Each week during the ACC season, RTC will review the last seven days to discuss the teams, players and anything else trending across the league.

STOCK UP

Syracuse. Has Jim Boeheim righted the ship in upstate New York? After an incredibly disappointing 8-6 start to the season, the Orange notched consecutive easy wins over Miami and Pittsburgh at the Carrier Dome last week. In both victories, Boeheim used the same five players — John Gillon, Andrew White, Tyus Battle, Tyler Roberson and Tyler Lydon — for all but 17 minutes of game action, and White and Battle in particular played all 80 minutes. It appears that Boeheim’s shortened rotation has been effective, especially on the defensive end. In two losses to St. John’s and Boston College, the Orange allowed 93 and 96 points, respectively; last week they held Miami to 55 and a high-scoring Pittsburgh squad to just 66 points.

Has Jim Boeheim found the answer to what was ailing the Orange? (Nick Lisi/AP)

Joel Berry II, North Carolina. The North Carolina point guard was in our Stock Down section last week after he struggled in the Tar Heels’ surprising loss to Georgia Tech. He earned his way on to the Stock Up list this week after a tremendous performance in a win at Clemson. After shooting a miserable 3-of-13 in Atlanta, Berry responded with an impressive 12-of-19 performance at Clemson, including seven three-pointers and great leadership down the stretch. He followed that up with 19 points, five rebounds and five assists in Sunday’s blowout win over NC State. If North Carolina expects to get back to the National Championship game, it will need Berry to play like he did this week to get there.

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It’s very much a Year of the Freshman in college basketball and the Pac-12 has followed suit. As we now find ourselves through two weeks of conference play, it’s a good time to check in on the headlining freshmen in the Conference of Champions. Washington’s Markelle Fultz is the Pac-12’s leading scorer and the front-runner as the top pick in the 2017 NBA Draft, but there are a number of other high-scoring freshmen in the league. In fact, we could probably just list the top five scorers in the Pac, slap the top five freshmen label on them, and call it a day. Here’s what the list would look like if we did just that.

Markelle Fultz is the Presumptive #1 Pick in the 2017 NBA Draft (USA Today Images)

1. Markelle Fultz, Washington – 22.1 PPG
2. TJ Leaf, UCLA – 17.4 PPG
3. Lauri Markannen, Arizona – 15.9 PPG
4. Charlie Moore, California – 15.2 PPG
5. Lonzo Ball, UCLA – 14.7 PPG

Pretty good, right?  Those are your top five freshmen by scoring average. They’ve all played enough minutes for us to trust in the validity of their averages, but what happens when you rank these five players based on offensive efficiency?  Here’s where things start to get interesting.

Well then.  First, we see that Markannen, whose shooting splits are insane, vaults to the top of the group. California’s Moore gets voted off the island altogether; Arizona’s Rawle Alkins jumps into the picture; and Fultz slides down to fourth in our rankings. This is why efficiency is important to consider when judging players. Does Offensive Rating make Markannen a better player than the others? No, but it does clearly identify him as the most efficient offensive player regardless of draft potential. That’s all well and good, but what about defense? For that we turn to defensive efficiency, an admittedly noisy statistic compared with individual Offensive Rating, but still a useful and informative metric. Limited strictly to defense, here’s how the top five freshmen scorers in the conference.

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After one of the craziest opening weekends in ACC history, things calmed down considerably in the second weekend of conference play. In fact, all seven ACC games were won by the favored squad, and only one of those contests was decided by fewer than 11 points. Even if the games weren’t all that scintillating this weekend, there were still a couple takeaways heading into this week. First, in an unanticipated surprise, the two remaining unbeaten schools in conference play are Florida State and Notre Dame — the Seminoles handled visiting Virginia Tech while the Irish rallied to defeat Clemson in South Bend. And then there’s the continued injury misfortunes for Duke — in the Blue Devils’ first game without head coach Mike Krzyzewski (back surgery), stalwart center Amile Jefferson suffered a first half foot injury and never returned. Early reports suggested that the team captain may miss substantial time, meaning even further interruption to a “dream season” that has been anything but smooth to this point. Here are the highlights from the weekend around the ACC.

