The untrained eye: Gonzaga vs. BYU
02.02.12
BYU beat Gonzaga 83-73 in an 82-possession game Thursday night. I was there. This is what I saw.
Saint Mary’s thanks you, Noah Hartsock
BYU forward Noah Hartsock’s 24 and 14 effort helped pin a second loss to Gonzaga’s conference record, and that combined with the Gaels’ surprisingly narrow home win over San Diego Thursday night puts SMC two games clear of Gonzaga for the WCC regular season title. Gonzaga still has a chance to win a share of its 12th consecutive WCC title by beating Saint Mary’s, but they need the Gaels to lose another game somewhere. That’s not impossible, though. (Remember last season?) The chance of getting the top seed is nearly out of the question, though, because Saint Mary’s will hold the tiebreaker by virtue of its sweep of the team that should be the conference’s third-place finisher, BYU. Nonetheless, let’s see how the Simulator sees things shaping up. Here are the chances it gives for getting the top-seed in the WCC tournament…
Saint Mary’s 95.5% Gonzaga 4.2% BYU 0.3%
And keep in mind the Simulator is pretty dumb since it assumes there’s an equal chance the tiebreaker will fall to Gonzaga or Saint Mary’s.
The Zags defensive supremacy will take an unfair hit
Coming into the game, Gonzaga not only led the WCC in defensive efficiency during conference play, they led the league in three of the four factors while ranking second in turnover percentage. Part of this is explained by having only played one game against Saint Mary’s or BYU, but the larger part of the explanation is that their defense is pretty solid. This game really didn’t change my mind about that, either.
Sure, Gonzaga gave up 83 points, but BYU had 82 offensive possessions. The half-court defense was still impressive considering the opponent had a decent offense and the game was on the road. The problem was on the other end, where 12 first-half steals by BYU led to 17 points, often of the fast-break variety. Those points should be blamed on the faults of the offense, and if you take those out of the equation, the Gonzaga defense did very well.
(By the way, kudos to the folks behind StatBroadcast, who have added possession count and four factors information to their in-game application. See the right side of the Home Stats view.)
You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take
And if you are Gonzaga shooting specialist Mathis Monninghoff, sometimes you take 100% of your team’s shots and miss them all. Monninghoff checked in with 11:33 to go in the first half and returned to the bench permanently with 9:53 left. In between he missed three three-pointers, representing all of his team’s attempts during that time. Oddly, in 1:40 of action, Monninghoff took the same number of shots as the Zags most-frequent per-minute shooter this season, Elias Harris, did in 21 minutes on the floor.
Frank Haith and coaching luck
02.01.12
I’m puzzled at the reaction to the closing moments of the Missouri/Texas game on Monday night, a game in which the Tigers won 67-66. For my taste, Missouri head coach Frank Haith is getting a little too much credit for the events of the final possession. For example, the reaction on twitter has almost universally praised Haith for throwing a zone defense at Texas after the Longhorns’ timeout with 27 seconds remaining. See also, this blurb from Andy Katz.
I suppose Haith deserves credit for throwing a zone at Texas out of the timeout prior to the game-deciding possession. But I’m really not sure. I mean, I have few reasons to make such a judgment, other than to say, “Missouri won, therefore Haith is brilliant!” However, unless Rick Barnes is lying, this move was anticipated. And besides, it’s not like it’s rare for a coach to change defenses out of a timeout late in the game.
Sure, the Longhorns’ offense was disrupted by the move, but then again, they ended up getting a pretty decent shot from Myck Kabongo, one on which he appeared to get fouled. Now, officials are not necessarily going to call fouls on the final possession using the same standard as the rest of the game, but I hope we can agree that Haith had no control over whether the whistle was blown is that situation. And I have a hard time heaping praise on a person based on an outcome that was out of the person’s control.
Had a foul been called and Texas gone on to win the game, I think it’s safe to say that few people would be praising Haith or calling for him to win coach of the year based on his final-possession strategy. In fact, I’m guessing they’d be talking about blowing a ten-point lead in the closing minutes and how Missouri is reeling, and perhaps that Haith has a less-than-stellar track record in close games during his career. That, too, would have been an overreaction. And just to be clear, the difference between these two extremes is an event that Haith had no influence on.
