November Reset

If you had told me at the start of the season that the Davidson Men's Basketball Team would rise double digits in KenPom, not only steal a game in Atlantis but dominate a Top 100 Big East Team wire-to-wire, and be 5-2 I would have been over-the-moon excited. Now there is important context that needs to be considered, but there is no way to describe Davidson's season so far except as a success. So let's dive in!

First, let's talk pre-Atlantis. The Cats started the season against DI competition with three efforts that felt uneven. Against Bowling Green, in Bowling Green, Davidson spent most of the first half nailing 3s and playing suffocating defense, leading to a 16 point lead at halftime. The second half was much different; Bowling Green hit everything, the defense looked out of sorts, and the offense devolved from our signature motion offense into a bunch of iso ball. Ultimately we pulled it out, but after leading 46-31 at half winning 91-85, by just six, felt disappointing, especially against a team ranked in the mid-200s on KenPom.

Next we played ETSU at home and the game was as stressful as last season's iteration. After jumping out to a 13-2 lead early, the game turned into a rock fight. The Bucs even took a 7 point lead early in the second half, but ultimately the Cats gutted out an uncomfortable 76-70 win in large part due to the play of Zach Laput who scored 14 points on 6/7 shooting and made winning play after winning play. This game featured a myriad of warning signs, as Matt McKillop acknowledged postgame, ETSU was able to completely take us out of our preferred offense and forced us to beat them with iso ball. Davidson's movement looked bad, only took 11 3s total, and missed an abysmal 11 free throws (finishing 21-32 from the line, worse than 66%). But again, that was a game Davidson lost year and in hindsight ETSU looks pretty solid, as they are up to 117 on KenPom as of December 1.

Finally, Davidson rounded out its pre-Atlantis schedule by beating the daylight out of VMI. Now VMI is quite bad, they are 338th on KenPom (out of 364 teams), but it was nice seeing the Cats get back to their identity with their trademark movement and 3s as they finished 13-32 from 3 and 20-34 from 2. Still though, the second half turned into a slog, in no small part due to some whistle happy refs making phantom loose ball foul calls, and the game did not feel like a full 40 minutes.

Now let's turn to Atlantis. Davidson opened with a hyper-athletic Arizona squad that has struggled early but is top 30 on KenPom for a reason. Davidson came out of the gates hot and looked like they largely belonged for about 75% of the game, trailing 62-68 with 12 minutes to go. That's where things unraveled in a BIG way, as the Cats were outscored 36-9 the rest of the way; not good! This felt like a continuation of us looking really good for halves and halves of halves but falling apart at some point in the second half.

Against Providence though the Cats FINALLY put together as close to a full 40 as they have all season. In the first half Davidson contested everything and gave up maybe one or two easy shots at most, holding PC to just 18% from the field and 18 points. The offense looked solid as well, scoring 38 points on beautiful movement and passing (and 4/10 from three). Davidson kept the lead around 20 for most of the second half by continuing to contest everything and running the motion offense. PC made a run late but Davidson hung tough and pulled it out 69-55 before PC hit a half-court 3 to make the spread a more palatable 11. Now Providence was without it's best player so this was not a "Spaces" worthy win but they are still a Big East team in the top 100 on KenPom and the game felt like a proof of concept game for me. The offense looked and produced like it did under Bob McKillop BUT it clearly incorporated elements unique to Matt McKillop; i.e., more emphasis on getting to the line and attacking the rim off the dribble. The defense was a huge plus as well, making Providence work for everything even when they got hot.

Finally, the team finished up against an elite Gonzaga squad ranked 3rd in the country. Davidson showed a lot of fight and ran its stuff but ultimately the legs weren't there and the Zags were just too good.

So where do things stand? The Cats are sitting at 113 on KenPom and 5-2 with a Top 100 win and a second Top 120 win. Davidson has five remaining non-con games (with their current KenPom rankings in parentheses): Charleston Southern (301), Charlotte (204), Detroit Mercy (308), at Temple (116), Bethune Cookman (279), and Eastern Michigan (305). As is probably clear by the KenPom rankings in the 200s and 300s, Davidson will be comfortable favored to win five of its remaining six games and the Temple game will be close to a tossup (or a slight Temple edge). If the Cats can go 5-1 and hammer the bad teams (which they have not been able to do yet) they will be comfortably within the Top 100 on KenPom once conference play starts. If they can go 6-0 and finish the non-con 11-2 then we are really cooking with gas.

Ultimately, the 33 and 25 point drubbings to Arizona and Gonzaga show that this Davidson team is not likely to pull a major shocker and contend for an A10 Title or NCAAT At-Large bid, but the rest of the results do show that this is a quality basketball team that can finish comfortably in the top 100 on KenPom and avoid the A10 Pillow Fight if they can stick to their style of play and play full 40 minute games. Now if the threes start falling for guys like Laput, Kochera, and Blums, guys who have a history of making those shots at above average clips, there is a world where this team could contend for a double-bye in the A10 Tournament and push the top 75 on KenPom. That's the ceiling in my opinion, but again, it will require us to hit our 3s. To even have that as a possibility after the last two seasons is more than enough to get me excited.