AP poll (preseason)

[stever20]

3 games they lose- 21/75 28% 25 attempts per game
33 games they won- 305/762 40% 23 attempts per game

It'll be interesting to see if they try to be a bit less reliant on the 3. I could see Wright wanting to be a smidge less dependent on the 3 ball.

The 2 NCAA tourney losses- 20/59 from 3 point range. Taking 59 attempts in 2 games is a LOT. Only had 53 2's(including 20 in the UConn game 2 years ago).

If anything- get back to the balance they used to have. from 2008-13 seasons Nova took the following 3% shot attempts/all fg attempts.... 35.3, 33.7, 33.2, 34.5, 32, 34.9. Last 2 years 44.8 and 42.9.

[stever20]

of course looking at the Pace exhibition game- Nova took 24/57 attempts as 3's- or 42% So looks like you may be right there as well- will be interesting to watch as they start to play a bit stronger team than Pace.

[Bill Marsh]

It's good to see that things are heating up. When there are intense debates over meaningless pre-season polls, you know there's a lot of testosterone flowing and the guys can't wait for the season to begin!

I can imagine what it will be like when our teams start playing actual games. Watch out.

[stever20]

Just was looking at the 3 point percentage of shots...

Nova last year was #22 in the country in highest percentage of shot's being 3's....

of the 21 that took a higher percentage- only 3 made the tourney- Davidson, Belmont, and E Washington. No team in the top 80 made the tourney 2nd weekend...
in 2014- Nova was #7 in the country. No team higher than them made the tourney. Only 4 of the top 100 made the 2nd weekend.

what is strange is the teams that do make the 2nd weekend- generally do really well- 6 of 8 making the elite 8 at least....
Wisconsin 2014 was 45th, made final 4 round(39.1%). 2015 they were 89th, made title game(37.4%)
Michigan 2014 was 34th, made elite 8.(40.1%)
Iowa St 2014 was 65th, made sweet 16.(37.5%)
Mich St 2014 was 86th, made elite 8.(36.3%)
Notre Dame 2015 was 83rd, made elite 8.(37.6%)
Utah 2015 was 91st, made sweet 16(37.3%)
(2013 season- only 3 of the top 100 made the 2nd weekend- 1 elite 8 and 2 sweet 16's)
(2012 season only 3 top 100 also made the 2nd weekend- 2 elite 8, 1 sweet 16).

So you can see that even with these teams that took a good amount of 3's- the highest was right at 40%. Nova was up at 42.9 and 44.8 the last 2 years.

btw, 1 thing that looking at the stats for this post- look at Butler's pct the last 8 years...
2008 48.5% #6
2009 45.2% #13
2010 39.8% #36
2011 38.7% #46
2012 31.9% #191
2013 35.8% #95
2014 32.0% #192
2015 28.7% #299
(and the 6 years before Stevens got there- as far back as Ken Pom goes- they were in the top 15 every year in this- with 3 of the 4 years immediately preceding Stevens being in the top 7(with the 4th year #10).) Don't think Nova goes that far the other way by any stretch..

[stever20]

interesting from the college sports madness previews:
http://www.collegesportsmadness.com/article/12132

Nova #11.

but this part is really interesting:
Those two were a big reason why Villanova ranked 14th in the country in three-pointers made per game.(talking about Hillard and Ennis).

Maybe with those 2 gone Nova won't rely quite as much on the 3 point shot(which could improve their game to where they wouldn't have a game like NC State last year). The 3 games Nova lost, they shot only 21-75 from 3 point range.

The old saying, you live by the 3, you die by the 3.

Wow Stever glad to see you are man enough to admit when wrong. Good for you.

In terms of this team vs last you might see more 3's than less. Brunson and Booth replace Hilliard and Ennis and both of those guys can stroke the three. But more significantly Jenkins, Hart and Bridges who replace JVP can all shoot from 3. Whether they live by the 3 or die, we'll see in time. But I'd rather lose playing our game than lose trying to be something you are not. They only lost 3 games last year so they lived by the 3 much more than died. But we'll see.

Also 21/74 is 42% eFG%. Not great but not so significant that it explains why they lost.

here's something pretty interesting:
Using this from ESPN's John Gassaway:
By way of answering that question, allow me to introduce you to the most-and least-experienced major-conference teams for 2015-16. To measure experience, I use a handy item I call possession-minutes. Basically it's the percentage of minutes that a player is on the floor, multiplied by the percentage of possessions he used last season (as seen at KenPom.com). I add those products up for each player on a given team from last season, and calculate what percentage of that total number is returning as possession-minutes (%RPMs) for this season. For 2015-16, the average major-conference team will return about 60 percent of its possession-minutes from last season.

For the 10 Big East teams...
#114 DePaul 68%
#134 Xavier 65%
#198 Villanova 54%
#199 Georgetown 54%
#208 Butler 52%
#210 Seton Hall 52%
#222 Providence 50%
#247 Marquette 46%
#282 Creighton 40%
#351 St John's 5%

Pretty interesting. Had no clue that DePaul has the most coming back. I think the danger with 2015-16 looking at this list is that some teams get off to poor starts breaking in new guys in the rotation.

[stever20]

well, Looking at Nova so far, Gumby is right in that Nova is actually shooting more 3's. Right now thru 2 games- taking 50% of their shots as 3's.

It'll be interesting as Nova gets into some challenging opponents if this continues, or it's just a function of playing cupcakes.

One thing to note- nation wide for the 1st weekend- the 3pa% was 36.3% of all shots. The all time record was only 34.4%. So looks overall like the number of 3 pointers may really be going up this year.