Checking in on the Big East halfway through conference play
On Tristen Newton, Ryan Kalkbrenner, tough schedules, free-throw shooting, shot quality, the worst Big East team of all time, and more
We’re 55 games into the 110-game Big East double round-robin, so it’s as good a time as any to take stock of what we’ve seen so far. I threw in some random thoughts and a ref rant, too.
Newton Defying Gravity: A year after rampaging through every non-conference opponent to a national title, UConn has reloaded to sit at the top of the league by two games and at #1 in the AP Poll, despite losing two players now getting rotation minutes in the NBA as rookies — Jordan Hawkins and Andre Jackson — plus Final Four Most Outstanding Player Adama Sanogo.
Yes, the Huskies added Cam Spencer through the portal and Stephon Castle as a freshman, but the biggest difference has been in the play of point guard Tristen Newton. If you look at UConn’s statistical profile this year compared to last year, the Huskies have markedly improved in two areas: 2-point shooting and turnovers. Newton has reduced his turnover rate from 22.6 to 17.8 and improved his 2-point conversion rate from 38.0% to 50.4% while playing four extra minutes per game and seeing his usage go from 21.6% to 27.5%.
That’s why the East Carolina transfer, in his second year at Storrs, is on the shortlist for Big East Player of the Year.
Kalk It Up to Ryan: In his first 10 seasons at Creighton, Greg McDermott never had a top-40 defense. Then came Ryan Kalkbrenner. Playing just a third of possible minutes as a freshman in 2020-21, Kalkbrenner was part of the 32nd-best defense in the country and, since taking on starter’s minutes the next season, the Bluejays have had a top-20 defense.
In league play this season, Creighton is first in field-goal defense, defensive rebounding and fewest free-throws allowed, and it starts with the string bean center, who is again competing with Devin Carter for Big East Defensive Player of the Year honors (Kalkbrenner won the award last year).
One downstream effect of Kalkbrenner’s ability to provide such resistance at the rim is that Creighton can overplay on the perimeter, part of why the Jays also allow the fewest 3-point attempts in the league.
Kalkbrenner is second in block rate in league play, top 15 in rebounding on both glasses, top five in free-throw rate and true-shooting %. There’s an aspect of following Creighton this year where it feels like the parts are greater than the sum, but little about CU’s sometimes underwhelming play lays at the large feet of Kalkbrenner.
Murderer’s Row: St. John’s and Xavier played Wednesday night (the Musketeers won by 11 at Cintas Center), and both sit at 5-5 in league play, joined by Butler and Providence with that record. The Red Storm and Xavier are also side-by-side when you rank Big East teams in order of how difficult their schedules have been this year, sitting first and second, respectively.
St. John’s has yet to play either of the league’s sad sacks — Georgetown and DePaul — and has already played two of the league’s top three on the road (UConn and Creighton). Xavier has already played UConn twice in addition to Creighton, St. John’s, Villanova and Providence on the road. XU still has three more games against DePaul and Georgetown. The schedules will balance out in the second half of the season, making Rick Pitino and Sean Miller’s clubs strong picks to emerge from the muddled middle.
Below you can see a grid of wins and losses that are ordered by the difficulty of each game from top to bottom, adjusted for home and road (team quality is based on KenPom’s ratings). I find this chart a good way to see both outlier results (hello, Marquette’s home loss to Butler) and how schedules are looking. For instance, check out all that white near the top of Creighton’s column — the Jays have played the league’s easiest conference schedule to date. (The image below is linkable so you can access a more readable version of the table that I plan to update regularly.)
Free Indeed: During conference play, Big East teams are shooting 75% from the free-throw line, the best of any conference. Villanova continues to pace the country at 82.1% after leading the nation at 82.0% last year. Butler (14th) and Seton Hall (15th) also rank in the national top 15.
Butler’s D.J. Davis and Seton Hall’s Al-Amir Dawes are 1-2 in the league in conference games and overall in free-throw shooting for players with at least two attempts per game. Davis (95.7% for the season) is second nationally; Dawes (93.3%) is seventh.
The worst team in the Big East from the foul line both for the season (68.9%) and in Big East play (67.8%) is Providence — the national average is 71.4%. PC missed half of its 26 attempts in a nine-point loss to UConn on Wednesday night. This marked the fourth time in 10 Big East games and sixth time this season that the Friars missed at least nine free throws.
The Conference of Shot Quality: Perhaps part of the Friars’ struggles at the charity stripe stem from the fact that they hardly ever take long 2-pointers. Those two things are, of course, unrelated, but PC has been excellent at avoiding that most inefficient shot type in basketball, taking only 16.3% of its shots in that range, the third lowest rate of any major-conference team, but just the second best in the conference.
Marquette is the Big East team ahead of PC (second among high majors behind only Alabama), and the Golden Eagles are also 11th in most close twos and 13th in most 3-pointers attempted, meaning Marquette may have the best overall shot quality in the league. Four of the six major-conference teams least likely to take a long 2-pointer reside in the Big East — Villanova and Connecticut join Marquette and Providence in that cohort. Creighton is 12th by that same measure and also ranks top 10 in both close twos and threes attempted.
