Vinny Pezzimenti Moment -- Week 5

Vinny took a seat on the Villanova bandwagon last week when he ranked the 'Cats #19 on his AP ballot last week according to pollstalker. There is definitely extra room on the bandwagon if Seth Davis and Ed Graney want to jump on board.

My Big East Blogger Poll for this week:

1 - Georgetown
2 - Pittsburgh
3 - Marquette
4 - Villanova
5 - West Virginia
6 - Connecticut
7 - Louisville
8 - Notre Dame
9 - Providence
10 - Seton Hall
11 - Syracuse
12 - South Florida
13 - St. John's
14 - Rutgers
15 - DePaul
16 - Cincinnati

Player of the Week: Jerome Dyson, Connecticut

Rookie of the Week: Dar Tucker, DePaul

Who's Up...Who's Down...
This appears to be finals week for most Big East schools, so most teams played one opponent, if any this week. And the competition was mostly cupcakes. My top 5, though I have been tempted to move West Virginia over Villanova, the Wildcats managed to beat their designated patsy, Hartford, by +28, 3 more than Pomeroy predicted. Another slow start against Columbia next weekend and I might be even more tempted, especially since West Virginia is scheduled to play Radford, a team Georgetown beat handily this week. I did shuffle the bottom three quartiles around to reflect recent wins/losses and team developments. Louisville lost their 3^rd game of the season to Purdue on Saturday. Center/forward Derrick Caracter was suspended after the loss to Dayton last Saturday, so, after drafting Josh Chichester from the football team (a move that reminded me of Andy Kennedy's raid on the Cincinnati football team to get Connor Barwin...) the Cardinals went to Purdue with an extremely depleted front court (no Padgett, no Palacios, no Caracter). And lost 67-59. The Cardinals have gone 3-3 since losing David Padgett. I moved them down another position this week to make way for Connecticut. I also moved Providence down a spot even though they beat Brown by +19 last week. With 3 losses, including 2 the week before last, I think Connecticut is doing better right now. I moved Notre Dame up another spot, leapfrogging Providence. Syracuse may have won the battle against East Tennessee State on Saturday, but did they lose the war? Off guard Eric Devendorf is out with an ACL tear that ended his season. The Orange lost wing Andy Rautins in August to a similar injury, and so appear to be very short of outside scoring threats. Looks as though Philadelphia's Scoop Jardine will get the abbreviated version of Coach Boeheim's orientation for new players. Syracuse also appears to have lost senior pg Josh Wright. Wright appeared briefly in the season opener with Siena, disappeared for five games, then reappeared to take garbage time minutes in 3 games. He was DNP for ETSU, and according to accounts, was not on the bench. Wright started most of Syracuse's games at the point last season, but was displaced by freshman Jonny Flynn during preseason practice. The Orange stay at #11 this week (for me anyway), but there are some rough weeks ahead for them. In the bottom (or so) quartile I had South Florida and St. John's swap spots. The Bulls did not play last week, but the Johnnies dropped a game to Niagara (MAAC Conference...) over the weekend. The bottom 3 teams all lost last week, but DePaul is losing "more quickly" than Rutgers, and at almost the same rate as Cincinnati at this point. So I dropped them to #15.

The competition was pretty meager this week, most coaches emptied their benches before their starters ran up the points. Or the team lost and the rotation stayed pretty tight. Joe Alexander of West Virginia had a pretty good game against Maryland-Baltimore County over the weekend. Joe scored 20 points in 29 minutes, snagged 8 rebounds and had 2 assists. But my vote for player of the week goes to Connecticut's Jerome Dyson, who scored 23 points in 29 minutes, dishing 3 assists, snagging 4 rebounds and pinching 2 steals in the process. Jerome's eFG% for the game was a very nice 61.8, produced while getting a good deal of defensive attention from the Bobcats. The freshman player was tough since Dominique Jones was not playing this week (Bulls had finals?). Villanova's Corey Fisher had 18 points, 3 assists and 2 steals against Hartford on Friday night. He had an eFG of 75.0 and a PPWS of 1.36 -- both very good offensive numbers (see side bar for further reading). But if the Blue Demons are going to salvage anything from this season, Dar Tucker is going to have to have a number of nights like he had in their losing effort againt Illinois - Chicago. Tucker, coming off the bench, scored a double-double in 23 minutes of play. He scored 26 points and grabbed 11 rebounds in the Demons 85-80 loss to Illinois - Chicago. The Demons, at 2-5, are really struggling right now.

