[Cracked Sidewalks] Top 40 Catholic basketball teams and 'All-Catholic team'

[CrackedSidewalksSays]

Top 40 Catholic basketball teams and 'All-Catholic team'

Written by: noreply@blogger.com (bamamarquettefan1)

I oppose the formation of a "Catholic League" for basketball.  However, I ranked the Catholic Universities who play D1 hoops in light of the tumult of realignment news surrounding Louisville leaving the heavily Catholic Big East, the Catholic flagship Notre Dame going back to the football championship, and the passing away of the great Rick Majerus who bookended his career at Jesuit schools Marquette and St. Louis.

Below I ranked the top 40 colleges and top 40 players on Catholic teams into eight "All-Catholic squads."  Obviously by "All-Catholic" I mean players who play for Catholic schools, so if we did these for football Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o would be at the top of the "All-Catholic" football list for playing for Notre Dame, while a young Catholic Jim McMahon would not have been listed as a "All-Catholic" quarterback when he led Brigham Young.  I based the team rating mainly on www.kenpom.com through today, but if a team was ranked then I averaged that with both the AP and ESPN poll.  For players, I based it half on the average of their latest Value Add appearing as "2013 Act" and their projected Value Add based on all of last season ("2013 Proj") as they both appear on www.valueaddbasketball.com.

While Notre Dame had the huge upset of Kentucky, and I expect Georgetown to shoot to the top now that Otto Porter is back from his concussion, right now you have to look further west for the top two Catholic teams in the land.

Kevin Pangos (3.9 APG) and Elias Harris (15.9 ppg, 8.4 rpg) both make the "2nd All-Catholic Team" (see all 8 teams below the team ratings) as two of the top 10 Catholic players in the country who are also expected to play in the NBA.  They have led Gonzaga to lopsided wins over West Virginia, Oklahoma, Davidson and others en route to an 8-0 record and the top shooting team in the country (53.3% field goal percentages).  Comments on other teams appear below the list of teams.  Here are the top 40 - and by the way St. Francis of Pennsylvania is the only Catholic team that does not make the top 40 since there are 41 Catholics teams:

Catholic UniversityConfPomAPESPNAve[/tr]

1	Gonzaga	WCC	3	10	10	8
2	Creighton	MVC	32	16	13	20
3	Notre Dame	BE	20	22	25	22
4	Georgetown	BE	37	15	23	25
5	Saint Joseph's	A10	27			27
6	St. Louis	A10	46			46
7	Marquette	BE	50	43		47
8	St. Mary's	WCC	66			66
9	Providence	BE	70			70
10	Seton Hall	BE	73			73
11	St. John's	BE	79			79
12	La Salle	A10	83			83
13	Xavier	A10	89			89
14	St. Bonaventure	A10	95			95
15	Dayton	A10	96			96
16	Villanova	BE	98			98
17	Iona	MAAC	102			102
18	Santa Clara	WCC	113			113
19	DePaul	BE	117			117
20	Loyola MD	MAAC	118			118
21	Detroit	Horz	130			130
22	San Francisco	WCC	137			137
23	Boston College	ACC	151			151
24	Fairfield	MAAC	155			155
25	Niagara	MAAC	158			158
26	Duquesne	A10	171			171
27	Manhattan	MAAC	177			177
28	Loyola Marymount	WCC	181			181
29	San Diego	WCC	191			191
30	St. Francis NY	NEC	202			202
31	Canisius	MAAC	210			210
32	Holy Cross	Pat	216			216
33	Siena	MAAC	218			218
34	Portland	WCC	223			223
35	Sacred Heart	NEC	232			232
36	Mount St. Mary's	NEC	237			237
37	Loyola Chicago	Horz	238			238
38	St. Peter's	MAAC	254			254
39	Fordham	A10	257			257
40	Seattle	WAC	268			268

National Player of the Year candidate Doug McDermott has helped Creighton nudge out Notre Dame and Georgetown as the second best Catholic team.  However, Otto Porter is my pick for Big East POY and would almost certainly rank 1st on this list if he had not missed the first several games with a concussion.  Jack Cooley has been even better than advertised to help the Irish rank #3 just ahead of Georgetown.  Stars Matthew Dellavedova (16.6 ppg, 5.4 apg) and Bryce Cooley (22.1 ppg, 4.4 apg) round out the 1st team and have run great offenses for St. Mary's and Providence to make them #8 and #9 respectively - the latter despite the Friars not having a couple of stars qualify.

