Well, with the performance in Greensboro, it is likely that the inaugural season of CMYBall is at an end. It had it's highs and lows, but through 32 games, the herculean effort to field a team, much less win a few games seemed out of reach. Ten months ago, we had barely enough players to form a roster. Seven months ago, Jon Kabongo was ruled out with a knee injury. A not unsubstantial percentage of our current roster should be readying themselves for senior proms and SAT results.
Yet we made it to .500.
Scoring
| Player | Year | Position | Scoring |
|---|---|---|---|
| Team | - | - | 68.56 |
| Freshmen | - | - | 51.67 |
| Landers Nolley II | r-Fresh | G/F | 15.47 |
| Tyrece Radford | Fresh | Guard | 10.16 | Naheim Alleyne | Fresh | Guard | 8.78 |
| Jalen Cone | Fresh | Guard | 7.97 |
| PJ Horne | r-Junior | Forward | 7.56 |
75.36% of scoring production was from Freshmen. Find me another school in the nation with that stat line. Add into that, we're guaranteed to be losing 0.18% to graduation. Again, find me another school with that figure.
Rebounding
Tyrece MF Radford managed an even 200 rebounds on the year. Nolley chimed in with 186, Horne with 133, and Bede with 118. Rounding out the top 5 was Ojiako with 85. Dude will be solid. If he can have the endurance for Horne's minutes, he could see 300 in a season.
Assists
177-53. That is Wabissa Bede's ATO on the season, good for a ratio of 3.34 to 1. That's good for 2nd nationally. The 53 turnovers are the fewest among the top 100 assist producers in the country.
Experience/Minutes
The word that best describes this Hokie team unlike years previous is "healthy." Discounting Kabongo's season ending injury three months before tip-off, the 2019-20 Hokies missed a total of 2 games - Cattoor early in the year, against Chattanooga with an ankle injury and Ojiako against Syracuse. So of ten scholarship players who were likely to have seen major playing time this year (320 games) injuries cost 34 appearances.
Nolley led all Hokies with 967 minutes, the only player to top 30 mpg. Bede (951), Horne (901), Radford (842), Alleyne (833, and Cattoor (627) all finished with greater than 20 minutes per game. Cone (590), Wilkins (460), and Ojiako (322) all finished with greater than 10 mpg.
65.8% of minutes were played by Freshmen, and .72% played by Seniors.
All told the Hokies accrued 6550 minutes in 32 games, averaging out to 32.75 total games played for the team. We asked a lot of our freshmen and we got what they could give.
Looking Ahead
Two highly rated guards will be adding to the roster, in Joe Bamisile and Darius Maddox. Add in Kabongo (21 games played, 103 minutes) and Aluma (68 games played, 1370 minutes) and the Hokies should be one of the deepest, most experienced teams in the league, with almost 8000 returning minutes.
Comments
If some one can drive and finish at the basket its gonna be huge!
YUGE!!
EDIT: Gif removed so no one else drops their TKPC membership
Tyrece Radford be like, "Hold my beer"
This has to be our dunk of the year, right? Here are all the angles
Edit: Thanks for teaching me how to embed, 07Hokie!
click where it says "Share," then copy the embed code and paste it in your comment.
And draw the foul.
Last year, we had 545 FT, with 413 made
This year, we had 429, with 305 made.
Even with our reduced percentages, we still dropped a ton of points from last year
This might be a dumb question, but does the MF in "Tyrece MF Radford" mean what "MF" normally means, or does it mean "My Friend"? He is a bad, bad man!
And, is he our MVP? I felt like he came from nowhere, improved the most, and was the most consistent guy the last 2+ months. He plays bigger than his (what?) 6'3".
It means what it normally means.
And yes, I think we can argue that he was the MVP of the team.
Think he is actually only 6'1". But he plays like he is 6'5".
Radford is probably my favorite player right now. All drive, hustle, and guts.
If you split the season into ACC play and OOC play were there any major trends that you see? My eyes tell me Nolley was the OOC MVP and Radford was the ACC play MVP. I think Cone, Catoor, Ojiako, and Radford were all trending up at the end of the season. Nolley, Bede, Horne, and Wilkins were trending down. Alleyne was about even all year.
Scoring-wise, Nolley dropped 2.5 ppg from the first 16 games to the last 16, going from 17.9 ppg to 15.47, following a general trend of the team 71.44 to 68.56. Radford came into his own, increasing his scoring from 8.4 ppg to 10.16.
Scoring among the Freshmen stayed pretty consistent 52.5 ppg, dropping to 51.67 as the season's end.
Horne dropped 1 ppg in scoring, but his scoring drop was offset by Cone. Oddly enough, both are about 4 inches shorter than their respective equal on the opposing sideline.
Bede was/is not a scorer. His ATO remained high, although it is down from it's peak in the 4s, 3.3ish ain't nothin' to sneeze at.
If anyone is going to get squeezed for PT next year, Wilkins is my bet right now. You're right. He had the 2nd worst offensive rating of the regular contributors (beating Nolley), and had the 2nd worst defensive rating (beating Ojiako). Of note, defensively, he was also behind Branden Johnson.
