“Nothing’s changed on our end,” athletic director R.C. Johnson told the Memphis Commercial Appeal.

The newspaper also claimed that the Big East’s interest could be for basketball-only, which would likely be an unfavorable situation for Memphis. The Tiger’s football program might have a difficult time finding a new home if it were not invited to come along.

Things became less clear when Jon Wilner of the Mercury News reported that his sources have suggested that Air Force is now likely to join Navy in the Big East. If the Big East plans to halt this round of expansion with a 12-team league, these rumors would certainly conflict. Then again, the Big East could be talking to multiple schools about becoming the 12th football member.

Memphis does provide benefits to the Big East, however. As an all-sports member, they would bring one of the best basketball brands from outside the power conferences and a program that runs and is funded just like the top programs of the Big East. They’d also provide an all-sports buffer to soften the blow of any potential future departures. Memphis also happens to be an easy sell to the basketball interests in the conference and a great ticket to bring into town for everyone.

The Air Force Academy would bring a notable national brand in football-only, they’d bring their long-time rivalry with the Naval Academy into conference play (and ease up Navy’s non-conference scheduling). They’d also add another football team in the west to help fill out that division geographically.

Didn’t Air Force already decline?

It was previously reported that Air Force had decided not to join the Big East conference and to remain in the Mountain West and/or its amalgamation with Conference-USA. Things have changed since then, however, and the Conference-USA talk went from a football-only combination to a potential all-sports merger.

Furthermore, Navy finally pulled the trigger on joining the Big East (as of the 2015 football season). When they did, it created a tough situation for their non-conference scheduling — Navy would have 8 conference games, Notre Dame, Army and Air Force on their schedule every season, leaving just one slot. Navy head coach Ken Niumtalolo suggested that if push game to shove, they might be willing to drop their rivalry with Air Force.

Changing scenarios might leave Air Force more bullish on the Big East or bearish on staying put.

Which rumor is wrong?

It’s tough to guess at this point. Both reporters have some level of credibility, but neither has named their sources. Either option would make some degree of sense, however.

It is also possible that both schools could be on their way to joining the league. The Big East isn’t afraid of adding basketball schools and was set to have 17 members in that sport when they invited TCU (now joining the Big XII). Plus, with Navy putting off membership until 2015, the Big East might not be able to host a potentially-lucrative football championship game in 2013 or 2014 unless they add two more members (than currently expected) in 2013.

The Big East hadn’t ruled out a 14-member football conference, and may even be likely to go to that configuration (or bigger) in the future. If both Memphis and Air Force joined, expect that both would play football in a “west” division while Memphis would participate with the rest of the league in other sports. One additional school would have to be added, but Memphis’ location would allow some flexibility in the selection. A 14th member could theoretically come from anywhere in the country, and the Big East would have plenty of time to choose, since they wouldn’t need that member to join until 2015.

2015… that sounds familiar…

Of course, 2015 is also the football season that has been pegged by Villanova administrators as the soonest that they would or could join the Big East conference after a transition to FBS. That is based on a three-year transition period that is preferred by Villanova over the minimum two-year period that the NCAA has set as a minimum.

The longer Villanova waits, however, the further that period will have to be pushed back. Though, if invited soon, it still seems plausible that Villanova could plan to be ready for Big East football in 2015 and they could plausibly join alongside Navy at that time.

The Big East kind of left Villanova hanging when the expansion drama heated up this fall. There hasn’t been much action on that end, as the football schools and Big East office scramble to realign at lightning speed. Villanova has internally been working on some plans related to the football program and would still like to sit down with the Big East and hammer out a plan for football.

As of the writing of this post, VUhoops is not aware of any news regarding Villanova and Big East football.

Can Boise State be West Virginia?

The other cog to this story is that there are now reports, coming from the same reporter who suggested that Air Force might be close to joining the Big East, that the Big East is “pressuring” Boise State to join in the fall. Having Boise come in for the 2012 football season would allow the Big East to avoid the scheduling horrors of trying to fill an extra open date on every school’s schedule when WVU ultimately joins the Big 12.

It does appear that WVU will not be a part of the Big East in fall at this point, and the major matter of contention will be over what the school will owe to the conference for their trouble.

It is believed that Boise State can withdraw from the Mountain West on short notice under their bylaws by paying a significantly-larger fee to the conference. The Big East would likely ask that West Virginia or the Big 12 would pay that amount in addition to any other damages, so the lawsuit seems to make an early exit for Boise State more feasible.

