I haven't spent nearly as much time thinking about Rutgers basketball this summer as I normally would, because *gestures broadly at everything.* But Scarlet Shack's thread on minutes distribution got me researching and typing and before I knew it I had gone way beyond the scope of that thread, so I've decided to post my own instead. But let's start with that basic minutes framework:
Ron Harper Jr. - 32 minutes
Geo Baker - 31 minutes
These are the two most important guys on the team. I don't think I'm breaking any news here. In the final six games of the season, Baker averaged 32.6 minutes per regulation. Steve Pikiell clearly wanted the ball in his hands during the games it mattered most, and that's not going to change for 2020-21. At various times Caleb McConnell, Jacob Young, and Paul Mulcahy were able to give usable minutes as lead guard but Baker is the guy, even if that doesn't always mean he brings the ball up the court. In fact, the offense was better last season in part because Baker wasn't the only one who could. In 2018-19, Baker had to play nearly 34 minutes per game for the entire season which I think was too many. But he was the only ballhandler with Big Ten experience that season and so he had to play that much. It was the best situation for the team but not for Baker and I think it drove his offensive numbers down. Now as a senior he won't have to handle that kind of workload since there are four other capable ballhandlers, but he should also be better-conditioned than he was a sophomore so that he can handle it when needed -- like the Northwestern and Purdue OT games last season. But he was also more rested because of the hand injury, so keep that in mind.
So what can/should we expect from Baker as a senior? The biggest thing he did last season was fix his two-point shooting: from 37% as a sophomore to 49% as a junior (34% to 45% in Big Ten games). That's a gigantic leap. We should expect a bit of regression in this area, though Baker did mention this as something he specifically worked on. So it's not like it was pure happenstance that the number went up. The eye contest confirmed that he was more explosive as a junior and able to get by defenders and to the rim. He also took a lot fewer stepbacks just inside the arc, which is a bad shot even for him. Yes, I'm aware that arguably the biggest shot of the season was of this variety (the one against Purdue at the very end) but it's always better to take that shot from a foot further back and make it a three-pointer. When he drives but cannot get all the way to the basket, his turnaround from just outside the paint is a valuable weapon. The other big thing he did was cut his turnover rate. I believe this is because he 1) wasn't on the floor so darn much and 2) didn't always have the ball in his hands. Both of these should remain the case in 2020-21.
His three-point shooting has gone down each season, from 37% to 34% to just 29% last season, and it was low even before the hand injury. His free-throw shooting has held steady between 74-78% so it's not like he's forgotten how to shoot, and obviously he's made some huge ones when we really needed it. Opponents are going to continue to respect his shot and just as I expect his two-point percentage to regress down, I expect his three-point shooting to bounce back up. Something in the 34% range to go along with maybe 43% on two-pointers. This would put him on a tier near Brad Davison (44/36), Marcus Carr (41/36), and Anthony Cowan's (46/32) numbers from a season ago though it must be noted that Carr and Cowan also get a lot of trips to the free-throw line, which Baker does not.
As for Harper, he has basically been our best player since January of 2019. Last season, his usage went up while his efficiency mostly held steady. He's our best three-point shooter, he makes smart decisions, he's almost always in the right spot, and his combination of size and skills make him the hardest player on the team to defend. He can get physical inside against smaller defenders and he can drive by or shoot over bigger defenders. He improved his conditioning and went from 22 minutes per game to 28 minutes. So I think he'll be able to handle another four minutes per game as a junior.
I have less to say about Harper than Baker, weirdly, because I really think there's less mystery here. I'm comfortable saying Harper's floor is a 33% three-point shooter. He shot 34% in conference play in 2019 and then 35% for the season last year. His two-point percentage has been above 50% both seasons. He doesn't turn it over. Even if he simply repeats his performance from last year, he's going to provide a ton of value. The last piece to the puzzle is consistency. We know he's capable of going off for 20 points in a game. It's just a matter of eliminating the games where he disappeared. Against Michigan (at MSG) and then at Maryland a few days later, he shot 4-19 and didn't attempt a free throw. (These games were right in the aftermath of Kobe Bryant's death which clearly had a big impact on him, so this is purely an illustrative example and not a criticism)
Simply put, Harper has all the tools to be a top-10 player in the league and have one of the best individual seasons in modern Rutgers history. The ceiling for raw stats is limited only by the fact that the offense will still share the ball a good deal -- he's not going to be taking 30-35% of the team's shots while on the floor like Luka Garza or Lamar Stevens did last season. But in my view Rutgers' season is going to go as Harper does. If he hits his 50th percentile outcome, Rutgers will be a relatively comfortable tournament team, 6-9 seed range. If he overperforms then we're talking 4-5 seed potential. If he underperforms then get ready to watch the bubble all season along again.
