College Hoops Mailbag: Elite Weaknesses, Keita Bates-Diop, AAC Top-4 Seeds
It’s Friday, so you know what that means. It’s mailbag time. We do this every Friday and touch on subjects that you prefer to hear me ramble about. We’ll get right into it because frankly, I’m writing this later in the morning than I typically do and there are good questions this week. Just a reminder you can submit questions to me on Twitter as this is a weekly thing. Also a reminder that if you’re snowed in/have nothing to do tomorrow, Saturday’s slate, especially in the early afternoon is absolutely loaded. It’s a perfect set up if you’re an NFL fan because you can get a little sweat in with some college hoops – please, like my sport – before the NFL. Let’s go.
This is one of the more interesting questions, because first off people are going to yell about who is elite. If you’re talking about this season and this season only, I think the elite teams would be Villanova, Duke, Michigan State, West Virginia and Virginia, especially if we’re limiting it to just five. If you’re going to typical elite teams you obviously go Duke, Kentucky, Nova, Michigan State, Louisville, UNC and Arizona. Now that everyone is going to yell about that, let’s stick with the five teams for this season.
Villanova – There is no glaring weakness with this team and they are truly the only team that I feel comfortable saying that about. If you want to go to something specific it’s injuries. The rotation is down to 6.5 people which means Wright is always changing something up. When you watch them play right now, pay attention to how much they sub and how quick they rotate guys in and out to keep people fresh. That messes with rotations, mismatches, etc.
Michigan State – To me it’s playing Miles Bridges out of position. Say what you want, but this team is better with Bridges at the four. That’s where you can really exploit mismatches and let him take advantage in those spots. Nick Ward is an excellent player, but this team would be much better bringing him off or Jaren Jackson off the bench and running Bridges at the four more often than not.
Duke – I mean this one is obvious. Who the hell can they defend? They can’t guard anyone in a pick and roll, they give up 90+ points per game until they played Pitt, who just sucks. Until they learn how to stop anyone this team has such a glaring weakness there. That said, they are so good offensively
West Virginia – Can the halfcourt offense be sustained? This is a decent offensive team, something that has flown under the radar as I talked about in my blog about them yesterday. But, with Esa Ahmad returning, who is an excellent offensive player, how does this change what they have been doing? Can James Bolden continue to shoot the ball at a 40% clip?
Virginia – I still hate the pace of play they play at. Don’t get me wrong, they are absolutely awesome at it and I won’t knock them for it. But, it just creates such a slim margin for error when you’re playing that few of possessions. That’s why against UNC they were only up 7 at half despite what felt like a dominating first half. I’d like to see them play just a little bit faster.
Marquette, Villanova, Oklahoma, UNLV, Nevada.
I’ve spent a lot of time about Mark Turgeon. He’s in a weird spot. He’s an excellent coach but a god awful communicator. He absolutely knows the game and knows how to take advantage, his problem is relaying that to his players and assistants. He struggles with trusting them to a degree too and often wants to overcoach. That’s why you see them go through some weird offensive struggles. Instead of letting Cowan and Huerter just create and be playmakers he sees the advantage but can’t properly relay how to take advantage. It’s a weird thing, but that’s what it is. He’s an excellent recruiter, especially now with the DMV area.
I’d go right in order of how you have it listed. I would argue though it’s not ‘sneaky deep.’ It’s just deep. Everyone knows how good the Big East is. They are one of the three best conferences in America – personally I have it as No. 2 while KenPom has them at No. 3. However, I’ll go with Marquette simply because of how hot they can get shooting the ball and they probably have the best player out of anyone in that group in Markus Howard. If they could just figure out a way to play any sort of defense, they’d be a top-25 team. However, they rank 144th in the country defensively, a number that just needs to be in the top-100 and we’re talking differently about them. They have their weaknesses, most notably on the inside, but you hope the addition of Harry Froling can help with that as the season goes on.
Keita Bates-Diop is one of the 15 best players in the country right now. He should be on every All-American team (well, one of the three) whenever people release the entire midway mark awards. He’s the Big 10 Player of the Year at the moment and just shows how important he is to this program – remember, he missed the majority of last season. What’s not to love about his game? He’s a 6’7″ wing that can create his own shot and is a two-way player. He’s in the top-500 nationally in block percentage, rebounding and true shooting percentage. I’m going to go ahead and say there aren’t a lot of people doing that. He’s shooting 42% from the 3-point line and over 80% from the free throw line, showing he can be super effective in getting his shot. On top of that he takes care of the ball, especially with his usage rate. But, what’s really to love about his game is he doesn’t seem to force anything. When you watch him play, the game is coming easy to him and he’s not trying to force a shot or get out of rhythm. Everything seems to be in rhythm with the offense and he’s not jacking up a bunch of terrible shots. It’s an absolute joke he’s not on the Wooden Award Watch (one of the 25 best players).
I’ll say Villanova (Big East champ), Michigan State (Big 10 champ), Virginia (ACC champ) and I’ll go West Virginia. It’s going to be whoever wins the Big 12 and I’ll take West Virginia in that role at the moment. Speaking of the Big 12…
My take is this is the best conference in America and it’s not close. You have a handful of legit national title contenders at the top. The middle is incredibly strong and even the bottom of the league with Iowa State, Kansas State and Oklahoma State are good enough to win games. There are no easy road wins in this conference this year. Just think for a moment – according to numbers the easiest road win is going to come at Iowa State. Yeah, good luck winning a bunch of games going to Hilton. I think the record that eventually wins the league will be 12-6. It’s just going to be that hard to get road wins. As for the last question? Kansas is the fourth best team in the conference at the moment. I’ll take the field over KU, especially with the Jayhawks already having a home loss to one of the teams better than them.
Two. This conference stinks this year. It’s Rhode Island and St. Bonaventure and that’s it. VCU isn’t good enough to get in nor should they unless they win the A-10 title. The conference ranks 10th in KenPom’s rankings behind the likes of the MVC and MWC. There are four sub-200 teams. There are only 3 teams ranked in the top-100. It’s just a down year for the conference, especially with Dayton losing that senior class and Archie Miller.
The AAC is in a weird spot this year yet again. They got better at the top with Wichita State coming over from the Missouri Valley and Cincinnati still being a strong team. However, there are two sub-300 teams that they have to play. The middle of this league stinks. SMU can’t win away from home. Temple has some ugly losses. Houston is okay. UConn is irrelevant this year. That said, you have to fill out the bracket. Cincinnati’s nonconference will hurt them as they simply didn’t get more than 1 quality win at UCLA. Wichita does have wins at Baylor and Oklahoma State and neutral vs Marquette to help them. If I had to guess, Wichita ends up a top-4 seed, Cincinnati a top-5 seed. The best thing for them would to play each other three times, win at home and then play a close conference title game.
The ceiling does go up slightly, just because you’re adding a first round talent to the roster. Now, the one thing to remember is this isn’t going to be the same Jared Vanderbilt that everyone expected. He’s behind in terms of stamina and conditioning. He’s behind in adapting to the college games. He’s behind in simply playing with teammates. Maybe you expect them to make the Sweet 16 and anything else would be a failure, but the ceiling doesn’t really change with this team. They have the talent to compete with anyone in the country but the inexperience to lose to anyone in the country. That will still be the same with the addition of Vanderbilt.