WKU Basketball: Notebook — Number Crunchin’ After Opening C-USA Road Swing
I don’t want to use the term “reeling,” but the Hilltoppers have not opened Conference USA play well. They’ve seen leads of 21 and 15…
I don’t want to use the term “reeling,” but the Hilltoppers have not opened Conference USA play well. They’ve seen leads of 21 and 15 points dissipate in their last two games and are 1–2 after opening the conference season on the road.
Here’s a look at how the Tops are doing and where they rank among conference competitors.
Shot Selection
The Hilltoppers are tied for the second-best shooting percentage in the conference, along with Louisiana Tech, with a 46.2% clip. However, the Tops have played two fewer games than the Bulldogs and the best-shooting team in the league, North Texas (47.5%).
On the flip side, the Tops are tied for allowing the fourth-worst shooting percentage on defense, allowing opponents to shoot 43.9% (MTSU is the other team who is allowing that mark).
From Scottsville Road!
The stats from deep are similar, oddly enough: WKU posts the fourth-best three-point shooting percentage, 35.7%, a tenth of a percentage point behind Old Dominion.
Defensively, WKU is holding opponents to 34.7% from behind the arc, the fifth-worst margin in the league. (Only Rice, La Tech, MTSU and Marshall are worse.)
Not In My House
Almost exclusively because of Charles Bassey (and Jake Ohmer), the Hilltoppers lead the league in blocks per game and are tied for the most blocks in total with Marshall, with 85.
Where Is The Love?
Last year, the Hilltoppers were one of the best rock-sharing teams in the country, finishing inside the Top 80 with assists, totaling 515. This year, it’s a bit of a different story.
The Tops are averaging 11.6 assists per game, good for the 10th best mark in the conference. They’ve also totaled just 188 assists to this point.
Player Bullets
That’s how the Tops stack up as a unit, but how are guys stacking up individually?
The rumors of Taveion Hollingsworth’s demise have been greatly exaggerated and, I’ll admit, this site shares in some of that. He’s leading the Hilltoppers in scoring after 16 games, logging 15.8 points per game, which is also good for the 10th-best mark in C-USA play.
Taveion is joined by two other double-figure scorers in Charles Bassey (14.7) and Jared Savage (13.4).
I know some of you are taking a look at that Savage number and are scratching your head a bit. However, he has only been painfully unproductive over the last couple of games, combining for 10 points against ODU and Marshall. Savage opend the year scoring at least 15 points in four of the year’s first seven games and didn’t score single-digits until the eighth game of the year. He’s failed to log a double-digit game on just four occasions so far.
Taveion and Savage are also seeing the floor more than any other player; the former is averaging 36.6 minutes a night while the latter is logging 36.3 minutes a game.
When you average the numbers out to just per 40 minutes, Bassey is the man, leading the team in points (19.8) and rebounds (12).
Per 40 minutes, eight Hilltoppers are averaging double-figures — Bassey, Hollingsworth (17.3), Savage (14.8), Lamonte Bearden (14.5), Josh Anderson (14.4), Matt Horton (14.4) and Tolu Smith (13.9). The now-departed DeSean Murray averaged 18.7 points per 40 minutes in his first eight games.
Last year, we talked about how Darrius Thompson was the heartbeat of the Tops’ offense, leading WKU in points produced for a majority of the year with 551 (Justin Johnson, though, finished the year with a better mark, 559). So far this year, the Tops have a similar inside-outside setup with the top two contributors — Taveion and Bassey. Taveion leads the team with 247 points produced while Bassey has produced 223. Where the Tops are in trouble, though, is after that. After Johnson/Thompson, last year’s team had two guys within 50ish points of 500 produced and another within 100 points. This year, only Savage (194) and Anderson (148) are close to matching Taveion and Bassey’s numbers, and from Anderson, the next closest guy is Dalano Banton (92).
I think it’s worth noting the lack of Banton’s statline: This year, he is averaging only 4.6 points, 3.9 boards and 2.9 assists (the best assist number on the team). He’s often time the most important player on the floor for WKU in spite of his contributions on the final statsheet. I can’t remember the last time WKU’s point guard was that. Maybe Kevin Kaspar?