A new era of UNM Men’s Basketball starts tonight. After one of the crazier offseasons that I can remember, featuring a coaching change, 10 players announcing their intention to transfer, two of those players coming back, and an Athletic Director retiring under pressure, the Lobos are hoping to wipe the slate clean and redefine what the program is all about. If early returns are any indication, then mission accomplished. This team is practically unrecognizable from last year’s version and in my view, that’s a wonderful thing.

Rather than one of my standard previews, like I’ve done the last couple of years where I looked at each player’s stats to show how they played and what we might expect out of them, this year I figured that I’d just look at some larger themes to keep an eye on throughout the year. After all, based on the 147 points they dropped on Northern New Mexico on Saturday, last year’s stats don’t mean much this year.

The Four Factors

If you’re a KenPom junkie like us, or Geoff Grammer, or Coach Weir, you’re probably already familiar with the Four Factors of Basketball Success, as defined by Dean Oliver. They are, in order of importance:

• True Shooting Percentage, which is a method to insert the extra value that a three pointer provides into the standard shooting percentage. One way to think about this is that because a three-pointer is worth 1.5X what a two-pointer is worth, a made three should count as 1.5 made shots when calculating a player’s or a team’s shooting ability.
• Turnover Percentage, which is simply what percentage of a team’s possessions ends in a turnover.
• Offensive Rebounding Percentage, which is the percentage of a team’s offensive rebound opportunities are actually turned into offensive rebounds. That is, your offensive rebounds divided by the sum of your offensive rebounds and your opponent’s defensive rebounds.
• Free Throw Rate, which is how many free throws a team shoots per field goal attempt. In other words, how often you get to the line.

Given that last year, the Lobos were the best in the country at free throw rate and mediocre to bad at the other three factors, not all factors are equally important and simply being good at one factor is not enough. It’s also worth noting that these factors are important on defense as well, where, again, the Lobos were average-ish last year in all of these factors.

Given what Coach Weir has turned the team into, it’s clear that he is putting a lot of value in the first two factors. He wants guys who can make shots, particularly from deep, and he wants to create a bunch of turnovers. In fact, he wants to force at least 20 turnovers a game, which would likely put the Lobos in the top 10 in that category. As far as KenPom shows, they’ve never done that (the best was their 42nd place finish in 2009). It’s a little unclear how good the team will be at offensive rebounding, particularly given their size, and at free throw rate, but it’s totally possible to win off of just the first two.

Threes Galore

I’m sure you noticed that the Lobos didn’t shoot many threes last year. In fact, in terms of what percentage of their shots came from behind the arc, the Lobos were bottom-10 in the country. Given the way that basketball has evolved, that’s certainly not ideal. The general consensus is that the most efficient shots on the court are at the rim and from deep, so ignoring either of those in favor of midrange shots is an advanced stat-head’s nightmare.

In fact, one thing that really stuck out to me last preseason was an interview with Sam Logwood where he talked about how he spent the whole summer working on his midrange game. This is a guy who can basically jump over anyone to get to the rim and who can shoot threes at a 35% clip for his career, and he was told to focus on the least efficient shot in the game. And you wonder why he never seemed to make the Leap I have predicted the past two seasons (By the way, I’m keeping that streak going. This is Sam’s year! I’m all on board).

Anyway, Coach Weir has envisioned this as an offense that either scores in transition, uses guys like Logwood to get to the rim, or finds the open man for a three. And that’s a lot of what we saw on Saturday. In that game, the Lobos took a bunch of threes, 39 to be precise. That was 46% of their field goal attempts, a number that would have ranked them 14th last season. If the shots are falling, this is a type of offense that will put a bunch of points on the board quickly.

Scoring Distribution

Last season, the Lobos basically just relied on two players, Elijah Brown and Tim Williams, to do all of the scoring for them. EB scored 18.8 points per game while Tim chipped in 17.4 of his own. The next leading scorer was Sam Logwood, which kind of feels like a surprise when I think about it. He averaged 7.3 points per game. That the Lobos lost the bulk of their offense has made a lot of people skeptical about how well they are going to do this year. Really, losing those two guys seems to be the justification for why most publications have the Lobos ranked in the bottom-three of the conference.

So where is the scoring going to come from this year? The answer seems to be from everyone. Chris McNeal, Troy Simons, and Sam Logwood seem to be the most likely candidates to lead the team in scoring, but I would be shocked if there was a big dropoff after them. Plus, we could easily see 7 or 8 guys lead the team in scoring on any given night. I really like this setup, as unlike last year, it means that other teams have to plan on shutting down more than just two guys (or one, which Tim was hurt). And, if one guy is having an off night, someone else will be there to pick up the slack.

Interior Depth

I think that after so many years of Alford and Neal-coached teams, I’ve become accustomed to the Lobos having a good chunk of their roster made up of fairly traditional big men. Centers and power forwards with size who can bang down low, make interior passes, and get rebounds. Because of that, it’s hard to not feel a little anxious about the fact that there are only three true posts on the team this year. Of course, we’re no longer in the Alford/Neal era and the Lobos aren’t going to play that style anymore. In reality, those three posts are mostly going to be rotating through one position instead of two, as the Lobos have already shown a preference to playing smallball with Sam at the four. Like most changes Coach Weir has implemented, that’s definitely the direction that basketball is going in the modern era, so it’s likely by design that those three are the only three bigs on the roster. But, old habits die hard and it does make me a little nervous about foul trouble and injuries, even if my head is telling me that it’s probably going to be alright.

Overall Outlook

I’m sure you can tell by now that I’m drinking the cherry kool-ade this season and that right now, I’m all in on Coach Weir. I would honestly be shocked if the Lobos finish 9th or below in the conference and I could see them ending up anywhere between 4-8. Based on what some expectations seem to be, that would be a great achievement for the Lobos and Coach Weir, especially given how rocky of an offseason it was. This team still has some holes in it and there are a bunch of new players that are all trying to fit into a new system at the same time, so there could be some rough patches here and there. However, to me, it feels like there is a good amount of talent on the team and at least right now, I trust Coach Weir to make the most of it. And if that happens, this season could be more fun that what anyone predicted going in.