It is also rumored that the Conference USA bylaws have special provisions for the withdrawal of founding members. Houston is considered a founding member, but may or may not be able to take advantage of the bylaws protection now that their withdrawal papers have already been submitted. One such consideration in those bylaws is that founding members have a decreased exit penalty when giving a year’s notice to the conference.

Another (and this is completely unconfirmed) is that they may be able to withdraw with less than a year’s notice, for an increased, but still manageable, fee. If that provision exists and Houston isn’t able to take advantage to join in the fall under that provision due to some technicality, all hope would not be lost, however.

Another founding member of Conference-USA? Memphis.

Independent Philly Photo

Earlier in the week, we posed the question of how good Maurice Sutton really was for the Wildcats. The recipient of very few minutes this season, Sutton had a career performance on Saturday, as the Wildcats dropped a second game against Marquette by four points. During that game, Darrius Johnson-Odom passed Maalik Wayns to become the Big East’s second-leading scorer this season. Wayns now sits 3rd on that list for points per game with West Virginia’s Kevin Jones lapping both player to take the top spot.

With 405 points scored this season, however, Wayns still has more total points that Johnson-Odom. In fact, even on a per-game basis, Wayns has scored just 0.1 fewer points.

That 3-point game against Syracuse only muddles the argument even more. Was that game a fluke? Should we ignore it for the sake of comparison? If that game were stricken from the record his per-game average would be 19.14 points, which is comfortably ahead of DJO’s 18.5 and still trails Jones with 20.9.

We can’t just go around giving players a mulligan though.

Wayns leads the Big East in free-throw percentage, which is important because he does get a significant number of opportunities there. In the bigger picture, however, he could probably score more at the line. Wayns draws fouls at a rate of 5.7 per 40 minutes and has a free-throw rate of 42.9, which is a smidge below the mark of 50 that Ken Pomeroy considers “Good” or 70, where a player becomes “excellent.”

Free-Throw rate compares the number of free throws attempted to the number of field goals attempted. The higher the number, the more efficient a player is at scoring (assuming they actually make their free throws). A player like Maalik Wayns who can connect on 89.9% of his free throws, is under-utilizing that skill with such a low free throw rate.

In contrast, Mouph Yarou has a FT Rate of 53.9 and JayVaughn Pinkston is sitting at 71.6.

Wayns has the nation’s 359th-best Offensive Rating at 111.9 and takes 28% of the team’s shots when he is on the floor. He is rated highest for assist rate, however, coming in at 79th nationally in that category — 31.2% of his teammates’ scoring has resulted from an assist he has dished out while he was on the court. Only two teammates have recorded a double-digit assist rate, Ty Johnson with 22.7% and Markus Kennedy with 10.1%, and neither has received more than a moderate amount of minutes this season.

While these numbers suggest that Wayns has room for improvement, you don’t have to look too much deeper to see another issue. Villanova relies on Maalik Wayns to create offense.

Whether that offense comes from Wayns directly or from his teammates, it seems all the more likely to happen when Maalik is on the floor. Wayns can create opportunities for himself (and does so often), but his teammates haven’t had such an easy time and rely on the assist to set them up.

To date, Maalik Wayns has been the Wildcats’ best assist-man, dishing out 4.6 assists per game. The next-highest number belongs to Johnson, who has produced just a paltry 1.7 assists per game. Part of that deficit can be explained by the minutes differential of course, but Wayns still leads Johnson in assists-per-minute, 0.137 to 0.126.

How good is Maalik Wayns? Without question he is the most important player on this year’s Villanova team and when his minutes have been cut, the ‘Cats have struggled — and that includes the times where they have been artificially cut by foul trouble.

In the long-term, Nova needs to find a way to get by without Wayns on the court but in the short-term, they can’t live without him.

Independent Philly Photo

On Saturday, Villanova couldn’t keep it’s hyped starting center on the court. Mouphtaou Yarou played just 11 minutes against Marquette while picking up a number of quick fouls. His big-bodied understudy, Markus Kennedy, didn’t fare much better — he fouled out of the game with 13 minutes remaining. All of that meant one thing: more minutes for Maurice Sutton.

Sutton played 22 minutes in that game, scoring 11 points, grabbing 10 rebounds, 3 steals and 2 blocks. Half of his rebounds were on the offensive glass.

Sutton is the rare player who redshirted for a season without necessarily suffering any injury. That was four years ago, when Sutton was a skinny 6-10, 180lb forward/center who was recruited to Villanova to provide some height and front court depth. Now, Sutton is listed at 220lb, still less than 6-6 James Bell (who admittedly has the assistance of two metal rods to hold him to the ground).

Even before his performance against Marquette, some fans were calling for the senior to get more playing time. Afterward, the clamoring for an increased role has only been louder.

