TV dinners they’re goin’ to my head
TV dinners my skin is turnin’ red
Twenty year old turkey in a thirty year old tin— ZZ Top
Game Twenty was a turkey for this season’s Billikens; not sure about the thirty year old tin. This reminds me of a favorite question from legendary SLU baseball assistant coach Frank Mormino, when he saw some less-than-graceful fielding:
Frank: He looks like a billet out there. You know what a billet is, son?
“Son”: No, Frank. What is it?
Frank: It’s twenty pounds of sh*t stuffed in a ten-pound sack.
If you cannot tell already from this meandering intro, this was not a good game for SLU . Another road loss. Another conference loss, extending the losing streak to three in a row and seven of eight. Whatever wind was in our sails after the thrilling VCU game last Friday night at Chaifetz turned to doldrums in Fairfax, VA.
George Mason came into the came on a five-game bender of their own, and the Billikens were just what they needed. Let’s see what we can learn.
Jerry Falwell Scoreboard
Well, at least the kept it close.
If you hear anyone drop an “at least they kept it close” in reference to #SLU‘s performance tonight vs. GMU, I want you to slap them.
— Brian Hank Haenchen (@Brian_Haenchen) January 30, 2015
Whoa, whoa big fella. Take it easy. Call off the dogs. I was just kidding around. To score the game a moral victory, we at WAB are looking for high leverage games in a hostile environment where every possession counts on both ends. We will not be fooled by the semi-respectable final score. This one was reasonably close in the first half, but by the first media timeout of the second half was all but decided. George Mason was #196 and struggling going in, so closing to under ten in the last minute does not constitute a moral victory. SLU falls to 3-3 in its effort for a Moral (Victory) Majority.
Lineups
Starters: Bartley, Yacoubou, Roby, Yarbrough, Manning Seventh straight for this combination. Minutes Distribution (non-starters in Bold):
- Yarbrough (33)
- Roby (29)
- Yacoubou (26)
- Mike Crawford (24)
- Austin McBroom (24)
- Brett Jolly (16)
- Bartley (16)
- Austin Gillmann (12)
- Manning (10)
- Reggie Agbeko (7)
- Miles Reynolds (3)
- Tanner Lancona (0)
Nothing for Lancona and single-digit minutes for Agbeko and Reynolds means we went with nine guys for this one. McBroom and Crawford saw significant time off the bench.
Going into the season, it looked like a strong possibility that McBroom/Crawford would be the starting backcourt as they represented just about all of the returning shooting range. McBroom started the season as the primary scorer, more recently moving to some sort of specialists role like in baseball. Occasionally he has been the Closer, but more often a Setup man or even Middle Relief.
Crawford started the season moving and shooting well, went fallow for awhile as he battled a mysterious weight-loss, and more recently has picked up his scoring role from the bench, scoring in double-figures in his last three. (I am not counting the VCU game, where he was essentially sidelined by Coach Crews in favor of McBroom’s ball-handling).
Four Factors
The Four Factors, or just the one on the far right, show very clearly where this game was won by the Pats and lost by the Bills. Mason was the aggressor and got to the line an impressive 34 times; SLU took 20 freebies.
Leverage
The decent amount of Medium-High leverage here should be taken with a grain of salt, as this was first half action between two very low-rated teams. No High leverage minutes and the heat turned down after the half to fizzle out.
SLU Player Stats
(Definitions at the bottom of the post)
- Roby got his bits and bytes in order in this one. As we have noted many times, the WAB supercomputer and AdjGS measures simply do not favor his game. Davell came out on top in this one on the strength of 5 rebounds, 4 assists and a pair of steals.
- High volume shooting night for Yarbrough, but not enough contact to get to the line more than twice. He did his best work on the boards (7 rebounds, 3 offensive).
- Crawford fouled out after firing up 10 shots yielding 14 points, tied for the team high
- Ten minutes without a rebound for Manning. That should not happen.
- Lancona has now sat out the last three. Given the team has not exactly caught fire in the face of this benching, we have to believe he will have some more chances coming his way.
- Scores as the worst game of the year for Yacoubou. He is always doing a lot of trackable stuff — the is the anti-Roby in that respect — and usually his brand of good outweighs the bad to end up with a positive line. In this one the 3 turnovers and 4 fouls carried the day, as he strangely only took 4 shots from the field. Unusual and uncharacteristic.
Summary
As the guys on Rock M Nation have reminded us (and themselves) many times this exploratory season, progress is not linear. It is lumpy, uneven and sometimes unexpected. The SLU team that gave VCU all it could handle last Friday, walking out of Chaifetz with their heads high, bore little resemblance to the squad that staggered out of the Patriot center six night later.
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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.