Making a Beilein to Morgantown
12.30.04
West Virginia knocked off George Washington last night in an Atlantic-10 throwback game to remain in the unbeaten club, whose numbers dropped to ten with Hawaii's heartbreaking loss at Fresno State. The 9-0 start is the best for the Mountaineers since the Jerry West era. While the game at WVU Coliseum was sold out, one can conclude basketball has not quite arrived in Morgantown because no couches were burned in celebration.
WVU graduated to the Big East in the 1995 but they've never had much success there, with their only tourney bid coming in 1998 as a 10 seed. Things are changing under third-year head coach John Beilein though, and the Big East is more wide open than people expected this season. UConn has struggled with, or in one case been beaten by, some questionable competition. Syracuse and Pitt figure to finish 1-2 in some order, but then you have WVU fighting it out with UConn, Boston College (the nation's luckiest team so far), and possibly Villanova and Providence in the second tier of the Big East.
The Mountaineers were on my preseason list of six darkhorse teams that didn't receive any votes in the preseason polls. So far they're the only ones to do anything to deserve top 25 consideration. So I think I have found a team to get obsessed over. D'Or Fischer, you da man!
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I would be delinquent this morning if I didn't call out the Furman Paladins. If you're beating someone 69-8 at the half, chances are that's a game that shouldn't be on the schedule. Or at least be like Virginia and make it an exhibition.
Game Diary: Gonzaga/Oklahoma State
12.28.04
Gonzaga and Oklahoma State square off in the second game of the "All College Classic."
1st half
14:41 - Gonzaga 17, OSU 10. Gonzaga has scored on every possession so far and is on pace to score about 130 points. So much for my theory that they couldn't win the game by scoring at will as they did against Washington. The Cowboys have been settling for threes having already attempted four. Their game is predicated on slashing to hole, getting layups and supplementing that with some John Lucas and Daniel Bobik jumpers.
10:35 - Gonzaga 26, OSU 15. Ronny Turiaf heads to the bench at the 14 minute mark bothered by an ankle sprain. His replacement, JP Batista scores on the Zags next two possessions. It's not until the 12:40 mark that OSU makes its first stop on Gonzaga. The Cowboys are still settling for the outside shot too often. OSU is shooting just 33% so far.
7:20 - Gonzaga 29, OSU 24. Turiaf goes down in pain at 8:46 and appears done for good tonight. The officials have shown that they will let the players play, and this has favored OSU over the last few minutes. Eleven of OSU's 21 field goal attempts have been from three, a distribution Mark Few has to like. ESPN goes to break with a shot of Turiaf walking behind the Gonzaga bench, so he may try to come back after all.
3:34 - Gonzaga 39, OSU 33. How much longer is Eddie Sutton going to wait to start JamesOn Curry? The Cowboys have been more productive tonight with Curry in and Terrence Crawford on the bench.
Halftime - Gonzaga 48, OSU 39. Wow. Gonzaga almost puts up half-a-hundred on OSU with Turiaf only playing 6-8 minutes. Just more fuel to the notion that at Gonzaga, it's as much about the system as it is about the players. One interesting thing about the Zags - apparently they have no backup for point guard Derek Raivio.
OSU finishes the half shooting 4-16 from three and 13-32 overall for 40%. Gonzaga on the other hand has shot 4-6 from three and 20-31 overall for 61%. The Zags do everything well offensively: shoot well, shoot well from three, get to the line, get offensive rebounds, and they don't turn it over much.
There have been 34 possessions in the first half, so this game is following the form of the Gonzaga/Washington game with the offenses dominating - but especially the Zags offense. Eddie Sutton made his players practice in football pads after an early loss to BYU last season when he was displeased with the defensive effort. I wonder if he still has those pads handy.
2nd half
15:14 - Gonzaga 57, OSU 43. I said this morning that this game had blowout potential, and thankfully I didn't mention which team would win big. Of course, I meant OSU, but this game game is teetering on the brink of a runaway in favor of Gonzaga. Turiaf starts the second half, and Gonzaga scores on their first four possessions. Without Turiaf, the Zags offense is great. With him, it's explosive. OSU is going to be seeing a lot of zone from upcoming opponents given how poor they've looked against Syracuse and tonight.
13:46 - Gonzaga 57, OSU 47. A couple of stops by the Cowboys and OSU is showing signs of life. It helps that Turiaf is back on the bench after picking up his fourth foul crashing the offensive boards.