Sutton’s stats are hard to truly judge based on the small sample size. He averages just 6.4 minutes per game – which is actually down from the last two seasons where he played over 10 minutes per game. This season, he didn’t even get off of the bench in 7 of the Wildcat’s games and played one minute or less in 5 more.

Despite that, Sutton leads the team in field goal percentage, making 52.9% of his shots (but he has only taken 17 of them), he also makes 75% of his free-throws (but he has only taken 8 of them).

Raw statistics can’t possibly tell the whole story. Advanced statistics might very well be skewed as well, but they are potentially more reliable here.

Sutton is 7th on the team in points scored per minute played with 0.25 points per minute. Maalik Wayns is the team leader with 0.55 points per minute. When he is on the court, Wayns takes 28% of the team’s shots but Sutton has accounted for just 12.1% of the shots taken in his 96 minutes of game time.

In ORtg, a metric that determines a player’s offensive efficiency by dividing the points produced by the number of possessions that player has used, Sutton ranks first, producing an ORtg of 115.3. Maalik Wayns has an very strong ORtg of 111.9 — good enough for second place. He also leads in effective field goal percent with 52.9% despite having not even attempted a 3-point shot (James Bell is a close second with 52.8%).

When it comes to rebounding, no Wildcat has been more productive per-minute that Mo Sutton. He produces 0.333 rebounds per minute played, edging out Yarou with 0.312 and Markus Kennedy with 0.310. On the offensive glass he is second, grabbing 0.115 offensive boards per game, with Kennedy leading at 0.129 and Yarou coming in third with 0.111.

The little-used big man crushes his teammates in steals-per-minute, forcing 0.052 while number-2 was Kennedy with 0.037.

He comes in second in blocks per minute and third for (fewest) turnovers-per-minute.

With just 96 minutes under his belt in 2011-12 and more than halfway through the season, however, the validity of all of these numbers is perhaps questionable. Against a ranked opponent on Saturday, however, it certainly seemed as if he was validating those results. Per-minute, Sutton had 0.5 points, 0.455 rebounds, 0.23 offensive rebounds, 0.14 steals, and 0.09 blocks in that game.

Does the skinny big man from Maryland deserve more minutes?

Sutton’s per-minute production has been strong in small sample sizes so far this season. He is by-no-means superman, but he hasn’t been a liability on the court either. That all could change with a greater role being handed over, but isn’t it worth taking that chance?

He certainly has more basketball experience than Yarou and he is more mobile than Kennedy. He is a different type of player than the other Villanova forwards. Sutton isn’t as bulky, but he is quicker than Yarou and Kennedy and has good instincts on the court.

Sutton also won the Hoops Mania slam dunk contest — a mostly meaningless affair that he almost won by default as his teammates missed their attempts repeatedly. The meaning inherent in that fact is that Sutton may be the best offensive finisher of the group.

Lets also not forget that despite the fact that his school biography page lists him as a junior, Sutton is in-fact in his fourth year of school at Villanova. Jay Wright talks about senior leadership, but ultimately decreased the minutes of the one actual scholarship player in his fourth year.

We won’t know if Maurice Sutton has played his way into a bigger role until the next game against Pittsburgh on Sunday, but the numbers suggest that Jay Wright should consider it.

To make matters worse for the Big East, the report noted that Louisville would be the “slam dunk” choice to be the 11th team invited. Louisville was passed over by the conference in favor of West Virginia a few months ago when they needed to add a 10th member to replace Missouri. The Big 12 would also give consideration to Brigham Young university as part of any expansion.

That conference has had difficulty deciding on a final number of teams, with some interest groups preferring a 12 team model and others (Texas) preferring to hold steady with 10 members.

The 10-team model appears to be winning the day, despite the conference office leaving the door open to expand again in the future.

“I don’t anticipate there’s going to be a movement off 10,” interim Big 12 commissioner Chuck Neinas told Lubbock radio station Double-T 104.3 FM. “It could happen down the road, but we definitely won’t be beyond 10 for 2012-2013 and there is strong feeling within the membership that 10 provides the opportunity for round-robin in football and you play everyone in basketball twice …

“That seems to be appealing to the conference members. To go beyond that will take a lot of research and hard thinking.”

A potential crisis, seemingly averted.

The power of litigation

The Big 12 may be unwilling to rock the boat in hopes that the Big East and West Virginia will reach a settlement agreement that has been rumored to be in discussion. They have plans to announce their 2012 football schedule on February 1, in order to meet requirements to their television partners. They also need to have a 10th member to comply with those agreements.

There are rumors that have been mentioned by media sources that the Big East and WVU may be near a settlement agreement.

