Nico's Unique, Shot Selection, and Some News (HV Weekly: 12/13/19)
It's exam season and travel is limited, paving the way for a few superb in-state and regional rivalry games.
Happy Friday — welcome back to the Hoop Vision Weekly!
(Or if this is your first Friday with us, welcome to the family; we’re glad you’re here.)
We’ve got a fun one today. It’s exam season for most programs, but even with a fairly light slate in terms of marquee games — we had 27 Top 100 matchups last weekend and only have 15 this weekend — the slate will still be quite informative. We’ll learn a lot about some teams enduring December slides, and we get a very healthy handful of high-major true road games.
In this week’s edition:
A look at the weekend’s top games and notable outliers
Plenty of Gonzaga vs. Arizona preview coverage, including a section on how Nico Mannion is on pace to shatter the NCAA record for an obscure statistic
A roundup of Hoop Vision coverage of games, trends, and X’s and O’s from the week
A look back at the week that was on Hoop Vision PLUS
Exciting news: our new HQ website and Hoop Vision STORE launch today! More on that at the bottom of this email.
Happy Friday. Glad you’re here. Let’s go!
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LOOKING AHEAD
(*Reminder: Team rankings and score projections via KenPom.com)
15 games between teams ranked in the KenPom Top 100
8 games between teams in Top 68
6 games between Top 48 teams
2 games between Top 32
The fun ones
Highest-ranked matchups…
HM vs. HM: Gonzaga (#8) at Arizona (#12)
HM vs. HM/MM: Memphis (#34) at Tennessee (#21)
MM/LM vs. MM/LM: BYU (#42) vs. Utah State (#48) — in Salt Lake City
Biggest Projected Blowout…
Louisville 87, Eastern Kentucky 55
Projected Highest-Scoring Game…
Green Bay 83, Evansville 81
Projected Lowest-Scoring Game(s)…
Texas A&M 65, Texas A&M-Corpus Christi 52
High-Major TRUE road games (excl. in-conference games):
Depending on your definition of “high-major” there are 14(!) of these this weekend — excluding the Big Ten league games. Ten of them are on Saturday, so we highlighted our favorite five from Saturday below. Gonzaga and Colorado make consecutive appearances on this list, and it’s full of in-state and regional showdowns:
Colorado at Colorado State, Fri 8pm ET
Oregon at Michigan, Sat 12pm ET
Memphis at Tennessee, Sat 3pm ET
Seton Hall at Rutgers, Sat 4pm ET
Oklahoma at Wichita State, Sat 6pm ET
Gonzaga at Arizona, Sat 7pm ET
Oklahoma State at Houston, Sun 3pm ET
NC State at UNC Greensboro, Sun 3pm ET
South Carolina at Clemson, Sun 5pm ET
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Game To Watch
#8 Gonzaga at #12 Arizona
Saturday 10pm ET (ESPN2)
Those of us on the East Coast go through the internal monologue a few times every year: “Is this west coast game really worth staying up for? Or worth skipping going out on the town or watching a movie on the couch?”
To answer that definitively: Yes, this one is worth it.
Both teams enter the game with one loss — for Gonzaga, it was against Michigan in the Bahamas; for Arizona, a true road loss at Baylor last Saturday. Both teams have often looked dominant against weaker competition this season, but there are still some unknowns at this point in the season.
Filip Petrusev has combined a high usage rate with positive efficiency for Gonzaga this season, but really struggled against Jon Teske’s length in the loss to Michigan. Arizona doesn’t have anyone quite that imposing, but they do have plenty of length up front in Zeke Nnaji, Chase Jeter, and Christian Koloko.
Arizona is led by freshman point guard Nico Mannion. Forget the fact that he’s a freshman, Mannion has been remarkably efficient this season, period. He’s shooting 42% from three and 52% from two — and actually he’s doing it in spite of his shot selection.
On the season, Mannion has taken just three field goal attempts at the basket during Arizona halfcourt possessions. His two-point attempts have been classified as follows:
3 at the basket
20 runners/floaters
5 short jumpers
20 mid-range jumpers
Mannion is taking almost seven runners for every one attempt at the basket, which is a historically high ratio. In the last 10 years, just three players have finished a full season with even a three-to-one ratio:
Willie Magnum IV (Eastern Michigan) — 3.2
Demetrius Troy (UNC Greensboro) — 3.0
James Harvey (McNeese State) — 3.0
On the one hand, the season is still young and it seems pretty likely that Mannion will regress towards the mean. On the other hand, the schedule is only getting tougher for Arizona — starting with this Saturday night showdown.
From an NBA perspective, there haven’t been too many pro prospects with a similar shot distribution to Mannion. Nigel Williams-Goss is one of the bigger names towards the top, he finished with a 2.0 runner-to-rim ratio at Washington. Ty Jerome finished with a 1.6 ratio his sophomore season at Virginia.
Film Room
Big Game Pod breaking down the Arizona-Gonzaga matchup
KenPom Prediction: Arizona 77, Gonzaga 74
(59% Arizona win probability)
LOOKING BACK
THE STUFF YOU MISSED WHILE WATCHING “THE IRISHMAN” ON NETFLIX
We begin with another edition of the BIG. GAME. POD. This season-long collaboration podcast alongside Gibson Pyper continues with a preview of Gonzaga-Arizona, as the Zags travel to Tucson for the marquee matchup of the weekend.
It was a double helping on the Big Game Pod this week, actually, with this recap from Sunday’s UNC vs. Virginia game mixed in with a podcast mailbag/Q&A (Apple // Spotify).
