Re: 2018 Pre-Season Thread

[Dean Murdoch]

Thanks for the report, both of you.

Especially appreciate the rebounding breakdown by NoPo. Total rebounds were close at 40-36, but given how well the Pilots shot the ball that's actually a whipping on the glass by UAV.

I didn't realize how bad it was until now, but the Pilots were 348th out of 351 teams last year in offensive rebounding (19.2%) and only had 15.6% OR against UAV. Although it should be noted that I also see a bunch of tournament teams (including Loyola Chicago) that weren't much better in that category.

UAV had 29.5% OR which is slightly lower than the 31.4% that the Pilots allowed on average last season against D1 teams...so definitely some room for improvement this year.

On an aside, with Hogland looking like he might be a significant contributor...when was the last time a Pilot took a development redshirt season (as opposed to injury/transfer) and became a key player? The only player I can think of in this category in the last 15 years would be John Bailey.

[Stonehouse]

I didn't realize how bad it was until now, but the Pilots were 348th out of 351 teams last year in offensive rebounding (19.2%) and only had 15.6% OR against UAV. Although it should be noted that I also see a bunch of tournament teams (including Loyola Chicago) that weren't much better in that category.

A lot of NBA teams have been trending away from offensive rebounding in recent years, because transition defense is more important than it ever has been given the huge increase in three point shooting.

It's one of those things where if you're really good at it, it's definitely worth pursuing, but if you're not particularly good at it, it's probably best to get back on defense and prevent a transition three rather than trying to crash the boards.

I have no idea if that thought process played into our low offensive rebounding numbers last year or if it was just a reflection of our team's personnel, but I'm not surprised to see a lot of tournament teams ranking low in offensive rebounding - it's a legit strategy that has been happening in the NBA for a few years now.

[Guest]

It's one of those things where if you're really good at it, it's definitely worth pursuing, but if you're not particularly good at it, it's probably best to get back on defense and prevent a transition three rather than trying to crash the boards.

I have no idea if that thought process played into our low offensive rebounding numbers last year or if it was just a reflection of our team's personnel, but I'm not surprised to see a lot of tournament teams ranking low in offensive rebounding - it's a legit strategy that has been happening in the NBA for a few years now.

I recall last year the coaches saying that they were teaching to get back on defense rather than go to the offensive board, so I think you have got it right.[/quote]

[DoubleDipper]

Depending upon one's perspective the numbers may not look good, but reflecting on WHY Valley outrebounded the Pilots might help. Most of UP's shots were from the outside, and UP generally had one player in the vicinity of the basket while the rest were getting back to play defense while AV swarmed the basket to grab the rebound.  Also, many of AV's rebounds were long caroms of the rim, away from the UP players.    

I too shook my head at the numbers, and thought "oh crap," but after reviewing the positioning, passing and team play of Theo, D, and Hugh, I was very encouraged by UP's length, mobility, savviness, and activity.

Hard to say what will happen as the competition gets tougher, but Saturday's performance by the frontcourt exceeded my expectations, and with Theo, who has less than two years of experience under his belt, we could see a real monster in a year or two.

Seemed pretty obvious Jacob is a pick-and-pop guy who is tall enough to block shots and snag rebounds, and is not expected to be a physical force inside, but instead draw defenders out while opening lanes for the wings and guards.

Nice of UP and TP to honor Darwin Cook and Jack Avina prior to the game....

[NoPoNeighbor]

A lot of discussion about offensive rebounds here, but my concern based on Saturday is about the Pilots' poor defensive rebounding. Allowing the opponent to get offensive rebounds results in second-chance points again you, and prevents you from getting out in transition. The fast break looks to be a potential strength of this team, so every time we can't get a defensive rebound we are really limiting our offensive by forcing ourselves into a half-court possession.

From what I saw Saturday, I'd suggest that the bigs need to understand their rebounding positions and assignments much better, rather than having multiple players collapsing on the shooter and trying to block the shot.

[DoubleDipper]

The fast break looks to be a potential strength of this team, so every time we can't get a defensive rebound we are really limiting our offensive by forcing ourselves into a half-court possession.

Defensive rebounding and fast-break points are certainly areas of emphasis by the coaches, and there is always room for improvement, but I'm not sure it was a weakness on Saturday.

A quick look at the box score shows UP having 31 defensive rebounds resulting in 23 fast-break points.  Sure, it was not against a D1 team, but it shows the guys know how to do it!

With regard to offensive responding (only 5), UP apparently showed the ability to get back on defense, as AV scored only 1 point on their fast-break attempts (I guess free-throws off of fast breaks are counted...I didn't know that), but yeah, they should be able to do much better at being in position to grab the rebound.

