Marquette Has a Bench Problem and a Solution

While losing on the road to a Q1 opponent in and of itself isn’t necessarily cause for panic, one thing that has me very concerned for Marquette, and is not isolated to just one game, is the lack of depth that has creeped up over the last month. It’s not that Sen Jones, Ben Gold and some of the freshmen haven’t had their moments, but as the calendar has turned from November to December, there are worrying signs flashing all over the place.

Stevie’s Absence

And the reason the alarms are going off is because Stevie Mitchell’s absence, which in and of itself takes a fantastic defender and smart offensive player out of the picture, has meant there were more opportunities for the bench to prove themselves. And they have failed quite miserably.

So before we get too far into the negative, let’s start with a mea culpa. Just 3 days ago I gave Stevie a C for his nonconference grade, noting the shooting woes and generally glossing over the fantastic advanced and on/off numbers. So in case you missed it, here are the fancy number, updated for the Providence pounding.

The way to read that chart is that Marquette’s net rating (how many points the offense scores subtracted with how many it gives up per 100 possessions, adjusting for opponent quality and filtering out garbage minutes) is a full 22 points better in the time Stevie is on the court, compared to when he’s off of it. (The little numbers in italic are raw net rating, not accounting for opponent.)

In particular, the defensive numbers are eye popping. Marquette is 16.6 points worse per 100 possessions when Stevie’s off the floor. And yes, there are plenty of caveats and asterisks to go with on/off metrics, but this isn’t some small sample outlier. He’s played 323 possessions this season. It’s just a fact that when he goes out Marquette’s defense goes from very good to kinda bad.

Ben and Sean Combos

Another one of those caveats about on/off is that who you play with matters greatly. If you are a starter, and regularly share the floor with the best players on the team (Kolek and Oso), then by default your numbers will be rosier. If you are a bench guy that is usually playing with bench guys, then you probably will be penalized, even if you are the best defender in the country.

And this is where Shaka’s job becomes very difficult. Trying to find the secondary and tertiary rotations that provide a lift, or at least minimize the dropoff, is a challenge. And I for one am nowhere near smart enough to take that on. What I do want to highlight here is that sometimes a combination just doesn’t feel right when watching it.

This season, and not just recently, I’ve held my breath through minutes when Ben Gold and Sean Jones share the floor. It isn’t that they are bad players or anything (again, go read the grades I gave them) but they have a unique combination of limitations that makes their partnership just not work right on defense. Here are their On/Off splits when they share the court vs any other time they are not both on at the same time.

Sean is very aggressive both on the perimeter and on doubles, and although he is very quick both laterally and in bursts, he doesn’t do a great job contesting shots once a ball handler gets inside. Per Synergy, Sean’s direct matchups are scoring 1.118 PPP against him, which ranks in the bottom 10% of all D1 players.

While Ben has made enormous strides on his defensive game, he is still handsy and foul prone on the inside, and not always quick enough on the perimeter. He commits 5.8 fouls per 40 minutes, and ranks 10th in block rate of the 11 Big East players 6’10” and taller.

And even though this all sounds harsh, it is not, IMO, a limited 1 game overreaction.

Against Providence, Marquette was a -12 in 12 possessions with these 2 on.
Against St. Thomas they were -13 in 10 possessions.
Against Notre Dame they were a +0 in 21 possessions.
Against Texas -1 in 5 possessions.
Against Wisconsin -2 in 10 possessions.

If we were to look at the 140+ possessions this season with these 2, we’d probably be able to add more context. It is 100% not as simple as saying never ever let these 2 on the court together.

But even a high level view can diagnose that opponents are thriving in these situations and have been all month.

Chase Ross Effect

One of the repercussions of the Stevie injury is the shifting of Chase Ross from first off the bench to first on the floor. And despite what was a pretty miserable offensive performance from him against Providence, he’s been a seamless fit with the starters and provided plenty of value.

Here’s a graph of how many possessions the 4 starters + Chase have played together by game, and the color matching the quality of those shared floor minutes.

In the 3 games since Stevie’s injury, the 5 man lineup of the starters + Chase is outscoring opponents by 31 in 75 possessions. Even against Providence, MU was net neutral in those minutes, and -15 at all other times. For the season, you can barely tell the difference of which lineup has Stevie and which has Chase, he’s been that seamless.

Before this week, I was even getting ready to make a case for Chase as a starter full time, because he needs more minutes on the floor. I no longer hold that belief. It’s not that he doesn’t deserve more time, he should be a top-4 minutes guy this season, but his absence on the 2nd line means way more than what he adds to the starters.

I’m pretty sure Kolek, Kam, and Oso could be great with any 2 D1 players. Not to demean anyone on Marquette, but they are that good, and play so deliciously well together.

But not anyone can play with not All-America-level players and also elevate them. And through the first third of this season, Chase really has. Here are the Hoop-Explorer stats with Sean and Ben and the player listed, filtering out garbage minutes and adjusting for opponent quality, with a minimum of 40 possessions played.

Again, this isn’t me assigning my pro Rossy Possy agenda, this is the numbers speaking loud and clear. You need to be able to dip into your bench for more than token or foul-forced minutes. The bench does have skills that help the team individually. Oso + Gold is still the answer to rebounding woes. Sean is still basically the only way Kolek gets spot up looks. They have a role.

But in order to minimize some of the limitations at this point of their growth arc, it’s important to keep them in situations where they are best suited to thrive. So far this season, that appears to be Stevie starting with Chase coming off the bench.

Conclusion

It’s easy to overreact to 1 game, or a series of games, both positively and negatively. What I think this dive shows though, rather than knocking down players that may be struggling, is that Marquette already has the solutions, whether or not the shooting ever progresses to the mean.

If and when Stevie returns, his 20 to 25 minutes a game adds plenty of value, particularly on defense, but also removes the need to play players that may be struggling, whether they be starters or bench pieces. Because as bright as the future of the freshmen is, they are not ready to be rotation-level contributors at this point. So the rotation right now is just 8 players and 7 with Stevie injured.

And once more, although 12 games is more than 1/3rd of the season, it’s a miniscule sample. One really bad or really good game spikes stats, Like Kam losing 10 ORtg points alone against Providence. So take everything I wrote with a grain of salt.

What I am confident in saying is that I’m not adjusting my expectations of Marquette just yet. This team is not as deep as I had hoped, Jop hasn’t hit his stride, and shooting is bad bad. But the process is still sound, and the top-level talent more elite than I could have hoped. I still believe this is a top-10ish team, with real final four aspirations.

Now it’s time to prove it once more.