After putting together one of their most complete performances of the season in Saturday's lopsided home win over St. Bonaventure, the Rams see if the efficiency they found to snap a two-game losing streak can travel in back-to-back road contests in the city of brotherly love. It starts tonight against a four-win Saint Joseph's team currently in the midst of one of their worst seasons in decades on new head coach, Billy Lange.
<h4>VCU (13-5, 3-2)
SAINT JOSEPH'S (4-14, 0-5)</h4>
<h4>A QUICK LOOK AT SAINT JOSEPH'S</h4>
Saint Joseph's is in the beginning stages of a brand new era for the Hawks after firing longtime head coach, Phil Martelli, this offseason. Brand new AD, Jill Bodensteiner, wasted no time in putting her fingerprints on St. Joe's athletics by firing Martelli after one year together as coworkers, opting for former Navy head coach and recent 76ers assistant, Billy Lange, as his replacement. Lange was a part of several successful Villanova squads as an assistant and associate head coach, but managed just two winning seasons in his seven previous years as a Division I head coach at Navy, cracking the kenpom top-200 just once, in at No.200 exactly back in 2008 with a 16-14 overall record.
Lange immediately lost a ton key pieces from last season's Hawks squad, namely promising rising Junior, Charlie Brown, who left school early and after going undrafted signed a two-way contract with the Atlanta Hawks and G League affiliate, the College Park Skyhawks.
Brown, Jared Bynum (transfer to Providence), Chris Clover (graduated), Lamarr Kimble (transfer to Louisville) and an injury to Taylor Funk all exited the Hawks starting lineup from last season, making for a brand new group that has taken almost nothing but beatings in year-one of the Lange era.
SJU has gotten production out of Delaware transfer Ryan Daly (20.1 ppg, 4.4 asts), but not a ton of efficiency, which paired with a young group of starters that includes two freshmen, a sophomore and previous role player, junior Anthony Longpre, has resulted in a Fordham-like first year for Lange in Hawk Hill.
Still, while the Hawks have mostly taken it on the chin this year, they've done enough weird things to put some fear in visiting opponents. St. Joe's owns two top-100 wins this season (matching VCU's two top-100 wins), defeating No.93 Bradley in their home-opener and traveling to No.78 UConn where they shocked Dan Hurley's Huskies. Both of those wins however, came with the services of Taylor Funk.
The Hawks went into the half tied with Dayton though in a recent Funk-less loss and took kenpom No.100 Davidson (who's also struggling) to overtime in a recent road loss.
SJU has struggled on both sides of the ball, but have been particularly bad on defense, ranking 306th nationally in adjusted defensive efficiency heading into tonight's matchup. The Hawks have been miserable in virtually every measurable outside of turnover percentage offensive (key for them tonight) and attacking the glass when they have the ball.
The Hawks live and die by the three this season (mostly die), taking almost half of every shot behind the stripe -- 49.4% of their shots come from deep --but currently rank 306th in the nation in three-point shooting at 29.8%. They hit 39.4% of their threes in the upset at UConn and 38.5% to keep things close against Dayton.
A QUICK LOOK AT VCU[/HEADING=3]
<h4>VCU (13-5, 3-2)
SAINT JOSEPH'S (4-14, 0-5)</h4>
<h4>A QUICK LOOK AT SAINT JOSEPH'S</h4>
Saint Joseph's is in the beginning stages of a brand new era for the Hawks after firing longtime head coach, Phil Martelli, this offseason. Brand new AD, Jill Bodensteiner, wasted no time in putting her fingerprints on St. Joe's athletics by firing Martelli after one year together as coworkers, opting for former Navy head coach and recent 76ers assistant, Billy Lange, as his replacement. Lange was a part of several successful Villanova squads as an assistant and associate head coach, but managed just two winning seasons in his seven previous years as a Division I head coach at Navy, cracking the kenpom top-200 just once, in at No.200 exactly back in 2008 with a 16-14 overall record.
Lange immediately lost a ton key pieces from last season's Hawks squad, namely promising rising Junior, Charlie Brown, who left school early and after going undrafted signed a two-way contract with the Atlanta Hawks and G League affiliate, the College Park Skyhawks.
Brown, Jared Bynum (transfer to Providence), Chris Clover (graduated), Lamarr Kimble (transfer to Louisville) and an injury to Taylor Funk all exited the Hawks starting lineup from last season, making for a brand new group that has taken almost nothing but beatings in year-one of the Lange era.
SJU has gotten production out of Delaware transfer Ryan Daly (20.1 ppg, 4.4 asts), but not a ton of efficiency, which paired with a young group of starters that includes two freshmen, a sophomore and previous role player, junior Anthony Longpre, has resulted in a Fordham-like first year for Lange in Hawk Hill.
Still, while the Hawks have mostly taken it on the chin this year, they've done enough weird things to put some fear in visiting opponents. St. Joe's owns two top-100 wins this season (matching VCU's two top-100 wins), defeating No.93 Bradley in their home-opener and traveling to No.78 UConn where they shocked Dan Hurley's Huskies. Both of those wins however, came with the services of Taylor Funk.
The Hawks went into the half tied with Dayton though in a recent Funk-less loss and took kenpom No.100 Davidson (who's also struggling) to overtime in a recent road loss.
SJU has struggled on both sides of the ball, but have been particularly bad on defense, ranking 306th nationally in adjusted defensive efficiency heading into tonight's matchup. The Hawks have been miserable in virtually every measurable outside of turnover percentage offensive (key for them tonight) and attacking the glass when they have the ball.
The Hawks live and die by the three this season (mostly die), taking almost half of every shot behind the stripe -- 49.4% of their shots come from deep --but currently rank 306th in the nation in three-point shooting at 29.8%. They hit 39.4% of their threes in the upset at UConn and 38.5% to keep things close against Dayton.
