(01-28-2022 10:52 AM)dan10 Wrote:  

(01-27-2022 09:24 PM)Hart Foundation Wrote:  Williams was very impressive and JMU had no match for him in the paint. So good that they sat Butler most of the time even though he is an all CAA player and a double double machine himself.

This is not that true. Butler has been hurt the better part of the past 2 going on 3 weeks. Our last game was his first appearance and he was very limited on his minutes. Coaches made it seem like he tweaked his injury in that game too. Drexel actually sent out that this whole weekend we would be without him and Okros. So Butler being dressed and even playing a few minutes last night was actually a surprise.

With that said, Williams has been amazing through this stretch and with the way he was playing last night, its an easy call to make to keep Butler on the bench. But to say Butler was benched because of Williams, is not actually true.

What was Butler’s injury? I didn’t notice any issues during the game.
Whatever it was, Spiker would have been a fool to take Williams’ minutes when he was significantly larger than JMU’s small front court players. It was a complete mismatch.

I went back and looked at Byington's teams since 2014 on KenPom, looking at overall ranking, offensive and defensive efficiency and tempo. His two best teams were his last two at GA Southern, no. 134 in 2020 and no. 103 in 2019. The rest of his teams at his prior stop were mainly in the 150 to 300 range. Given that overall ranking it's no secret why his teams never made the NIT or NCAA at GA Southern. What stood out to me in this exercise was that he changed how his teams played, starting in 2019. That's when he changed his tempo, as shown below:

2022 - 63
2021 - 36
2020 - 41
2019 - 14
2018 - 134
2017 - 155
2016 - 136
2015 - 228
2014 - 169

In other words, he saw substantial improvement -- to a point -- when he played with greater pace. The downside to that construction of a team, however, is that it limits its ceiling and I think we're seeing its negative impact, at least in part, defensively now. What I saw last night, certainly, was a total failure to rotate defensively as the ball went from side to side. The assistant coach admitted as much during the halftime interview.

If you examine a different analytic site, Bart Torvik, you can see the total failure of the team defensively (https://barttorvik.com/team.php?team=Jam...ear=2022):

Adj Eff - 299
eFG% - 331
OR% - 290
3P% - 259
2P% - 338
Block % - 327
TO% - 28 (very good at that, of course)

Fundamental breakdowns in defensive play, completely exacerbated by a total lack of size in terms of how the team is constructed. He's going to have to change his philosophy on that if he's going to get this thing turned around to the level we'd like to see. Good to know a 6-9 forward from DeMatha is slated to come on board.

Throw all that analytical stuff out the window and I knew in the first few minutes of the game last night that Drexel would win. Why? They simply have better talent. The CAA is still a better league than the Sun Belt, albeit slightly; and it still has good coaches up and down. I wouldn't be surprised if that center (Amari Williams?) transfers up after this season. Looks like a potential NBA player.

The wild thing is Williams hasn't been a force until the last two weeks. He was almost non existent last year and was being brought on slowly to start the year. Now he is blocking everything and providing offense with 2 of 3 MVP's on kenpom last few games.

I don't think playing fast necessarily means playing poor D. There are teams that play fast who have high level defensive efficiency. That being said allowing so many 3's to be taken against you are going to have some high variance results. There are lots of studies that 3 point defense has a lot of lottery component to it. The only way to defend 3's with consistency is to not allow them to be attempted. You get some rare teams like when Syracuse has great athletes (NOT this year) and have good 3 point defense despite the fact you are giving up a lot of attempts vs the zone.

The 3 point D vs Elon and Drexel in the 1H was very very poor. CofC was getting tons of great looks. Reyne Smith from CofC is mostly just a shooter at the moment and he somehow got off 11 3 pointers. Teams are going to be fortunate if they are hitting 50%+ no matter how you defend them but if you are giving up wide open look after wide open look with no one close to the shooter, I know which way the lottery is going to trend.

In conference teams are shooting 50% of their attempts from deep against JMU. Seeing how open some of these are there is something schematically wrong. JMU did a better job defending 3s in the 2H vs Drexel but was having to play a zone where all the components were pushed out on the 3 point line. That worked somewhat vs Drexel but they just started exposing the inside.

In conference play JMU is giving up over 1.15 pts a possession. That would put them in the bottom 10 of the country if extrapolated over the whole season. JMU is good at forcing turnovers but if teams dont turn it over they are absolutely punishing the nets. And giving up tons offensive rebounds.

I tend to give Byington the benefit of the doubt because he's gotten a lot of talented pieces into the fold and took over a complete rebuild situation. This was a total tear down when he arrived and he turned it interesting/competent almost immediately. Overall I think he's doing a good job despite the downturn. This is not an easy situation off a covid break and a season that kind of doesn't mean much. UVA was the season. That being said the defense has trended recently very poorly and I think the usual letting the guards eat and cause turnovers isn't going to work. Especially with the lack of depth currently. Can't hit them with waves if you only have 6-7.

What is wrong with Strickland? Saw nothing in the paper on him.

I agree that playing fast doesn't necessarily equate to bad D. My point was that he must have made a conscious decision to play with more pace and it also coincided with better overall results. JMU is still playing with pace, but the defense has now seemingly collapsed. Part of that could be that the team has sustained some attrition through injury and illness and some level of fatigue has set in. When a team is as small as JMU is, they're going to be vulnerable inside. That being said, they aren't making simple rotations defensively.

I haven't seen all the games this season, but I've been impressed generally with the caliber of CAA opponents, save Northeastern. W&M, Drexel and Hofstra all have quality rosters from the teams I've seen.

WM was tragic to start the year, they've been surprisingly decent in conference.

Strickland is injured but it wasn’t specified by coach. 2 games ago he played briefly and then was taken out. Coach said he is the toughest guy on the team, but Strickland indicated he couldn’t play when he came out.

Good News for JMU, Delaware may not have their big Painter tomorrow. He sprained his ankle last night. I’m not celebrating the injury, but it does help JMU in an area of weakness. JMU has some players out, Delaware has some players out.
Home game favors the Dukes and it is a must win for JMU to stay in the CAA race.

(01-28-2022 12:51 PM)Hart Foundation Wrote:  What was Butler’s injury? I didn’t notice any issues during the game.
Whatever it was, Spiker would have been a fool to take Williams’ minutes when he was significantly larger than JMU’s small front court players. It was a complete mismatch.

Sadly, the staff has ben completely tight-lipped on what his injury was/is. I think I may have heard a core injury at some point. When we came out of our covid pause we assumed it was covid related. Then he bowed out after like 5 minutes and missed over a week. Our last game before this was his first back and he played I think 10 minutes against Elon and was similar last night, despite the press release earlier in the day stating he would be out all weekend. So something is bothering him, hard to say what it is. Its been very Belichick-ean, which is frustrating.

But yes in that time frame Amari Williams has taken crazy strides forward and helped ease missing Butler. He certainly is not making Spiker's job easy for minutes once Butler is back to full health