Jacob Young - 26
Montez Mathis - 26
Paul Mulcahy - 26
I'm grouping these three together as the ones who will see the biggest role increase from Caleb McConnell's injury, but it's more instructive to think of this group getting 72 minutes combined than any one player in particular. There is a lot of uncertainty with this group and the split might end up being 30-28-20 instead of 26-26-26.
Let's start with Mathis and Young. The biggest gap in the roster right now is "willing and efficient third offensive weapon." This was the role that Akwasi Yeboah filled beautifully last season and that McConnell might best have been suited to fill in 20-21. Without him, I think it falls mainly on Young and Mathis. (and also Oskar Palmquist, who I will get to shortly) They are certainly *willing* participants in the offense: Young used up 26% of possessions while on the floor, while Mathis was above 20%, and was even higher as a freshman. So neither guy is shy about trying to put the ball up. The issue is the efficiency. Both players have a tendency to be too aggressive on their drives to the basket. For Young this showed up in his turnover numbers. He'd dribble himself into a bad spot and then end up traveling or making a bad pass to get out of it. For Mathis, he would force shots from awkward angles which resulted in a low two-point percentage. Young's shot percentage and Mathis' turnover rate are both not bad, so each has a clear area for improvement.
And of course there's the three-point shooting. They attempted about the same number of shots (59 for Young, 62 for Mathis) but combined to hit only 28% of them. In conference play this actually improved to 33% which, if that held, would not really be an issue. Yeboah was only a 34% shooter for the season. But I don't have a whole lot of confidence that number is legit. Young is a career 26% shooter, and Mathis is 27%. Still, even getting those numbers up to 30-31% would be very beneficial. A bounceback on Mathis' two-point numbers would be nice, too. As a freshman, he 44% of attempts in conference play. As a sophomore, just 37%. He also went to the free-throw line nearly twice as much as a freshman. Now, he's not a great free throw shooter but earning trips to the stripe has benefits beyond the two shot attempts as you can get opponents into foul trouble, get to the bonus as a team more quickly, etc. This is conjecture but in my mind Mathis played with his free throw woes in his mind. He shied away from contact and put up awkward shots because he didn't want to go to the line. It's a thin line between fearless and reckless, to be sure, but there's room for better balance.
I don't think I need to spend a whole lot of time on their defense as I think everyone recognizes that Young and Mathis are each quality defenders. And knowing Pikiell both will bring the energy on that side of the ball and rotate them to keep fresh. So the playing time is going to slant toward the one whose offensive game turns the corner.
Mulcahy is sort of the opposite. He was efficient even despite poor three-point shooting, but not willing at all. When he was on the floor, he attempted just 10% of the team's shots. That's comparable to 2019 Shaq Doorson, who basically only attempted dunks off of offensive rebounds. It's a very low number for a guard/wing who is not a defensive menace. (even Nojel Eastern, for example, was 14%) So that's going to have to change for Mulcahy or else he's going to be very easy for teams to defend which will gum up the works for the rest of the offense. And it should change! He showed some pretty crafty moves at times when he was able to get into the lane and he made some smart cuts to get easy layups. He passed up some wide-open three-pointers that he shouldn't have. Again from my eye test and watching him in warmups, his shot isn't that bad. I'm not expecting him to morph into Sasha Stefanovic and start hitting shots with a defender draped all over him, but if he's open in the corner he needs to fire.
And it all meshes together. If an opponent is respecting Mulcahy standing in the corner, then maybe they're a step late to help on a Young or Mathis drive. Or if Young has cut down his turnovers then a coach might stress that they need to help when he drives. Now you have Mulcahy or Mathis open for a three pointer. The offense needs to be a rising tide lifting all boats.
