Analysis: Villanova Regular Season Performance

I hate to bump Mike's pregame story down, but I just wanted to compare the season performance data of Georgetown and Villanova, going into the Big East tournament (this doesn't include today's game between Villanova and DePaul).

I've gone over Georgetown before, but I'll re-post the graphs with end-of-regular-season data.

First, overall performance (click on any image to enlarge):




This shows the general upward trend during the first 2 months of the season, then a plateau from mid-January forward. The big outliers are the Vanderbilt game in mid-November and the Syracuse game right before the end of the season.

I think, generally, this is the kind of shape you'd expect from a well-coached team, especially because the zero line in this case represents an exceptionally high level of performance (Georgetown is ranked #6 by Pomeroy as of this evening).

To break this down futher, I'll look also post the Hoya's offensive and defensive performances charts, as posted in the Syracuse aftermath article, now updated through the UConn game. Not a lot to add to what I said then (except nice D against UConn).

Offense:




Defense:



Okay, I do have to point out the troubling trend in the offensive performance since mid-February, but you should keep in mind that the defense has shown a nice upward-tick at the same time (as discussed earlier, these are significantly anti-correlated for Georgetown, for whatever reason).


Now, here's Villanova's regular season performance chart:



Now, this is something completely different.

Villanova was a wildly inconsistent team early in the year; for example, they;d have a great game against Iowa (+23 pts) followed immediately by a stinker against Navy (-21 pts) [Remember, these points represent difference between actual and expected game scores, not the point differential in the game itself]. Like G'town, 'Nova has settled in near the zero line as the season has progressed, but here the team has become much more steady, with only one bad game since Feb. 1st (at Marquette). And also like Georgetown, the zero line represents a very high level of overall performance (19th, by Ken Pomeroy). I'm not sure what this says about the coaching - consistency has certainly improved, but without an obvious upward trend as the season progressed - but it's hard to argue with the results.

For completion, I'll add Villanova's offensive and defensive performances:

Offense:


Defense:


Here, it seems that the defense was the culprit early in the year.

And yes, that terrible offensive performance was the same game as that great defensive performance (v. St. Joeseph's), and if you missed the game - nationally televised on ESPN - consider yourself fortunate.


Also, I've updated the log5 chart, with 1st round games now completed:

Seed	Team	Qtrs	Semis	Finals	Champ
1	Georgetown	100%	67.9	48.3	32.3
2	Louisville	100	62.8	31.1	13.8
3	Pittsburgh	100	63.6	38.2	19.0
4	Notre Dame	100	60.3	22.9	11.3
5	Syracuse	100	39.7	11.5	4.5
6	Marquette	100	36.4	17.0	6.2
7	West Virginia	100	37.2	13.7	4.5
8	DePaul	0	0	0	0
9	Villanova	100	32.1	17.3	8.5
10	Providence	0	0	0	0
11	St. John's	0	0	0	0
12	Connecticut	0	0	0	0