Post by Commissioner on Oct 26, 2016 10:36:02 GMT -5
Valparaiso
2016:
Overall: 30-7 (RPI #31)
Conference: 16-2 (1st)
A while back, the Valpo blog featured a fun, well-written post with a subjective ranking of the biggest home court advantages in the Horizon. www.valpofanzone.com/2016/08/17/which-horizon-league-venue-is-the-toughest-place-to-win-no-s-10-6/. Naturally, the piece concluded that the ARC was the biggest home court advantage in the conference. Me being me, I decided to play with some numbers.
Here are the composite home and away records for current Horizon League teams over the past 9 years—since Valpo joined the league. By looking only at conference play, we mostly remove strength of schedule (not completely—the best teams always play the weakest conference schedule, since they don’t play themselves, and so on down through the conference standings). It gets a pretty decent sample—156 games for all but Oakland and NKU. Then I compare the home vs. road winning percentages, and see who has the biggest difference.
Horizon Home and Away 2008-2016 (156 games)
Rk…Team .. Overall …….. Home …….....…... Road…………. Diff.
1. GB .... 98-58 .. .628 ... 63-15 ... .808 ... 35-43 ... .449 ... +.359
2. Mil .... 83-73 .. .532 ... 52-26 ... .667 ... 31-47 ... .397 .... +.270
3. UIC ... 39-117. .250 ... 29-49 ... .372 ... 10-68 ... .128 .... +.244
4. CSU .. 91-65 .. .583 ... 55-23 ... .705 ... 36-42 ... .462 .... +.243
5. WS .... 89-67 . .571 ... 54-24 ... .692 ... 35-43 ... .449 .... +.243
6. YSU .. 47-109 . .301 .. 32-46 ... .410 ... 15-63 ... .192 .... +.218
7. Val. . 101-55 . .647 ... 57-21 ... .731 ... 44-34 ... .564 .... +.167
8. Det. .. 69-87 . .442 ... 40-38 ... .513 ... 29-49 ... .372 .... +.141
9. OU .... 31-19 . .620 ... 17-8 ..... .680 ... 14-11 ... .560 .... +.120
10. NKU .. 5-13 . .278 .... 3-6 ..... .333 ...... 2-7 ..... .222 .... +.111
As mentioned, Valpo fans being Valpo fans, their blogger of course ranked the ARC as the toughest place to play in conference. It is true that Valpo has the second highest conference home court winning percentage of any Horizon team over these 9 years, but they also have the highest road winning percentage. In other words, they’ve just been really good, so winning at Valpo is really tough. But Valpo doesn’t do all that much better at home than on the road. In fairness, when you win over 56% of your road games, it’s hard to do a lot better at home. But Valpo’s differential really is pretty small, compared to, say, UIC which has the worst home winning percentage not counting NKU. Because when you lost over 60% of your home games, it’s hard to do a lot worse on the road.
Green Bay’s Resch Center appears to give the greatest home court advantage. The Phoenix’s home court winning percentage is .359 better than their road percentage. They go from a conference best .808 at home to just .449 on the road. In short, on the road Green Bay is a mediocre club—tied for 4th with Wright State. At home, they’re a tiger, in absolute numbers six games better than Valpo, even though Valpo has had better overall teams.
As you can see, the Titans, despite having the longest home winning streak in the nation for a time back at the turn of the century, and one of the 10 longest as recently as the 2013 season, have in fact not gotten much advantage from playing in Calihan.
Meanwhile, home court advantage or not, Valpo has taken the place of Butler as the league’s showcase team, finishing first in the regular season in 4 of the past 5 years, after being 1 game off the pace in 2011. But they’ve not quite gotten over the hump into the highest echelon of mid-major programs, with Gonzaga, Wichita State, and such. They’ve gotten to the NCAA just twice in this time, and lost both times in the first round. Last year’s run to the NIT final was nice—and further proof that when good mid-major teams can schedule top teams at home or on neutral courts, they can win. But it wasn’t the NCAAs.