V.J. Beachem’s six three-pointers helped Notre Dame defeat Clemson and remain unbeaten in the ACC. (Photo: slapthesign.com)

• Best Win I: Notre Dame trailed Clemson by seven points at halftime, but the Irish prevailed by five to move to 3-0 in league play. Senior forward V.J. Beachem led the way, making six threes en route to 22 points. Bonzie Colson pitched in with 13 points and 12 boards — his third straight double-double performance to open league action. Notre Dame now faces a very daunting part of its schedule — a stretch of five games in just 13 days, with the first three on the road — beginning with a trip to Miami (FL) this Thursday.

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The second week of conference play has wrapped up and with it has come a new team in the #1 spot. Baylor has taken the reins as the top team in the RTC25 after wins over Iowa State and Oklahoma State moved the Bears to an unblemished 15-0 on the season. Scott Drew’s squad moved up with some help from #15 Butler, which ended #2 Villanova‘s reign with a 66-58 upset victory over the Wildcats on Wednesday night. Things will not get any easier for Baylor this week, however, as the Bears will arguably face their toughest test of the season in traveling to Morgantown to take on #8 West Virginia. There is consistently quite a bit of turnover in the RTC25 during conference play, so be sure to keep an eye on the poll each week as the college basketball season remains fluid. This week’s Quick N’ Dirty Analysis of the RTC25 is after the jump.

Quick N’ Dirty Analysis.

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It’s only January 7, but with Baylor going into tonight’s game against Oklahoma State as one of two remaining unbeaten teams in college basketball, many are wondering where this team came from. The Bears started the season with a grand total of zero votes in the AP preseason Top 25, but through 14 games against an excellent schedule, no opponent has been able to touch them. Under longtime head coach Scott Drew, Baylor has never made the Final Four but his teams have gotten close. During a three-year stretch from 2010-12, the Bears made two Elite Eights but had the misfortune of playing the eventual National Champion on both occasions (Duke – 2010; Kentucky 2012). This year, Baylor is better equipped to make its first Final Four in school history, but it’s not because expectations in Waco will be high. On the contrary, it’s because expectations are not high, which is exactly how Baylor has thrived to this point of the season.

Baylor is Off to One of Its Best Starts Ever (USA Today Images)

Baylor had plenty of question marks coming into this season. Senior forward Johnathan Motley was a preseason All-Big 12 pick, but beyond that was mostly unknown. The most notable concern was how Miami transfer Manu Lecomte would fare in his first season with the Bears. The answer is so far, so good. Lecomte is leveraging his additional time in Drew’s lineup by averaging 5.1 assists per game, ranking among the nation’s top 60 in assist rate at 32.3 percent. As outstanding as the possible Big 12 Transfer of the Year has been, he hasn’t even been the most pleasant surprise on the team. Junior center Jo Lual-Acuil Jr. has gone from relative anonymity to averages of 11.0 points and 7.6 rebounds per game, pairing with Motley to create a formidable frontcourt that no team in the Big 12 — not even Kansas — wants to face. The starters have been exceptionally consistent to this point, and a bench of which little was expected continues to get better as the season rolls along. Sophomore wing Jake Lindsey contributed his first double-figure game of the season against Iowa State on Wednesday night.

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The path to the NCAA Tournament for any mid-major starts out simply: Win the conference tournament. The alternative is to build an impressive non-conference resume and cross your fingers on Selection Sunday. Ask last year’s Saint Mary’s team that went 27-5 and was relegated to the NIT. As the Gaels learned a year ago, the Selection Committee places the bar exceptionally high and scheduling is a significant factor. A lackluster non-conference resume meant that St. Mary’s two regular season games against Gonzaga held great value (which it swept), but a pair of losses against an uninspiring Pepperdine squad sealed the Gaels’ fate. The exact recipe for an at-large bid can be hard to determine because the committee changes every year, but the following teams in traditional one-bid leagues could have a shot at an at-large bid if they falter in their conference tournaments.

