I. Renko is an RTC columnist. He will kick off each weekend during the season with his analysis of the 26 other non-power conferences.  Follow him on twitter @IRenkoHoops.

I’ll be honest.  I didn’t expect St. Mary’s to be very good this year.  Last year, they lost five of their last eight games, including a lackluster home loss to Kent State in the NIT first round.  Over the offseason, they said goodbye to their unquestioned leader and star, Mickey McConnell.  Although they started the season with a win over Northern Iowa at home, they followed that with a 12-point loss at Denver.  Then came a string of victories against middling competition at best and a 13-point loss to Baylor.  So coming into this past week, St. Mary’s had a lot to prove, as far as I was concerned.  And, well, at a minimum they proved me wrong.

Randy Bennett Contemplates Whether to Accept I. Renko's Apology

First was last Friday’s neutral floor matchup against Missouri State, a strong if not outstanding team (more on them down below).  The Gaels handed them a decisive 77-61 defeat.  So far, so good.  But still, how would St. Mary’s fare against their prominent conference foes — BYU and Gonzaga — once the WCC season kicked off?  Could they register a win against a top 30 team?  Well the Gaels answered that question with authority Thursday night, posting their second straight 16-point win.

Mea culpa.  St. Mary’s is, indeed, a very good team that has a chance to make some noise in March, as it did two years ago.  But I owe them a bit more introspection than that.  How, exactly, have the Gaels built their 12-2 record and top 25 Pomeroy rating?

• Stat sheet stuffers —  Fifth-year senior forward Rob Jones and junior guard Matthew Dellavedova lead the team in scoring, but they do much more than that.  Jones is an excellent rebounder who averages a double-double.  Witness his 24 points and 15 boards against BYU.  Dellavedova, meanwhile, is averaging 6.7 assists per game.  Against Missouri State, he finished with 17 points, eight assists, and five rebounds.  And against BYU, he 18 points, 12 assists, six rebounds, and four steals.  Complete play from your best players helps stitch the fabric of a well-rounded team that is more than the sum of its parts.
• Offensive rebounding — In whipping up on Missouri State, St. Mary’s showed off an underrated asset — the ability to dominate a team on the glass.  They hauled down approximately 90% of Missouri State’s missed shots and 30% of their own.  The difference in offensive rebounding allowed them to take 12 more shots and cruise to victory.  The Gaels didn’t let up against BYU.  Although the Cougars are a very strong defensive rebounding team, St. Mary’s pulled down almost 40% of their own missed shots and 67% of BYU’s.  On the season, the Gaels’ offensive rebounding percentage is 12 percent higher than their opponents’.
• Balanced production — The departure of McConnell may have produced a team that is more offensively balanced, but just as efficient, as last year’s team.  In both of their wins this past week, four players finished in double figures.  And that was without Clint Steindl, who averages nine points per game, but was out with injuries.  Against BYU, Jones paced the team with 24 points, but Stephen Holt added 21 and Dellavedova 18.  By contrast, in their loss to Denver, Jones and Dellavedova scored 21 and 20 each, but no one else posted more than six points.
• Improved defense — The Gaels’ shot-stopping ability has improved this year, as they have a much better defensive FG%.  They didn’t show that as much against Missouri State and BYU, both of whom shot the ball at a reasonable clip.  That makes one wonder whether this newfound defensive strength is sustainable against high-quality opponents, but it’s at least a start to build on.

After the updated Top 15, we recap the wild start to the MVC season, preview a New Year’s Eve feast, and delve into much more in the week that was and the week that will be.

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I. Renko is an RTC columnist. He will bring you his analysis of the 26 other non-power conferences each Friday during the season.  Follow him on twitter at @IRenkoHoops.

The biggest and most impressive result — but also most perplexing — of the past week was Davidson’s 80-74 win versus Kansas. The Wildcats are a genuine contender in the Southern Conference this year, but they haven’t proven to be one of the best teams in the TO26.  Indeed, the win in Kansas City was sandwiched between a 23-point drubbing at Charlotte and an eight-point loss at UMass, two teams that are hardly the caliber of the Jayhawks.

