If you are like me, the morning after a loss is a chance to cross examine all the ways this stupid sport has a hold on me, and quickly chuckle at my overreactions, let alone all those flooding my replies. I’m able to scroll through all my favorite stat sites and contextualize what I saw with data.
But when I woke up on Sunday morning, the opposite was true. As I went through the data I realized that my in-the-moment panic wasn’t putting the fanatic in fan, it was a rational realization that reared its ugly head. Marquette’s defense is really bad. And it has been for a while now.
For those not familiar with some of that terminology, adjusted defensive rating is the way sites like Bart Torvik and KenPom help standardize stats for a sport with as many teams of as varying quality as college basketball. They “adjust” opponent strength and then set it to 100 possessions. Above 100 is generally on the poor side.
And hey, bad games happen. They happened to some of the best MU teams we’ve seen in the last few decades. What I wanted to highlight with that Tweet is that they are happening with alarming frequency now. In the last 25 games of Shaka’s tenure, 6 of them have a DRating below 109.6. There were only 8 in the first 119. It’s 24% of games vs 7% of games. And 3 out of 5 so far with this personnel.
Add in that Marquette’s offense is below the level of the last 3 years, and you can see where my head is at.
But why?
Ha, if I could answer those questions you would not be reading my thoughts for free. I’m the same dummy that projected this team to be near elite on defense, with the added athleticism.
What I can say is that in the 2 games against high major opponents, the lack of both rim protection and rim deterrents was alarming.
Per synergy, Maryland scored 37 points on 25 shots at the rim, a disastrous 1.48 PPP. To put that in context, Maryland tool 22 shots at the rim vs Georgetown and only scored 13 points (0.59 PPP).
Per Synergy, Indiana put up 27 shots at the rim, and scored 32 points. They had more success getting to the rim vs Marquette than against Milwaukee or Incarnate word.
Together, opponents are shooting 62.3% at the rim against Marquette, which isn’t great, but pretty much middle of the pack, per CBB Analytics.
However, 44% of opponents field goal attempts are coming at the rim against high majors, 12 percentage points more than the D1 average and ranks 349th in the country. There’s simply no way to win games against decent teams when you can’t stop them from getting to the rack basically half their possessions.
Add in the overperformances from opponents behind the arc, and you get a decent overall sense of what is happening.
Speaking of shots at the rim…
Despite the defensive issues, Marquette had one of the most mind-bending meltdowns I can remember, when it got to the rim at will and proceeded to miss 10 layups in 8 minutes. I’m not even exaggerating.
Doing some more digging, it appears the 17 total misses at the rim are tied for the most Marquette has ever missed under Shaka, last doing it in February against UConn (12/29) on National Marquette Day. The 3rd most? That would be 16 vs UNC in the 2022 NCAA Tournament.
A great trio of games I’d like to forget.
Is the season over?
No, but it’s important to be honest with the facts. And currently, Marquette has about a 13% chance to make the NCAA tournament, per Bart Torvik’s site, down from about 28% when the season began. (His model runs 10,000 simulations based on that morning’s data, and gives us those results for probability).
While Bart’s (correct) pessimistic projection of MU is still weighing on the numbers and will move up and down as more results come in, setting this baseline for Marquette’s tournament outlook is important. Losing to IU could have been washed out with a solid performance over Maryland. Losing both means that the margin for error for the rest of the noncon is basically gone.
In order to not need something like 16 wins in Big East play, Marquette will have to beat both Dayton and Oklahoma, and then win one of the Wisconsin or Purdue roadtrips. Certainly not impossible, but using KenPom’s current odds, that has between a 4.3% and 7.4% chance of happening.
One last time, things happen. Nothing is set in stone. But as they currently stand, most of MU’s margin for error has been eroded, and a huge jump in quality (and results) will be needed to think about bubble scenarios.
Is there anything good?
Chase Ross. He has been so much better than I could have imagined.
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Paint Touches 
Another well done piece of analysis. Thank you for posting. One non analytics thought watching the Benny Hill sequence is that they were all missed layups instead of misssed dunks. This situation reared its head last year where the efg for the team was low. Obviously 3 pt % was a contributing factor but our finishing at the rim was a problem then too. This team is more athletic but just dunk the damn ball!