So, basically, looking at the incredibly soft non-conference schedule (Dayton/MSU/BYU) aside, scoring remained pretty consistent, even taking the Freshmen wall into account.
Having a 9 man rotation played a large part of limiting the affects of that wall. No player played 1000 minutes, yet we had 7 with 600 (Cone had 590, but I'm including him)
I was thinking along the lines of offensive and defensive ratings as I never really saw Bede and Horne as scorers. Cone and Catoor both seemed to settle in a little bit and started to play smarter to go along with the harder part. Radford became a much more effective offensive player adding some points to augment his rebounding and defense role. Alleyne seemed to stay even, but I think he played better than I expected to start the season so I don't think this was a bad thing. Bede, Horne, and Nolley seemed to become less effective as the year wore on in all facets, not only ppg.
Posted this earlier in another thread but this seems like the better forum since its focused more on stats.
Next year will definitely be crowded for guys looking to play substantial minutes so on a player value basis, this would be my recommendation based on offensive / defensive value.
I know PER is focused more on offensive value but it does factor in blocks and steals. The biggest takeaway is that Radford has the potential to grow into a mini-Draymond Green due to how active he is on both ends of the floor.
25+ Minute "Starters"
G - Bede - 12.3 PER
G - Radford - 24.8 PER
G - Cattoor - 16.0 PER
G/F - Nolley - 16.0 PER
F/C - Ojiako - 16.3 PER
10-20+ Minute "First off the bench backups"
G - Cone - 13.9 PER
G - Alleyne - 12.5 PER
G - Kabongo - 10.3 PER (based on his 2018-19 limited role, <5 min/game)
F - Horne - 11.9 PER
F - Aluma 18.2 PER (from the 2018-19 Wofford season)
G - Wilkins - 16.2 PER
Wait and see Freshman
G - Bamisile
G - Maddox
To mirror the above sentiment, the amount of returning value and experience from a basically all Freshmen roster is incredible.
In an ideal world:
Ojiako and Aluma would be able to split time at the 5, maybe 25-15
Horne plays the 4, with Aluma, maybe 30-10
Nolley and Wilkins play the 3, 30-10
Alleyne, Cattoor, Radford, Bamisile, and Maddox play the 2, 5-5-20-5-5
Bede and Cone play the 1, 25-15
However, if we go single post,
Ojiako, Aluma, and Horne split the post 20-10-10
Nolley, Radford, Alleyne, Cattoor, Bamisile, Maddox, and Wilkins split the wings 25-25-20-20-10-10-10
Bede and Cone split the point 25-15
I'd rather use Horne as a rotation 4/5 than starting him to be honest. He would be good in my opinion as a 15 - 20 min big who stretches the floor in a rotation with Aluma and Ojiako.
I know MY wants more size but the quality and depth of guards available means the personnel will probably best fit something like Nolley playing some 3/4.
I also would cut Wilkins minutes and expect sparse minutes for Kabongo. I would expect to see a lot of Maddox and Joe Bamisile albeit they'll start behind Cattoor, Alleyne and Radford at 2/3
Bede and Cone is good at the 1, Bede is definitely a better defender and Cone plays well off ball so there is plenty of options there.
Overall I think next season is looking pretty good, don't be surprised if Maddox or Bamisile are good enough to get their way majorly into rotation either, both guys seem pretty legit. Not to mention there may still be another player added to the class.
If we lose anybody to attrition, I hope we add another big, just to help with minutes.
Do you think your 25+ Minute "Starters" will be the starting five for our first game next year? Personally, I predict our first game starters to be Radford, Cone, Nolley, Horne, and Ojiako. Swap Bede for Cone if neither Radford nor Cone slide into a true PG role.
Also for everyone's reference, average PER is always locked at 15.00.
I admittedly follow the NBA more than the NCAA (with VT basketball being the lone exception) and realize that PER is an imperfect measure of what impacts winning in college. However, the more 15+ PER guys playing substantial minutes probably equates to more wins.
This is what concerns me about Bede and Horne.
Cone has already eclipsed Bede in a lesser role and I think we can all agree that he has a substantially higher ceiling (especially in Year 2). My hope is that means Cone will end up starting but my head tells me that CMY may also prefer the senior leader to be on the floor for the majority of the game (at least to start the season) which is why I projected him to start over Cone.
As for Horne, he is another case of a Buzz holdover who is a rotation level player at best that was forced into a starting role like Bede.
IMO, both should be relegated back into a supporting role and start Cone, Cattoor, Radford, Nolley, and Ojiako. That leaves Bede, Horne, Kabongo, Alleyne, and Aluma as the next five off the bench.
The other big questions are how much the incoming freshmen play and what happens to Wilkins. Next season will be exciting and interesting to see how CMY manages the returning production.
Bede definitely has a lot of qualities that are valuable though, leader, good defense and smart with the basketball as evidenced by his high assist to turnover rate. Cone is gonna get plenty of minutes going into year 2 anyway, but he also plays well with Bede as an off guard.
I think Aluma starts, Ojiako is improving but a work in progress particularly on offense and Aluma has already been practicing for a year with the team. He is a "veteran" of playing on good teams and knows MY better than anyone on the team. Probably would have played a ton this year if he was available.