Flying Dutchmen Fans

We're about a third of the way through the season. Our record is 7-3 and our RPI today is 104. The question I have is, how good are we?

Certainly, you can say we've played some exciting games. The Monmouth win was a classic. But we've defeated only one team with a winning record (Army, 6-4) and have struggled to beat four MAAC/AE teams. We've also lost to two MAAC teams (2-7 Siena and 4-5 Fairfield, the latter in a scrimmage). Our next opponent is another MAAC team, Manhattan, and then comes Villanova.

Not sure this is the best way to prepare for a competitive CAA season.

We are like a little girl. When we are good we are very good. When we are bad hop boy. We are inconsistent from in game to game to game. I️ see us as a 18 to 20 win team

Jojo I think that is a very good question. Besides Gustys and Sabety, this is a young team with a lot of new faces.
I like the depth. I like that different players are stepping up. They are learning to play together and maybe the coach is getting a handle on how to play 9 players or so.
The depth should allow us to play some man to man defense, to press more and to get some fresh legs in there.
The newness of the roster gives me hope that they can continue to improve especially defensively. They can shoot free throws.
There is some real promise here...keep getting better every day.

Jojogunne wrote:Not sure this is the best way to prepare for a competitive CAA season.

I think our OOC has been nearly perfect for our team.

We have four games against teams better than us (Dayton, Clemson, Auburn, Nova), warm-ups (Army, Kennesaw), then a bunch of peer opponents (Siena, Monmouth, Rider, SB, Manhattan). It's the perfect OOC, like what could you possibly want different? Records aren't truly indicative of the quality of opponent at this point.

How good are we? Great question.

We've been a bad defensive team, we lack size at the guard spots, and athleticism at the forward spots. We're showing a little life though, I thought we pressured the ball much better against SB, and generated 9 steals. We show flashes of good defense, but generally, we have not been aggressive enough and we let our opposition move the ball easily.

Offensively, we're pretty good. We shoot the 3-pointer well, we've gotten big offensive contributions from multiple players, which is encouraging, it means we have some offensive flexibility based on opposing defensive matchups in the CAA. We've been running a lot of that triple-weave a la Pecora the last few games. I think this is an "In Guards We Trust" season.

I think the coaching staff is trying a lot of formations on both sides of the ball in the OOC. We were picked fourth in the CAA this year, that is a fair potential outcome, I agree with Stu, I think we're about a 20 win team. If we can get some defensive scheme to work in conference play, or get Rok to give us anything defensively, we could get in that 23+ win range and compete for the title.

Flying Dutchmen wrote: We have four games against teams better than us (Dayton, Clemson, Auburn, Nova), warm-ups (Army, Kennesaw), then a bunch of peer opponents (Siena, Monmouth, Rider, SB, Manhattan). It's the perfect OOC, like what could you possibly want different? Records aren't truly indicative of the quality of opponent at this point.

There are 351 teams, so the median is 176th. Our non-conference strength of schedule is 189th according to http://warrennolan.com/basketball/2018/schedule/Hofstra which says that Manhattan is 278th in the RPI and Villanova is 5th. Those two games should provide a net positive impact and our non-conference strength of schedule will be average. It's not like we should have scheduled harder because we thought we had a chance at an at-large bid. Our non-conference strength of schedule was 195th in 2016-2017 and 140th in 2015-2016 (but the NIT improved that). For 2014-2015 and before, Warren Nolan's site has strength of schedule but not non-conference strength of schedule. In 2014-2015, our non-conference opponents' winning percentage excluding Vermont in the CBI and excluding our opponents' games against us was .404. I think our non-conference strength of schedule is normal by our standards.

Flying Dutchmen wrote:

Jojogunne wrote:Not sure this is the best way to prepare for a competitive CAA season.

I think our OOC has been nearly perfect for our team.

We have four games against teams better than us (Dayton, Clemson, Auburn, Nova), warm-ups (Army, Kennesaw), then a bunch of peer opponents (Siena, Monmouth, Rider, SB, Manhattan). It's the perfect OOC, like what could you possibly want different? Records aren't truly indicative of the quality of opponent at this point.

How good are we? Great question.

We've been a bad defensive team, we lack size at the guard spots, and athleticism at the forward spots. We're showing a little life though, I thought we pressured the ball much better against SB, and generated 9 steals. We show flashes of good defense, but generally, we have not been aggressive enough and we let our opposition move the ball easily.

Offensively, we're pretty good. We shoot the 3-pointer well, we've gotten big offensive contributions from multiple players, which is encouraging, it means we have some offensive flexibility based on opposing defensive matchups in the CAA. We've been running a lot of that triple-weave a la Pecora the last few games. I think this is an "In Guards We Trust" season.