There’s no denying that Frank Haith has done a great job this season. There are few teams in the country better than Missouri right now, and I’d say that whether the Tigers had won or lost in Austin. Mizzou was primed to be very good, but there’s something to be said for not screwing that up as a new coach. Especially when the hire had little support among the fan base. However, let’s not anoint Frank Haith as the basketball version of Bill Belichick. Perhaps his move at the end of game was brilliant, but the outcome of the game was also influenced by random events out of Haith’s control. Giving him credit for the switch to zone is fine, but praising him for the outcome of the game is a bit much.
The untrained eye: Saint Mary’s vs. BYU
01.29.12
Saint Mary’s beat BYU 80-66 in a 71-possession game Saturday night. I was there. This is what I saw.
Randy Bennett’s track record on defending the three-point line is incredible.
For eight consecutive seasons, Saint Mary’s has finished in the top ten in three-point attempt defense. They’re on their way to a ninth consecutive season. I’m not sure why this stat doesn’t get more run, but the ratio of three-point percentage defense references to three-point attempt defense references is approximately 950:1 in the media, yet they’re equally important.
Sure, opponents convert threes at a decent rate against the Gaels (35.6% this season), but since they’re not taking that many three-pointers, it isn’t a big issue. Not that anybody is going to overcome a 23-point second-half deficit to Saint Mary’s anyway, but SMC’s ability to prevent three-point attempts makes it easier for them to protect a lead.
BYU normally takes a third of its shots from beyond the arc but in two games against Saint Mary’s just 20% of their shots have been threes, and the Cougars have been playing with a double-digit deficit for most of those 80 minutes. BYU has needed to shoot threes and they haven’t been able to do it. Kudos to Gaels’ head coach Randy Bennett, a man with an unwavering and yet largely unnoticed defensive strategy.
Saint Mary’s now roots for BYU
Here’s how things stand in Pool A of the WCC
St. Mary’s 3-0
Gonzaga 0-1
BYU 0-2
The Gaels will clinch Pool A, and essentially the top seed in the WCC tournament, should BYU be able to regroup and knock off Gonzaga Thursday night. Otherwise, despite being unbeaten in WCC action, they may need to fight off Gonzaga in Spokane on February 9 to finally break the Zags strangehold on WCC regular-season titles.
Officials: Can’t live with ‘em. Pass the beer nuts.
You are probably aware of the kerfuffle that took place earlier on Saturday when Karl Hess missed a blatant goaltend towards the end of the West Virginia/Syracuse. As is customary when these cases come up, Hess’s schedule was cited as a contributing factor to the missed call. Hess worked every day this past week except Friday. No doubt, a few days off here and there would make Hess a better official. However, officials are like people in any other profession in that some are better than others. Kendall Marshall is much more tired than Stilman White and the end of every North Carolina game, but that is hardly reason for Roy Williams to play Stilman White.
Where am I going with this? Well, the Saint Mary’s/BYU game was not an officiating masterpiece. In fairness, it would have been a challenging game even for the best officials. The home fans are going to have a beef with the officiating no matter what when the home team is down by 12 at the half in a big game. And for whatever reason, many of the fans in the Marriott Center were armed with projectiles which eventually forced the officials to call a technical on the crowd early in the second half. In addition, the game was extremely physical with 48 fouls called and there could have been 10 more.
That said, the game probably could have been handled better. Randy Bennett got a bizarre technical at one point while yelling instructions to his players. BYU head coach Dave Rose picked up his second technical in seven years on the job late in the game. If coaches could freely talk about officiating, I’m guessing neither of these two would have had flattering things to say about this game.
This season, the officials in this crew had worked 24, 27, and 27 games respectively; compared to the 57 that Hess has worked. Yet there were still knowledgeable people unhappy with the officiating. The simple fact is that we don’t know how fresh the officials were in this game – surely they’re like a lot of people in that they each have jobs that take up too much of their time. The time that this crew isn’t reffing, they are expending energy and losing sleep being lawyers or accountants or whatever, while Karl Hess’s crew is reffing games. That’s not to say the way officials are assigned games couldn’t be improved. But while simply asking the best officials to cut back on their schedule might feel good, it isn’t going to solve much.