Randy Bennett Found Out the Hard Way How Important Scheduling Is (USA Today Images)

UT-Arlington

The Mavericks have three losses on the season, all of which came against respectable opponents in a span of five days on the road. Aside from that, no low-major can top their pair of excellent wins that came at Texas and St. Mary’s. UT Arlington holds a top-50 RPI, but recent history does not appear to be on its side. The Sun Belt has earned only one at-large bid in the last eight NCAA Tournaments, and that bid went to Middle Tennessee State in 2013 (which has since moved on to Conference USA — more on the Blue Raiders below). UT Arlington could at least make things interesting by running the table until the conference tournament semifinals, which would give it 30 wins prior to Selection Sunday. Read the rest of this entry »

During this week’s television broadcast of the Kentucky-Texas A&M game, viewers could hear Wildcats’ head coach John Calipari yell “Go! Go! Go!” at the top of his lungs seemingly every time the Wildcats touched the ball. Calipari is simply exhorting his team to play to its strength, which, as you may have noticed, seems to be working. The Wildcats are currently the ninth-fastest team in college basketball (average possession length of 14.0 seconds), but what Calipari knows is that his team runs much better offense the faster it goes.

Kentucky’s early offense in SEC play.

As the above table shows, when Kentucky shoots the ball in the first 10 seconds of the shot clock, its offensive efficiency comes in at a blistering 147.8 points per 100 possessions (over the 153 total possessions I have charted during conference play). However, if the Wildcats’ offense runs past the 10-second mark on the shot clock — effectively dropping back into the half-court offense — it drops to an an offensive efficiency rating of 107.7; effective field goal percentage drops over 20 percentage points; turnover percentage increases; offensive rebounding percentage decreases; and, free throw trips drop. In other words, outcomes are a lot better for the Wildcats when they get a shot up within the first 10 seconds. In this edition of Freeze Frame, we analyze Kentucky’s offensive efficiency by possession length.

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Basketball, as we’ve discussed in previous Pac-5s, is a simple game. Score more than your opponent by playing better offense, defense or some sort of hybrid. In looking at the most effective ways to achieve this outcome, defensively speaking, rim protection is high. Let’s keep our opponent away from the shots that are most commonly and easily made: the layup and dunk. This key facet to the game is often attributed to the effort of big men — the lurking paint protectors threatening to put shots into the bleachers. And by that logic, we might consider rim protection quantifiable by a team’s propensity to block shots. It’s not wrong. Blocking shots is a tried and true means to protecting the rim. It also looks cool. But it’s not a comprehensive measure of rim protection. There’s also a team’s — or individual’s — ability to limit dribble penetration, force long jumpers, limit transition offense and so forth. Defense is a team effort and therefore to note that Oregon has the nation’s top block rate (20%) doesn’t necessarily mean they do the best job of protecting the rim (also of note: it doesn’t hurt the Ducks’ ability to limit layups and dunks).

Defense is the name of the game for Oregon big man Chris Boucher, right. (AP Photo/Chris Pietsch)

In this week’s top-5, we’ll look at the Pac’s five best rim protecting teams. We’ll qualify this list by noting the five teams with the fewest total made shots at the rim. This does not take into account pace, unfortunately, which will dilute the total number of shot attempts against a defense. What I wanted to capture, however, was a team’s holistic approach to rim protection. By looking at the total number of made layups or dunks against those teams, we account for field goal defense and the propensity to limit overall shots (again, pace is a big component of this but also cannot be ignored as a strategy). A brief, contextualizing anecdote: Oregon owns the nation’s top block rate, yet teams still shoot 66 percent at the rim against them (fifth highest in the Pac-12) and allow the second highest percentage of shots at the rim. This perhaps suggests that Dana Altman’s team is content in allowing penetration to the rim, daring opponents to challenge Jordan Bell and Chris Boucher when they get there. The defensive risks then taken by Bell and Boucher could, perhaps, lead to drop off passes or putbacks, yielding a higher field goal percentage at the rim and consequently a slightly less effective rim defense. Here are the Pac-12’s five best rim protecting teams as measured by fewest layups and dunks allowed.

