Not to be a Buzzkill, but...

Even the most pessimistic Davidson fan couldn't label Davidson's 6-2 start as anything but a success. Almost every returner has shown marked improvement, the highly touted freshman class has shown flashes, the team has a dominant Top 100 win on a neutral court, and the only losses have been to teams ranked 29th and 4th on KenPom. Yet, anyone who's watched this team closely can tell there's a slight disconnect between the ends and the means. Yes, the team is 6-2 with 5 very winnable games to end the non-con but it's hard to get on a pedestal and confidently shout that this team will contend for an A10 Title or even finish in the top 100 on KenPom...

Do the numbers back up this nebulous feeling? Yep, as clear as day. As of December 8, the Cats are 52nd in strength of record and 61st in wins above bubble but just 118th in KenPom and 130th in T-Rank. SOR and WAB are results-based metrics while KenPom and T-Rank are predictive metrics. Results-based metrics try to measure what you've done and nothing more, the predictive metrics try and extrapolate to determine how good you are and how good you will be going forward. Long story short, the black and white, wins and losses, picture of Davidson's season has been rosy while the way we have gotten those wins has been far less so. The reasons for this are quite clear: we have let bad teams (BGSU, Charleston Southern, and to a lesser extent ETSU) hang-around until the final moments and been blown out by the good teams (Arizona and Gonzaga). In the world of advanced analytics and ball knowing, this mix is a harbringer of doom, but let's take a look under the hood and try to figure out the why.

The primary culprit seems to be that this squad has so far been unable to put together a full 40 minute performance. In fact, the team has surrendered double digit runs in 5 of the team's 7 games against D1 opponents. Trigger Warning, these numbers are not pretty. Against Charleston Southern Davidson surrendered a 8-24 run, vs Gonzaga it was 0-13, Arizona ripped off a stunning 36-9 run, ETSU took the lead in the 2nd half with an 18-8 run, and even BGSU had us on the ropes for a minute with a 20-7 stretch. Even against VMI the 2nd half was mostly a slog after a stellar first half. Whether it be intensity or focus, these Cats have shown a proclivity to losing their edge for large swathes of game time where they stop running Davidson's trademark motion offense and instead devolve into iso-ball and the defense breaks down from its typically rigid structure and starts hemorrhaging open looks. To this point the offensive prowess of Connor Kochera and Reed Bailey, even in iso situations, and overall effort of Zach Laput, who makes winning plays in his sleep, has kept the Cats enough on track that they've pulled out the games against bad opponents, but this is trend is much more worrisome if looking ahead to conference play against a very solid A10. The current recipe may be enough to hold off the likes of ETSU, BGSU, and Charleston Southern in the final minutes but its very questionable that it will be enough to beat very many of the A10's 7 Top 100 teams.

There are other bright red flags as well. Davidson's 3 pt defense has been beyond atrocious. Opponents are shooting over 40% from deep against the Cats, good for 360th in the nation out of only 364 D1 teams. This number is particularly shocking considering that Matt McKillop's squad grades out roughly positively in the other defensive stats; the Cats are 131st in 2pt FG%, 71st in offensive rebounds conceded, and 42nd in fouls. Somehow all that all comes out to Davidson sporting roughly the 175th best defense in the country. By itself that's not a good or bad number, if the offense can perform at a top 100 level you can live with the 175th best defense without loving it. But ultimately you cannot live with having one of the 5 worst 3 point defenses in the country. You cannot take away everything unless you have a Donovan Clingan and premier perimeter athletes, but 360th is simply not good enough and requires major adjustments from the coaching staff.

On offense there are no catastrophic numbers, 3 point shooting can be better but the team is much improved in that regard from last season and continues to get good looks. The major red flag instead is what I mentioned earlier, that the team goes major stretches where it abandons its trademark ball movement and cutting and instead leans on inefficient iso-opportunities where it asks Reed Bailey and Connor Kochera to create buckets out of nothing on their own. That has a time and place, and both guys are having very good years so far, but that is not an effective way to run an offense in the long-run. This is emphasized even moreso by the fact that the team has been VERY effective running the motion offense and that's without shooting particularly well from deep yet. In fact, even with the lapses the Cats have a top 100 offense as is. The major stat to highlight here is that the Cats are top 25 in not turning the ball over and have almost double the assists as they do turnovers. If the Cats just run their stuff and shoot a touch better from 3 you are looking at a top 75 offense, maybe even better.

So where do we go from here? Well the team has Charlotte on Tuesday night at home, a game that you can almost bet on to be gross. Bigger picture, the Cats need to take advantage of its remaining non-con schedule that doesn't feature a single top 120 team and 4 games against sub-200 squads. The coaching staff needs to make adjustments guarding the 3, I would like to see us continue to shoot the 3 ball better ourselves, and the team absolutely needs to work on playing full games with intensity and focus without prolonged lapses where the team goes into a shell on both ends. Do that and the Cats have a real shot at finishing the non-con 10-3 or even 11-2, either of which would constitute a very successful non-conference performance in Matt McKillop's third year at the helm. Go 'Cats!