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Northwestern has been able to compensate for Drew Crawford’s lost offense, but they have not been able to compensate for the athleticism he brought to the defense. He was one of the only players with the quickness and size to frustrate opposing wing players.

Providence has had a nightmare of a season. First Kris Dunn was injured. Then Vincent Council was out. Plus, Bryce Cotton has missed games occasionally. And yet with one or more of those players out at the start of the season, Ed Cooley got his players to buy in and play team basketball. They knew they had to play great defense to have a chance, and the players responded. But now that everyone is at full-strength, the defensive commitment just isn’t there. Pretty much from the moment that Kris Dunn debuted, Providence has stopped playing defense. And the team has gone 2-6 since then.

North Dakota St. was one of the true surprises of the early season. They were extremely dominant and looked like a real challenger to Nate Wolter’s South Dakota St. team for the Summit League title. But the injury to leading scorer Taylor Braun has completely derailed NDSU’s offense.

This next group features three players whose absence was not a huge problem. Georgetown sat at 0-2 in the Big East and had just been blown out at home by Pittsburgh when they found out Greg Whittington was academically ineligible. Since then the Hoyas have gone 4-1 including an upset of Louisville over the weekend. Georgetown’s improvement without Greg Whittington is a little bit of a surprise, but likely has two causes. First, with Whittington academically ineligible, the Hoyas have stopped rolling out one-guard lineups. The offense has simply moved more crisply with two guards on the floor at once.  I appreciated John Thompson III’s creativity with four forwards on the floor, but there is a reason most teams don’t do that. Second, un-related to the suspension of Whittington, head coach John Thompson III has stopped trying to run the offense through center Michael Hopkins. Hopkins was the team’s least efficient offensive player, and Hopkins playing time has plummeted in recent games.

Memphis had its best offensive day of the season (against Tennessee) when Tarik Black was out, but I wouldn’t necessarily be convinced that the team is better off without him. That seems like a bit of a fluke.

North Carolina hasn’t really missed Leslie McDonald and I don’t think anyone is surprised. North Carolina has a plethora of two-guard/wing players. What the Tar Heels are missing is a second legitimate post-player to compliment James Michael McAdoo. PJ Hairston and Reggie Bullock were well-positioned to replace McDonald’s playing time.

I took a little liberty and grouped the North Carolina game in the “Moser-injured” category because he clearly wasn’t 100%. The good news for UNLV fans is that they are a better team with Moser in the lineup. The bad news is that even with the team at full-strength, they have only been a borderline Top 25 team. UNLV has Top 10 talent, and Anthony Bennett might be the best freshmen in the country, but they haven’t quite been able to put it all together.

Virginia’s splits aren’t really about Evans so much as they are about a team that has improved throughout the season. The Cavaliers started out playing mediocre basketball, began to play better defense once they added a PG with the quickness of Evans, and even with Darion Atkins going down they have continued to improve. That last split probably isn’t sustainable, but Virginia is the rare team that can say they are playing much better now than in November.

Although you might not guess it from their 8-6 record, the Washington Huskies have been at their best at full-strength.

Durand Scott missed Miami (FL)'s loss to Florida Gulf Coast early in the season. And Reggie Johnson just missed a string of games and hasn’t quite looked 100% since returning. Miami has only had their full-lineup for 7 games, but when you include a blow-out win against Duke in that sample of seven games, you look pretty good.

I’m not sure mid-season transfer Jamal Branch has been a negative influence on St. John’s. But he just so happened to miss St. John’s best win of the season, at Cincinnati, with an eye injury. And he was around for St. John’s embarrassing home loss to UNC Asheville.

Meanwhile, I feel for Creighton’s Josh Jones having to give up basketball due to a heart condition. But as crazy as it sounds, his 109 ORtg was actually a drag on Creighton’s fine offense. The Blue Jays are in the rare position of having an embarrassment of riches in their rotation right now.