Despite much of the league getting quality looks, the Big East is in the middle of the pack in offensive efficiency in league play (15th of 32 conferences) thanks to teams not shooting well on threes (33.1%, 25th) or twos (49.7%, 20th), which is at least in part due to the Big East being the second best league at blocking shots. Seton Hall’s Jaden Bediako is far and away the leader in shot-block rate in conference games, ahead of the aforementioned Kalkbrenner.
For a directional sense of the value of shots from each location, teams typically convert close twos about 60% of the time (or about 1.2 points per shot), long twos about 40% of the time (or 0.8 points per shot) and 3-pointers about one-third of the time (or 1.0 points per shot)
Am I Blue? Yes, I’m Blue: Nine teams have a positive point differential in league play, which means only two have a negative point differential; Georgetown sits at -104 in nine games and DePaul sits at an incomprehensible -240 in 10 games.
DePaul seems likely to go down as the worst team in league history. The Blue Demons rank 294th in KenPom. Here are all the other teams in Big East history to finish 200th or worst in KenPom (or SRS from 1995-96 and earlier):
1982-83 Seton Hall: 208th (of 274)
2000-01 Virginia Tech: 234th
2003-04 St. John's: 200th
2006-07 Rutgers: 208th
2008-09 DePaul: 206th
2015-16 St. John's: 211th
2022-23 Georgetown: 219th
Considering there were more than 80 fewer teams in 1982-83, you could make a pretty good case that the Pirates squad — P.J. Carlesimo’s first — entered this season as the worst in Big East history, but barring an unlikely turnaround, DePaul should “surpass” them.
The Blue Demons are bad in almost every way, but the worst number may be their 338th-place ranking in field-goal defense. The only other major-conference schools to rank outside the national top-260 are Georgetown (296th) and Louisville (303rd).
The two biggest storylines left for DePaul are: will the Blue Demons win a league game? Their best shot is at home vs. Georgetown on Feb. 24. And who will replace Tony Stubblefield, who was fired Jan. 22?
Ref Travel Show: If you watched the Big East double-header on FOX Sports 1 last night, you may have noticed that, in both St. John’s-Xavier and Providence-Connecticut, 46 fouls were called and 62 free-throws attempted. PC, Connecticut and St. John’s are 1-2-3 in the Big East in free-throw rate in league play (Xavier is 6th) and these are also four of the five teams most likely to send opponents to the line. So if there were ever a pair of matchups for this to happen, maybe these were them.
Still, I have a pet peeve, and so I will take this opportunity to air it. College basketball referee travel is wild stuff. The three refs that worked the PC-UConn game — Ron Groover (in Clemson), John Gaffney (in Atlanta) and Clarence Armstrong (in Raleigh) — were all doing ACC games Tuesday night ahead of this matchup. Storrs is not next door to any major airports, so one imagines that travel experience, particularly from Clemson, was not one conducive to a lot of rest and recovery.
Groover has worked 72 games so far in a season that is 88 days old — he was back down South to officiate UNC-Wilmington’s win over College of Charleston on Thursday night. The man loves to work — during the 2017-18 season, Groover had stretches of 17 and 19 consecutive days calling a game.
On a Friday night in December, Purdue visited Northwestern at 8 p.m. local time. That game went into overtime as the Wildcats knocked off then-#1 Purdue. High-stepping Jeff Anderson, Earl Walton and Tim Comer officiated that game, which lasted until almost 11 p.m. in Evanston. About 12 hours later, those same three officials were in Madison for the Egg Bowl Bedlam matchup between Marquette and Wisconsin.
I’m sure Jeff, Earl and Tim had fun carpooling on that two-and-a-half-hour drive. Tim, as the junior official of the three, had to be in charge of loading up a playlist — maybe a mix of Sufjan Stevens and some holiday classics — but could they possibly have been at their best for that game? Can we develop a deeper bench of trusted referees so that the Big Ten doesn’t think this sort of turnaround is worth it?
YouTubes of the Week: My first comes from Jordan Sperber’s HoopVision channel. He did a lengthy and informative breakdown of the Houston Cougars blitzing ballscreen coverage (don’t call it a “trap”). The video also included interesting nuggets on whom you typically want shooting out of a pick-and-roll and then how the nation’s best defense turns those numbers on their head. (Not YouTube, but to stay on the Houston theme, on KenPom’s Substack, he takes a look at how the Cougars’ ability to get their own misses on jumpers is uncanny and demonstrates hustle.)
If you found Tim Brando’s call of the Providence-Connecticut game maddening — perhaps due to his incessant referencing of Ed Cooley, his head-scratching praise of the refs and his general incomprehension of what was happening on the floor — look back toward when Brando still had his fastball, calling the Providence vs. Duke second-round matchup in Charlotte in 1997.