1st team 'All Catholic'SchoolHtYr28-NovProjAve[/tr]

1	Matthew Dellavedova	St. Mary's	6' 4"	Sr	9.11	7.03	8.07
2	Doug McDermott	Creighton	6' 8"	Jr	5.30	10.23	7.77
3	Bryce Cotton	Providence	6' 1"	Jr	9.90	5.42	7.66
4	Jack Cooley	Notre Dame	6' 9"	Sr	7.12	7.82	7.47
5	Otto Porter	Georgetown	6' 8"	So	5.62	9.08	7.35

In addition to the Gonzaga duo on the 2nd team, we've all seen how great Edwin (17.9 ppg) has been for Seton Hall (#10).  Armand is only 2nd on Iona (behind Momo Jones) at 20.6 ppg, but put up 28 to crush Wake Forest 94-68 and has Iona 17th at 3-2.  While St. Francis NY is only 30th as a team, Cannon's 16.0 ppg and 9.6 rpg included an 11-rebound performance at Illinois.

2nd team 'All Catholic'SchoolHtYr28-NovProjAve[/tr]

6	Fuquan Edwin	Seton Hall	6' 6"	Jr	8.04	6.54	7.29
7	Jalen Cannon	St. Francis NY	6' 6"	So	8.29	5.64	6.97
8	Elias Harris	Gonzaga	6' 8"	Sr	8.49	5.12	6.81
9	Kevin Pangos	Gonzaga	6' 2"	So	5.37	8.08	6.73
10	Sean Armand	Iona	6' 4"	Jr	9.26	4.11	6.69

Pomeroy calculated St. Joseph's as the 5th best Catholic School, but Hawks fans will be quick to remind him of Galloway's 13 point, 3 assist performance in their upset of Notre Dame and his customary two steals in a route of Harvard. Harrison's 26 point, 6 rebound performance to lead a route of South Carolina has St. John's up to #11 and closing on Marquette.

3rd team 'All Catholic'SchoolHtYr28-NovProjAve[/tr]

11	Ray McCallum	Detroit	6' 3"	Jr	7.00	6.19	6.60
12	D'Angelo Harrison	St. John's	6' 3"	So	5.72	7.43	6.58
13	Langston Galloway	Saint Joseph's	6' 2"	Jr	4.45	8.55	6.50
14	Anthony Ireland	Loyola Marymount	5' 10"	Jr	7.52	4.60	6.06
15	Marc Trasolini	Santa Clara	6' 9"	Sr	9.14	2.89	6.02

Evans 14.0 ppg and 6.9 rpg are fantastic numbers when you consider that the team that Majerus built at St. Louis is ranked 6th and one spot ahead of Marquette despite scoring only 64.4 ppg - the 247th best total in the US.  Momo Jones is the second half of Iona's one-two punch, while Dillard has led Dayton to the 15th best spot among Catholic schools.

4th team 'All Catholic'SchoolHtYr28-NovProjAve[/tr]

16	Kevin Dillard	Dayton	6' 0	Sr	6.14	5.43	5.79
17	George Beamon	Manhattan	6' 4"	Sr	5.83	4.90	5.37
18	Eric Atkins	Notre Dame	6' 2"	Jr	6.06	4.59	5.33
19	Dwayne Evans	St. Louis	6' 5"	Jr	6.78	3.83	5.31
20	Lamont Jones	Iona	6' 0	Sr	7.27	3.00	5.14

You see some of the additional stars on the power teams above in addition to Cormier leading Loyola-MD into the #20 spot and ahead of the other two Loyola schools.

5th team 'All Catholic'SchoolHtYr28-NovProjAve[/tr]

21	Jerian Grant	Notre Dame	6' 5"	Jr	3.40	6.76	5.08
22	C.J. Aiken	Saint Joseph's	6' 9"	Jr	3.98	6.15	5.07
23	Stephen Holt	St. Mary's	6' 4"	Jr	4.42	5.39	4.91
24	Dylon Cormier	Loyola MD	6' 2"	Jr	5.48	4.23	4.86
25	Grant Gibbs	Creighton	6' 5"	Sr	5.69	3.89	4.79

While Marquette ranks #7 among Catholic schools and is still getting one vote for 25th from an AP writer, the strong stats of Davante Gardner and Jamil Wilson were mainly rolled up against terrible defenses prior to being shut down by Florida.  Like St. Louis, MU right now is a bubble team, but certainly has the incredible depth on the roster to move way up. Despite the slaughter at Florida, Derrick Wilson and Vander Blue were the two players who improved their Value Add during the game.

