WH

Thanks for enlightening me about viewing the whole picture, J-Watters. My brain sometimes gets too cooped up in that small cranial compartment in my head.

My more rounded view is this. When you finish first in the league in FG% defense, you are playing pretty damned good defense!

Nor can that stat be solely attributed to having a good shotblocker. After all, Richmond's Darrius Garrett (3.3 bpg) finished just behind CJ Aikin (3.5 bpg) in blocks, but Richmond finished NINTH in FG% defense. Hot damn.

Maybe, just maybe, SJU's guards are pretty good at defense. Not great, mind you, but decent enough. And I suspect they will get better. Galloway, a superb athlete, can play really good defense and Jones, while no more than above average, is certainly a ball-hawking threat. Chris Wilson wasn't half bad as a frosh and has the tools to get much better a second-year player.

SJU is not a gambling team on defense. That's generally been the case under Martelli. What surprised me last year is how much he let power forward Halil Kanacevic handle the ball. He led the team with 100 Tos and almost single-handedly accounted for SJU's negative A/T ratio. I suspect he won't be allowed to turn the ball over quite as much this season.

In any case, your are still right. Stats don't tell the whole story. Yet thine own eyes saw the Hawks about 15 times last year and I did witness more than a smattering of good defense, especially on Hawk Hill,

WH

Tman, too many unknowns and lack of experience for me to put Dayton higher.

Frontcourt is solid, not great. Benson is coming off a big injury and Kavanaugh, while a favorite of mine, is no star. Blue-collar type, as you know. I like Gavrilovic - he could have a breakout year - and Oliver is a good complementary small forward.

But where is the perimeter scoring going to come from? Dilliard is just a so-so treyballer and there's no proven shooters on the roster. Sanford could be one of those guys but Miller has to find another shooter or two.

The good thing is that those unknowns have the potential to be answered. We'll see. Dayton has a solid base on which to build, but does Miller get the frame up this season?

IMO, Dilliard is one of the top three point guards in the league. I'd probably take Tyreek Duren over anybody else, though Chaz Williams and Dilliard are just as good. They all play a bit differently and are required to do different things for their teams.

A great PG is not enough, though. Rashid Bey couldnt do it alone in his senior year after Yah Davis got ejected. And Bona has had a slew of fine guards whose load was too heavy to bear. It happens sometimes.

Jonathan Watters

I'll contend that a well-rounded view would amount to something along the lines of "when other teams struggle to score the on you, you are playing good defense". Applying this rule to St Joes and realizing that teams rarely struggled to score on the Hawks last year, I come to my conclusion. Dramatic and controversial, I know. I do see what you are getting at, but for the Hawks to become a good defensive team they need to allow dramatically less shot attempts. They will probably never defend the attempts they do allow much better than they did last season, other than contesting the 3 point shot a little better.

So the new well rounded argument is that there isn't a correlation between FG% defense and an elite shot blockers? I guess we just disagree on that front. The correlation is very clear. As far as Richmond goes, at least the statistical profile shows that Garrett's blocks didn't make much of an impact. Richmond was bad at everything, whereas St Joe's was actually pretty good at protecting the basket but clearly needs more aggressive defense from their guards.

Except that Jones did very little hawking of the ball last year, averaging just 1.2 steals in 36.5 minutes. Maybe Jones and Galloway are capable of being good defenders, but it doesn't change the situation they are in. I would argue that it has a lot to do with the rule that you yourself pointed out and I originally referred to. A successful A-10 team should have 3 wings, and St Joe's has a single undersized wing. Leading to...

He was also an inefficient shooter, but these types of things can happen when you are forced to play 3 big guys on the floor at the same time. You clearly state that to be successful an A-10 team needs 3 wings - Kanaevic as such a facilitator is a case of Martelli making do with what he's got, but the real solution would be to add another effective wing to the mix. That isn't likely to happen this year. So what they ought to do is at least figure out how to rebound the ball better if they have to stick with the big lineup.

DukesDan

I'll say it again. There is no way Duquesne is the worst team in this league.

They have a very good freshman class coming in and return a solid core of Sean Johnson, Jerry Jones, Andre Marhold. Watch out for Kadeem Pantophlet to become an excellent sharp shooter.

St. Bonaventure at 7 is very optimistic. The loss of Nicholson is huge. They are going to have to completely redefine their team.

__________________
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2012-2013 Locks of the Day TBA
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WH

J-Watters, you'll argue every which way till Sunday that the stats are wrong. If that's the case, everything is totally subjective and no one can prove anything.

Look, I saw the Hawks a lot more than you did last year and the stats bear out what I saw. The Hawks were a very good defense team, period. You can attack that assertion from any and every angle, but the stats do not bear out your main argument. All the if, buts and ands don't alter that underlying fact.