10:38 - Gonzaga 65, OSU 55. Turiaf is still on the bench, but it doesn't matter. JP Batista is a Walton-esque nine of nine from the field in Turiaf's absence. OSU is staying within shouting distance mainly with threes. Stephen Graham hits his second of the game (and second of the season), followed by a Daniel Bobik bomb. Bobik is a guy that should be shooting them and he has just been cold.
7:38 - Gonzaga 65, OSU 62. Points are suddenly at a premium, especially for Gonzaga who's scored only eight in the last eight minutes. Turiaf comes back in at 8:04. The game has devolved into a series a wrestling matches inside, and the officials have lost control to a certain extent.
3:54 - Gonzaga 73, OSU 71. OSU continues to be content to jack up threes in the half court set. Stephen Graham connects at 6:30 and 5:50 to keep Gonzaga from getting too much of a working margin. He had not made a single three coming into this contest and now has four. One thing about Gonzaga's defense: they are tough in the half-court, but they give up a lot of transition opportunities. That's the only reason OSU is still in the game. Gonzaga is willing to crash the offensive boards and trade put-backs for a few layups on the other end.
Final - Gonzaga 78, OSU 75. OSU ties it a couple of times, once at 3:26 and again at 1:52, but on both occasions Gonzaga makes a hoop on the next possession, first by Turiaf, then by Morrison. OSU finishes with 30 three point attempts, easily a season-high. By contrast, Gonzaga finishes with nine attempts. I believe Raivio played all 40 minutes. The Zags have made a convincing case to all but the most stubborn skeptics that they are the real deal. If Raivio stays healthy, they're a legit top ten team. They'll be favored big-time in every remaining game on the schedule.
Flex-ibility
I'd like to start today by giving credit to the Longwood Lancers. Coach Mike Gillian (friend of this blog) certainly got some mileage out of the game against the nation's #1 with a pregame feature on espn.com and an appearance on Cold Pizza. Then the 1-12 Lancers did something that neither Wake Forest nor Gonzaga could do - play a reasonably competitive game against Illinois for 30 minutes, eventually losing 105-79. Priceless trivia tidbit: Longwood and Delaware State are the only teams to shoot better than 50% against Illinois so far. That's the same Delaware State squad that missed its first 16 shots against Northwestern last night, in a 50-43 loss.
I promised some comments on the national efficiency stats I posted yesterday. One thing that jumped out at me involves the participants in the big game tonight, the aforementioned Gonzaga at Oklahoma State (correction: game is at Oklahoma City). It's Mark Few's unstoppable flex offense against Eddie Sutton's impenetrable Iba-style defense. Gonzaga is #1 in adjusted offensive efficiency (OE), having previously torched Georgia Tech's #1 ranked defense.
Over the summer, I declared Gonzaga the most underrated team, or something to that effect, in Andy Katz's preseason top 50. The basis was that even though they lost some guys, including a talented point guard, the Gonzaga offense is as efficient as they come. I calculated efficiency stats for both 2002 and 2004 (I don't know what I was doing in 2003), and Gonzaga led the nation both years.
Two years is a small sample, but I think it says something when a team performs well in the same area with somewhat different personnel. It says something about the system. And that system is working again. With the West Coast Conference schedule coming up, you can expect Gonzaga to finish the season #1 on the raw side of the OE stats again. That fact alone makes the price of $42.95 for tapes of Mark Few explaining his system seem like a bargain.
However...
The Gonzaga defense has been a major disappointment so far. It's weaker than anyone could have expected, ranking dead last among WCC teams. They have a couple of timely wins over highly ranked teams in Georgia Tech and Washington. But if they continue to give up points at the rate they have, then we have seen Gonzaga at their peak. They gave up over a point per possession (roughly the national average) to offensive lightweights Portland State (#203 adjusted OE), Idaho (#229), and Eastern Washington (#271).
They did manage put the clamps on Georgia Tech pretty well, holding them to 40% shooting. Though maybe the travel to Las Vegas and late game time for Georgia Tech had something to do with it, because that performance doesn't fit in with the rest of Gonzaga's portfolio. Gonzaga was able to bully Washington with its offense, beating the Huskies even while allowing them to shoot 50% from both two and three point range. That option won't be available tonight. OSU won't let the 'Zags make 59% of their shots as they did against Washington, even if it means Eddie Sutton has to come on the floor and take a couple of charges himself.
So based on all of this info, we should expect (1) tonight's game will be more high scoring that the Oklahoma State/Syracuse game (74-60 on December 7th) and (2) this game has blowout potential.
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