After NCAA tournament hero CJ McCollum went down, I thought Lehigh would have to cede the Patriot league title to Bucknell. But by buckling down on defense, Lehigh won its first five games against D1 competition without McCollum, and shockingly picked up the road victory at Bucknell. They actually looked like they might be the Patriot league favorites after all. But a home loss against Lafayette emphasized what was already true. Without McCollum, Lehigh’s offense isn’t nearly as good. Perhaps by emphasizing their new defensive identity, they can still win the league. But it isn’t going to be nearly as easy without their star.

Kwamain Mitchell’s ORtg is only 88.9, and he is one of only two St. Louis players with a sub-100 ORtg. Given how the team played without him, I think it is worth asking whether he is hurting the St. Louis offense.

Andrew Steele can’t be as important as the numbers here show. But his absence corresponded to the team’s December swoon. And I’m certainly willing to believe that the senior guard is an important cog to the team’s offensive and defensive chemistry. I just know that given his limited role on the team, there are other factors at play here.

Finally, Syracuse was playing like the 2^nd best team in the nation in the games before the Southerland academic suspension. Since then, the upset loss to Villanova has the Orange playing more like the 15^th best team in the nation. Still, that loss to Villanova felt like one of the annual games where an opponent got hot from three. Syracuse usually loses at least one of those. I’m not sure we have an accurate feel for the Orange without Southerland yet.

Final Notes: The following injuries are not worth a split since they were so short, but they will likely show up on NCAA scouting reports at the end of the year.

-Mike Bruesewitz missed Wisconsin's loss to Marquette.

-Justin Jackson missed Cincinnati's loss to Notre Dame. Given Jackson’s general struggles this year, I'm not sure anyone can count that as meaningful, but I'm sure it will show up on the NCAA committees report from the Big East. 

-Brady Heslip missed Baylor's loss to Charleston. I watched this game and his absence really seemed to hurt the flow of the Baylor offense.

-Xavier Thames missed San Diego St.'s loss to Wyoming.

-Dwayne Davis missed Southern Miss's loss to Arizona with the flu. It didn’t seem that important at the time, but given how well Southern Miss is playing in CUSA this year, it could matter come selection Sunday.

-Roy Devyn Marble missed Iowa's 3 point loss to Michigan St.

-PJ Hairston missed North Carolina's loss to Indiana.

-Sam Grooms missed Oklahoma's loss to SF Austin.

-Cory Remekun missed St. Louis's loss to Santa Clara.

-Terone Johnson missed Purdue’s loss to Bucknell.

-Rotnei Clarke missed Butler’s loss to La Salle.

-Milton Jennings missed Clemson's loss to Purdue.

-Nate Wolters missed South Dakota St.'s loss to Minnesota.

-Akron was missing Demetrius Treadwell and Nick Harney in their season opening losses to Coastal Carolina and Oklahoma St. The latter came in OT so the NCAA may very well care that these players were missing.

-Stanford was missing Aaron Bright for the Missouri and Minnesota losses, but oddly the team has played worse basketball since he has returned. Perhaps his 23% three point shooting has something to do with that.

-Finally, I'm not going to say much about players who missed the opening game or opening three games (Shabazz Muhammad) because with the recent games weighting on Kenpom.com those games have already been deemphasized. But there remain a number of recent injuries to keep an eye on in February. Oregon's Dominic Artis, UCLA's Travis Wear, Notre Dame's Scott Martin, Boise St.'s Jeff Elorriaga, and Texas's Jonathan Holmes have only recently joined the inactive list.

The game of the weekend featured Baylor ending Kentucky’s 55-game home winning streak. I’ve often described Scott Drew as an excellent recruiter, but without the in-season coaching ability of John Calipari. But for at least one afternoon, Scott Drew’s club ended up on top.

A couple of things fascinated me about the game.

First, John Calipari had Kyle Wiltjer on the bench for a long stretch in the second half. And he really had no choice. Wiltjer finished the day 1-for-11 from the floor, and he doesn’t have the defensive ability to stay in the game if his shot isn’t falling. Wiltjer has to find ways to provide value to his team other than just knocking down threes if he is going to be a true leader this season.