Myles Johnson - 19
Cliff Omoruyi - 19
Mamadou Doucoure - 1
Dean Reiber - 1
I'm grouping these together because the big men situation looks pretty straightforward to me. I don't see a situation where any of these players are out on the floor with another aside from an emptying-the-bench situation. Omoruyi and Johnson have different skillsets but neither is a threat to shoot the ball from distance and in today's game you simply can't have two guys out there like that. Illinois ran into this issue with Kofi Cockburn and Giorgi B, and Giorgi actually can shoot a little bit. So I think we'll either see one on the floor or the other and that's that.
So let's talk about their skillsets. Johnson is the second-best offensive rebounder in the conference. He's a very good defender who can muscle up with anyone inside, and he's a reliable enough post presence on offense that you can run some things through him. Pikiell has raved about his passing but to me it's only been okay. He doesn't panic when teams run an extra defender at him but from my memory he just makes a basic pass out of it. There's nothing wrong with that -- his assist rate was higher than Jalen Smith, higher than Cockburn, but lower than Xavier Tillman and Kaleb Wesson. It's possible I'm not giving him credit in this area, but nothing about his passing particularly stuck out to me.
Clearly the issue with Johnson is avoiding fouls. BUT! He actually made a pretty big stride forward from his freshman year in this department, even if it didn't feel like it. He went from 6.1 fouls per 40 minutes down to 4.2 (6.5 to 5.0 in conference play). Many of these were drawn on the offensive end, too, which is something that I think the coaching staff is specifically going to gameplan to better avoid in 20-21. Johnson should also naturally improve, though likely not as drastically as from freshman to sophomore. And of course there is the matter of how last year was an especially stacked season for big men in the conference.
Meanwhile Cliff Omoruyi is a little bit more springy and mobile than Johnson. Whereas Shaq Carter was just about the same type of defender as Myles, Omoruyi I think is going to be able to better match up with the stretch 5s in the league like Wisconsin's Nate Reuvers and Micah Potter, whereas Myles Johnson matches up better with bruisers like Kofi Cockburn and Trevion Williams. (Nobody in the country matches up well with Luka Garza) I also expect him to be an improvement over Carter on the offensive side. There will be freshman issues but Omoruyi is the kind of guy you can run some offense with, while Carter pretty much got all of his points on putbacks. I think his presence will also let Pikiell be a bit more bold keeping Johnson in the game even with foul trouble. I don't expect to see much of Doucoure/Reiber at all.
Oskar Palmquist - 12
Mawot Mag - 7
These two are the biggest wildcards and are a secretly huge factor because they'll be ones primarily backing up Ron Harper Jr. Palmquist is going to provide more offense while Mag will be in there for his defense. If either proves to be more game-ready than I expect then they would cut into the minutes of the Mathis-Young-Mulcahy group. There are minutes available at the 3 spot with McConnell's injury and we know Pikiell likes to roll out some long lineups.
Projected starting lineup:
Baker
Mathis
Mulcahy
Harper
Johnson
Where this team could be better than 2019-20
I expected that the offense would improve from 2018 to 2019 mainly on the back of stronger three-point shooting. That really didn't happen. They improved only from 312th to 296th which certainly doesn't account for their overall offensive rise from 152nd to 72nd. So I think there is still room improvement behind the arc. Losing Yeboah hurts, but he only shot 34%. (which was 2nd on the team but is not exactly sharpshooting) The upside here is that Harper shoots 37%, Baker 35%, Palmquist is in the 33% range, and Mathis/Young/Mulcahy stay above the 30% threshold. It's not going to be a high-volume shooting team, but getting from 30.8% to even just 32% would help a lot.
Turnovers. This is one hidden reason the team improved last season. In 2018-19 they turned it over on 19.1% of their possessions. In 2019-20 it was 17.9%. Not a giant raw difference but it took them from 224th to 104th in the country. Jacob Young's high rate sticks out like a sore thumb, and if he can pull that down from bad to merely average they should crack the top 75. Rutgers doesn't shoot well which means they have to make it up on volume and that means not giving the ball away and also getting offensive rebounds.