So the Crusaders, now under first year head coach Matt Lottich, will attempt another run in 2017, and they are, again, the near unanimous favorite to win the conference. And that’s a tribute to how good the Crusader program has become. Not many mid-major teams could lose their coach, the Conference Defensive Player of the Year (Center Vashil Fernandez), a quality point guard like Keith Carter, and three other rotation players (graduating seniors Victor Nickerson and Darien Walker, and David Skara, who transferred to Clemson) who between them made 38 starts last season, and still be the conference favorite.
Much of the optimism is thanks to the decision of forward Alec Peters to return for his senior season. FWIW, I think he made the right choice—I strongly suspect he would not have been selected had he stayed in the draft, and he’ll probably do more for his 2017 draft prospects as the star at Valpo then as a transfer, and the 2nd, 3rd, or even 4th option at a high major program. I suspect Peters is a delight to coach. He’s a guy who plays for the team rather than individual stats, who can knock down a three or bang inside, who runs the court well, makes free throws, and plays defense. He’s a deservedly unanimous pre-season choice for Conference Player of the Year.
The big question mark, and what could be the difference between Valpo as a Sweet 16 contender and Valpo as a first round loser or NIT squad, is whether they can fill the shoes of Carter at the point. Carter was overshadowed last year in the Horizon by All-American Kay Felder and Milwaukee’s Jordan Johnson, the nation’s top two assist men, but you could make one helluva case (which I’ll spare you here) that he was actually the league’s most valuable player. Valpo has several reasonable candidates to replace Carter. None are likely to be as good, but the trick will be to minimize the falloff.
The logical candidate, if you ask me, would be Junior Tevonn Walker (8.8 ppg, 1.6 apg), a two-year starter who was listed as a point guard coming out of high school, and who logged some time at the position as a freshman in 2015 when Carter was injured for 10 games. But for whatever reason, it appears that Lottich is not considering Walker for the role. An intriguing possibility is senior Shane Hammink, who played a bit there last season and who, at 6-7, can see over most Horizon guards. But Hammink had more turnovers than assists last season. He’s just not a point guard. Perhaps more important is the opportunity cost of playing Hammink at the point. Hammink is a really good off-the-ball player, who moves well and who can post-up shorter guards or drive to the hoop if he gets the ball reasonably close to the basket. In short, the team probably benefits more if Hammink is a guy you pass the ball to rather than a guy you get the ball from.
The three real competitors, then, are juniors Lexus Williams and Max Joseph, and freshman Micah Bradford.
Williams was on the Horizon All-Freshman team way back in 2014. He tore his ACL and missed the 2015 season, and then broke his kneecap seven months later. Though he was in uniform all season last year, he played just 92 minutes—virtually all garbage minutes—in 16 games. One can subscribe to different theories about Williams:
a. The injuries have permanently slowed him. His big asset was quickness, and losing a half step has reduced him to a bit player.
b. This year he will be fully recovered, and should resume the form that earned him the starting point position as a freshman.
c. The injuries may have slowed him, but maybe he wasn’t that good anyway.
I’m personally more and more leaning towards C. I was really high on Williams as a freshman, but looking back at the statistical record (who ya’ gonna believe, Commish, the stats or your lyin’ eyes?), Williams might always have been overrated. Valpo really lacked a good point guard that year, with Carter becoming eligible only in mid-December and then being hampered by injuries. Williams got the job almost by default. In January he put together an impressive string of games, including a 22 point, 4 assist, 4 rebound, 5-7 shooting performance against the Titans that may have made my eyes value him a bit too much. But overall, the numbers aren’t really that impressive. He shot just 38 percent from the floor, and his assist/turnover ration was a so-so 1.37-1. His offensive rating (a fancy stat developed by Ken Pomeroy to try to measure all contributions in one number) was the 7th worst among the league’s starters. He also hit a wall just after that Detroit game, shooting just 27.8% from the floor (28.6% from three) in the final 15 games of the season, and over the season’s final 10 games had an equal number of assists and turnovers. Anyway, if he is back to his 2014 form, he’ll get a shot, but I’m not sure that’s all that good a form.