If the Big 12 were to further raid the Big East membership it could jeopardize any willingness that the conference may have to settle it’s legal dispute with West Virginia. In fact, there is still a chance that the Big East could amend it’s pleadings to make the Big 12 a defendant in that case as well.

If West Virginia’s exit costs are greater than what the Mountaineer administration is capable of expending, the Big 12 may be willing to assist them in covering the difference.

The blame game

Big 12 interim commissioner Chuck Neinas, who also serves as a consultant to C-USA and the Mountain West Conference on their merger plans, blamed the current mess on Missouri being “selfish” and demanding to leave immediately. According to the Charleston (WV) Gazette:

“The one thing that gets lost is we’re in this predicament because the SEC invited Missouri,” Neinas said. “But the SEC was willing to play with 13 [rather than 14] next season. We made an offer to Missouri that was financially beneficial to stay for another year. Missouri made the decision not to accept.

“We had a teleconference call with those in the SEC, Big East, ACC, Mountain West and Conference USA. We all agreed we could save money and avoid litigation if all held serve for 2012-13. All agreed. But Missouri made a very selfish decision. It’s been very disruptive. Missouri gave us notice in November [of 2011] and it’s pretty difficult to move forward then.”

He wasn’t very sympathetic over how these moves have affected the Big East though.

“The Big East gets on planes and flies all over the country inviting other schools,”  Neinas [told the Charleston (WV) Gazette]. “But they raise hell when West Virginia wants to come to the Big 12?

“We didn’t solicit West Virginia; West Virginia solicited us — as did other Big East schools. It seems to me the Big East has a double standard. And the Big East was talking about [automatic qualifying status to the BCS]. There’s not going to be AQs in the near future.”

To date, no conference has asked a potential new member to join sooner than their current conference’s exit notice period other than the Big 12. The Big East may have flown on airplanes to line up its expansion schools, but all of them have given notice to current conference partners and will withdraw according to the bylaws and provisions they are currently bound to.

Neinas has had discussions with Big East commissioner John Marinatto, specifically noting that they spoke at the BCS Championship Game in New Orleans this year, but would not divulge the substance of those discussions. He also declined to speak about potential solutions to the fact that at least one of the Big East or Big 12 will be without a 12th scheduled football game for next season.

Now, Villanova has upped the ante by hiring a company to monitor the social media profiles of all varsity athletes at the university.

When the basketball team’s ban was first instituted, Wright explained that some of his players were “too popular” on the websites and that he didn’t want to see their remarks there being published by the media. A series of off-color remarks that were republished in the media recently cost one highly-touted football recruit recently, as he was expelled from Catholic powerhouse Don Bosco Prep and a number of colleges backed off his recruitment.

Villanova athletes are like any other college kids, but the public and the media will always demand more of them.

It is more than just a personal concern, however. On a few occasions, information about football player injuries were leaked this fall through the players’ Twitter feeds. Even strong hints about what was going on could throw a reporter or an opposing team onto the scent of these stories.

With opponents having knowledge of injuries, they have an easier time game-planning. If a player ultimately plays through an injury, opponents will know where their weaknesses are, and could exploit them — a potentially dangerous result.

Teams were lectured this fall about the dangers of “tweeting” and “facebooking” every thought or happening in their lives. Many of Villanova’s varsity athletes have made their accounts private because of this, but the University has taken things a step farther this spring.

Villanova hired VarsityMonitor, a company that specializes in tracking and monitoring the social media profiles of college athletes. School officials haven’t commented publicly about the move, but student-athletes haven’t been happy with the move:

“Things that I make private, I don’t believe that they should have access to that,” said track athlete Anna Francis.

All athletes were sent an email recently advising them to add the service as a “friend” on their Facebook and Twitter accounts. Once they have done that, the company will be able to see anything that they post online and will help the school to “develop and enforce fair and effective social media policies.”

The process is done both by an automated system and by manual review and the will report it to the school if they uncover, “inappropriate, illegal, or unethical content. ” The determination of what in inappropriate is based on individual school policies and the notification would be sent to both administrators and the player’s head coach.

VarsityMonitor also archives the athletes’ account posts to allow for, “historical analysis, analytics, reporting, and research into the overall social media behavior,” and provides reporting of the public “mentions” of the athletes by others on social media sites.

Other schools using VarsityMonitor include North Carolina, Texas and Nebraska.

Brown attends practices, he watches the drills and scrimmages and advises Wright and his staff based on his own expertise from decades of coaching basketball players. It is the second-opinion that Jay Wright looks for to check his own judgment.