Second, I continued to be impressed with the all-around game of Baylor’s Isaiah Austin. I wish he would settle for a few less outside shots, but what I love about Austin is how he always looks extremely focused when on the floor. Even if he commits a turnover or takes a dumb shot, Austin doesn’t ever appear to get rattled.

Of course it is easy to describe an intangible like “quiet confidence” when a player is winning. And with Kentucky losing, it is easy to attack Nerlens Noel’s complete lack of an offensive game. But had Kentucky rallied to win, we’d instead be talking about all the little things Noel did to help his team win on Saturday. Noel had 16 rebounds and 6 steals in Kentucky’s loss, and Kentucky needed those defensive stops in a game where they shot so poorly. Watching so many freshmen play prominent roles made me want to do a quick update of how all the top recruits have fared this season. Here is a summary of the RSCI Top 80.  * = injured or ineligible for part of the season

Kentucky has had a problem with rebounding this year, but don’t blame Nerlens Noel. He needs some help from Willie-Cauley Stein and Kyle Wiltjer who are very poor defensive rebounders for their size.

If Kaleb Tarczewski and Steven Adams aren’t earning major minutes at this point in the season, it is hard to envisioning them becoming full scale stars later. When conference play rolls around, coaches tend to be less patient with their freshmen. Thus in many ways, percentage of minutes can be the most important stat this time of year.

Efficiency is also important, and Kyle Anderson’s 87.9 ORtg is terrible for an elite recruit. Point guards can struggle more than other players to adapt to the college game and Anderson was considered to have point guard skills out of high school. So perhaps Anderson’s struggles aren’t a complete surprise. On the other hand, Archie Goodwin and Marcus Smart weren’t really point guards in high school and they have adapted to the position. Goodwin’s turnover numbers are far too high, but he’s set up his teammates passably while setting up his own shot a lot. And Marcus Smart has made a tremendous transition to playing the point-guard position at the college level. Smart’s assist rate is much better than many players regarded as better passers out of high school.

I really think the problem with Anderson is that Ben Howland hasn’t figured out how to use him. Lots of coaches from Rick Pitino to John Thompson III have been able to feature great lanky passers, by positioning them at the high post and letting them see the whole floor. Anderson still has the potential to be that type of player, even if he has struggled early.

Grant Jerrett and Sam Dekker are the only players in the Top 20 who are not starting. Ricardo Ledo is ineligible. And Kris Dunn and Gary Harris are injured.

We start to see the typical drop-off when we get to recruits in the 11-20 range. DaJuan Coleman still has the profile of a player who will be a star in a future season, but right now he is having trouble earning playing time behind other quality big men on Syracuse’s roster. Meanwhile Cameron Ridley has been extremely disappointing for Texas. Certainly it hurts not to have Myck Kabongo eligible, but Kabongo’s absence doesn’t explain why a player like Ridley can be so passive against a team like Chaminade as he was in the Maui Invitational loss. The only good thing I can say about Ridley is that he has 19 blocks already, which is more than any other player in the Top 50 except Nerlens Noel.

Only Rasheed Sulaimon has become an undisputed crunch time star for his team. And Sulaimon’s efficiency is even more impressive when you look at Duke’s strength of schedule so far. Rodney Purvis has also played major minutes, but he is deferring a lot to his teammates at this point.

Glenn Robinson has been shockingly efficient at this point in the season, well above many of his peers on this list. But none of the players listed here are going to quite be in the national player of the year discussion because they are starting to become more passive offensive players. (I.e. the percentage of possessions used is now often below 20%) Only Danuel House is using a large number of possessions at this point in the rankings, and House plays for a Houston team that is in the process of upgrading its talent level in anticipation of joining the Big East.

This preseason I wrote how Marcus Paige would have some growing pains and be inconsistent this year, and the response I got was that Roy Williams had a ton of confidence in Paige and that I was being un-necessarily pessimistic. So far, with an 87.7 ORtg, neither Paige nor the Tar Heels are off to a great start. Paige has better days ahead, but North Carolina is also going to have a few more baffling losses before the season is over.