Joseph was a high school teammate of Walker and actually played the point more often than his more highly recruited teammate. When Carter missed 10 games in 2015, Joseph logged some credible minutes off the bench. Last year, his playing time declined by about 50%, to just 178 minutes on the year, and he shot a paltry 26% from the floor. Joseph is a nice guy to have around, but unless he’s gotten a lot better, he’s a solid bench player, not the point guard on a conference champion.
That leaves Bradford, a three-star recruit per Rivals and the pride of Valpo’s 2016 recruiting class. Bradford is what they call a “high motor” player, quick and very active on both offense and defense. He’s a good three point shooter, as well. I don’t know if Bradford will start on opening night, but I’m pretty confident he’ll be starting by season’s end, and probably quite a bit sooner.
Besides questions about the point, Valpo’s other potential weakness is lack of depth up front. Too go with Peters they’ve got 6-7, 230 lb. senior Jubril Adekoya, the league’s 6th Man of the Year in 2015, and 7-2 redshirt freshman Derrik Smits, son of former Indiana Pacer Rik. Much is expected of Smits, who was redshirted because of injuries rather than not being skill-ready. An across the board 3-star recruit, Smits chose Valpo over Butler, Xavier, and Clemson, among others. He is the probably the most highly recruited true center to go straight from high school to the Horizon since at least the old MCC days. But after those three, there is very little size. I would expect Jaime Sorolla, a slim, 6-11 freshman from Tortosa, Spain, to get some playing time, but don’t expect him to be a major factor as a freshman. The only other front court players are walk-ons.
I would expect Lottich to use a three guard lineup with whoever wins the point job plus Walker and Hammink starting alongside Peters and Smits. That will leave Adekoya in his familiar, and productive, role of coming off the bench to back up both the center and forward slots.
Valpo was 9th in the nation last year in scoring defense, 8th in defensive efficiency per Ken Pom. In the increasingly run-and-gun Horizon, that kind of defense stands out, and there’s nothing to suggest Lottich, an assistant to the departed Bryce Drew, is going to change the basic game plan. Smits probably won’t be immediately as effective as a rim protector as Fernandez was last year, but I suspect his 7-2 frame and long reach will still leave teams unwilling to charge too recklessly down the lane. But while defense is Valpo’s advantage, the Crusaders are no slouch on the offensive end. Walker, Peters and Hammink can get up and down the court with the speedsters at Green Bay and Youngstown, and my guess is Bradford can, too.
Though Valpo is a heavy favorite to win the league, deservedly IMHO, there are potential trouble areas. If they can’t find a solid point guard to run the show, there may be no one to get it to two of the league’s best offensive players, Peters and Hammink. The team is not deep, and if Smits doesn’t come through, they will be dangerously thin up front. Other than Peters, there’s no reliable three-point threat. We’ll have to see how everyone responds to the new coach. Worst of all, it doesn’t appear that the ARC provides a big home court advantage, after all. But the ARC does get noisy, and the Crusaders are the favorites either way.
Meanwhile, for anyone hoping the emerging Valpo dynasty will end with the graduation of Peters, Hammink, and Adekoya, the Crusaders will add three potential impact transfers next year in Detroiter Bakari Evelyn (recently of Nebraska), David Middleton (Utah State), and Joe Burton (Oklahoma State), all of whom are sitting out a transfer year. Additionally, they already have a commitment from 6-7 Parker Hazen, an ESPN 3-star recruit. They’re not going away soon.
Probable Starters
PG- Micah Bradford, 6-2 Fr.
SG- Tevonn Walker, 6-2 Jr. (8.8 ppg, 3.4 rpg, 1.6 apg)
G/F- Shane Hammink, 6-7 RS Sr. (8.9 ppg, 3.1 rpg, 1.7 apg)
F- Alec Peters, 6-8 Sr. (18.4 ppg, 8.5 rpg, .505 FG%, .440 3PtFG%, .850 FT%)
C- Derrick Smits, 7-2 RS Fr.