In non-podcast news…
This chart — a slight precursor to a Hoop Vision Plus follow-up article (more on that below) — caused a mini-stir on the college hoops Twitterverse:
The obvious, noticeable aspects of the chart above:
Dayton looking good in top-right territory
Florida A&M looking, well, largely the opposite as the most remarkable outlier
A messy middle, muddled with programs at every level
And if you just can’t get enough startling shot selection statistics in your life, we’ve got you with a few more:
Elsewhere, it seems the Texas Tech defense is coming into its own after last year’s season-long display of dominance. Here’s brief video look at how the Red Raiders held a talented, highly-ranked Louisville squad to 0.75ppp (2m19s).
Did someone say dominance? And wins over talented, highly-ranked teams?
And of course, some X’s and O’s notables from the week:
Texas Tech flare screen to corner; Darius Perry/Louisville ready for it (22s)
“Buckeye” ball screen series from four coaches with Ohio roots (59s)
Maryland double backdoor after Jalen Smith pop to tandem side (39s)
Virginia’s “circle” after a rescreen (1m35s)
THIS WEEK ON HOOP VISION PLUS
We’re in Year 1 of Hoop Vision PLUS; thank you for all the continued feedback and support along the way as we build a substantive, independent college basketball media business.
BONUS: Today we launched the Hoop Vision store; a subscription to HV+ provides you a 50% discount off all current and future digital products.
For those who haven’t yet signed onto our premium newsletter+video+audio product, or to those subscribers who lost track of this week’s content in their inbox, here’s your weekly HV+ rewind:
Wednesday: What Happens When Shot Selection is Changed?
As teased above, Wednesday was a deeper dive on shot selection this season, looking at the teams leading the pack, season-by-season correlation, and the extremes at both ends of the spectrum this year in college basketball. An excerpt below on the standout teams in terms of expected value:
The new three-point line has changed the average expected values for shot attempts. Below are the NCAA averages so far this season for the six classifications of shot attempts in half-court offense.
Around Basket (not Post-Ups) — — 1.09 PPS (34% of shots)
Post-Ups — — 0.93 PPS (8% of shots)
Runner — — 0.71 PPS (6% of shots)
Short Jumper (<17') — — 0.74 PPS (7% of shots)
Medium Jumper (17' to <3 point line) — — 0.70 PPS (7% of shots)
Long Jumper (3 point jump shots) — — 0.98 PPS (38% of shots)
Using those expected values, we can calculate each team’s shot selection. The top five is listed below.
(Data from games thru 12/9)
Penn
Northern Colorado
Alabama
James Madison
FIU
You might recognize a couple familiar teams from last season’s top five. Penn and FIU both make repeat appearances.
As for the high-majors, the top five is as follows.
Alabama (#3 overall)
Stanford (#7 overall)
Vanderbilt (#9 overall)
Auburn (#11 overall)
Nebraska (#16 overall)
Again, we have some repeats from last season. Stanford, Vanderbilt (despite a coaching change), and Auburn all finished in the top five in 2018-19 as well.
Monday: The Starting Five
Every Monday, we feature a grab bag of five notes, actions, or other standout trends from the prior week of games. This week,
This week’s Starting Five Topics:
Arizona’s “Wheel” Action
Why Luka Garza’s 40-point performance was a bit of an anomaly
Virginia’s three-point shooting regression
Texas Tech’s end-of-game intentional fouling strategy
Excerpted below. A data visualization on first-year head coaches thus far in 2019-20
There are 60 coaches in year one of a new job this season. The graph below plots those 60 programs. The x-axis is this season’s adjusted efficiency margin (via KenPom), the y-axis is last season’s adjusted efficiency margin.
22 out of 60 programs with new head coaches are performing better than the previous season
Best efficiency gains to start the season: Zac Claus (Idaho), Kevin Broadus (Morgan State), Carm Maciariello (Siena)
Worst efficiency losses to start the season: Jay McAuley (Wofford), Lennie Acuff (Lipscomb), Quinton Ferrell (Presbyterian)
ANNOUNCING THE HOOP VISION STORE
We’ve teased some news a few times previously in this Friday newsletter, and we’re excited to finally reveal it today:
We have officially launched the Hoop Vision STORE at HoopVisionHQ.com
The store contains digital products to help fans watch smarter and to help coaches coach smarter. Last season, we produced the Hoop Vision 2019 NCAA Tournament Bible. Today, we released two more products out of our new “Watch Smarter” series.
Watch BLUE BLOODS Smarter — an hour-long deep dive video into the X's and O's of John Calipari (Kentucky), Mike Krzyzewski (Duke), Bill Self (Kansas), and Roy Williams (UNC).
Watch BASELINE OUT OF BOUNDS Smarter — a 32-minute deep dive video into the X's and O's chess match between the offense and defense while the ball is being inbounded underneath the hoop.
A subscription to Hoop Vision PLUS provides you a 50% discount off all current and future digital products in the Hoop Vision STORE.
Additionally, all Hoop Vision PLUS annual subscribers are receiving a complimentary copy of one of the Watch Smarter videos above in appreciation of their support of Hoop Vision. Join the HV+ community now to be included in that video giveaway.
There is one more — non-digital — addition to the Hoop Vision STORE: Merch!
In true college basketball form, we have an official Hoop Vision dri-fit t-shirt available for purchase. The shirt is dri-fit because… we knew that (spoiled) college basketball coaches would accept nothing less!