When you’re Fifteen and somebody loves you, ya gotta believe them. — Taylor Swift

When Milik Yarbrough played his Fifteenth college game, he went for a career-high 26 points against a big and experienced front line and the Father of Our Country.

George Washington (#37 KenPom.com) was an NCAA Tournament team last year (first round loss to Memphis) and is roughly on track for a return engagement this season, with a signature neutral court win over #19 Wichita St dulling the stain of losing at #110 Penn St.

In this one, it came down to a final GW block of a Mike Crawford three for the Colonials to shake Saint Louis.

Jerry Falwell Scoreboard

SLU is now 2-0, continuing to lead the A-10 conference in Moral Victories.  If the Bills stay Moral for a Majority, I will consider the conference season a rousing success.

Let me take a moment to argue with a straw man who wants to say “moral victories are garbage and breed losing”.   To this straw man, I say: yes, I agree that moral victories are no comparison to beating Kentucky by 25 on their home floor and after hand-shake hugs making out with Ashley Judd.  No question, Straw Man.

But Straw Man, you should consider that the far more probably alternative than Winning Going Away is Getting Completely Demolished.  And I would like you to show me how Getting Completely Demolished on a regular basis has ever led to team-building and a learning environment.   So I am going Moral Majority on you this season.

Lineups

Starters:  Marcus Bartley(!), Yacoubou, Roby, Yarbrough, Manning

Wow!  McBroom out of the starting lineup for the first time all season.  Bartley with just his third start.   In the last post, we wallowed in the sameness of the Starting Five and the shortening of the bench.  The Safecracker is not done twisting and listening.  Not yet.

Minutes Leaders (non-starters in Bold):

1. Yarbrough (38!)
2. Roby (27)
3. Bartley (24)
4. Austin McBroom (23)
5. Mike Crawford (22)

Big minutes for three Freshmen.  I wonder how much The Safecracker is celebrating his freedom from constantly shuttling 12 guys to get their 10 minutes each, as now he has traded his Deep Team Problems for Thin Team Problems.  Yarbrough wore out; Roby fouled out.

DNP-CD:

• Miles Reynolds
• Tanner Lancona

Reynolds sits for the second consecutive game, Lancona for the first.

When Grandy Glaze injured his shoulder in the preseason, his spot in the lineup seemed Lancona’s to lose.  As much as he has lost it going 0-12 from the three point line thus far (KenPom.com does not count games against non-Division I opponents, so for this discussion Tanner’s three-pointer against Rockhurst never happened), Yarbrough has decisively won it.   Lancona shot 36% from distance last season, so we expect progression to the mean over time.

Four Factors

 

GW handed it to SLU pretty handily in three of the Four Factors, but the Billikens shot well enough to overcome almost all of that.  GW will finish near the top of the conference this season, and our Billikens near the bottom, but on this night we went into the Charles E Smith Center and gave the Colonials, their fans, and their refs everything they could handle.

Quick shout out to Charles E Smith.  How much of a boss do you have to be to get a building named after you when the school is named after our greatest general and Founding Father.  If Chuck Smith University played basketball at the Geo Washington Center, would they be able to recruit well?

Leverage

The relatively low Leverage of this game  was mostly a function of its problematic initial state.  The KenPom.com computer gave SLU only a 4.6% of victory at the jump, and did not realize the Bills were even serious until they went up 24-16 twelve minutes into the first half.

Haters of pie charts, do not despair.  These dudes will be giving way to something better as soon as the WAB supercomputer is properly calibrated.

SLU Player Stats

(Definitions at the bottom of the post)

• Yarbrough carried the load and ignited the offense against a big and experienced frontline.  Also encouraging: he mostly avoided the penal whistle, only called for two personal fouls on a night where the referees set out to give Rammer a heart attack.  SLU was whistled for 26 fouls to just 14 for GW, but Yarbrough remained on the floor.
• Roby and AdjGS got together in the daytime, took a nice walk around the Lincoln Memorial and sorted out their differences over coffee.  The suddenly hot-shooting Roby’s offense rating (146) outpaced that of even the mighty Yarbrough (126).  Roby being Roby and refs being refs, he still fouled out.  More coffees to come.
• Always good to see Ash’s AdjGS outpace his points (9.9 to 7), as he once again battled on the boards for 6 rebounds
• McBroom tried his hand at Three-Point Specialist and worked that quite well, making 2 of 4
• Other Austin (Gillmann) showed a bit of Rob Loe 2.0 with a three-pointer and four nifty assists
• After a strong first game, then a mostly fallow non-conference, Mike Crawford seems to have stabilized and started to pick up from where he left off last season.  Here’s hoping the effects of his mysterious weight loss are in the rearview.
• Bartley asserted himself reasonably well in the surprise start with a performance Mike Shannon would love.  Deuces were wild for Marcus, as he hit 2 threes, grabbed 2 rebounds, dished 2 assists, and fumbled 2 turnovers.
• Less drag than last game from the Subtractors.  That all three were Bigs speaks to the relative strength of GWs front line, and further underscores the big night Yarbrough had.

Summary

Bills remain undefeated at 2-0 in the Jerry Falwell Conference, whilst falling to 0-2 in the Atlantic 10.  McBroom came off the bench as a designated three-point shooter, and The Ys Men (Yarbrough and Yacoubou) battled long and hard inside.   Late game was problematic for SLU and ultimately the Current Champs yielded to the Possible Future Champs.

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AdjGS:  variation on the Game Score metric created by John Hollinger, detailed here.  Hollinger’s original formula is Adjusted to reallocate the points in the game by ratio of the player’s overall impact.  Credit to the team at Rock M Nation for this improvement.

True Shooting %:  Per Basketball Reference, true shooting percentage is a measure of shooting efficiency that takes into account field goals, 3-point field goals, and free throws.

Leverage:  Per Ken Pomeroy, measures how much is at stake on a particular possession.  Leverage is not based on what happened during the possession, but is the range of win probability based on what could have happened.  Learn more here.

DNP-CD:  Did Not Play – Coach’s Decision.  Healthy and otherwise eligible player who did not see any action in the game.