By ADAM HERMANN
Philahoops Staff
-
OFFENSE
(The offensive graph contains three components. Along the x-axis runs Scoring Efficiency, which measures how efficiently each player scored their respective points. Along the y-axis runs the percentage of their team’s points each player scored. And the size of the player’s bubble represents the number of minutes played. A perfect game would land a player in the upper right section of the graph.)
SEASON-TO-DATE: ROTATION SUCCESS
As we saw in the last season-to-date piece after Drexel’s victory over Rutgers, the Dragons’ offense is sloppy in graph form but effective on the floor. Chris Fouch has continued to show the country that he is Drexel’s premier scorer by averaging 24 points per game in the team’s two games at MSG, but the other three pieces of Drexel’s (former) Big Four are bunched in the season-long graph on the right, and that’s a good thing.
The bad thing, as we now know, is that Damion Lee is out for the remainder of the season. Removing him from that graph, the Dragons will need to see other names emerge (I only use players with at least 5% of the Dragons’ points.) Look for Major Canady to get more action in the coming games, especially as the season continues and Frantz Massenat and Fouch need support scoring against CAA foes.
The graph is also a little too left-leaning for Bruiser Flint to be happy with his offense. Massenat is the most efficient of the Four at 44 percent which, while not abysmal, certainly isn’t ideal. The team as a whole is scoring with 44.6 percent efficiency, a figure that definitely needs improvement. Being in the bottom fourth of the country in shooting percentage is okay when you’re a defense-centric squad, but it’s not what Flint is looking for.
BALANCE PREVAILS VERSUS BAMA
There was a wide range of point totals and scoring efficiencies in the triple overtime third place game against Alabama Friday afternoon. But it might have given Drexel fans a glimpse of what’s to come offensively without Lee, and it was a very reassuring glimpse.
The Dragons had four players score at least 17 percent of the team’s points, as we can see by Fouch, Massenat, Tavon Allen, and Kazembe Abif essentially being on the same y-axis plane, albeit spread far across the x-axis. But if I’m Flint, that’s exactly what I want to see out of my team. Massenat and Abif will be more efficient — Abif because of his location around the hoop and Massenat because of his pass-first mentality — and Fouch and Allen will be less so because of their score-first tendencies.
And having Dartaye Ruffin and Rodney Williams go a combined 6-of-8 from the field doesn’t seem magnificent in the box score, but those are important points. With Lee gone the Dragons will need support scoring to become more prevalent, and if their best defenders can start pouring in three field goal makes per game the offense will be in much better shape.
FOUCH’S EFFICIENCY NEEDS WORK
It’s no secret that Fouch is the heart of Drexel’s offense. He’s their leading scorer at 19.5 points per game, averages 27 percent of the team’s points scored per night — the only player above 20 percent — and nearly willed them to a victory over No. 4 Arizona Wednesday night.
But he has to get more efficient with his scoring.
Right now, his 42 percent efficiency is the second-worst mark on the team behind only Canady. He’s the least-efficient player of the seven who average double-digit minutes per game.
The lower number stems from his woeful three-point shooting. Fouch is known around the CAA as one of the deadliest three-point shooters you can face, but this season he’s doing his best to disprove that notion. After six games Fouch is shooting just 27 percent from behind the arc, and he went 1-of-12 against Alabama. He seems to take them out of habit — 48 of his 100 field goal attempts this season have been threes — but he needs to either break that habit or get better at it.
***
DEFENSE
(The defensive graph consists of two parts. Along the x-axis runs the percentage of the team’s minutes played, the dependent variable. Along the y-axis runs points allowed against, which shows how many points each player’s lineups allowed when they themselves were on the court. A perfect game would land a player in the bottom right section of the graph.)
SEASON-TO-DATE: GRAVITATE TOWARDS THE MEAN
We’ve seen fantastic defense from the Dragons so far this season, including Wednesday when they held the No. 4 team in the country to 20 points in the first half. Ruffin has spearheaded the defensive efforts for Drexel by averaging a team-low 1.51 points allowed per minute in his 29.2 minutes per night, but his support has been steadily improving to help his cause.