Nik Cochran Led Davidson to a Truly Shocking Upset

Yet for one shining moment in their non-conference schedule, Davidson went toe-to-toe with one of the best teams in the country in one of the toughest road environments and in the process, managed to avenge their loss to Kansas in the Elite Eight in 2008.  Nik Cochran led the way with 21 points on just six field goal attempts.  He was 4-5 from three-point range and 7-8 from the free throw line.  But it was a fairly balanced effort for the Wildcats, who also received double-digit scoring from Jake Cohen, De’Mon Brooks, and J.P. Kuhlman.  Perhaps most importantly, they were able to contain Thomas Robinson on the defensive end.  Although the Kansas star notched 21 points, it took him 18 field goal attempts and 12 free throw attempts to get there.

More on the week that was after the updated Top 15 rankings, after the jump.

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I. Renko is an RTC correspondent.

If you were to line up the 100 players with the highest assist rates in the nation, one of them would stick out like a sore thumb. Well, more like a long, muscular, imposing thumb. Georgetown’s 6’10” center Henry Sims, who sports a 33% assist rate, is the only player in the top 100 taller than 6’4”. And he is far and away the most important assist man on the Hoyas, averaging 3.7 per game. By contrast, point guards Markel Starks and Jason Clark average 1.4 and 1.2 assists per game and have assist rates of just 10.4% and 8.3%, respectively.

Sims Is The Most Unlikely Assist Man In College Basketball

On Saturday afternoon, Sims demonstrated just how important his passing game is to Georgetown’s success. Despite the Hoyas’ significant height advantage over the visiting American Eagles, Sims and his frontcourt mates had a quiet first half, as the Hoyas ground out a six-point lead.  But right out of the second half gate, Sims took over the game without even scoring, pulling the strings from his pedestal at the high post. From the 18:58 mark to the 13:19 mark of the second half, Sims assisted on five layups, as the Hoyas pushed their lead to 15 points. You sometimes see a 6’10” center take over the game with his shot-blocking or even rebounding. But rarely, as we saw on Saturday, with his passing.

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I. Renko is an RTC columnist. He will bring you his analysis of the 26 other non-power conferences each Friday during the season.

It was supposed to be a quiet week in college hoops, but as you know, when you’ve got more than 340 teams playing 30-game schedules over the course of four months, it’s never that quiet. And we found that out in a big way this past week as the fallout from the melee at the Crosstown Shootout reverberated through the college hoops world.  Lots of ink has been spilled on this, and there’s little that I could add to the various rounds of media condemnation and outrage.  So rather than trying to piggyback on all of that commentary, I thought I might take moment to, well, comment on it. 

It should go without saying that college basketball players should not throw punches at each other, stomp on people, or otherwise let the emotion of a high-intensity rivalry spill over into extracurricular violence.  That’s an easy enough point on which we can all agree.  But what has sparked an unusual amount of outrage among the commentariat is not the physical altercation itself so much as the post-game remarks about it by Tu Holloway and Mark Lyons.  Journalists have been tripping over themselves to decry Holloway and Lyons with as much self-righteousness as they can muster.  In this race to prove just how indignant they are, sadly, many observers have obscured the content of what Holloway and Lyons said.

Commentators have oversimplified Holloway and Lyons' post-game comments

To be clear, it didn’t seem like Holloway and Lyons had processed just how unacceptable the ending of the game was.  And they certainly didn’t choose their words carefully given the national audience.  But some of the more inflammatory language that media has seized on has been badly misconstrued and inaccurately portrayed.  Some have condemned Holloway for declaring his team to be a bunch of “gangstas.”  Others have criticized him for throwing around the word “thugs.”  And still others have suggested that the senior guards thought that the fight was simply an acceptable demonstration of their toughness.  It makes me wonder if they watched the whole press conference or simply seized on the most sensational statements that most easily lent themselves to moralizing outrage.

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