Other Key Players
G- Max Joseph 6-1 Jr. (1.5 ppg)
G- Lexus Williams 6-0 RS Jr. (1.5 ppg)
PF- Jubril Adekoya, 6-7 Sr. (6.1 ppg, 4.1 rpg, .503 FG%)
2016:
Overall: 30-7 (RPI #31)
Conference: 16-2 (1st)
A while back, the Valpo blog featured a fun, well-written post with a subjective ranking of the biggest home court advantages in the Horizon. www.valpofanzone.com/2016/08/17/which-horizon-league-venue-is-the-toughest-place-to-win-no-s-10-6/. Naturally, the piece concluded that the ARC was the biggest home court advantage in the conference. Me being me, I decided to play with some numbers.
Here are the composite home and away records for current Horizon League teams over the past 9 years—since Valpo joined the league. By looking only at conference play, we mostly remove strength of schedule (not completely—the best teams always play the weakest conference schedule, since they don’t play themselves, and so on down through the conference standings). It gets a pretty decent sample—156 games for all but Oakland and NKU. Then I compare the home vs. road winning percentages, and see who has the biggest difference.
Horizon Home and Away 2008-2016 (156 games)
Rk…Team .. Overall …….. Home …….....…... Road…………. Diff.
1. GB .... 98-58 .. .628 ... 63-15 ... .808 ... 35-43 ... .449 ... +.359
2. Mil .... 83-73 .. .532 ... 52-26 ... .667 ... 31-47 ... .397 .... +.270
3. UIC ... 39-117. .250 ... 29-49 ... .372 ... 10-68 ... .128 .... +.244
4. CSU .. 91-65 .. .583 ... 55-23 ... .705 ... 36-42 ... .462 .... +.243
5. WS .... 89-67 . .571 ... 54-24 ... .692 ... 35-43 ... .449 .... +.243
6. YSU .. 47-109 . .301 .. 32-46 ... .410 ... 15-63 ... .192 .... +.218
7. Val. . 101-55 . .647 ... 57-21 ... .731 ... 44-34 ... .564 .... +.167
8. Det. .. 69-87 . .442 ... 40-38 ... .513 ... 29-49 ... .372 .... +.141
9. OU .... 31-19 . .620 ... 17-8 ..... .680 ... 14-11 ... .560 .... +.120
10. NKU .. 5-13 . .278 .... 3-6 ..... .333 ...... 2-7 ..... .222 .... +.111
As mentioned, Valpo fans being Valpo fans, their blogger of course ranked the ARC as the toughest place to play in conference. It is true that Valpo has the second highest conference home court winning percentage of any Horizon team over these 9 years, but they also have the highest road winning percentage. In other words, they’ve just been really good, so winning at Valpo is really tough. But Valpo doesn’t do all that much better at home than on the road. In fairness, when you win over 56% of your road games, it’s hard to do a lot better at home. But Valpo’s differential really is pretty small, compared to, say, UIC which has the worst home winning percentage not counting NKU. Because when you lost over 60% of your home games, it’s hard to do a lot worse on the road.
Green Bay’s Resch Center appears to give the greatest home court advantage. The Phoenix’s home court winning percentage is .359 better than their road percentage. They go from a conference best .808 at home to just .449 on the road. In short, on the road Green Bay is a mediocre club—tied for 4th with Wright State. At home, they’re a tiger, in absolute numbers six games better than Valpo, even though Valpo has had better overall teams.
As you can see, the Titans, despite having the longest home winning streak in the nation for a time back at the turn of the century, and one of the 10 longest as recently as the 2013 season, have in fact not gotten much advantage from playing in Calihan.
Meanwhile, home court advantage or not, Valpo has taken the place of Butler as the league’s showcase team, finishing first in the regular season in 4 of the past 5 years, after being 1 game off the pace in 2011. But they’ve not quite gotten over the hump into the highest echelon of mid-major programs, with Gonzaga, Wichita State, and such. They’ve gotten to the NCAA just twice in this time, and lost both times in the first round. Last year’s run to the NIT final was nice—and further proof that when good mid-major teams can schedule top teams at home or on neutral courts, they can win. But it wasn’t the NCAAs.
