most notorious home courts (although you may or may not get the Bonnie students close to the end of break). That will be an education after only having to go to places the DAC and Carpenter center in your previous life. I could definitely see you running the table at home this year (been to your place- tough place to play) but every one of your away games (save Duquesne) will be a stiff test. Gotta get to around 12 W's in the a-10.
And by the way, for many years(20) this WH guy has provided an amazingly detailed and accurate preview of the a-10, along with levelheaded analysis thoroughout the season. (Imagine how hard levelheadedness is to find on here!)
We think he changed water into wine at some point too.
Just sayin'

Jonathan Watters

Actually, if Clarke is bigger or more athletic than Redford it isn't by much. Which should start to really scare you, as you put his his SEC production into context. John Jenkins was the best shooter in the country last year, but he wasn't even the best shooter in his own conference until Clarke transferred.

Say what you want about Redford, the guy is a roleplayer that if defenses focus on means his star teammates are getting opportunities. His largest value is as a decoy, even at the A-10 level. Clarke on the other hand was a featured weapon. He did it against better defenses, in much higher volume, and still managed to shoot a higher percentage.

DistrictBaller

We led the country in turnover margin at +6.5 (the next closest was Syracuse at 5.5). We also led the country in both steals (381), steals per game (10.6), turnover rate (27.3%), steal percentage (16.0%), as well as turnovers per game at 17.9. Two of our back court players (Darius Theus- starting PG and Briante Weber- bench spark plug) combined to form the most potent theft tandem in the country with 71 and 77 steals respectively. The combined 148 steals are more than any other duo in the country. As good as we are forcing the other team into miscues, we were very proficient in keeping the ball given our style of play.

Does the CAA help buoy those numbers? Perhaps, but we were just fine against non-conference competition once our role players and freshmen started to get acclimated. After the first month (November 30th onwards) VCU was 26-4 with the 4 losses coming by a combined 11 points, 3 of which were 1 possession games. Let's look at the non-conference in those games against good teams or teams from the A-10 or comparable pseudo mid-major or higher leagues and we'll use the transitive property here where it applies since that is apparently a valid tool for comparing the quality of teams.

-a 23-point win over 22-win South Florida(beat Temple by 14 in NCAA second round) that won 2 games in the NCAA's where we racked up 11 steals and 12 assists against 8 turnovers

-a 15-point win in a de facto road game at the Verizon Center against George Washington where we forced 17 turnovers, 8 steals while dishing out 14 assists and turning over the ball 9 times.

-a 22 point win over Richmond (beat Temple by 11, St. Joe's by 3, La Salle by 2, and Dayton by 11) in which we forced 16 turnovers and had 12 steals while turning the ball over only 7 times ourselves

-a 19 point win over UAB where we forced 22 turnovers, had 14 steals, while dishing out 18 assists to 13 turnovers

-a 1 point win over a 22-win Akron NIT team where we forced 20 turnovers and 12 steals while dishing out 13 assists to 13 turnovers

-a 9 point win over a 20-win Northern Iowa team (beat St. Joe's by 2 in the NIT @ St. Joe's) where we forced 18 turnovers and 12 steals while dishing out 17 assists to 11 turnovers.

I don't know how all this conjecture is supposed to mean any more than the transitive properties I pointed out for the games VCU won in our non-conference schedule. This means nothing other than that Temple and Wichita State were 2 evenly matched teams in a single match-up on a given day.

I also think it's fair to note that VCU led the vast majority of the game until the final minute against a 27-win Big 10 team in Indiana that is preseason top 5 this year. We forced 22 turnovers (we had 11) and 10 steals against a team that was likely better than anyone in the A-10. Again to be fair that was just one game on a given night. However the numbers over several different games bear out that VCU has been good at taking care of the ball and great at forcing teams into turnovers regardless of the level of competition.

We get both St. Joes and UMass at home. We rarely lose in that building regardless of whether the team is high, mid, or low-major. If these games were on the road I'd be more inclined to agree with you. I agree that SLU and Temple on the road are tough games and have said as much in my previous posts.

As for the A-10 bias, that's fair, we all have our own and I can understand that we'd have some skepticism coming in. That does take away from the objectivity of your analysis a bit, but then when it comes to fan-based predictions, no one is ever truly objective.

__________________
"We will wreak havoc on our opponent's psyche and plan of attack."
- VCU Head Coach Shaka Smart

College Hoops

I appreciate the time and effort WH put into the original post Whether you agree with him or not he provided the reasoning behind his picks. Short of being an insider with every program in the conference, its impossible to know how well guys look in the pick-up and summer league games, nor how they've recovered from an injury. I haven't looked at the respective home/away conference games of each school, but District Baller makes a good point that VCU has home games against some of the presumed better conference foes. In line with that, I think a school like Dayton which plays Xavier twice probably has it a bit easier now with what has transpired at X then was anticipated when the schedules were released.

DistrictBaller

WH, please don't interpret my posts as disrespect. I really appreciate your posts and the discussion they stimulate. I'm just presenting my viewpoint as an admittedly biased fan.

College Hoops, I also think getting X on the road this year is not the same beast it has been in previous years. Sure we could lose the game, but it would be an upset. I think every road game save SLU and Temple, VCU is the better team with better talent and I don't think that's a stretch at all to state that. Whether we can handle the road venues or not is another thing entirely, and something no one can predict because no one has all the variables. VCU is a new commodity in this league.

While I appreciate that road venues are tough to play in the A-10, using the DAC (I have no idea what or where the Carpenter Center is) as the kind of arena we play and comparing it to A-10 venues to say we're in for 'education' is a little disingenuous.

We play in packed houses at a first-class arena by any standard in the Ted Constant Center at ODU every year. Games at George Mason's 10,000 seat Patriot Center are also pretty heated. To be sure there are dumps all over the CAA, but that doesn't mean we don't know what it is to play in tough road venues. The DAC is an awful venue, but the students are right on top of you and it's easy to get hot and loud in there. We played and beat Wichita State at the 10,500+ seat Koch arena in 2011 which is sold out every game and has one of the best mid-major fan bases and atmospheres in the country. We play at the Robins Center every other year and have won 3 out of the last 5 match ups there. We played and beat George Washington at the Smith Center and Saint Louis at Chaifetz in 2010.

That's not to say we're going to win these games, but we know what tough road games and atmosphere are like. I'm not going to be surprised if we lose a couple of games our fans don't expect us to lose on paper, that happens and we're taking a step up in competition so it's even more likely. At the same time, I think we have a better team than many give us credit for.

__________________
"We will wreak havoc on our opponent's psyche and plan of attack."
- VCU Head Coach Shaka Smart