[NoPoNeighbor]

A quick look at the box score shows UP having 31 defensive rebounds resulting in 23 fast-break points.  Sure, it was not against a D1 team, but it shows the guys know how to do it!

Obviously the best way to assess these kinds of stats is with percentages, not raw numbers. The Pilots secured 31 defensive rebounds and allowed AV to get 13 offensive rebounds. That's a 70.5% defensive rebounding percentage, which is almost exactly equal to last year's season-long number of 70.4% -- good for #286 in the country. There's no way around the fact that we were one of the worst rebounding teams in the country last year. We had a total rebounding percentage of 44.8%, which was 341st out of 351 teams.

As for Saturday night's exhibition game against an NAIA team, we scored .74 fast-break points per defensive rebound. This means that the 13 offensive rebounds secured by AV represent 9.6 fast-break points that the Pilots could have scored if they hadn't lost the rebound on the defensive end.

[wrv]

Thank you DD for noticing that perhaps the greatest player to wear a Pilot uniform was at the Chiles Center on Friday. Those of you who did not see Darwin Cook play missed something. He was an all around player, a savvy distributor, a good defender and an excellent scorer. Remember that his points were largely scored when other players, Slaughter, Ravio, and Leonard Williams were competing for the ball and also scoring for the Pilots. I believe he played 10 years in the NBA, longer I am sure than any other Pilot. One night while playing for the then New Jersey Nets he put 30 points on the Blazers in a Nets win. In the game discussed in another thread with the Beavers at the Coliseum, he was on his game: I recall him driving into Steve Johnson, all 6'10-11" of the future 1st round pick Johnson and lofting a floater from just inside the foul line where Johnson was standing attempting to block Cook's shot, which went in, no rim; that play brought me out of my chair; he also led a number of fast breaks that night, I recall one with Ravio on the wing, Cook's pass was timed well and led Ravio by the defender to an easy layup. I know he put up 40 or 41 one night as a Pilot, thought it was against USF, but its been too long.

Still remember what a player he was.

RIP Jack Avina

[Dean Murdoch]

North Texas beat TCU 80-74 in a closed scrimmage last weekend

TCU's supposed to be pretty good this year...

[NoPoNeighbor]

Here's a list of the 77 best DI three-point shooters so far this century:
https://www.ncaa.com/news/basketball-men/article/2018-10-25/best-3-point-shooting-college-basketball-players-century

#11 will be a familiar name for Pilots' fans. Three other WCC players also made the cut.

[DoubleDipper]

It will be an interesting preseason test for #3 Gonzaga after junior forward Killian Tillie went down with a stress fracture of his ankle that required surgery.

Expected to jump to the NBA next year, Tillie should be back in six to eight weeks, but will likely miss the preseason games against Texas A&M, Illinois, Arizona, Iowa St, and Creighton, and could even miss the UW, Tennessee and UNC games in December. All of those game are of course expected to boost GU's RPI before the beginning of WCC play.

Word is Gonzaga dominated Michigan St. in a secret scrimmage in Minneapolis this past weekend without Tillie.

UPDATE: Apparently Tillie originally hurt his ankle while playing against UP on January 23rd, and reaggravated it during fall practice...

[Dean Murdoch]

Expected to jump to the NBA next year, Tillie should be back in six to eight weeks, but will likely miss the preseason games against Texas A&M, Illinois, Arizona, Iowa St, and Creighton, and could even miss the UW, Tennessee and UNC games in December. All of those games are of course expected to boost GU's RPI before the beginning of WCC play.

Which, of course, is now a moot point thanks to the introduction of the NCAA Evaluation Tool! Whatever that is.

Speaking of which, I wonder if the WCC has amended its tiebreaking procedures for basketball? It used to be head-to-head first, record against other WCC teams in descending order second, and then RPI third. But now the unbalanced schedule affects the second breaker (is 2-0 treated the same as 1-0, is 1-0 better than 1-1, etc) and the NET has replaced the RPI, rendering the third breaker obsolete.

[DoubleDipper]

Oh yeah, I totally forgot the RPI was replaced by the NET, the NCAA Evaluation Tool...thanks for reminding me.

The NCAA Evaluation Tool, or NET, will rely on game results, strength of schedule, game location, scoring margin, net offensive and defensive efficiency and the quality of wins and losses.    

The RPI will still be used for all other NCAA sports, including women's basketball...

“What has been developed is a contemporary method of looking at teams analytically, using results-based and predictive metrics that will assist the Men’s Basketball Committee as it reviews games throughout the season. While no perfect rankings exist, using the results of past tournaments will help ensure that the rankings are built on an objective source of truth.”

Of course Gavitt said that before we learned the truth about truth...