I was worried that Yogi Ferrell could have a similar negative impact on the Hoosiers because freshmen are often inconsistent. But Ferrell has thrived because he has worked within the offense. Instead of hogging the ball and needing to create shots, Ferrell has let his teammates work their isolation stuff, and provided key drives and dishes when needed. Ferrell has been happy to fill a role on the Hoosiers, and he has been everything Indiana needed.

Finally, Tony Parker’s minutes this year have been a joke, but with Josh Smith transferring, Parker at least has a chance of cracking the UCLA rotation now.

Notice how often a lack of playing time plagues players at this point in the rankings. I expected and still expect big things out of Kansas’ Perry Ellis and Iowa’s Adam Woodbury, but their coaches have only given them a taste of playing time at this point. The result is that some guys at this point in the rankings become unmitigated gunners. Hey Indiana’s Jeremy Hollowell, no matter how good you think you are, when the game with North Carolina was close late in the first half, Indiana didn’t want you bombing threes. They wanted Jordan Hulls bombing threes.

Xavier has played much better than many of us anticipated this season, and freshman Semaj Christon deserves a lot of that credit. Christon has out-played point-guards like Marcus Paige and realistically he’s been much more important than even Yogi Ferrell given his role in the offense. Christon is using nearly 30% of his team’s possessions, scoring at a prolific clip, and setting up his teammates without a rash of turnovers.

Most of Christopher Opekpa’s stats are pretty pedestrian, but not his block rate. Opekpa has 35 blocks at this point in the season, easily out-distancing any of the other freshmen in today’s column.

Nik Stauskas has been unbelievably efficient at this point and he is playing major minutes to boot. Some people expected Michigan to be a Top 10 team, but did they really expect Stauskas to outperform his peer level players by this much? His efficiency is due in large part to his teammates, and his shot-selection. But his performance is still notable. Stauskas has the most threes of anyone mentioned in this column (18 made) beating even UCLA’s super-aggressive shooter Jordan Adams.

Also give Adams credit. He’s shooting 26% of the time while maintaining a solid ORtg. Kyle Anderson may have been the third rated recruit for UCLA, but Adams has actually played like one.

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Duke isn’t a perfect team. Their defensive rebounding remains suspect. On Saturday Night, it felt like Louisville could take as many bad threes as they wanted because the Cardinals always got the rebound. Ryan Kelly usually takes the blame. He wasn’t a great defensive rebounder last year, and that trend continues into this season. But the moment you start to question one of the Blue Devils, he finds a way to surprise you. Just when you thought that Ryan Kelly lacked strength on the interior, there he was at the end of the Louisville game getting a key block that led to a run-out and basket on the other end. And that four point swing was critical in a five point win.

Meanwhile, Kelly and Mason Plumlee were vital in beating VCU’s press, and that allowed Duke to escape the VCU game with a 12.3% turnover rate. That was the best job a team did holding onto the ball against VCU since the 2011 NCAA tournament. Meanwhile Plumlee and Kelly also matched the physicality in the Battle 4 Atlantis tournament. While the refs called plenty of perimeter whistles in the Bahamas, they seemed to swallow their whistles on the inside. And Duke managed to avoid being overwhelmed by the physical strength of players like Minnesota’s Trevor Mbakwe.

Duke may not be #1 in the polls, but in terms of accomplishments, no one has more quality wins than the Blue Devils at this point. They’ve beaten two preseason Top-5 teams and two more probable tournament teams. And as we near the end of November, we are once again reminded that no one has their team ready to play at the start of the season better than Mike Krzyzewski.

Year after year his teams win these preseason tournaments, and they do it by simply making fewer early season mistakes than their counterparts. With Duke nursing a three-point lead in the final minute of the Louisville game, the shot-clock was winding down. Duke was going to have to settle for a tough shot against a Louisville defense that had been shutting them down all day. But then Russ Smith made a foolish gamble. He dove for the ball instead of playing straight up, and Quinn Cook spun into the lane for a beautiful floater that sealed the victory. Duke made the right play, Louisville didn’t, and the Blue Devils won again.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that Duke will be the best team in March. Kentucky is still very young. Gorgui Dieng was out of the lineup for Louisville. And as the analysis below will show, Duke’s early season success doesn’t always translate into March success. But give Mike Krzyzewski credit for dominating the early season once again.