When it comes to phone-a-friends, however, Jay Wright has a rolodex deeper than Larry Brown. According to a quote published in the Newark Star-Ledger this morning, there was another coach from outside the program staff who attended practice this week — called in to provide insights.

“That’s what we’re looking for — effort. We have a legendary coach at practice every day, a Hall-of-Famer in Coach (Larry) Brown, but being around so much, sometimes, he’s like us. We had a guy on the outside come in and watch practice the other day and after practice he said, ‘I really didn’t see anybody going after each other.’ They’re still learning a lot of things and it’s hard to play with complete intensity when you’re still learning and that’s what’s going on.”
– JAY WRIGHT 

Who was that “guy on the outside?” Was it another Big 5 coach? An ex-Villanova coach? A Philadelphia legend like Herb Magee of Philadelphia University? Or could it have been one of Larry Brown’s friends? Either way, Wright hasn’t identified this mystery coach.

With the ‘Cats bringing in outside coaches to observe practice, it would seem that there was a high level of concern inside the program about the level of play thus far this season. If things had been going well, with a win-count in the teens, would Wright have looked beyond a Hall-of-Fame coach like Larry Brown for advice?

UPDATE (3:40p): We have a clue! According to Dan Gelston of the Associated Press, when asked about the identity of the mystery coach after the post-game press conference concluded, Wright responded: “Can’t tell you. He would be embarrassed. He’s a local guy.”

We can go ahead and eliminate everyone who can’t be classified as “a local guy.”

10. Did UCLA Get Involved With Goodman? – The HoopGroup’s Dave Krupinski reported to VUhoops.com that UCLA may have made a late push to recruit former 2012-commit Savon Goodman, leading to his de-commitment. There was also a suggestion that Goodman would be a package deal with Kyle Anderson. So far, Goodman remains undecided on where he will land.

9. Source: Nova Also Had ACC Talks – At least one newspaper blew this story up after seeing it on VUhoops and reported that Villanova had “applied” for ACC membership. Our sources didn’t report anything getting that far along, but there was reportedly a push by Boston College athletic director Gene DeFilippo to get Villanova into the expansion picture.

8. Big East Media Day: Jay Wright on Realignment – Coach Wright fielded more questions about football at the media day than he did about his own team. Wright loudly proclaimed that Villanova wanted to join the Big East in football, and expressed optimism about the new members.

7. Isaiah Armwood Transferring – The news broke shortly after the team returned from its European tour that junior forward Isaiah Armwood would not return to school. The move created some uncertainty in the line-up that Wright was likely to use and lead to less flexibility in games.

6. WVU Sues the Big East – Conference realignment took an ugly turn when West Virginia took their desire to leave the Big East conference this summer into court. Their hastily written Complaint made their over-the-top claims part of the public record.

5. Goodman De-Commits – Savon Goodman was initially expected to be one member of a star-studded all-Philadelphia class for the Wildcats until 2012. VUhoops had the story when Goodman made his intention to re-open his recruitment official prior to jetting off to Southern California for the Boost Mobile Elite 24 Classic event.

4. Homecoming Wrap-Up – The basketball team marched into the Pavilion wearing military uniforms and saluted the crowd, Mo Sutton won the Slam Dunk Contest, superstar-rapper Drake performed a mini-concert and the football team lost to Old Dominion. You came to VUhoops for pictures, videos and a recap of the whole weekend.

3. Expansion Apocalypse: What to expect when you are expecting (a decision) – On April 7th, the final countdown to what was supposed to be a Board of Trustees vote on whether or not to move the football program to the Big East conference was underway. Our sources indicated that the Trustees favored the move and that it was likely to be approved. We ran down the details of what would have to happen next. The Big East conference never let that vote occur, however, as the carpet was pulled out from underneath the Wildcats on April 10th.

2. Daniel Ochefu Commits to Villanova – Who ever said that Jay Wright can’t recruit big men? Ochefu is considered one of the best Center prospects in the country and one of the best basketball players in the Philadelphia area. He gave Jay Wright his verbal commitment on March 21, 2011 and joined Ryan Arcidiacono and Savon Goodman (since de-committed) in what was then one of the top-2 recruiting classes in the nation.

1. Football Has A PPL Problem? – VUhoops was the first outlet to report on the University of Pittsburgh’s objections to Villanova’s plan to play FBS football games at PPL Park, the home of Major League Soccer’s Philadelphia Union. The Panthers were not the only objectors but early on they were the loudest. Villanova didn’t have many other options for a modern facility capable of hosting FBS football, however, and moved forward with that plan.

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2011 was dominated by talk of football upgrades and conference realignment. Basketball was hardly on top of the world, but a potentially huge 2012 recruiting class kept Wildcat fans on the edge of their seats.