The Young Guns

Syracuse began the Flynn-Greene Era with 2 close wins at home in the Carrier Dome. Two very close wins at home. With under 40% of his playing time returning this season (3 starters included), Coach Boeheim's decision to begin this season with a tournament seemed a little daring. The Preseason NIT, unlike a number of early season tournaments, whose promoters appear to consult rather closely with the host of each regional site on opponent selection, timing of the games and other issues, handed Syracuse two rather competitive opponents. Understand, Siena of the MAAC and St. Joseph's(PA) of the A10 are not going to break into any regular season Top 25 polls and will most likely finish with RPIs in the #70 - #110 range, but both will most likely see a post season beyond their respective conference tournaments. The Siena Saints are favored to win the MAAC while St. Joseph's (PA) is projected to finish with enough wins to draw consideration for at least the three lettered tournament. Given the relative youth of the Syracuse team a close call (or two close calls...) would not seem out of place, especially considering the opponents. But winning two games by a total of 11 points, the last on literally a game ending jumper, seemed too close for comfort. So who did Coach Boeheim start and who did he include in the rotation for these games?

Player	Games	Minutes	Min%	FGM	FGA	Points	PPWS
The Starters
Eric Devendorf	2	77	96.3	11	23	31	1.16
Jonny Flynn	2	72	90.0	11	19	33	1.58
Donte Greene	2	76	95.0	11	24	32	1.19
Paul Harris	2	73	91.3	11	23	32	1.10
Arinze Onuaku	2	63	78.8	11	16	29	1.34
The Bench
Rick Jackson	2	19	23.8	5	7	10	1.43
Scoop Jardine	2	7	8.8	0	2	0	0.00
Kristof Ongenaet	2	9	11.3	1	3	2	0.67
Josh Wright	1	4	5.0	0	0	0	0.00

That he started 2 freshmen, Flynn and Greene, is hardly a surprise. They were heavily promoted going in, and have not disappointed. But combined with red shirt sophomore Arinze Onuaku, Paul Harris and Eric Devendorf, the Orange starting five may easily be the least experienced (from a collegiate perspective) of any starting five in the conference. Only Devendorf has more than one year as a starter. He is the only one who has played more than one season of college ball too. Between them Onuaku and Harris have 2 starts over the past 2 seasons. Onuaku took a redshirt last season after logging 17.2% of the available minutes as a freshman. While Onuaku rehabbed a knee last season, Paul Harris entered the program and played 54.1% of the available minutes. Devendorf is the grownup in this group. The same trend holds true for the Orange substitutions. Boeheim has used 9 players over the two game stint, 8 having appeared in both games. There is a huge playing time gap between the 5^th (Onuaku) and the 6^th man (Rick Jackson).

Almost as surprising as the shallow rotation is the allocation of minutes within the rotation. The starting five have logged at least 78.8% of the minutes distributed to the squad, with 4 of the 5 logging in excess of 90% of the available minutes. The sixth man in (by most accounts that would be Rick Jackson), gets less than ¼ of the available time (Min%) while he gets slightly less than 1/3 of the minutes allocated to the 5^th starter (Onuaku). Easier competition is in store after the NIT championship round at MSG. The starters may well get some downtime before starting the Big East portion of their schedule. Continuing to play 90% of the available minutes going forward will take a huge toll on the entire freshmen contingent.