If you came to No Bid Nation back in October, well before the 2020-21 men’s college basketball season began, and told us that William & Mary would have one player named to the second team all-conference, two players named to the all-defensive team, and one of our crop of freshmen crowned as rookie of the year in the CAA, we probably would have assumed we placed pretty well in the standings. At the very least, those honors must (!) be an indicator that this team played well and came together as a squad. The reality ended up being a little more complicated than that.
Given all of the twists and turns, how can we really evaluate this season? In true Data from Deep fashion, I will dive into one key stat from the three phases that encompass the Tribe’s performance: offense, defense, coaching.
Offense: (Not) Scoring early and often
The most worrying issue facing the Tribe offense is perhaps not the most obvious. It would be easy to write entire posts about how a team with Luke Loewe, Connor Kochera, and Miguel Ayesa (who still exists, believe it or not) ended up the sixth-worst three-point shooting team in the DI basketball, or how we were the second-most blocked team in the entire nation, or even how assists were markedly down relative to last year. I will resist the urge to pick the low-hanging fruit to point out a deeper trend: the failure to execute early in games.
Take our final two regular season games against Elon as a microcosm of our season. In game one, it took the Tribe exactly 10 minutes to cross into double-digits, a rate which, if extended for the entire game, would leave the team with 40 points by game’s end. In the same timeframe, Elon had 27 points and an unassailable lead. In the second game, it took 12 minutes for the Tribe to score ten points.
One may make the argument that the team is scoring less points because (1) they were unable to score in general (as evidenced by their three-point shooting) and (2) they play with a slower tempo than in years past. Looking at it from a points per possession standpoint can clear up these residual isssues.
In the 17 games William & Mary played this season, they averaged a 73.1 offensive rating (i.e., the team would score 73 points in 100 possessions) in the first five minutes of their games. This is in disparity with their 102 offensive rating in the second halves of games. Keep in mind that the average offensive rating in college basketball is 102.1. A wide gulf also exists between the Tribe and the rest of the conference; their offensive rating in the first ten minutes of play is 12.4 points below the CAA average and 11.9 points below the NCAA average.
You also can’t say the reason the team found themselves in the hole early is because the defense was giving up a lot of easy points either. William & Mary’s opponents averaged 16.4 points within the first ten minutes of play, negligibly different from the NCAA average of 16.0. It is clear that this offense would often stumble out of the gate, putting added pressure on the defense to keep them in games until they could get regain their footing.
Intuitively, getting off to a slow start is problematic. Teams that were down by five or more points within five minutes of play won only 43% of games, while teams down by ten or more within ten minutes of play won only 31% of their games. Obviously worse teams will find themselves down by a lot early in games, but not scoring points isn’t exactly a winning formula. It is unclear if these slow starts are down to composure by the players or coaching, but hopefully this issue can be addressed next season.
Defense: Spotty rim protection
Statistically, the Tribe were a better defensive than offensive team this season. Luke Loewe still played very well, Connor Kochera took charges like a boss, and Mehkel Harvey did get a lot of blocks. But according to KenPom, they ranked 293rd in adjusted offensive efficiency and 271st in defensive efficiency. Better on defense by technicality?
The W&M defense bounced between pretty good and average at times this season, especially in early game situations. However, this team got shot on a lot, and from close range. Overall, 57% of the points scored by Tribe opponents came from two-point range, the 14th highest share in college basketball. Perhaps some of those points are coming from defenders on the edge allowing shooters to come in for a pull-up jumper? In truth, 40% of opponent field goals attempted came at the rim and they finished those shots at a 59% clip. (For the Tribe, shots around the rim made up 48% of total shots but they only finished them at a 52% rate, an issue we can save for another day).
Similarly, the Tribe’s defensive rebounding rate ended at 68.2%, almost four percentage points below league average. This again seems to indicate that opponents were unafraid to attack the basket. Our defense, on the other hand, was unable to repel them. This team missed the calming presence of Nathan Knight under the basket.
Coaching: More skill, less luck
Coaching is often evaluated in terms of the intangibles, which Dane Fischer assuredly has in recruitment ability, demeanor, and command of the team. However, that does not leave much for stat nerds to discuss. One of the more popular ways to evaluate coaching ability is to look at the difference between actual wins and “expected” wins, which are calculated using the ‘Pythagorean’ formula that is informed only by points scored and allowed. Some readers may remember I used this formula to analyze Coach Fischer’s stellar first year.
The theory is that teams that score exactly as many points as they allow should be expected to then win as many games as they lose on average. Any difference in actual and expected wins can be viewed as a proxy for coaching ability. Certainly if on-court performances were lacking but the team still won a fair amount of games, the coach must know what he is doing.
And, perhaps unsurprisingly, Dane Fischer ranks among the best coaches in this rating for the second year running. While William & Mary ranked second last year in win percentage over expected, the Tribe took the top spot this year over Hofstra and Northeastern. It is a great honor to ever be ranked above Bill Coen in any kind of CAA basketball stat, and it indicates what a boon Fischer has been to our team and our school.
While we can debate the contributions of the team’s overall offensive scheme or rotations to their success on the court, it must be said that Fischer teams historically do not fold over. Our lone win over Drexel this year, coming on the back of 17 straight free throws, comes to mind as a game that we probably do not win without Dane’s leadership. In a season full of ups, downs, zigs, and zags, perhaps Coach Fischer was our most consistent performer over the entire season.
In many ways, the 2020-21 season was confusing. The season’s starts and stops complicated our ability to draw any grand conclusions about the Tribe’s trajectory, and the CAA’s indifference to making up games did not help. But the numbers help to illuminate the good and the bad that came from this season like no other. As you can see above, there’s a reason W&M bowed out in the conference quarterfinals yet again. But in a situation where the margins between where the Tribe is now and where it wants to be are so small, seeing the room for growth can be reason for optimism.