Providence Game Thread II

[Venturajay]

Stating the obvious, two issues with this squad - Defense, and closing out games.

It is a long year, go JAYS

[Realhoops]

Before the Butler game I would have favored the Jays to win every remaining game except UConn at home, and would have felt like we had a pretty solid shot in that one. I feared the worst at Providence after the Butler game.

Now I look at the schedule and I only feel even reasonably confident that we should "expect" to win the home game against Georgetown next week. I would think the Jays actually do win a number of the other games -- but just in isolation based on how things have looked these last couple of games, I can't imagine much confidence to EXPECT wins in any other specific individual games.

At X? Tough environment and a team that is, imo, better than Providence. Tough one to expect a win.
Georgetown -- God help this place if they blow that one.
At Butler? They beat us on our floor and Hinkle has never been a kind place for our shooters. Tough one to expect a win.
UConn? Buckle up.
At St. John's? In the Garden? Certainly won't be easy. Tough to expect a win.
Seton Hall? Remember that triple overtime battle? Don't really expect much less than a battle like that here, either.
Marquette? See UConn. And it's Senior Day, unfortunately.
At Nova? On their senior day? With the trouble we have dealing with Dixon? Tough one to expect a win.

Honestly won't be shocked if the Jays go 6-2 or go 1-7 or anything else at this point. Wednesday night in the BET is very much on the table right now, as is second or third place. For the NCAA, it feels like anywhere from 7-10 seed is very much on the table, as is possibly getting back into the 3-4 range.

I think teams have absolutely figured out how to deal with the drop coverage on defense, and are starting to exploit it. At some point you just can't keep trying to chalk the problems up to some kind of insane shooting -- teams know exactly what we're going to give them and they are executing to take advantage of it, as well-coached teams will do. And we are built to have no other real option.

[Angry Dan]

Before the Butler game I would have favored the Jays to win every remaining game except UConn at home, and would have felt like we had a pretty solid shot in that one. I feared the worst at Providence after the Butler game.

Now I look at the schedule and I only feel even reasonably confident that we should "expect" to win the home game against Georgetown next week. I would think the Jays actually do win a number of the other games -- but just in isolation based on how things have looked these last couple of games, I can't imagine much confidence to EXPECT wins in any other specific individual games.

At X? Tough environment and a team that is, imo, better than Providence. Tough one to expect a win.
Georgetown -- God help this place if they blow that one.
At Butler? They beat us on our floor and Hinkle has never been a kind place for our shooters. Tough one to expect a win.
UConn? Buckle up.
At St. John's? In the Garden? Certainly won't be easy. Tough to expect a win.
Seton Hall? Remember that triple overtime battle? Don't really expect much less than a battle like that here, either.
Marquette? See UConn. And it's Senior Day, unfortunately.
At Nova? On their senior day? With the trouble we have dealing with Dixon? Tough one to expect a win.

Honestly won't be shocked if the Jays go 6-2 or go 1-7 or anything else at this point. Wednesday night in the BET is very much on the table right now, as is second or third place. For the NCAA, it feels like anywhere from 7-10 seed is very much on the table, as is possibly getting back into the 3-4 range.

I think teams have absolutely figured out how to deal with the drop coverage on defense, and are starting to exploit it. At some point you just can't keep trying to chalk the problems up to some kind of insane shooting -- teams know exactly what we're going to give them and they are executing to take advantage of it, as well-coached teams will do. And we are built to have no other real option.

+1

Could not agree more

[SeattleJay]

As I get older, and watch the game evolve, I believe the 2 most important factors are offensive rebounding differential and turnover differential. These are 2 things that frequently stand out in our losses.

The margins in these 2 areas against PC were not as horrific as some games. I think there was a differential of approximately 8 on the offensive boards and 4 on turnovers. That means that PC had 12 more possessions. Even at a 40% rate on only 2 pointers, that means that we are 10 points in the hole.

In this day and age, when lots of teams have guys that can shoot the 3, it’s really hard to make up that difference on shooting (remembering that shooting involves the skill of shooting the ball but also influenced by a good or bad defense)

I think it’s harder to improve on turnovers than rebounding. Ergo, I agree that we need fewer minutes with both Bello and Ashworth on the floor simultaneously and get someone on the floor who will get us some gosh darned offensive rebounds and prevent offensive rebounds by the opposing team.

The BE is a rugged game. It is frequently referreed ruggedly. It is hard to win by outshooting your opponents.

Miller, no doubt, is a great shooter and helps space the floor. He has a very bright future. However, he is not getting shots and not getting rebounds right now.

Please get someone on the floor that can rebound the ball.

[Trifecta]

Huge shout out to Jaden Green. He was really good on both ends in the very limited time he got. His reward of course was to be benched and never see the floor again, but that’s Mac and the bench.

I won’t be surprised to see him and Ditzler both go somewhere else and have massive seasons and careers elsewhere. Even when you show that you deserve to be on the floor, we keep you on the bench and then get sad that everybody has no legs and comes up short repeatedly down the stretch in games.

Just curious as to what you've seen from Dotzler to make you think he deserves to be on the floor right now?

[jayc13]

As I get older, and watch the game evolve, I believe the 2 most important factors are offensive rebounding differential and turnover differential. These are 2 things that frequently stand out in our losses.

The margins in these 2 areas against PC were not as horrific as some games. I think there was a differential of approximately 8 on the offensive boards and 4 on turnovers. That means that PC had 12 more possessions. Even at a 40% rate on only 2 pointers, that means that we are 10 points in the hole.