In effect, each team exacts a different strategy to protect its rim. Be it through the collective or with a particularly lengthy big man, it remains a critical facet of the game.

Last night in Washington, a 6’4” combo guard showed off a dizzying array of skills, set Twitter ablaze and almost certainly turned the heads of the numerous NBA scouts watching on ESPN2. In other news, the Huskies’ Markelle Fultz scored 22 points on 16 shots. Oregon sophomore Tyler Dorsey had, in the words of his coach Dana Altman, “one of those games,” unleashing a scoring flurry as good as any you will see in college basketball this season. With Dillon Brooks straddled with foul trouble in the second half and Washington threatening to hang around, Dorsey hit a three-pointer off a pass from Brooks and didn’t stop shooting until the game was over. When he was finished, he had made six consecutive buckets (five from downtown) in scoring 17 points in fewer than 12 minutes. His eight made three-pointers were three more than his career-high and his 28 points represented a career-high against a Power 5 opponent. But it wasn’t just the sheer number of three-pointers that made Dorsey’s performance so impressive last night, it was the variety in which he got those points that was notable.

Tyler Dorsey Put On A Show Last Night, But Can He Keep It Up? (Samuel Marshall/Daily Emerald)

Dorsey wasn’t just camping on the perimeter waiting for a kick-out pass. He was swishing shots in transition, pulling up effortlessly off the dribble and putting on a catch-and-shoot clinic. No stranger to 20-point games during his collegiate career, Dorsey looked as confident as ever in his touch last night. You’d be hard-pressed to find one of his second-half shots that even hit the rim. The question now becomes whether his performance against a lackluster Washington defense is a sign of things to come for the Los Angeles native, or just another tantalizing tease of his vast offensive potential. Remember that this was supposed to be a breakout season for the sophomore, the kind of emergence capable of making an already elite Ducks’ offense completely unstoppable. Oregon is still waiting for that breakout.

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It didn’t take long for the Big 12 hierarchy to crystallize, at least at the top of the standings. Kansas took the early driver’s seat, as expected, and despite a few noticeable flaws that could ultimately snap The Streak if left uncorrected, the Jayhawks are still the team to beat. Just a notch under them, Baylor and West Virginia are both capable of chasing down the Jayhawks, but no other teams are in that camp. Below the Bears and Mountaineers but above Oklahoma State, Texas and Oklahoma is the murky middle, where the differences between teams at the top and bottom of this tier is tough to discern and could come down to a mere handful of possessions, if the first week of conference action is any indication. With two league games under each team’s belt, here’s how the race for fourth place in the Big 12 is shaping up.

Kansas State center Dean Wade gives the Wildcats an early edge on the middle of the Big 12 pack. (Statesman.com)

• Kansas State — Lost in the aftermath of all the traveling jokes and memes from Tuesday night’s game against Kansas is that the Wildcats came up with a truly impressive offensive performance. Bruce Weber’s team posted 1.22 points per trip at The Phog, marking one of the best outputs by a Jayhawk opponent in recent years. The Wildcats appear to be gelling, but one reason why the last couple seasons in Manhattan have been so disappointing is because they’ve had a tendency to play inspired ball in marquee games only to go flat in subsequent efforts, so consistency will be a key. Still, judging solely from the first six weeks of the season, nothing from this team’s resume suggests that Kansas State isn’t capable of pulling it off. Fourth-place probability: 40%.

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