[dholcombe]

An article regarding non conference scheduling.
https://www.bloggingthebracket.com/2018/10/31/17875448/wcc-non-conference-schedules-college-basketball-2018-19-analysis-rankings-gonzaga-byu-saint-mary-s

[MesaPilot1]

A belated thanks for all of you local folks for team updates. The first time some of us long distance fans get out first view of the Pilots is the 11/06 when Multnomah visits the Chile's Center.

Looking forward to seeing the freshmen big men, and a 7 footer shooting 3's. I just hope Diabate gets enough playing time so he can grow like he did in the second half of last year...
   
Excited to see how the soph guards have improved, and the wings are improving...

Looking forward to my first streaming game, with the only bummer being the injury to Clark...

                     Go Pilots Basketball

[DoubleDipper]

Tonight the Westmont College Warriors from Santa Barbara, CA, should provide the Pilots a chance to work on their inside game and defensive schemes against Westmont’s balanced scoring attack and their scoring leader, 6-8/235 Olisa Nwachie (#25), a transfer from St. Johns.

In Westmont’s first game against a group of former college and pro players, the Warriors scored 48 points in the paint and 56 points in the second half in their 91-87 win.

Last night Westmont scored 42 points in the paint, and each of the starters scored in double figures at Portland Bible in the Warriors 110-74 win.

Westmont, a NAIA National Tournament team the last four years running, and national runner-up in 2015, should provide UP a sterner test than Antelope Valley did a week ago.  And if last night's game is any indication, Westmont should have a fairly large gathering on hand to support their two players from the Northwest, #13 from Renton and #15 from Silverton.

[Guest]

Back-to-back games? Not sure if they'll have the legs for a second half run.

[dholcombe]

Back-to-back games?  Not sure if they'll have the legs for a second half run.

Which is a reminder....back to back games today. Women play at 4:30

[Dean Murdoch]

Back-to-back games?  Not sure if they'll have the legs for a second half run.

...and the Pilots open the second half on a 17-0 run, good call!

[DoubleDipper]

Both teams were gassed at the end of the game.   Westmont shared their minutes among nine players as a way of offsetting playing back-to-back games, while four of UP's starters played 29 minutes or more (Marcus played 35 minutes and Josh 33 minutes while being sidelined for awhile by what looked to be a leg cramp).

UP was in a battle against a very good, mature, and well coached team.  The Pilots were up by only 3 at the half, but as mentioned, came out of the locker room on a 17-0 run before Westmont got within 9 points late in the game.

It would be easy to look at the statistics for the story, but some of the players without the big stats stood out as big contributors in the 94-80 win:

1. JoJo is much improved over last season, and last night's performance with 6 assists and 0 turnovers was one of his better outings.  In a humorous ending the game JoJo was driving for an uncontested layup for his 9th point of the game when the coaches began yelling, NO, NO, NO....and JoJo dribbled away from the basket with a big smile on his face.

2. Theo couldn't find the net with his free-throws (0-4), but he became very proficient at interrupting Westmont's bread and butter back door plays (the Warriors scored 22 in the paint after scoring in the mid-40s in their previous outings), and he was always disrupting the shooters and banging the glass.  Tim Frost might have been a better scorer as a freshman big, but Theo will be a much better all-around player sometime soon.

3. D also could not sink a free throw (1-7), but he too was always making it difficult for Westmont to work inside and he, along with Theo, kept their big-man star player wrapped up all evening...he scored 13, but 9 of those were from beyond the arc.

4. Franklin got the start last night as a better counter to Westmont than Jacob, and it paid off.  He can be good, but in the past I've criticized his lack of TEAM play, but he excelled as a team player last evening.

Westmont is an excellent 3-point shooting team, but UP didn't really defend the 3-point shot, and when the Pilots went cold from behind the arc in the second half (3-14) it almost came back to bite them.  It will be interesting against Multnomah on Tuesday, they threw up 59 3-point attempts against PSU on Friday night in their 119-89 loss to the Vikings.

[DoubleDipper]

Oh, and the new Wheel logo uniforms looked marvelous, although I had a hard time adjusting to UP wearing their "road" colors at home...

[Guest]

From looking at the box score, I note that's Hugh's minutes dropped, and Taki again got very few minutes. Looks like they are not in the 8 man rotation. Malcolm was productive coming off the bench, scoring 12 on high percentage shooting. Marcus got 11 rebounds to go with his 22 points, the only Pilot with a double digit rebound total.

[DoubleDipper]

From looking at the box score, I note that's Hugh's minutes dropped, and Taki again got very few minutes.  Looks like they are not in the 8 man rotation.  

Hugh came in when Theo fouled out at the 2:49 mark and helped on a couple of defensive stops and converted a nice drop-step move under the basket.