Basketball games are always a major topic for Villanova. Just outside the Top-10 were stories about two basketball losses that deeply disappointed Nova Nation, this season’s loss in the Holy War and the last season’s NCAA Tournament flame-out.

Nova fans also celebrated alumni in 2011, watching Scottie Reynolds try to build his professional career, and Curtis Sumpter try to revive his own with Team USA. Sumpter returned from a career overseas to try and work his way into the NBA the hard way; through the D-League route that Scottie opted to eschew.

Villanova football won just 2 games in 2011, but began to show some promise near the end of the season as the young players began to figure out their roles. Villanova basketball went 17-17 from January 1, 2011 until December 31, 2011, not counting exhibition games (if you did, they would be below-.500).

What do you hope the top-stories of 2012 will be?

Then, things took off. He took the Wildcats on a seven season run of 21- to 30-win seasons, NCAA bids and postseason runs. It made his reputation as a superstar.

The last two seasons of that run were two of just three in that span where the Wildcats didn’t make it to the second weekend of the NCAA tournament, and they collapsed late in both seasons. This season has started off with a whimper and has shown only a precious few signs of hope moving forward.

How unusual is it for a coach and a program to take a dip like that?

Mike Kryzewski hasn’t missed a trip to the NCAA tournament since 1996, but that is perhaps a unique situation. The standards are a bit different for an elite program headed by an elite coach who tends to get his pick of the best recruits in the country. When Coach K failed to get past the first weekend in 2007 and 2008, it was a let-down. Getting blown off the floor by Villanova in the 2009 Sweet Sixteen was another low-point for a team that is annually expected to be among not just the top 25, but the top 5 or 10 in the nation.

UConn has missed the NCAA tournament seven times since Jim Calhoun took over in 1986. He followed up a 2009 Final Four with a trip to the NIT in 2010. In 2007 his Huskies didn’t make it to any post-season tournament and only managed a first-round exit in 2008.

Jim Boeheim won a National Championship in 2003 and then didn’t get past the first round in either 2005 or 2006. It took a Big East tournament run fueled by Gerry McNamara willpower to even make it to the 2006 tournament. In 2007 and 2008, Syracuse appeared in the NIT rather than the NCAA tournament.

Nobody looked to fire Boeheim in 2008. Nobody even questioned his undying devotion to the 2-3 Zone. They accepted the coach for what he was and eventually he got the program back on it’s feet among the elite.

Almost every head coach of an elite college basketball program has had seasons where his team didn’t quite click. Seasons where the execution was off, things went wrong, or bad decisions caused them to fail to live up to expectations. Sometimes they even string a few of them together.

This isn’t a defense of Jay Wright. The last two seasons ended with his team playing its worst basketball rather than its best. This season, meanwhile, is just a terrible mess for a team that is stocked with highly-rated recruits. There have rarely been teams in the Jay Wright era with so many 4- or 5-star talents.

What this is, is a reminder that the calls for Jay Wright’s head are perhaps premature. Villanova isn’t Duke, Kansas, or UNC. Villanova’s last run of seven consecutive NCAA tournament bids was under Rollie Massimino from 1980 until 1986, who followed that run with three NIT bids in six years. Even Jack Kraft, who won about 72% of his games at Nova, or Alexander Severance never quite had an elite run like that.

2010 and 2011 were ugly for the Wildcats, but they were still 25 and 21-win seasons, respectively. Both ended well enough to warrant a tournament bid. If Jim Boeheim could replace his run from 2006 through 2008 with what Villanova did the past two years and this season, there is a good chance he would take it.

The sky is not falling and Jay Wright’s seat is not hot. He has time and a recruiting class or two to get his program back on top. A coach that took a scrappy underdog team filled with unheralded recruits to a Final Four has earned a little bit of slack. Even if you impute those successes on his assistants, remember that the head coach hires his staff — he is CEO of the program.

Does Jay Wright make decisions that frustrate fans? Absolutely, but without Wright’s 7-year run, would Villanova fans even be in a position to expect a bid to the NCAA tournament in any given year?

While it is fair to be disappointed, it is shortsighted to be looking at head coaching resumes so soon. Jay Wright isn’t finished yet.

Updated:  December 27 at 9:00 am.

With over 150 participating in our poll, the VUHoops readers expect the Cats to go 10-8 during Big East Conference play, with 7 wins at home and 3 wins on the road.

The probabilities associated with each predicted win and loss have been calculated using reader voting as a proxy for the probability of the predicted outcome.   The details of the Cat’s predicted 10-8 conference record, including the probability of the predicted outcome, are set out below.

