Defense is very difficult to incorporate into any projections. On the one hand, we do it implicitly. When we say John Calipari will have the second best team in the country despite starting a ton of freshman, when we say Bill Self will have his team in the Top 20 despite losing his best players, we implicitly know that these are great defensive coaches. They consistently bring together new groups of players and get them to play great team defense. But defense is not all coaching and hard work. The top defensive teams also happen to have the best athletes. As hard as Virginia fifth-year senior Mike Scott works, he is never going to have the same natural shot-blocking ability as Kentucky freshman Anthony Davis.  Talent matters.

The biggest problem is that almost all our measures of individual defense are extremely poor. Blocks and steals are correlated with better defense, but there are tons of great defensive players who have never posted great stats in these categories. Certainly in my attempts to predict team offense and team defense, the offensive statistics have about four times the predictive power of the defensive statistics.

As such, when we evaluate defense, often they only key piece of information to incorporate is the past defensive performances of the coach. And since the talent levels can vary so greatly between schools, I am mostly focused on defensive performance at the current school. Here are the top defensive coaches at their current schools: 

For the coaches with one or two years of data, the jury may still be out on whether these are “great” defensive coaches, but often the experience at the previous team is informative. In particular, Clemson head coach Brad Brownell has had dominant defensive teams at UNC Wilmington and Wright St. too.

Many of these coaches have reputations as great defensive masterminds. But I do not think people give enough respect to Roy Williams, Rick Barnes, and Frank Martin for teaching solid defensive principles. North Carolina may run up and down up the court and create chaos, but they still emphasize getting stops. North Carolina doesn’t mind if you shoot in the first ten seconds, but they would prefer if you take a shot with John Henson’s hand in your face. 

Last year’s A10 standings

Xavier regularly wins NCAA tournament games, but last year was a huge breakthrough for Temple. The Owls won an NCAA tournament game for the first time since 2001, and head coach Fran Dunphy broke a personal 0-10 streak in NCAA tournament games. The two top teams from last year should be favorites again, but there should be plenty of movement in the rest of the A10 standings:

First, if you have been following my previews this month, you know I think St. Joseph’s will be substantially better. They hit the magical double-play. Not only did Phil Martelli’s squad give a ton of minutes to freshmen last season, they return the absolute most efficient players on the team. Langston Galloway and Carl Jones are one of the most formidable back-courts in the country, and if St. Joseph’s can have any success developing its front-court, the Hawks should be able to field a winning A10 team for the first time since 2009.

But St. Joseph’s isn’t the only lower division A10 team to keep an eye on this year. St. Louis also has a chance to be substantially better. Last year was supposed to be the breakout year for the Billikens, but off-season suspensions to the team’s best players meant Rick Majerus was forced to use a very young lineup and take his lumps yet again. But all those minutes given to young players should pay dividends.  The key may be forward Dwayne Evans. At only 6’5” he is clearly under-sized for a major basketball league. But he rebounds like a 6’10” player. And as he learns to refine his offensive game to match his rebounding skills, he could become the classic mid-major star.

The team going the other way is obviously Richmond. Chris Mooney had a veteran squad that made it to the Sweet Sixteen last year, but with Kevin Anderson, Justin Harper, Dan Geroit, and Kevin Smith graduating this off-season, Richmond will have to work its way through a rebuilding year.  The good news is that because of Mooney’s emphasis on defense, the wait may not take that long.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how Dayton faces a mixed bag this year. The departing Chris Wright and Juwan Staten were the team’s least efficient players last year. And on paper, Dayton should be better without them. But because of Staten’s star potential and Wright’s role in the offense, new head coach Archie Miller may still have a tough time replacing these players.

In 2005-06, it was fair to ask whether Duquesne basketball would ever be relevant again. The team had not had a winning record in over a decade, and the 1-win conference seasons were more common than the 7-win seasons. But over the last 5 years, Ron Everhart has done nothing but transform Duquesne into a consistently competitive and dangerous A10 team. This year Duquesne loses two extremely productive seniors in Bill Clark and Damien Saunders, but with the emergence of A10 rookie of the year TJ McConnell at point guard last year, Duquense will remain relevant in the A10 race once again. 

Last year’s MVC standings

I rarely say that a coach needs to be replaced, but I think it is time for Southern Illinois to replace head coach Chris Lowery. The major problem has been a complete drop-off in team defense. While Lowery seemed to continue the swarming man-to-man defense of Bruce Weber and Matt Painter in his first years with the Salukis, with Weber and Painter’s recruits and systems long gone, the Southern Illinois defense has fallen off the map:

Southern Illinois

Most people have correctly evaluated Wichita St., Indiana St., and Creighton as possible at-large NCAA bids out of the MVC (Missouri St. loses too many key players to be a likely contender). But for the MVC to become a multi-bid league again, the league has to do better in non-conference play. A 1-8 performance in the MWC-MVC challenge last year, coupled with a lack of success in the early season tournaments, meant that by last January it was already clear the MVC was going to be a one-bid league.

The MVC often has had trouble scheduling non-conference match-ups with the BCS leagues. Creighton in particular, has a surprisingly weak non-conference schedule this year. But there are still plenty of key non-conference games where the MVC can prove itself this season.  First, the MVC has a great chance at revenge in the MVC-MWC challenge thanks to all the talent (and team) defections in the MWC.  And the early season tournaments provide some more opportunities.  Indiana St. faces a bunch of terrible major conference squads at the Old Spice event. Even if beating Texas Tech or DePaul might not earn a ton of RPI points, Indiana St. has a legitimate chance to beat 3 BCS teams in three days in Orlando. And Wichita St. has a golden opportunity in Puerto Rico in a field where Maryland lacks depth and Purdue and Colorado are replacing their stars. Throw in the possibility of Illinois St. upsetting a young Illinois team in Cancun, and Northern Iowa sneaking up on Providence in the South Padre Island event, and the opportunities are there for the MVC to be major conference killers once again.