Other Impressive Teams

- Is the key to the early season simply good guard play? Illinois is off to a 7-0 start, and the Fighting Illini made at least ten threes in the first six games of the season. They broke the streak of outside shooting against Gardner Webb (and almost lost the game), but Illinois’ guards have looked fabulous so far this season.

Meanwhile, Cincinnati has rode its guards and looked incredibly impressive in its 6-0 start. In almost every game so far guards Sean Kilpatrick, Cashmere Wright, and JaQuon Parker have scored in double figures. In the preseason I wondered if the inside play of Cincinnati’s forwards would drag the offense down enough to stop the Bearcats from becoming an elite team. And the truth is Justin Jackson has continued to struggle with turnovers. That’s a three year trend that may not be correctable at this point. But Mick Cronin hasn’t felt obligated to give Jackson major minutes. Instead, he has been giving plenty of time to JUCO transfers Titus Rubles and David Nyarsuk, and the early returns are good. Not only have those players been able to finish the lay-ups and dunks that have come their way, their defensive intensity has allowed the Bearcats to reach even higher levels than last season. Cincinnati’s two point defense is near the tops in the nation right now. It helps that Cincinnati has played four of the worst teams in D1 in the early season. But Cincinnati also stifled Iowa St. and Oregon in winning the Global Sports Classic in Las Vegas, so there is some reason to think their defense is for real. I still think the question marks in the post could hurt Illinois and Cincinnati in conference play, but the early returns are fantastic.

Of course, perhaps we should continue to be reminded that the season is still early and we still have a small sample of games. No one looked more impressive than Baylor to start the season. The development of Cory Jefferson into a dominant player and the impressive debut of Top 10 freshmen Isaiah Austin had us all raising our expectations for Scott Drew’s club. But with Brady Heslip out of the lineup after having his appendix removed, Baylor couldn’t produce any points against the College of Charleston and the Bears fell at home on Saturday. Pierre Jackson and Heslip are outstanding guards, but the dropoff to Baylor’s backup guards Gary Franklin and AJ Walton is huge. Franklin and Walton have experience, but they just aren’t good offensive players.

Bullets

- Stanford’s Chasson Randle’s would like to erase the Minnesota game from his memory bank. Randle was 3-for-19 from the floor which was bad enough. But he may have committed the worst play of the season when he fouled Minnesota’s Andre Hollins at the end of the game. Hollins took a desperation half-court heave in a tie game, and Randle inexplicably fouled him. Hollins calmly sunk three free throws to give Minnesota the win. Hollins scored 41 the previous day against Memphis, and Stanford held him in check for most of the game, but Randle’s foolish foul allowed Hollins to win it at the end. Despite the dumb play, I love the postgame comments from Stanford coach Johnny Dawkins who tried to deflect some of the blame from Randle. Dawkins noted that one play doesn’t decide a game, and that Stanford made other mistakes that contributed to the loss.

- My biggest question for Michigan was whether someone could step in and fill the spot-up shooter role (played by Stu Douglass and others in past seasons.) So far Nik Stauskas has been more than up for the challenge. I don’t think his current efficiency numbers are sustainable, but the 78th ranked player out of high school has been much better than advertised. Certainly playing alongside Trey Burke and Tim Hardaway helps, but as teammate Matt Vogrich has shown, simply playing with other good guards doesn’t guarantee you will become a dominant scorer. I don’t know how much longer John Beilein can start Vogrich ahead of Stauskas.

- Northwestern held off Illinois St. in OT (thanks to a late technical by Illinois St.’s Jackie Carmichael), and that gave the Big Ten its fifth title in the nineteen Feast Week tournaments, most of any conference. That has given the Big Ten the early lead in most ranking systems from conference RPI to Sagarin.

- Oregon got 44 points from freshmen in the team’s 83-79 win at UNLV. With those new players and Arsalan Kazemi surprisingly declared eligible, Dana Altman has some great new pieces to work with.