Original Post

The Cat’s finished their out-of-conference schedule unranked with an RPI of 79 with a 7-5 record.  Of Villanova’s twelve OOC games, only four were against quality opponents as measured by RPI or AP ranking (St. Louis, Temple, St. Joe’s and Missouri).  The Cats lost all of those games by margins of ten points or more.  Their worst loss came against Santa Clara (RPI 130), which we all remember remember for the Cat’s collapse, blowing a five-point lead with 51 seconds to go.  ‘Nova’s seven victories came against teams with an average RPI of 189, with the best of the bunch at home against LaSalle (RPI 100).  Even in that game the Cats had to hold off a furious second half charge by the Explorers, which played without their top scorer, Ramon Galloway (15.0 PPG, 50% 3PT%).

We expected this team to be inconsistent but good, with flashes of brilliance coupled with inconsistency typical of a young team.  The inconsistency was clearly evident, but the flashes of brilliance, well … not so much.  After an embarrassing loss to a very young St. Joe’s team, Coach Jay Wright stopped blaming the team’s woes on its “youth” in favor of  perhaps a more accurate characterization — “inexperience.” Only Maalik Wayns and Mouph Yarou returned as starters from last season.  Yet, youth and inexperience explain only so much when considering the success of teams like Connecticut and Providence, both with ten freshman and sophomores and over ten wins this season.

From here, things only get tougher as the Big East season begins this week against West Virginia.  If the Cat’s have any hopes of post-season play, they need to get better fast.  What are their most glaring “opportunities” to do so?  For some of the answers, we turned to Statsheet.com, which tracks  every imaginable basketball statistic under the sun.  We compared the Cat’s stats with the average statistics of the top five teams in the nation to see how far we are from greatness.  Here’s what we found:

Defense

One of the most frustrating things about this team has been its defense.  Opposing teams seem to find wide-open shots at will.  We have had no answer for even average perimeter scoring-teams.  Every loss seems to feature a career high in scoring by an opposing player.  ‘Nova allows the bad guys to score 66.0 PPG (ranking = 165^th) on 40.6% shooting (ranking = 101^st).  While tough perimeter defense is sorely needed, comparison with the nation’s best teams highlights three other glaring opportunities:

Offense

On offense, this team has distinguished itself so far by its poor outside shooting and shot selection.  Nowhere is this more evident than in the in the case of Wayns and Cheek, who have combined for 123 shots from behind the arc (18% of all the shots taken by the team), while hitting only 28% of them.  JayVaughn Pinkston, ‘Nova’s top three-point shooter (42%) has attempted only 12 three-point shots.  Still not convinced?  As a team, Villanova is a decent 2-point shooting team (48.7%), but poor from long range (31.6%).  Yet, the team stubbornly launches 38% of its shots from beyond the arc. Still in doubt?  Consider this. Villanova is the 10^th best free-throw shooting team in the country at 76.8%, yet gets to the line only 21.6 times per game, good for a 118^th ranking in the country!  Worst of all, Villanova has a tendency to bring the ball up and shoot quickly with a hand in the face rather than exercising the patience to work for a good shot.

‘Nova scores 72.8 PPG (ranking = 103^rd) on 42.1% shooting (ranking = 221^st), while dishing out only 13.2 assists per game (ranking 151^st).  Comparison with the nations five best teams identifies four glaring opportunities for improvement:

What did We Expect?

Over the weeks leading up to the season opener, the VUHoops readers predicted the points per game the team would score this season in our Wisdom of Crowds poll.  So far the team has come very close to our expectations.  We predicted the team would score 72.2 PPG vs. an actual PPG of 72.8 PPG through twelve games.  However, that average is likely to drop as the team goes through the meat grinder otherwise known as the Big East.  Darrun Hilliard, scoring 7.0 PPG as a starter vs. our prediction of 3.8 PPG, has been our most pleasant surprise.  Ty Johnson’s scoring average of 2.2 PPG vs. our prediction of 5.7PPG has been our biggest disappointment.  His 11 MPG has had a lot to do with it, and we all hope to see much more PT for Ty over the remainder of the year.  Here’s a comparison of our all players’ PPG vs. our predictions:

The Two Best & Two Worst ( Per 40 Minutes Played)

• OREB:  Best:  Kennedy (6.1), Yarou (4.5); Worst:  Wayns (0.7), Hilliard (0.9)
• ASST:  Best:  Wayns (6.3), Johnson (5.0); Worst:  Yarou (1.1), Cheek (1.2)
• TO:  Best:  Yacoubou (0.8), Hilliard (1.4); Worst:  Pinkston (4.6), Johnson (3.6)
• DREB:  Best:  Kennedy (9.6), Sutton (8.6); Worst:  Yacoubou (2.1), Johnson (2.4)
• Steals:  Best:  Kennedy (2.0), Pinkston (1.3); Worst:  Yacoubou (0.3), Sutton (0.6)
• Blocks:  Best:  Yarou (1.3), Bell (0.9); Worst:  Wayns (0.0), Johnson (0.0)