Where this team could be worse than 2019-20
Free throw shooting. Yes, it's scary that they'll be even worse from the stripe but Yeboah and McConnell were the best two free throw shooters. In order to counteract that loss, Mathis, Harper, Young, and Mulcahy (all under 70% last season) are going to have to improve, especially Young who was under 60% and draws a good amount of contact. Harper did shoot 12-12 in a game against Penn State, so there's a chance it clicks, but I find it doubtful. Myles Johnson improving to even a 50% free throw shooter would also go a long way, but he's a 37% shooter over two years so I don't see much reason to be optimistic about that.
Defense. This one is tough because the metrics did not match my eye test last season. The numbers say Rutgers had the #6 defense in the country, and the #2 defense in Big Ten-only games, behind only Michigan State. This does not gel with my memory and frustration of blown switches and wide open shots. And that's true: opponents LOVED to attempt three-pointers against Rutgers, they just didn't make very many of them. How much of this is luck vs. skill is up for debate, but let's remember that Bryant had a pretty open shot at a three-pointer at the buzzer in the very first game. Things would have been much different if that had gone in. The 2018-19 team "allowed" opponents to shoot 35.3%, 226th in the country. The 2019-20 team "held" opponents to 31.2%, 72nd in the country. Was there a big difference in how well they closed out? Not really. I chalk a lot of that up to luck.
Having a feared shotblocker like Myles Johnson inside certainly helps discourage teams from trying to work it inside but that doesn't explain it all. I think teams will continue to shoot a low percentage on two-pointers, and continue to chuck up three-pointers at a high rate. The only difference is I expect more of the threes to go in, which will damage the defensive rating. The defense will still be good, but not #6 in the country good. Top-25 is a reasonable goal.
Ron Harper Jr. - 32 minutes
Geo Baker - 31 minutes
These are the two most important guys on the team. I don't think I'm breaking any news here. In the final six games of the season, Baker averaged 32.6 minutes per regulation. Steve Pikiell clearly wanted the ball in his hands during the games it mattered most, and that's not going to change for 2020-21. At various times Caleb McConnell, Jacob Young, and Paul Mulcahy were able to give usable minutes as lead guard but Baker is the guy, even if that doesn't always mean he brings the ball up the court. In fact, the offense was better last season in part because Baker wasn't the only one who could. In 2018-19, Baker had to play nearly 34 minutes per game for the entire season which I think was too many. But he was the only ballhandler with Big Ten experience that season and so he had to play that much. It was the best situation for the team but not for Baker and I think it drove his offensive numbers down. Now as a senior he won't have to handle that kind of workload since there are four other capable ballhandlers, but he should also be better-conditioned than he was a sophomore so that he can handle it when needed -- like the Northwestern and Purdue OT games last season. But he was also more rested because of the hand injury, so keep that in mind.
So what can/should we expect from Baker as a senior? The biggest thing he did last season was fix his two-point shooting: from 37% as a sophomore to 49% as a junior (34% to 45% in Big Ten games). That's a gigantic leap. We should expect a bit of regression in this area, though Baker did mention this as something he specifically worked on. So it's not like it was pure happenstance that the number went up. The eye contest confirmed that he was more explosive as a junior and able to get by defenders and to the rim. He also took a lot fewer stepbacks just inside the arc, which is a bad shot even for him. Yes, I'm aware that arguably the biggest shot of the season was of this variety (the one against Purdue at the very end) but it's always better to take that shot from a foot further back and make it a three-pointer. When he drives but cannot get all the way to the basket, his turnaround from just outside the paint is a valuable weapon. The other big thing he did was cut his turnover rate. I believe this is because he 1) wasn't on the floor so darn much and 2) didn't always have the ball in his hands. Both of these should remain the case in 2020-21.
His three-point shooting has gone down each season, from 37% to 34% to just 29% last season, and it was low even before the hand injury. His free-throw shooting has held steady between 74-78% so it's not like he's forgotten how to shoot, and obviously he's made some huge ones when we really needed it. Opponents are going to continue to respect his shot and just as I expect his two-point percentage to regress down, I expect his three-point shooting to bounce back up. Something in the 34% range to go along with maybe 43% on two-pointers. This would put him on a tier near Brad Davison (44/36), Marcus Carr (41/36), and Anthony Cowan's (46/32) numbers from a season ago though it must be noted that Carr and Cowan also get a lot of trips to the free-throw line, which Baker does not.