So the Crusaders, now under first year head coach Matt Lottich, will attempt another run in 2017, and they are, again, the near unanimous favorite to win the conference. And that’s a tribute to how good the Crusader program has become. Not many mid-major teams could lose their coach, the Conference Defensive Player of the Year (Center Vashil Fernandez), a quality point guard like Keith Carter, and three other rotation players (graduating seniors Victor Nickerson and Darien Walker, and David Skara, who transferred to Clemson) who between them made 38 starts last season, and still be the conference favorite.
Much of the optimism is thanks to the decision of forward Alec Peters to return for his senior season. FWIW, I think he made the right choice—I strongly suspect he would not have been selected had he stayed in the draft, and he’ll probably do more for his 2017 draft prospects as the star at Valpo then as a transfer, and the 2nd, 3rd, or even 4th option at a high major program. I suspect Peters is a delight to coach. He’s a guy who plays for the team rather than individual stats, who can knock down a three or bang inside, who runs the court well, makes free throws, and plays defense. He’s a deservedly unanimous pre-season choice for Conference Player of the Year.
The big question mark, and what could be the difference between Valpo as a Sweet 16 contender and Valpo as a first round loser or NIT squad, is whether they can fill the shoes of Carter at the point. Carter was overshadowed last year in the Horizon by All-American Kay Felder and Milwaukee’s Jordan Johnson, the nation’s top two assist men, but you could make one helluva case (which I’ll spare you here) that he was actually the league’s most valuable player. Valpo has several reasonable candidates to replace Carter. None are likely to be as good, but the trick will be to minimize the falloff.
The logical candidate, if you ask me, would be Junior Tevonn Walker (8.8 ppg, 1.6 apg), a two-year starter who was listed as a point guard coming out of high school, and who logged some time at the position as a freshman in 2015 when Carter was injured for 10 games. But for whatever reason, it appears that Lottich is not considering Walker for the role. An intriguing possibility is senior Shane Hammink, who played a bit there last season and who, at 6-7, can see over most Horizon guards. But Hammink had more turnovers than assists last season. He’s just not a point guard. Perhaps more important is the opportunity cost of playing Hammink at the point. Hammink is a really good off-the-ball player, who moves well and who can post-up shorter guards or drive to the hoop if he gets the ball reasonably close to the basket. In short, the team probably benefits more if Hammink is a guy you pass the ball to rather than a guy you get the ball from.
The three real competitors, then, are juniors Lexus Williams and Max Joseph, and freshman Micah Bradford.
Williams was on the Horizon All-Freshman team way back in 2014. He tore his ACL and missed the 2015 season, and then broke his kneecap seven months later. Though he was in uniform all season last year, he played just 92 minutes—virtually all garbage minutes—in 16 games. One can subscribe to different theories about Williams:
a. The injuries have permanently slowed him. His big asset was quickness, and losing a half step has reduced him to a bit player.
b. This year he will be fully recovered, and should resume the form that earned him the starting point position as a freshman.
c. The injuries may have slowed him, but maybe he wasn’t that good anyway.
I’m personally more and more leaning towards C. I was really high on Williams as a freshman, but looking back at the statistical record (who ya’ gonna believe, Commish, the stats or your lyin’ eyes?), Williams might always have been overrated. Valpo really lacked a good point guard that year, with Carter becoming eligible only in mid-December and then being hampered by injuries. Williams got the job almost by default. In January he put together an impressive string of games, including a 22 point, 4 assist, 4 rebound, 5-7 shooting performance against the Titans that may have made my eyes value him a bit too much. But overall, the numbers aren’t really that impressive. He shot just 38 percent from the floor, and his assist/turnover ration was a so-so 1.37-1. His offensive rating (a fancy stat developed by Ken Pomeroy to try to measure all contributions in one number) was the 7th worst among the league’s starters. He also hit a wall just after that Detroit game, shooting just 27.8% from the floor (28.6% from three) in the final 15 games of the season, and over the season’s final 10 games had an equal number of assists and turnovers. Anyway, if he is back to his 2014 form, he’ll get a shot, but I’m not sure that’s all that good a form.