Abif, for example, has been turning up the intensity on the defensive end. In his first two games of the season, Abif allowed 1.76 points per minute and wasn’t nearly as effective as Flint had hoped his junior forward would be.
However, in his last two games, Abif has allowed just 1.51 points per minute, which is 0.11 points per minute below the team’s season average. With Abif averaging the second-most minutes on the team at 35.8 per game, that’s a difference of nearly nine points per game. Five of Drexel’s six games this season have been decided by fewer than nine points.
Defensive improvements like that seem insignificant taken one percentage point at a time, but when you add things up over a 40 minute game, minor defensive improvements almost always lead to more wins and fewer losses.
BAH SHOWS IMPROVEMENT
Mohamed Bah is also showing marked improvement defensively. He’s only had double-digit minutes in two of the four games he’s appeared in this season, but in seven minutes of relief action against Alabama the freshman forward allowed just four points against him.
It’s a small sample size, but there’s no doubt that time will only help him. Before the season started, Flint and numerous players said that Bah had been struggling to pick up the defensive system and therefore he would be seeing limited playing time as he worked to figure it out.
He’s not quite there yet, but Bah is definitely showing progress, which is encouraging for Flint and his coaching staff considering the foul trouble Ruffin has been getting himself into lately.
***
EFFECTIVE LINEUPS
(The only lineups that count towards the analysis are the ones run for a minute or longer; in theory, these are the ones the coaches truly want to run as units rather than short-term coaching strategies because of fouling or defensive sets at the ends of games.)
versus Alabama
There’s a new lineup in town, and Kazembe Abif isn’t necessarily needed to keep the Dragons rolling.
The latest and greatest effective lineup the Dragons have been rolling out lately is that of Dartaye Ruffin, Rodney Williams, Frantz Massenat, Tavon Allen, and Chris Fouch. With Damion Lee done for the year, this lineup will be the one to watch.
They outscored the Tide 12-8 in eight minutes of action Friday night, and while Abif will probably see far more time than Williams as the season continues, it’s good to keep this lineup in mind. With foul trouble always around the corner, this is the one I’d be leaning on if I were Flint, especially in crucial defensive situations. Which is exciting, because it means Williams is learning this defense. That bodes well for next season, which will be a rebuilding year of sorts for the Dragons.
Another development we see in the effective lineups, of course, is an absence of Lee. It looks like Canady will be the one to fill Lee’s void; in the first full game without the junior guard, Canady was featured in nearly 18 minutes of effective lineup action, including sharing a brisk 1:40 with point guard Massenat. The lineup featuring two point guards outscored Alabama 5-4 in those 100 seconds, which is a 120 point per game pace. Obviously that’s not sustainable, but a lineup with Canady, Massenat and Allen can do significant offensive damage. I want to see more of that one.
In the season-long effective lineup table, there are two trends coming to the forefront as this team takes shape. There is the emergence of the Dragons’ new Big Three, and the emergence of the team’s two signature lineups.
First, meet the new Big Three. They’re almost the same as the old Big Three.
The three each play their respective roles in any given offensive set. Massenat is the distributor who regulates the offense, Fouch is the sharpshooter and point producer, and Ruffin is the rebounder and effective low-post scorer (62% efficient on the season). It’s a successful recipe, and without Lee these will be the three Flint needs to contribute on a nightly basis.
And we have Drexel’s two signature lineups:
Ruffin-Abif-Massenat-Allen-Fouch
Ruffin-Williams-Massenat-Allen-Fouch
Abif-Williams-Massenat-Fouch-Allen
In the three effective lineups that Bruiser Flint has employed for at least 20 minutes, there are three constant players: Frantz Massenat, Chris Fouch, and Tavon Allen. These three lineups have accounted for 115 of Drexel’s 433 points so far this season (27 percent) and have outscored opponents 115-108 in nearly 72 minutes of action through six games.
It makes sense that these are the three lineups Flint would rely on the most; they feature his top three offensive weapons. The intriguing part is not the guards’ presence but the presence of Rodney Williams, whose role continues to expand.
Williams scores just 3 percent of the team’s points on 46 percent efficiency, but his defensive role is so integral to the team’s success that he has earned a spot in two of the Dragons’ signature lineups moving forward.
Great Analysis! Go Dragons!