6th team 'All Catholic'SchoolHtYr28-NovProjAve[/tr]

26	Davante Gardner	Marquette	6' 8"	Jr	4.58	4.87	4.73
27	Kevin Foster (SC)	Santa Clara	6' 2"	Sr	9.36	0.00	4.68
28	Johnny Dee	San Diego	6' 0	So	4.66	4.65	4.66
29	Jamil Wilson	Marquette	6' 7"	Jr	5.50	3.56	4.53
30	LaDontae Henton	Providence	6' 6"	So	2.22	6.80	4.51

DePaul hopes a new arena will revive their program, but it took 19 points and 5 assists from Young (16.7 ppg, 4.1 apg) to deliver a desperate road win at Auburn to get DePaul to 4-3.table.tableizer-table {  border: 1px solid #CCC; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;  font-size: 12px; }  .tableizer-table td {  padding: 4px;  margin: 3px;  border: 1px solid #ccc; } .tableizer-table th {  background-color: #104E8B;   color: #FFF;  font-weight: bold; }

7th team 'All Catholic'SchoolHtYr28-NovProjAve[/tr]

31	Gregory Echenique	Creighton	6' 9"	Sr	5.10	3.52	4.31
32	Carl Jones	Saint Joseph's	5' 11"	Sr	5.29	3.28	4.29
33	Brandon Young	DePaul	6' 4"	Jr	4.47	4.08	4.28
34	Ronald Roberts	Saint Joseph's	6' 8"	Jr	5.04	3.50	4.27
35	Juan'ya Green	Niagara	6' 3"	So	5.33	3.04	4.19

 LaSalle has actually had very balanced play from five players to become the 12th best Catholic school to date, but Duren and Wright are the returning 1-2 punch that both sneak into the top 40 Catholic players - or 8th team "All-Catholic."
table.tableizer-table {  border: 1px solid #CCC; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;  font-size: 12px; }  .tableizer-table td {  padding: 4px;  margin: 3px;  border: 1px solid #ccc; } .tableizer-table th {  background-color: #104E8B;   color: #FFF;  font-weight: bold; }  [/tr]8th team 'All Catholic'SchoolHtYr28-NovProjAve[/tr]

36	Tyreek Duren	La Salle	6' 0	Jr	2.46	5.86	4.16
37	Cody Doolin	San Francisco	6' 2"	Jr	5.07	3.16	4.12
38	Ethan Wragge	Creighton	6' 7"	Jr	5.30	2.91	4.11
39	Jerrell Wright	La Salle	6' 8"	So	2.35	5.67	4.01
40	O.D. Anosike	Siena	6' 8"	Sr	4.44	3.43	3.94

Obviously Marquette has another chance to show the depth can produce Saturday when they host Wisconsin.  Their three potential big games before this were cancelled (Ohio State), averted by a buzzer beater in the previous game (UNC) and a disaster (33-point loss at Florida).  A loss Saturday would mean MU has no chances for a non-conference win against a current top 100 Pomeroy team, so this is a chance to show the potential.


http://www.crackedsidewalks.com/2012/12/top-40-catholic-basketball-teams-and.html

[brewcity77]

No one on the first five teams? Ouch.

[Norm]

How is Vander Blue not on any of these teams and Jamil Wilson is?

[Benny B]

Ugh.... Marquette is not 43rd in the AP poll.  Normally, figures like this cause me to question credibility of the author or the methodology, but Bama's work has been generally sound, and the 43 doesn't affect the ranking, so I'm willing to chalk it up as an oversight... but please, please, please, stop assigning AP ranks or values to teams in the receiving votes category.  That's not the way the polls work.

[bamamarquettefan]

Benny - agree that getting one 25th place vote doesn't really make MU 43rd, but when a team is getting a number of votes that make them 27th or 28th, I do think that should be factored.  It's a 50-50 and you could be right.

Brewcity - Agreed.  I know I was pretty harsh preseason in saying we didn't have a top 100 player, but even most BCS teams do not have a top 100 players since many mid-majors have some and the Kentucky's and UNCs have a lot.  Some couldn't believe that DJO was barely in the top 100, but top 100 is 2.5% of all D1 players so it is elite.  Our problem right now is that we don't have a top 300 player, but that can change if Jamil or Davante can have big games Saturday.

As for why Jamil so far really has been a lot better than Blue for the season as a whole:

The short answer to why Jamil is rating higher than Blue despite Blue's great improvement the last few games is that Blue has scored just a few more points than Jamil (8), while costing Marquette a lot more points than Jamil (15 more missed shots and 3 more turnovers).

When you dig into Pomeroy and Value Add, I do agree that Vander Blue's on-ball defense really amounts more than the 0.5% bonus he gets on PG/Per, but if you look at www.kenpom.com and look at his 16 categories, the only 4 things Blue ranks higher on Jamil in are the percent of time he has the ball, the percent of shots he takes, that he fouls a little less, and is slightly more likely to draw a foul.  Jamil is way ahead on the other 12 categories including the most important one – the overall offensive rating where Jamil is producing 116.2 points per every 100 times he has the ball to Blue's below average 97.4.
Here are the 12 categories in which Blue trails Jamil (Blue's figure always listed first) followed by the 4 categores where Blue is higher.