Early Season vs Late Season Coaches

Team X is “going to be so much better by the time conference play rolls around.” I heard this phrase a lot during Feast Week. But I hate to break it to the announcers. Even if everyone improves, some teams are going to fall behind the curve and look even worse in conference play.

Two weeks ago, I talked about how freshmen-led teams have the most potential to improve, (unless the losses pile up and they stop playing defense.) But another question I have been pondering is whether certain coaches are particularly good at developing their teams over the course of the season. The results are presented below. At some level, they make sense to me. Duke hasn’t lost an early season tournament game since 2006. And Krzyzweski has more wins in the ACC/Big Ten challenge than any other coach. Clearly, Duke is at its best in November. And I think Tom Izzo clearly has a reputation as a coach whose teams improve over the course of the season.

But I am hesitant to say that these numbers have much predictive power. By random chance, some coaches are going to have teams that get better over time, and some will have teams that get worse over time. This doesn’t guarantee that Michigan St. will be better in March or that Duke will be worse in March again this season. But whether they have predictive power or not, the past trends are worth examining.

A few notes on the tables. I calculated the average Pythagorean winning percentage for each coach for the time periods listed duplicating the formula used on kenpom.com. Then I averaged those splits over a coach’s career. At most this includes 10 years of data for each coach. This doesn’t include the current season, or the near death-penalty 2006 season at Baylor since I cannot construct splits for those seasons. In many cases, such as Bill Self’s splits, the differences are so small as to be meaningless. Bill Self is dominant in all seasons. The Pythagorean winning percentages are listed in the following tables:

Coaches that Are Great Early

Unfortunately, I think there is a negative stigma associated with the coaches on this first list. Rich Barnes teams have often looked dominant early in the year only to disappoint as the season progresses. But instead of praising Barnes for getting his team up to #1 at some point in the season, we all view him as a “choker” for not getting his team to the Final Four more often.

There also seems to be a negative stigma associated with blasting small schools early in the season. Wisconsin absolutely punishes the small schools it faces, and that raises their power numbers, even though a 40-point win against Presbyterian may not have as much predictive power as the top ranking systems give it.

But that is a very negative way to look at this table. There is real skill to having a team prepared to play in November and December. Mark Few’s teams have typically been fabulous in the Feast Week tournaments, and we respect him for that. So don’t bash Mike Krzyzewski for having his team ready to play in November.

One other trend in the table is worth noting. The best mid-majors tend to show a pattern of less impressive play in January and February. (See Dave Rose and Mark Few.) I think the issue here is that it is hard to blow out conference opponents by 20 points every night, even if they are inferior teams.

The mid-major effect partly explains Mick Cronin’s poor numbers as this includes his time at Murray St. Also remember the 2007 season where Cronin’s Cincinnati team was 9-4 at the end of December with wins against three Top 100 teams, only to go 2-15 the rest of the way. Cronin inherited a team in chaos at that point in time, and I wouldn’t necessarily say it reflects on his future expectations, but it does cause his splits to look pretty poor. I wouldn’t expect a collapse this season based on past performance.

Coaches that Dominate Mid-Season

It is no surprise Bill Self would be on this list given how his teams win the Big 12 ever year, but the truth is Kansas is usually pretty dominant in all seasons. Ben Howland on the other hand, typically needs a couple of months before his teams get on a roll. Buzz Williams numbers look a little lower than expected because this includes one season at New Orleans.

Coaches at their Best Late

I love the contrast of Roy Williams and John Calipari here. Both coaches have had their teams playing at a peak level in March, but John Calipari’s teams have relied much more heavily on in-season growth. John Calipari’s numbers are even more impressive here when you consider that this includes his time at Memphis.

Many of the coaches like Rick Pitino, Tom Izzo, and John Beilein have truly been at their best in the NCAA tournament and everyone is aware of that. But I didn’t want one tournament loss to skew how a team was playing late in the year, so I used the whole month of March instead of only the NCAA tournament. Thus Leonard Hamilton and Frank Haith also get credit as late-season coaches based on their ACC and Big 12 tournament title wins.

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