Some Thoughts on a Thursday

So we really have SIU's number, huh? Regardless of the opponent, it's critical to secure the two game sweep against any opponent we can. And we sure did it in stylistic fashion last night.

While the 16/24 statistic from last night is unquestionably the most gaudy one of the night, the thing that stuck out to me was that, in two conference games, SIU has put up offensive efficiencies of 77.5 and 74.6 (points per 100 possessions). That's WAY down from our season average of 101.5, and basically represents a total lack of offensive firepower.

It's surprising to me because our next best in-conference defensive effort was allowing 90.6 against our only game against Bradley so far. That's a significant gap, and it roughs out to about ten points in a standard MVC game [65/100 x (90.6 - 75)]. Altogether, I know that the current standings make this not likely to happen, and there's that old saying about beating a team three times in a year, but I wouldn't be too sad to have to match up with them come Arch Madness.

Shifting to the other side of the ball, the Wedel experiment at the 1 is really starting to turn things around for the offense. While it came to fruition during back-to-back offensive stinkjobs at Evansville and against Wichita State, our offense has recently put up a 103.6 offensive efficiency in the past five games (well above the 89.7 we put up in our first seven conference games). Overall, the improvement we've seen in Drake's play as of late has come from the offensive side of the basketball, and it came shortly after Phelps made the switch at PG. After shooting 40.4% from the field and 31% from three, we've seen a sharp increase towards 47.5% from the field and 53% from three in the past five games. Even after normalizing out the ridiculous shooting spree at SIU, we still shot 49% from the three in the previous four games.

Again, I'd point to a two reasons that this experiment works out so well:

• Don't look now, but Ben Simons is our most efficient offensive player in MVC play with a 113.0 offensive rating by my calculations. While he's not the guy or all-MVC at this point in his career, getting him off the bench and into the starting lineup is perhaps one of the smarter moves Phelps has made. Overall, Ben has chipped in 126 points in 12 MVC games and has done so at an efficient clip. He's shooting 44% from three in MVC play, and more importantly, has been visibly confident.
• Furthermore, putting the ball in Wedel's hands has ensured that he gets shots and uses more possessions. Considering that he's one of more offensively efficient players (109.4 offensive rating), that's a good thing. His past five games have seen the following for shot attempts: 11, 4, 14, 12, 9. Other than the 4 in there which consisted of UNI taking him away, it's gotten him more shots.

The last thing I'll note continues the trend of Wedel. Check out these three point shooting splits this season:

• Home = 48.7% (38/78)
• Neutral = 47.0% (8/17)
• Road = 31.4% (11/35)
• Conference Home = 59.4% (19/32)
• Conference Road = 30.4% (7/23)

Quite the difference. Unfortunately, I don't know how representative the "Neutral" is with only 17 attempts, and them being so far early in the season. Curious as to how this translates to the Scottrade Center as we make the trip in about a month...