1.   Offensive Rating overall – 97.4 points per 100 possessions to 116.2 possessions (Jamil is top 9% of the nation and his figure is almost what Jimmy Butler's was)
2.   eFG% 47.8% to 57.1% (Jamil in top 6% of country, problem for Blue is he is hitting only 43% of his 51 shots – and that's a lot of misses)
3.   Offensive Rebounding 1.4% to 6.0%
4.   Defensive Rebounding 6.9% to 16.9% (Jamil in top 14% of country)
5.   Assist Rate 12.3% to 14.5%
6.   Turnover rate 18.7% to 18.0% (Blue is higher, so worse)
7.   Blocked shots 0.0% to 4.8% (top 7%)
8.   Steal percent 1.4% to 1.8%
9.   FT rate (getting to the line) 23.5% to 32.7%
10.   FT percentage 75% to 81.2%
11.   2-point shots 43.1% to 52.8%
12.   3-point shots 41.2% to 46.2%
Blue is better in 4 categories:
1.   % of Possessions 24.1% to 20.0% (Blue is top 13%)
2.   % of Shots taken 27.6% to 20.6% (Blue is top 7%)
3.   Fouls committed 2.5% to 3.3%
4.   Fouls drawn 3.5% to 3.4%

[Benny B]

Benny - agree that getting one 25th place vote doesn't really make MU 43rd, but when a team is getting a number of votes that make them 27th or 28th, I do think that should be factored.  It's a 50-50 and you could be right.

I agree that receiving a vote should be taken into account, but here's the problem I have... the AP voters vote only for the top 25 on their ballots.  So let's say that - regardless of who each voter puts on his/her ballot (and in what order) - all 65 AP voters are unanimous that Marquette is the 26th best team in the country.  In such a scenario, MU would not appear on any ballots and therefore wouldn't even appear on the poll, while (as was the case this week) nearly 20 other teams receive votes.  So the RV schools are bumped up slightly -- not a huge deal, but the team who the voters would unanimously pick as the 26th best team is considered to be outside the "top 45" and quantitatively on the same plane with the 302 other D-I teams who didn't receive votes.

I've just never been a fan of increasing a data set at the expense of potentially introducing unquantifiable and indeterminable error.

[Dawson Rental]

I agree that receiving a vote should be taken into account, but here's the problem I have... the AP voters vote only for the top 25 on their ballots.  So let's say that - regardless of who each voter puts on his/her ballot (and in what order) - all 65 AP voters are unanimous that Marquette is the 26th best team in the country.  In such a scenario, MU would not appear on any ballots and therefore wouldn't even appear on the poll, while (as was the case this week) nearly 20 other teams receive votes.  So the RV schools are bumped up slightly -- not a huge deal, but the team who the voters would unanimously pick as the 26th best team is considered to be outside the "top 45" and quantitatively on the same plane with the 302 other D-I teams who didn't receive votes.

I've just never been a fan of increasing a data set at the expense of potentially introducing unquantifiable and indeterminable error.

I'm not positive, but I believe that this attitude of yours may disqualify you from posting on MUScoop.

[martyconlonontherun]

I understand the value of advanced stats in the NBA, but I have a problem assigning them to college basketball where there is a huge varying degree of competition. For example, look at Lamont Jones ranking and ask yourself if they make sense. Every team needs scorers and Lamont Jones is Iona's guy. He's going to get more burn and be the guy, but does it really make him a better player? I have no doubt in my mind Blue would put up better kenpom numbers put into that position. Even non-conference games against good teams aren't the same since those teams usually play down to the competition.

ETA: http://espn.go.com/ncb/boxscore?gameId=323210314
Had 40 against Quinnipaic in a tough loss between two powerhouses.

[Galway Eagle]

Would be cool to see the all time list or do it again later on in the season when more data is gathered

[bilsu]

I understand the value of advanced stats in the NBA, but I have a problem assigning them to college basketball where there is a huge varying degree of competition. For example, look at Lamont Jones ranking and ask yourself if they make sense. Every team needs scorers and Lamont Jones is Iona's guy. He's going to get more burn and be the guy, but does it really make him a better player? I have no doubt in my mind Blue would put up better kenpom numbers put into that position. Even non-conference games against good teams aren't the same since those teams usually play down to the competition.

ETA: http://espn.go.com/ncb/boxscore?gameId=323210314
Had 40 against Quinnipaic in a tough loss between two powerhouses.

Kind of sounds like Lockett at ASU vs Locket at MU.