I think the coaching staff is trying a lot of formations on both sides of the ball in the OOC. We were picked fourth in the CAA this year, that is a fair potential outcome, I agree with Stu, I think we're about a 20 win team. If we can get some defensive scheme to work in conference play, or get Rok to give us anything defensively, we could get in that 23+ win range and compete for the title.

couldnt agree more. aside from wishing we had more home games i think the schedule was perfect. literally you could break it down into three categories of equal amount of games. 1 - the ones that will challenge us (nova and charleston tourney), the great local rivalry games (sb, monmouth, rider and the games we should win (army kennesaw molloy)

Our RPI had a great day today considering we didn't play. We're up to 80th. Our opponents went 5-0:

Kennesaw State got their first win against Bethune-Cookman
Dayton beat Georgia State
Clemson beat Florida
Auburn beat Middle Tennessee, who is 21st in the RPI after losing
Rider beat Wagner, who is 53rd in the RPI after losing

Army, Siena, Monmouth, and Stony Brook did not play.

Nice...but all that matters is that we beat Manhattan...leaders in the MAAC if we go 3-1

Hofstra is up to 77th, and the CAA is up to 12th out of 32 in the Conference RPI. The MAAC is worse than usual. It's 22nd, and it was 21st or higher in the last eight complete seasons.

Good informative points, thank you - lets beat Manhattan - do some good things vs Villanova and gear up for our regular season CAA.

Army and Siena won today, while Stony Brook came close to at upset with a 62-60 loss at Providence. We beat Stony Brook by more at Stony Brook than Providence did at home. Hofstra is 71st in the RPI, and our non-conference strength of schedule is up 65 spots to 124th in 3 days (or 4 days because it includes all of Thursday through Saturday and some of today).

EvanJ wrote:Army and Siena won today, while Stony Brook came close to at upset with a 62-60 loss at Providence. We beat Stony Brook by more at Stony Brook than Providence did at home. Hofstra is 71st in the RPI, and our non-conference strength of schedule is up 65 spots to 124th in 3 days (or 4 days because it includes all of Thursday through Saturday and some of today).

I don't think the RPI is going to behoove us in any way this year would love to c this team win the whole enchilada and get an automatic bid. We all know from game to game it's hard to draw comparisons that are meaningful in common opponents because on a given day there are too many variables. Let's see if our PG play steps up and we keep teams in the 70's if so we'll have a good chance to win a lot of games because this team is decent offensively.

We're better than "decent" offensively. There are 351 teams, and one-third of that is 117. Our average rank in points per game, field goal percentage, three-point field goal percentage, and free throw percentage is 115th.

EvanJ wrote:We're better than "decent" offensively. There are 351 teams, and one-third of that is 117. Our average rank in points per game, field goal percentage, three-point field goal percentage, and free throw percentage is 115th.

Aggregated statistics like these don't reveal much. How well does the offense perform against better defenses? Can we score when the game is on the line? Answer these questions and you will have a better picture of the "decency" of the offense.

Also conference play is a different animal. We see these teams twice so they can adjust to our offense and we SHOULD adjust to theirs.

stuball888 wrote: Also conference play is a different animal. We see these teams twice so they can adjust to our offense and we SHOULD adjust to theirs.

By that logic CAA teams should score more in out of conference games than in CAA games. Last season CAA teams averaged 73.6 points per game and shot field goals .453 in CAA games. CAA teams averaged 74.1 points per game and shot field goals .450 in all games, so one number was higher each way. I don't think you can say in general that it's easier or harder to score against teams you play twice. It could be interesting to see the statistics for the first game against each opponent and the second game against each opponent, but I'm not going to spend time doing that.

Our RPI keeps climbing without playing. We're up to 69th. We're ahead of 44 percent of the teams in the top six conferences. We're ahead of a majority of the ACC, Pacific-12, and Big Ten.

EvanJ wrote:Our RPI keeps climbing without playing. We're up to 69th. We're ahead of 44 percent of the teams in the top six conferences. We're ahead of a majority of the ACC, Pacific-12, and Big Ten.

I assume even with a win tomorrow we will go down? But then probably even with a loss we will go up Friday?

EvanJ wrote:Our RPI keeps climbing without playing. We're up to 69th. We're ahead of 44 percent of the teams in the top six conferences. We're ahead of a majority of the ACC, Pacific-12, and Big Ten.

All the more reason to take them out of the conversation until everyone starts playing a substantial amount of in conference games. Lets talk RPI'''s in February.