I think Hugh will get his minutes, but it's pretty obvious the coaches are trying to give Theo and Jacob plenty of playing time at the beginning of the season.  IMO Taki will get very little court time unless he can consistently start converting his shots.

Crisshawn is hurt and Josh Phillips (JP) will redshirt, so all 10 available scholarship players saw at least a few minutes of playing time last evening,

[Sound Voltex]

Last minute previews before the season opener starts. Nothing too exciting that we haven't heard already.

At Portland, coach Terry Porter begins his third season with nowhere to go but up after struggling through a 10-22 season, 4-14 in conference. His best player is perimeter-shooting forward Josh McSwiggan, who hit on 43.5 percent from 3-point range. Porter’s sons, guards Malcolm and Franklin, will be in the rotation, although dad promised them nothing more than that. The Pilots have four redshirts and five additional newcomers to draw from.

http://wccsports.com/news/2018/11/5/mens-basketball-crumpacker-wcchoops-is-here-at-last.aspx

10. PORTLAND: Turning things around at Portland hasn’t been easy for Terry Porter, whose teams have won 11 and 10 games in his first two seasons at the helm. Four of Portland’s top five scorers from a season ago, led by sophomore guard Marcus Shaver and redshirt junior wing Josh McSwiggan, are back and Pitt transfer Crisshawn Clark is eligible after sitting out last season.

https://collegebasketball.nbcsports.com/2018/11/02/wcc-conference-preview-can-anyone-threaten-gonzaga/

63% of the roster returns for one of the youngest teams in the nation that finished 9th last year in conference play. Portland is still a young team and probably is one of those teams that will be improved, however will still finished at or around the bottom simply because the other programs ahead of them have made equal if not greater improvements. Just looking at the statistical categories in my data dump the Pilots finished 7th or lower in 15 of 21 categories in the WCC statical categories. In terms of how they stood in terms of NCAA statistics if a team is any where from 234 to 351 then they are in the lower third of all teams in DI College basketball. The Pilots were in the lower third in 15 of 32 statistical categories and they were knocking on the door of the lower third in 3 more. So it’s plainly obvious that the Pilots struggled in many aspects of the game last year.

The question is can they/will they improve? I think they will but as I said before I’m not certain it will result in any more wins. 3 point shooting is something the Pilots will hang their hats on this season. Josh McSwiggan, Marcus Shaver, Franklin Porter, and JoJo Walker are the Pilot’s leading returning scorers who all let the 3 ball fly. All of them played in the backcourt or the wing.

The Pilots desperately need the young front court to develop so that the backcourt doesn’t need to rely on the 3 ball so much. Also the Pilots got hammered on the boards last year, getting outbound on average by 5 rebounds. The Pilots on average gave up 11 offensive rebounds a game which is way too many second chance opportunities for such a young team to absorb. Tahirou Diabate seems like the most likely candidate to develop and be a positive presence along the front court. He put up respectable numbers as a freshman in terms of scoring, rebounds, and field goal percentage, however he’s going to need to take a big step forward in order to help the Pilots compete night in and night out. The good news is that the Pilots have a wide assortment of big bodies (Theo Akwuba, Josh Phillips, Hugh Hogland, Jacob Tryon, and Wyatt Watson) to roll out and see who performs/develops. The bad news is there will be growing pains during the process which will result in more loses. I assume one or two of these big men will redshirt (most likely Watson as Hogland already has). My guess is that Josh Phillips and Jacob Tryon will be the two that rise to the occasion to play alongside Tahirou (although Theo Akwuba got the start in the Pilots exhibition against Antelope Valley so we’ll see). Jacob having juco experience should play right away and Josh Phillips has the athleticism this front court will need against other team’s athletic big men (although he didn’t play against Antelope Valley so again we will see if he redshirts or not). But I can’t emphasize enough that this is still a young team and there will be growing pains associated with it’s development.

There is also the luck or should I say bad luck factor with the Pilots. Crisshawn Clark a transfer from Pitt who I assume figured to be a major contributor has gone down with an ankle injury. Not only is it bad luck that he’s injured for the Pilots, but he missed the 16-17 season for Pitt with a knee injury. So there are some concerns about durability in my mind. Rumors are the ankle injury may not be season ending, but I haven’t heard how long he will be out. It seems like something like this always tends to happen to the Pilots and I’m uncertain of the team’s ability to be “mentally tough” and overcome adversity. Could the Pilots put things together and surprise, yes. Is it likely, no. Normally, the third year of a coach’s tenure is when one gets the sense as to whether things are going to work out or not. So as long as the Pilots make some progress in terms of player and team development I think the program is on the right track. Hopefully for the Pilot faithful the team matures and turns the corner this season. I think they have the talent, but the lack of experience in an ever improving conference will be the deciding factor in my opinion.

http://wccboards.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=1781#p5925