Joseph was a high school teammate of Walker and actually played the point more often than his more highly recruited teammate. When Carter missed 10 games in 2015, Joseph logged some credible minutes off the bench. Last year, his playing time declined by about 50%, to just 178 minutes on the year, and he shot a paltry 26% from the floor. Joseph is a nice guy to have around, but unless he’s gotten a lot better, he’s a solid bench player, not the point guard on a conference champion.
That leaves Bradford, a three-star recruit per Rivals and the pride of Valpo’s 2016 recruiting class. Bradford is what they call a “high motor” player, quick and very active on both offense and defense. He’s a good three point shooter, as well. I don’t know if Bradford will start on opening night, but I’m pretty confident he’ll be starting by season’s end, and probably quite a bit sooner.
Besides questions about the point, Valpo’s other potential weakness is lack of depth up front. Too go with Peters they’ve got 6-7, 230 lb. senior Jubril Adekoya, the league’s 6th Man of the Year in 2015, and 7-2 redshirt freshman Derrik Smits, son of former Indiana Pacer Rik. Much is expected of Smits, who was redshirted because of injuries rather than not being skill-ready. An across the board 3-star recruit, Smits chose Valpo over Butler, Xavier, and Clemson, among others. He is the probably the most highly recruited true center to go straight from high school to the Horizon since at least the old MCC days. But after those three, there is very little size. I would expect Jaime Sorolla, a slim, 6-11 freshman from Tortosa, Spain, to get some playing time, but don’t expect him to be a major factor as a freshman. The only other front court players are walk-ons.
I would expect Lottich to use a three guard lineup with whoever wins the point job plus Walker and Hammink starting alongside Peters and Smits. That will leave Adekoya in his familiar, and productive, role of coming off the bench to back up both the center and forward slots.
Valpo was 9th in the nation last year in scoring defense, 8th in defensive efficiency per Ken Pom. In the increasingly run-and-gun Horizon, that kind of defense stands out, and there’s nothing to suggest Lottich, an assistant to the departed Bryce Drew, is going to change the basic game plan. Smits probably won’t be immediately as effective as a rim protector as Fernandez was last year, but I suspect his 7-2 frame and long reach will still leave teams unwilling to charge too recklessly down the lane. But while defense is Valpo’s advantage, the Crusaders are no slouch on the offensive end. Walker, Peters and Hammink can get up and down the court with the speedsters at Green Bay and Youngstown, and my guess is Bradford can, too.
Though Valpo is a heavy favorite to win the league, deservedly IMHO, there are potential trouble areas. If they can’t find a solid point guard to run the show, there may be no one to get it to two of the league’s best offensive players, Peters and Hammink. The team is not deep, and if Smits doesn’t come through, they will be dangerously thin up front. Other than Peters, there’s no reliable three-point threat. We’ll have to see how everyone responds to the new coach. Worst of all, it doesn’t appear that the ARC provides a big home court advantage, after all. But the ARC does get noisy, and the Crusaders are the favorites either way.
Meanwhile, for anyone hoping the emerging Valpo dynasty will end with the graduation of Peters, Hammink, and Adekoya, the Crusaders will add three potential impact transfers next year in Detroiter Bakari Evelyn (recently of Nebraska), David Middleton (Utah State), and Joe Burton (Oklahoma State), all of whom are sitting out a transfer year. Additionally, they already have a commitment from 6-7 Parker Hazen, an ESPN 3-star recruit. They’re not going away soon.
Probable Starters
PG- Micah Bradford, 6-2 Fr.
SG- Tevonn Walker, 6-2 Jr. (8.8 ppg, 3.4 rpg, 1.6 apg)
G/F- Shane Hammink, 6-7 RS Sr. (8.9 ppg, 3.1 rpg, 1.7 apg)
F- Alec Peters, 6-8 Sr. (18.4 ppg, 8.5 rpg, .505 FG%, .440 3PtFG%, .850 FT%)
C- Derrick Smits, 7-2 RS Fr.
Other Key Players
G- Max Joseph 6-1 Jr. (1.5 ppg)
G- Lexus Williams 6-0 RS Jr. (1.5 ppg)
PF- Jubril Adekoya, 6-7 Sr. (6.1 ppg, 4.1 rpg, .503 FG%)