A QUICK LOOK AT VCU[/HEADING=3]
There were a number of major news items from VCU's recent domination of St. Bonaventure:
<ol>
<li>Vince Williams will be out a number of weeks with a broken hand.</li>
<li>Malik Crowfield is back from an injured hand</li>
<li>VCU dominated without start guard Marcus Evans as Bones Hyland shined</li>
<li>The Rams played their biggest lineup of the season in the attention-grabbing win</li>
</ol>
Williams is expected to miss I've heard something like four weeks with the broken bone in his hand. He is a promising sophomore who fits the mold of the Treveon Graham/Bradford Burgess types of years past, but was having a bit of a rough season prior to the injury with a career-worst 82.4 offensive rating that was a really rough 63.9 in conference games. Williams ceiling remains incredibly high, but injuries have been a monster issue early for the promising wing from Toledo.
On the subject of lose one, add one, while Williams is out, the Rams return senior Malik Crowfield from injury. Crowfield was having a career year, hitting 50% of his threes prior to his return. He saw limited minutes in his return against Bona.
But the biggest injury issue (and surprising result) was how well VCU played without star guard, Marcus Evans. Evans caught a brutal combo of the flu and concussion protocol that kept him out of Saturday's contest. In his absence, VCU freshman, Bones Hyland, dropped a career-high 21 points on a 5-6 night from distance and added eight rebounds in VCU's win. The Rams scored 91 points against a kenpom top-100 caliber defense, albeit without monster defender, Osun Ossuniyi. It was VCU's largest margin of victory this year against a team within the kenpom top-200.
Evans return combined with the knowledge of just how deadly Hyland can be, should be scary for opposing teams. The senior Rice transfer was not having his best season prior to his recent concussion, but has a proven track record of being one of the best guards in the Atlantic 10. His ability to now move off the ball knowing the Rams have two extremely capable freshmen point guards in Hyland and Tre Clark (not to mention possible deep backup point guard, Malik Crowfield), could allow Evans the ability to move more into what I believe is his natural role at the 2, a role he started his career playing as a Rice freshman where he averaged a career-high 21.4 points per game.
But here's what I'm most excited about: the Rams went big against St. Bonaventure.
The long and short of it is this: VCU outscored Bona by 17 points in their 12:15 of playing two bigs at once (Santos-Silva with Douglas, then Douglas with Ward) versus outscoring them by "only" 11 points in the 27:45 of using a typical small ball type lineup. That translates to outscoring the opponent by 1.4 points per minute in a big lineup (a 56-point win over 40 minutes...yo) and 0.4 per minute going small (a still solid 16-point win).
It's just a one-game sample, but I'm extremely optimistic that VCU's defensive-minded big lineups (with three VERY good  mobile defensive players in Santos-Silva, Douglas and Ward) is something VCU will tinker with more often and hopefully something we'll see a lot more tonight. I am of the opinion it makes the Rams a MUCH more dangerous team and a very real threat to challenge Dayton for A-10 supremacy, be it the rest of the regular season or as a scary challenger in Brooklyn.
Scoring Offense: <span style="color: #339966;">VCU 71.7, SJU 70.5</span>
Scoring Defense: <span style="color: #339966;">VCU 62.1, SJU 81.3</span>
Effective Field Goal% Offense: <span style="color: #339966;">VCU 49.8%, SJU 45.6%</span>
Effective Field Goal% Defense: <span style="color: #339966;">VCU 45.9%, SJU 51.8%</span>
3-Point Field Goal%: <span style="color: #339966;">VCU 34.2%, SJU 29.8%</span>
3-Point Field Goal% Defense: <span style="color: #339966;">VCU 31.7%, SJU 35.8%</span>
2-Point Field Goal%: <span style="color: #339966;">VCU 48.9%, SJU 46.5%</span>
2-Point Field Goal% Defense: <span style="color: #339966;">VCU 45.1%, SJU 50.7%</span>
Rebounds per game: <span style="color: #ff0000;">SJU 38.1, VCU 34.6</span>
Turnover% Offense: <span style="color: #ff0000;">SJU 18.4%, VCU 18.7%</span>
Turnover% Defense: <span style="color: #339966;">VCU 25.8%, SJU 14.2%</span>
VCU WINS IF[/HEADING=3]
It's obvious: VCU must D the three. The biggest barrier to the Rams picking up a road W at Hagan tonight is a rare hot night from distance for the Hawks. SJU will launch threes all game. VCU must defend it.
Kenpom: 80-69 VCU win with an 86% chance of a Rams victory.
Game tips at 9PM at Hagan Arena in Philadelphia, PA
Watch: CBS Sports Network
Listen: <a href="https://www.iheart.com/live/fox-sports-910-richmond-2461/?autoplay=true&pname=1248&campid=header&cid=index.html">Fox Sports 910 AM & 98.5 FM</a>
Live Tweets: <a href="https://twitter.com/vcuramnation">@VCURamNation</a>
[/am4show]
It's obvious: VCU must D the three. The biggest barrier to the Rams picking up a road W at Hagan tonight is a rare hot night from distance for the Hawks. SJU will launch threes all game. VCU must defend it.
Kenpom: 80-69 VCU win with an 86% chance of a Rams victory.
Game tips at 9PM at Hagan Arena in Philadelphia, PA
Watch: CBS Sports Network
Listen: <a href="https://www.iheart.com/live/fox-sports-910-richmond-2461/?autoplay=true&pname=1248&campid=header&cid=index.html">Fox Sports 910 AM & 98.5 FM</a>
Live Tweets: <a href="https://twitter.com/vcuramnation">@VCURamNation</a>
[/am4show]
