2023/24 Preview: Offense

To the even the casual A10 fan it was clear last season that Davidson’s offense looked quite different than usual. First off, it was no secret that everything ran through Foster Loyer and Sam Mennenga. In fact, Foster Loyer sported a 27.3% usage rate and Sam Mennenga a 26.8%. Now Davidson is usually top heavy, relying, usually to great effect, on its stars but even by Davidson standards last season was an anomaly. Case in point, no Davidson player has had a usage rate at or above Sam’s 26.8% since Peyton Aldridge in 2017/2018. Furthermore, Davidson typically has 3 or even 4 players with usage rates in the 20% range, evidence of Davidson’s pass happy system. Since joining the A10 in 2014/15 Davidson has had at least 3 players with usage rates at or above 20% every season except 2016/17 and this past season. Interestingly, those two seasons are Davidson’s worst since joining the A10 and the only times the program has finished with a losing conference record.

Second, Davidson was noticeably bereft of its typical arsenal of 3-point shooters. Again using 2014/15 as the benchmark, Davidson has only had 2 seasons where it has shot under 35.4% from 3 as a team. Those 2 seasons were 2016/17 and last season. In 2016/17 Davidson shot 34.1% from 3 and this past season the team shot 32.5% from 3, good for 275th in the country out of 358 DI basketball teams. In the other 7 seasons since joining the A10 Davidson’s average 3-point FG% was 37.2%. To add injury to insult Davidson did not have a single player take more than 3 3-pointers per game and make more than 35% of them. This forced Matt McKillop to commonly play lineups that included multiple non-shooters on the floor at once. Even the guys who had above-average 3-point shooting percentages were low-volume shooters. No one on the team besides Loyer took more than about 3 per game. This let opposing teams focus on Loyer, swarm him with length, and feel comfortable helping off shooters in order to clog the lane. Simply, Foster and Sam couldn’t do it alone and no one else stepped up consistently enough to take advantage of the attention those two received from opposing defenses.

We’ve already spilt a ton of ink on why all of this happened and how Matt McKillop did his best to adjust the offense to the roster he had, something he did quite well considering the team was still able to produce an offense that finished just short of the top third of college basketball according to KenPom. Ultimately though it wasn’t enough, and the team had an offense that placed outside the top 30 or so in the country for just the third time since joining the A10, and was the lowest rated Davidson offense since 2009/10, the season after Steph Curry declared for the NBA Draft. At the end of the day a Davidson offense cannot thrive without ample 3-point shooting and last year’s team clearly did not have enough to suffice.

So that was last season, what about next season? Matt Mckillop is much smarter than I am, so he’s known for quite some time that the roster needed revamping. First order of business? Adding shooting, and Coach McKillop did just that this offseason. Starting with adding Angelo Brizzi in January, Matt McKillop brought in 6 guys in total: the aforementioned Brizzi, Mike Loughnane, Hunter Adam, Rikus Schulte, Jarvis Moss, and Bobby Durkin. Of those 6 guys Brizzi is expected to be a plus 3-point shooter, Durkin, Loughnane, and Moss are all plus, plus 3-point shooters, and Schulte and Adam are guys with smooth jumpers who are expected to be able to develop above average 3-point shots in the future. There’s also hope for internal improvement as well, as Skogman, Kochera, Bailey, and Spadone are all expected to receive more playing time and shooting opportunities and each shot about 35% from 3 on low volume attempts last season. Kochera in particular improved mightily as the season progressed and shot 36.5% from 3 over the last half of the season. If he can keep that up or even improve on that figure that would be a boon for the Wildcats. There’s also hope that Senior Guard Grant Huffman can rebound from his rough shooting season last year and reclaim his form from his first two seasons when he shot 38.5% from 3.

It is a little bit harder to parse out how the departures of Foster Loyer, Sam Mennenga, and Des Watson will impact the team’s overall shooting. Sam was a good shooter but at a lower volume, as he made 36.6% of his shots from 3 but only attempted 2.6 per game. Des is good at a lot of things, but he was below average from 3, he shot 27.2% from 3 on 2.5 attempts per game. Foster Loyer’s season is a bit more complicated. Loyer was statistically one of the best shooters in the entire country in 2021/22 when he shot a whopping 44% from 3 on almost 6 attempts per game; it was truly one of the best 3-point shooting seasons at Davidson ever. Unfortunately, as stated before, the makeup of last year’s team allowed teams to center their gameplan around suffocating him and their efforts took a toll. His 3-point % decreased to 33.5% this past season and he especially struggled as the season went on, making just 28.3% of his 3s from December on. My personal opinion is that Foster Loyer is one of the best shooters that’ll ever come through Davidson, it’s just that the circumstances of last season forced him to take a ton of extremely contested shots, which depreciated his percentage.

I would actually go as far as to argue that Foster’s situation was the perfect microcosm of last season’s offense. The team simply didn’t have enough weapons and shooters to force teams to respect all aspects of our offense, thus making it much easier to stop to us. When Foster and Sam were swarmed not enough guys stepped up and hit shots, which just put more and more pressure on the two stars. This upcoming team will be much more balanced. First things first, the team will actually be able to play 4 above average shooters on the floor at once again, even 5 in lineups with Skogman at the 5 and Moss and Brizzi sharing the backcourt. If Huffman can regain his freshman and sophomore form that opens up a ton more combinations as well and could ultimately be a critical swing factor for Davidson’s season.

Secondly, losing your two best players is never a good thing but losing Foster and Sam does mean that the team has no obvious go-to guy. Instead of being top heavy we are likely looking at a season where no one guy averages more than 15 or 16 points per game but a handful average more than 10.

These two things should lead to a team that’s much more balanced and much better at shooting than last year’s team. The improved 3-point shooting, the lifeblood of a Davidson/McKillop offense, should in turn reopen the cutting lanes that Davidson players have feasted on with back cuts for decades. Obviously, this is all the best-case scenario, it is up to the players and coaches to make it come to fruition. It is likely that things could look ragged at first with no established go-to or even secondary option, and fans will need to give younger players like Reed Bailey and Angelo Brizzi time to grow into their new, expanded roles. I think though that if the fans are patient, they’ll like what Matt McKillop and his roster ultimately develop into.