Next thing I know, you'll tell me a guy who hits 43% of his treys in his career really isn't a great shooter.

This bridge cannot be crossed, so I'll stay on my side of the Rhine and you can stay on yours. Maybe there's something to a Maginot line after all ...

WH

I'd be shocked if the Dukes finished higher than 12th or 13th. Rhody is the only team to which I think Duquesne is arguably superior. Even if the frosh are as good as advertised, there are a lot of experienced teams in the A-10.

WH

By the way, Martelli didn't actually play three big guys on the floor at the same all that much last season. In fact, Martelli spent part of the off-season trying to get CJ, Roberts and Halil more comfortable being on the floor at the same time.

When it comes to actually watching A-10 teams, I have a big advantage. Not so with VCU and Butler, but I freely admit such.

FlyingElvis

I also like Gavrilovic. He had a nice freshman season for a big at Dayton looking at it in light of our history. I think he has more upside than Kavanaugh because he has long arms and is much more difficult to block. Kavanaugh has lots of trouble against shot-blocking types.

Last year we were a really good 3pt shooting team as far as having multiple threats spaced around the perimeter. "Dillard penetrates, draws multiple defenders, and then kicks out for a wide open 3pt shot." That is how our offense ran last year. This year, I'm not sure what we have for 3pt shooting yet.

Last year we had nothing inside the paint with any athleticism. It hurt us a lot against specific types of teams, IMO. We are going to have athletic options inside this year, but I'm not sure how they stack up to A10 type competition just yet. Will Benson be the same? Not sure.

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"US Bank Arena can't be that bad"

anXUfan

Thank you so much for your informed analysis, WH.

That said, I promise you that by my willpower alone X finishes much better than 14th. Add coaching and talent and they may truly surprise.

Jonathan Watters

That the stats are wrong? The stats clearly state st Joseph's was a mediocre defensive team at best. That they got worse over the course of the year, significantly worse. Defense isn't fg%, defense is how many points you give up. You want to dock a group of inexperienced guards for not shooting well in the first half of the season, be my guest. But realize that even with the dramatic differential early in the year, the season stats say VCU was better at offense than St joes was at defense. By the end of the year, it wasnt even close. And i'm not arguing anything, I'm pointing to established fact. Not sure what you are arguing, really, other than coming up with increasingly illogical reasons for why VCU shouldn't be a favorite headed into the year.

e-parade

You also have to consider how many opportunities a team has to score. Fast paced teams cause more possessions per game, more possessions per game result in higher scores.

The percentage of those possessions that result in no points is a fairly good way to represent defensive efficiency.


This isn't a cut and dry measure by any means, but there really isn't a single measure you can use for it.

WH

I try to play nice, J-Watters, but I've wisely learned after years on this board who to tune in and who to tune out. You are a smart hoops fan, but this rather overlong debate has been revealing in other ways. Good luck to VCU or whatever team you root for. I will cheerfully leave it at that.

owlfan2272

Hope Temple/La Salle/St. Joes all finish that high as you predict WH. Would make for a very fun final year together in Philly.

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Temple Owls have won a lot.

Knobby

Uh oh- I think Muddy Waters and Johnny Watters may be related.....

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

Jonathan Watters

Defensive efficiency is absolutely cut and dry. It is how many points you allow per possession, and if you allow a high number of points per possession, it doesn't matter the reasons behind it. You aren't a good defensive team.

STJ's ability to defend the opportunities (not possessions, "opportunities", many stat goons refer to them as "plays")they gave their opponents was NCAA at large caliber. But they gave up so many extra opportunities per possession that their overall defense was quite a ways off from NIT caliber. In St Joes' case, % of possessions that result in points absolutely does not represent St Joes' ability to play defense, nor does it have much of a relevance to anything other than increasing the teams' upside should they figure out how to solve their other defensive issues.

A reasonable discussion about the prospects of STJ's 2013 season begins within the framework of their inability to force turnovers, protect the defensive glass, or defend the 3 point line. I guess if you want to say these things aren't defense I would suggest stopping for a second and considering what you are actually saying, but at the end of the day go ahead and shout it from the rooftops. It doesn't change the indisputable fact that they are issues and that is what I am attempting to discuss.

Not sure what the discussion is about if the goal of one side is to try and make these issues irrelevant.

It should also be noted that STJ's D absolutely tanked at the end of the season - over the last 10 games, they played defense at a level that would have ranked them in the bottom 100 teams in the entire country. It could be just a blip on the radar, but if I'm a STJ's fan or projecting big time improvement from the STJ's D this year, I make sure I understand where the change is coming from.