After last night’s drubbing at the hands of Arizona, the Lobos head into the holiday break at a definitive low point. In lieu of actually recapping that atrocity of a game, here are a few scattered thoughts about what’s happened so far this season.
Tim Williams is still good…
The hottest of takes, I know. Anyway, I’m starting to become convinced that Tim Williams was put on this planet to score 16-18 points and grab 6-8 rebounds per game, as that’s basically what he’s done since he started playing college basketball. If you look at his career stats, there is a freakish level of consistency from year to year, and this year is no exception. He’s shooting free throws a little better this year, which is the main difference between last year and this year, so he’s scoring an extra point or so a game. He was good last year, he’s good this year, and he’s been the team’s MVP by a decent margin this season.
… But he can’t do it alone
Arizona’s coach, Sean Miller, spoke of his game plan on defense against the Lobos, saying that they just trapped Tim whenever he caught the ball and forced someone else to beat them. Turns out, that was a pretty solid bet, as the leading scorer not named Elijah Brown or Tim Williams was Jalen Harris, with a whopping 5 points. It’s no wonder, then, that the Lobos only scored 46 points. There is a definite need for someone, anyone, to turn into a consistent scorer, as right now, the team is just way too easy to plan against (deny Tim, force EB to try to do too much, go home with a win). We’ve seen occasional flashes from Sam Logwood, Dane Kuiper, Connor MacDougall, Jordan Hunter, and Damien Jefferson, so it feels like it should happen at some point. It just needs to happen soon, as conference play could be rough otherwise.
3-pointers are killing the Lobos
So far this season, the Lobos have allowed teams to shoot 39.5% from three point range and have shot 29.4% themselves. For reference, that’s allowing opponents to shoot slightly better than Tony Snell did in his last year as a Lobo while the Lobos are shooting slightly better than that guy you play in pickup who thinks that because he once made a three, he’s the second coming of Steph Curry. The 10% difference between their shooting and their opponents’ shooting is the 12th-worst in the country, only behind teams that you’d be embarrassed to see the Lobos lose to.
Here’s the confusing thing though: they weren’t bad at either shooting or defending the three last year. The offense is at least a little explainable, as Elijah is basically the only guy shooting many threes and he’s been in a slump this season (and neither of those is a good thing. He needs to make more shots, but others need to take more as well), but I don’t really have a clue about the defense. Did Cullen’s knowledge of how the defense was supposed to work actually help out a lot more than people gave him credit for? If so, then maybe that’s evidence it’s not the defensive system itself that’s the problem, but the players failing to execute it. It might be too late to fix that, but it could explain why Noodles has started dropping the hammer on guys who aren’t playing defense the way they’re expected to.
The results have been predictable
On kenpom.com, Ken Pomeroy’s algorithms predict the scores and assign a win probability for each game. For example, as I’m writing this, the site has the Lobos beating Fresno State next week 75-70 and gives them a 67% chance to win overall. These numbers update as more games are played, so they’re most accurate the day of the game. With all of that said, the Lobos have yet to lose a game that KenPom predicted they would win and have yet to win a game that KenPom predicted they would lose. That’s basically unheard of, and in a weird way, sort of comforting. There are two major downsides to this, though. First, even though they were expected to lose the games, the blowouts against Arizona and Virginia Tech were a surprise. Second, if the trend continues, the Lobos will go 8-10 in conference play to finish with a 15-15 record. I can’t imagine that anyone would be happy with that.
It’s time to see what Noodles is made of
I know that I’ve been a strong Coach Neal supporter and, at times, have been one to make excuses for him. The last couple of years, there have been plenty of reasons for the Lobos’ struggles, whether it was injuries, graduations of key players, too much youth on the roster, or whatever. This year, those excuses just aren’t there. This team has a lot of continuity from last year, an average amount of experience relative to the field, and no big, devastating injuries. Bottom line, this team deserved to have higher expectations placed on it.
This isn’t even from the fans. In fact, here’s a quote from Neal’s boss, AD Paul Krebs:
“We expect to be leaders in the Mountain West, and our program should be nationally relevant. We need to consistently participate in the NCAA Tournament or the NIT and, frankly, that’s not happening. For lack of a better word, we’ve fallen into mediocrity. That’s not acceptable.”
Does anyone think that the Lobos have any shot of getting an at-large bid to the NIT this year, much less the NCAA Tournament? So, if the Lobos are going to make either of those tournaments and, thus, meet Krebs’ expectations, they’re going to have to win a conference championship, either regular season or conference tournament. The thing is, we’ve known this for a while, basically since the Wooden Legacy. If the Lobos had managed to make it to the finals of that tournament, then there were a few scenarios that you could have imagined that could have led to the Lobos being in the conversation for an at-large bid. Once that didn’t happen, there was pretty much no way the Lobos could have a shot at an at-large bid.
The optimist in me likes to think that the coaching staff knows this, which is why he has continued to play anywhere from 10-12 guys a game, regardless of the situation, and why he felt comfortable making drastic changes to the lineup at this point in the season. Getting the team ready for the conference season is, for any chance at the postseason and for Noodles to keep his job, the best course of action. Obviously, the pessimist in me disagrees and thinks that things are just completely out of control at this point. I really hope that’s not the case.
Like most Lobo fans (I hope!), I’d love to see this team succeed and, by extension, see Noodles succeed. After all, if things work out, then this moment will seem like the necessary growing pains that the team had to go through to become one of the top conference teams again. If they don’t, then this moment will seem like the beginning of the end, the moment when the seams started to tear before everything falls apart. Either way, this should be an interesting three months.