The statistic that shocked me the most was the players’ offensive ratings (representing points produced per possession (field goal attempts, free throw attempts and turnovers).  Maurice Sutton (121.7) and Dominic Cheek (117.4) lead the team, while JayVaughn Pinkston (79.6) and Ty Johnson (87.3)  have the team’s poorest offensive ratings.  However, before we begin chants of “We Want Mo,” a bit of context may be helpful.  None of the Cats offensive ratings are particularly strong when you consider that Syracuse’s Baye Keita leads the nation with an offensive rating of 152.3.

To earn a post-season birth, Villanova needs to do the seemingly impossible — get better fast against a Big East field that features six teams in the Top 25*#1 Syracuse, #4 Louisville, #9 Connecticut, #12 Georgetown, #14 Marquette and#22 Pittsburgh).   Do the Cats have it in them?  You decide by predicting the outcome of ‘Nova games for the rest of the way in our reader poll, below.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

David J. Miller Photo

On November 11th, expectations were high for Villanova’s season. Prior to and immediately after that opening game, a 106-70 walloping  of Monmouth University, fans and pundits alike were discussing what seed Villanova would receive in the NCAA tournament, or how high they could climb in the Big East standings. Since then, the Wildcats have fallen from grace.

After starting 3-0 with wins over Monmouth, La Salle and Delaware, Villanova won just one of three games at the 76 Classic in Anaheim, California. After returning from that tournament, they  lost three of six non-conference games, including two Big 5 games and a big-ticket contest against a ranked Missouri team in New York.

Early on, the Wildcats have struggled on the perimeter, both offensively and defensively.

Dominic Cheek has taken more 3-point shots than any other Wildcat, but has made just 29.7% of those. Maalik Wayns is not far behind in attempts but has connected on just 27.1%. JayVaughn Pinkston has connected on 41.7% from deep, but took just 12 of those shots. Darrun Hilliard is shooting 37% from beyond the arc, but has just 17% of the team’s attempts. Offensively, these trends cannot continue. There is no Allan Ray or Corey Stokes to make a high percentage of attempts from deep on this team and while shooting from outside shouldn’t be banned, it should be relegated to a secondary option.

Defensively, the Wildcat’s opponents have tended to light them up from the 3-point arc in losses and wins alike. The ‘Cats have struggled to control good perimeter shooters, often giving up excellent looks during switches and in transition.

That said, the ‘Cats have shown some signs of hope. Excellent defense helped the ‘Cats beat Boston University, but that defensive improvement didn’t last against St. Joseph’s University a few days later. Defense was again the story of the game against American University in their non-conference finale, holding the AU backcourt below its season average for outside shooting and building a 21-point lead.

Consider the opponents, however. Villanova has struggled with athletic teams with strong outside shooting and there remain many questions about their ability to do so going forward.

It will help to get players healthy. Almost all of the Villanova big men have had one ailment or another early this season, the most recent being a sprained ankle that has affected Mouphtaou Yarou (just 3 points against American).

It will be more important to learn from the earlier mistakes and to work to improve the offensive and defensive execution and preparation going forward.

Villanova was picked to finish 8th in the conference in the Big East’s preseason poll. Now, Ken Pomeroy’s website lists Villanova as the 10th-best team in the conference, based on a statistical analysis. None of these rankings or projections are infallible, however, but they present an interesting glimpse into where things stand at any one moment in time. Villanova is 10th out of 16 Big East schools right now, the question that Jay Wright and his program needs to be concerned with is, “Can they do better.”

Pomeroy thinks that Villanova will go .500 in conference play, which would leave them with a 16-14 record going into the Big East tournament, a record that could leave the ‘Cats in need of a tournament title in order to make their way to the NCAA tournament. For that to even be likely, Villanova will need to show improvement as the Big East schedule progresses.

The Big East schedule starts tomorrow, with Villanova opening its slate at West Virginia on Wednesday. What are the Wildcats capable of in the next 18 games? What do you expect?

See also: 2011-12 Season Schedule.

See also: Big Apple Buckets simulated the Big East season 10,000 times… Villanova’s best finish was 15 wins and worst was 2 wins.

See also: CBSsports.com lists Villanova among the Big East schools “capable of making the NCAA’s.”