In this day and age, when lots of teams have guys that can shoot the 3, it’s really hard to make up that difference on shooting (remembering that shooting involves the skill of shooting the ball but also influenced by a good or bad defense)

I think it’s harder to improve on turnovers than rebounding. Ergo, I agree that we need fewer minutes with both Bello and Ashworth on the floor simultaneously and get someone on the floor who will get us some gosh darned offensive rebounds and prevent offensive rebounds by the opposing team.

The BE is a rugged game. It is frequently referreed ruggedly. It is hard to win by outshooting your opponents.

Miller, no doubt, is a great shooter and helps space the floor. He has a very bright future. However, he is not getting shots and not getting rebounds right now.

Please get someone on the floor that can rebound the ball.

My thoughts as well. It's amazing the last 2 games were close and easily winnable. And why I have lowered my expectations going forward.

[Angry Dan]

Last night on the Twitter Fanta was applauding the decision by the officials to “let them play”. That may not be right but it’s a reality. Only super obvious calls are going to be made in this league. So we need to prepare for that.

We also need to clean up the turnovers and improve our passing. A good passing team can overcome physical defense. Just watch the last game between Iowa State and Oklahoma. The Cyclones play as physical as anyone. Oklahoma had great ball movement against them and won.

We also need to recognize that our margin of error is small. Even though we are high octane on offense we need to limit mistakes.

[Chicagojayfan]

Before the Butler game I would have favored the Jays to win every remaining game except UConn at home, and would have felt like we had a pretty solid shot in that one. I feared the worst at Providence after the Butler game.

Now I look at the schedule and I only feel even reasonably confident that we should "expect" to win the home game against Georgetown next week. I would think the Jays actually do win a number of the other games -- but just in isolation based on how things have looked these last couple of games, I can't imagine much confidence to EXPECT wins in any other specific individual games.

At X? Tough environment and a team that is, imo, better than Providence. Tough one to expect a win.
Georgetown -- God help this place if they blow that one.
At Butler? They beat us on our floor and Hinkle has never been a kind place for our shooters. Tough one to expect a win.
UConn? Buckle up.
At St. John's? In the Garden? Certainly won't be easy. Tough to expect a win.
Seton Hall? Remember that triple overtime battle? Don't really expect much less than a battle like that here, either.
Marquette? See UConn. And it's Senior Day, unfortunately.
At Nova? On their senior day? With the trouble we have dealing with Dixon? Tough one to expect a win.

Honestly won't be shocked if the Jays go 6-2 or go 1-7 or anything else at this point. Wednesday night in the BET is very much on the table right now, as is second or third place. For the NCAA, it feels like anywhere from 7-10 seed is very much on the table, as is possibly getting back into the 3-4 range.

I think teams have absolutely figured out how to deal with the drop coverage on defense, and are starting to exploit it. At some point you just can't keep trying to chalk the problems up to some kind of insane shooting -- teams know exactly what we're going to give them and they are executing to take advantage of it, as well-coached teams will do. And we are built to have no other real option.

Agree that we don't know what we're going to get at this point, but disagree on teams having figured out the drop coverage. Teams have had varied level of success this year, but I think we'll get better results in the next few games (although Xavier typically scores on us- even last year)

People need to remember the BE is a tough conference and even last year we went into the NCAA tourney having gone 4-4 in our last 8 conference games (including a 1-3 stretch with a loss to Providence that looked a bit like our loss last night). We also got blasted on defense by Nova on the road and Xavier in the BE Tourney (defensive ratings 125.4 and 115.5).. kinda feels like us versus Butler 130.3 and Providence 119.7

Bartorvik has us likely at 20-11 to end w/ 11-9 in conference after going 3-5 in the remaining 8 games, BUT Xavier is only favored by 1.2, Butler 0.5, Nova, 1.2. UConn favored by 2 in Omaa, and St. Johns by 3.3

Kenpom still has us at 18, Barttorvik at 20, Kenpom luck is 240th, which feels about right as we dropped a couple of really close ones. Whether or not losing close games is luck and/or skill and/or experience is up to God to decide, but typically those things even out a bit and we have a bunch of close ones ahead to hopefully get the balance back a bit

[Chicagojayfan]

Last night on the Twitter Fanta was applauding the decision by the officials to “let them play”. That may not be right but it’s a reality. Only super obvious calls are going to be made in this league. So we need to prepare for that.

We also need to clean up the turnovers and improve our passing. A good passing team can overcome physical defense. Just watch the last game between Iowa State and Oklahoma. The Cyclones play as physical as anyone. Oklahoma had great ball movement against them and won.

We also need to recognize that our margin of error is small. Even though we are high octane on offense we need to limit mistakes.

Letting teams play is a bit different then letting a crucial conference game go with one of the teams getting the fewest fouls (in regulation time) called on them all year (when it was incredibly obvious that there were a ton of fouls going on). That sets up BE teams to be playing "referee roulette" in the tourney where if they get hit by a B12 or ACC set of referees and blow the game by getting called for 30 fouls

As for that Oklahoma/Iowa State game - Iowa State got called for 17 fouls. If Providence got called for 17 fouls in regulation, we win that game easily

[Chicagojayfan]

What's odd about our rebounds and turnovers is that we've generally been pretty good with those this year, but it's painfully obvious in the games where we don't take care of business

TRB% of 47.1% and our record is 3-4, including the losses to UConn, Colorado State, Marquette, and Providence
Turnover% of 14.9% and above and our record is 3-5 (including losses to Providence, UNLV, UConn, Nova, and Marquette)

On to Xavier - they were one of the teams where our TRB% was 47.1, but our Turnover rate was 11.5%

Mac will adjust, he pretty much always does, even if it doesn't feel like it's happening fast enough