Nova slump analysis

Most Villanova fans probably hit the panic button about a week ago and rightfully so, as this team has lost 5 in a row by double digits and has displayed an alarming lack of heart lately. The team is clearly struggling right now and it seems to be in all facets of the game - offense, defense, rebounding, turnovers, etc. So what is going on? Two weeks ago we were # 18 in the country, has Jay completely forgotten how to coach since then? Highly unlikely. There is something else going on here - there's got to be - there's no other explanation for it. Even the bad Lappas teams didn't lose to St. Joe's by 20. One rumored explanation is team chemistry issues - that guys are unhappy with their playing time and its causing a rift between teammates. Its certainly possible and could be part of it, but Jay has shown a great ability to keep team morale high so I give him the benefit of the doubt there. I have another theory, based not on any inside info or insight, but solely on my own analysis of recent games and Jay's public comments.

Win or Lose, we will do things the Wright way
While I don't think Jay is intentionally losing games, I do think he is more concerned with getting guys to play the way he wants them to play than he is with winning at the moment. Ideally, all of your players would do exactly what you expect of them AND you'd still win, but I think in this case that is not happening and Jay has chosen to emphasize the WAY they play over winning. In other words, I think that Jay's primary goal is to teach these young guys a lesson and develop them into better players down the road, even at the expense of winning games now. Call it mortgaging this season if you will, for the benefit of next season. He'd never say that publicly, but I think that is what is happening. I think coming into the season, his goal was to balance winning and teaching. He is failing at that, so forced to choose one or the other, he is leaning toward teaching.

If he was only concerned with winning, I think he'd primarily play a 7-man rotation of Fisher, Reynolds, Stokes, Dante, and Drum with Grant and Pena getting big minutes off the bench - and the team would be much better than they are right now - maybe even an NCAA team. But those 7 players include 4 freshman and 2 sophomores and I think Jay realizes that they won't reach their potential down the road unless he makes them do things his way and really develops every aspect of their respective games. So instead, guys like Redding and Anderson who are less talented but have bought into the defense/hustle "team" concept get big minutes while Jay sits the younger guys, hopefully driving the point home of what earns playing time.

For Jay the question has become, Do you play the older less talented guy who plays the right way or the young talented stud who does not? The older less talented guys seem to be overmatched by Big East competition and you are losing games as a result. But if you reward the young stud with playing time before he's earned it, you lose all credibility as a coach - the stud might never listen after that and then where are you? Its a tough spot, but it appears that Jay has chosen the former.

For the players, I liken it to going overseas to study abroad and having the option to take your courses in english or in german. Sure, you could take the easy way out, take your courses in english, get by with reasonably good grades, but not really challenge yourself. Or you could enroll in classes that are taught exclusively in german, you'd probably struggle a lot at first, but you'd pick it up gradually and in the end you'd have a more well-rounded skillset. But you have to have the right attitude to be willing to invest in your own personal development and have a desire to improve your skills. I think that is what Jay is trying to do here, especially with the young guys. They all know how to score (english) and they probably think they are complete players, and quite frankly with their talent he could probably let them just go out and play their way and they'd do reasonably well - but they would never reach their full potential. Instead, Jay is trying to teach them the foreign language of his complex defensive rotations and get them to buy into the hustle and effort intagibles that he requires - and its certainly a challenge cause some of these kids have been told since they were 10 years old how great they are. Its a process of breaking down their bad habits and attitudes and then building them back up.

Teaching techniques
If you watch closely, you can see this approach in Jay's substitution patterns, in his interactions with players and if you read between the lines, even in his comments to the media. Earlier in the season, Jay's substitution patterns drove me nuts - there appeared to be no rhyme or reason and guys would sub in the game only to be yanked out 20 seconds later after a defensive lapse. I now realize that he has probably been teaching all along - its just that earlier in the season we were playing competition that we could beat while he taught, so it wasn't as noticeable.

A quick check of the boxscore shows that there were 27 first half substitutions against Syracuse on Saturday. 27 in 20 minutes! Thats a sub every 44 seconds! How are the guys on the court supposed to get in any sort of game flow or develop a rythm playing together or identify who's got the hot hand, if the lineup changes every 44 seconds?! Well, the answer is - they're not, because if my theory is right then Jay is more concerned with teaching than rythm or flow - so he'd rather yank a guy after a defensive lapse or a lack of hustle to take the opportunity to teach him or drive the point home that those qualities are what earn playing time. Similarly, last night against St. Joe's there were 22 first half substitutions, including one point where there were 8 subs in a 2 minute span. Anybody who's primary concern is winning the game, does not coach like that. Its the kind of coaching you see in exhibition games or scrimmages, in other words, teaching environments. In addition, when guys come out of the game, Jay doesn't yell at them nearly as often as he has done with other teams - he instead takes a few seconds to make his point in their ear. But we haven't seen the good ole crazy psycho Jay on the sidelines much lately. Instead he has been very calm, like he expects the mistakes and he knows that this is just the teaching process that this team needs to go through.

Lack of Leadership & Experience
I, for one, completely underestimated the huge factor that inexperience and lack of leadership would play in this team's success. I figured the team would struggle early as Jay instilled his values on the team, but that most of the kinks would be worked out by January. I figured maybe our youth would cost us a game or two down the stretch, but I certainly didn't expect a losing streak like this where they get blown out every game. But its clear that this team just hasn't clicked yet or gotten comfortable in its own proverbial skin. A big part of that is a lack of leadership on the court. This team doesn't have a consummate hustle guy to set an example like Mike Nardi or a "quarterback of the defense" who is always talking and directing people into the right spots like Will Sheridan.

Here is a post-game quote from the Syracuse game on Saturday:
"We talk about it all the time," Jay Wright said. "Energy can't come from making shots. When we made shots, we played hard on defense. When we started missing shots, we lost that toughness defensively."

That points to the youth and lack of leadership factors and the fact that guys aren't playing hard every possesssion.

And one from after the St. Joe's debacle:
"We'll be all right," Wright said. "Right now, when you lose a game like that, everybody's hurting. But a little bit of humility is not bad for anybody right now, me included. We have a lot of work to do, but we'll be fine."

Maybe I am reading into this a little bit, but I hear the "humility is not bad for anybody right now" part as Jay saying that until they start playing his way, they are not going to win games and maybe some guys need to be convinced of that so that they totally buy into what he is preaching.

No excuse for Jay
All of that said, as a die-hard fan I am not willing to give Jay a free pass on this season and allow him to hide behind the youth and inexperience factors. I mean, this team has real talent - two McDonald's All-Americans and several other highly rated players - enough so that a lot of smart college hoops insiders looked at this team in October and decided it was a Top 25 team. Now, granted Jay said back then "we are a year away" and that remains to be seen, but there's got to be a better way of balancing the winning now vs. development for the future equation. Look at Florida for example - they lost 4 NBA players, have no senior leadership either and they start 4 freshmen, yet they are coming on strong at the right time. So it is do-able. But Jay has some major issues to work out before this team turns the corner.

What he needs to fix
The defense has been atrocious all year and that is probably the part of Jay's system that is toughest for young guys to pick up, so that is not totally unexpected. Its not so much the literal defensive rotations that are most difficult, although they are complex, but more so the attitude necessary to be "excited" to give maximum defensive effort on every possession. It is a way of thinking and a sense of team pride - and that is a foreign concept to many of these stud high school players who are now our freshmen. Defensive effort has been the main reason given for why guys like Malcolm Grant and Corey Stokes are not getting more playing time. And I can see rewarding guys like Redding and Anderson who hustle and give maximum defensive effort in order to make a point to the young guys. But at some point you have to give Grant and Stokes some extended playing time and allow them to make mistakes without fear of getting yanked out of the game. Jay has been doing this more and more with Stokes lately, but Grant only played 1 minute last night. I am wondering if there is a serious attitude problem here that Jay is trying to correct or if Malcolm hasn't bought into the defense/hustle portion of the program cause he thinks he's already a stud at this level or if maybe he told Jay to go F himself or something and is being punished accordingly. Not much else makes sense.

The offense is now equally bad. Part of that is the odd substitution patterns I mentioned above. But lately, everybody tends to stand around on the perimeter and watch, especially when Scottie has the ball. There might be a ball-screen, but in general the guards wait for a pass on the wings and the big men call for a pass in the post. There is very little cutting through the lane or along the baseline to make the defense work to stay with their man. Jay's free-wheeling "take him" offense that the teams of the last couple years used clearly isn't working for this young team. Jay needs to draw up some specific screens and cuts to get things moving out there.

The team also seems to have a lack of general toughness, which has been a strength in years past. How many times have you seen our guards drive hard to the basket with a vengeance this season? Guys like Kyle Lowry, Randy Foye and even Scottie Reynolds last year made it a regular habit and it completely set the tone for the rest of the game. Now our guards are generally playing soft - content to settle for outside jumpers instead of challenging the heart of the defense (which makes us pretty easy to defend). Even if we were to get called for a charge, its sets a tone that says "this is gonna be a physical battle and you are gonna have to work to stop us." And that kind of stuff is contagious. On the defensive end, how many basket "AND 1's" have we given up lately? Too many to count if you ask me. There is a direct correlation to toughness there. I mean, if you are gonna foul the guy while he's shooting, you might as well hack his arm off or knock him down so he doesn't make the shot. Good, tough teams give hard fouls. Our guys tend to get called for these ticky tack bumps that barely seem to affect the shooters. This is not something that develops overnight - it takes good leadership both from the coaching staff and the veteran players to instill these qualities in the young guys.

Hope for the future?
All of that said, I'm still confident that our current senior-less roster will produce a good team before anyone graduates. Maybe not the Final Four I predicted for next year, but at some point they will get it and it will translate into a very good team. That could happen as early as next month with a strong NIT run or maybe not until the middle of next season, but at some point everything will start to click - there is just too much raw talent and Jay is too good a coach for it not to. It took Foye, Ray, Sumpter and Fraser two and a half injury-prone seasons going through much of the same stuff. (Foye almost transferred in the middle of his soph year before finally deciding to buy completely into Jay's system). So while the last couple weeks have certainly been frustrating and its disappointing as a fan to have your NCAA hopes pulled out from under you so quickly, hopefully Jay's approach will pay off down the road.