As for Harper, he has basically been our best player since January of 2019. Last season, his usage went up while his efficiency mostly held steady. He's our best three-point shooter, he makes smart decisions, he's almost always in the right spot, and his combination of size and skills make him the hardest player on the team to defend. He can get physical inside against smaller defenders and he can drive by or shoot over bigger defenders. He improved his conditioning and went from 22 minutes per game to 28 minutes. So I think he'll be able to handle another four minutes per game as a junior.
I have less to say about Harper than Baker, weirdly, because I really think there's less mystery here. I'm comfortable saying Harper's floor is a 33% three-point shooter. He shot 34% in conference play in 2019 and then 35% for the season last year. His two-point percentage has been above 50% both seasons. He doesn't turn it over. Even if he simply repeats his performance from last year, he's going to provide a ton of value. The last piece to the puzzle is consistency. We know he's capable of going off for 20 points in a game. It's just a matter of eliminating the games where he disappeared. Against Michigan (at MSG) and then at Maryland a few days later, he shot 4-19 and didn't attempt a free throw. (These games were right in the aftermath of Kobe Bryant's death which clearly had a big impact on him, so this is purely an illustrative example and not a criticism)
Simply put, Harper has all the tools to be a top-10 player in the league and have one of the best individual seasons in modern Rutgers history. The ceiling for raw stats is limited only by the fact that the offense will still share the ball a good deal -- he's not going to be taking 30-35% of the team's shots while on the floor like Luka Garza or Lamar Stevens did last season. But in my view Rutgers' season is going to go as Harper does. If he hits his 50th percentile outcome, Rutgers will be a relatively comfortable tournament team, 6-9 seed range. If he overperforms then we're talking 4-5 seed potential. If he underperforms then get ready to watch the bubble all season along again.
Jacob Young - 26
Montez Mathis - 26
Paul Mulcahy - 26
I'm grouping these three together as the ones who will see the biggest role increase from Caleb McConnell's injury, but it's more instructive to think of this group getting 72 minutes combined than any one player in particular. There is a lot of uncertainty with this group and the split might end up being 30-28-20 instead of 26-26-26.
Let's start with Mathis and Young. The biggest gap in the roster right now is "willing and efficient third offensive weapon." This was the role that Akwasi Yeboah filled beautifully last season and that McConnell might best have been suited to fill in 20-21. Without him, I think it falls mainly on Young and Mathis. (and also Oskar Palmquist, who I will get to shortly) They are certainly *willing* participants in the offense: Young used up 26% of possessions while on the floor, while Mathis was above 20%, and was even higher as a freshman. So neither guy is shy about trying to put the ball up. The issue is the efficiency. Both players have a tendency to be too aggressive on their drives to the basket. For Young this showed up in his turnover numbers. He'd dribble himself into a bad spot and then end up traveling or making a bad pass to get out of it. For Mathis, he would force shots from awkward angles which resulted in a low two-point percentage. Young's shot percentage and Mathis' turnover rate are both not bad, so each has a clear area for improvement.
And of course there's the three-point shooting. They attempted about the same number of shots (59 for Young, 62 for Mathis) but combined to hit only 28% of them. In conference play this actually improved to 33% which, if that held, would not really be an issue. Yeboah was only a 34% shooter for the season. But I don't have a whole lot of confidence that number is legit. Young is a career 26% shooter, and Mathis is 27%. Still, even getting those numbers up to 30-31% would be very beneficial. A bounceback on Mathis' two-point numbers would be nice, too. As a freshman, he 44% of attempts in conference play. As a sophomore, just 37%. He also went to the free-throw line nearly twice as much as a freshman. Now, he's not a great free throw shooter but earning trips to the stripe has benefits beyond the two shot attempts as you can get opponents into foul trouble, get to the bonus as a team more quickly, etc. This is conjecture but in my mind Mathis played with his free throw woes in his mind. He shied away from contact and put up awkward shots because he didn't want to go to the line. It's a thin line between fearless and reckless, to be sure, but there's room for better balance.
I don't think I need to spend a whole lot of time on their defense as I think everyone recognizes that Young and Mathis are each quality defenders. And knowing Pikiell both will bring the energy on that side of the ball and rotate them to keep fresh. So the playing time is going to slant toward the one whose offensive game turns the corner.
Mulcahy is sort of the opposite. He was efficient even despite poor three-point shooting, but not willing at all. When he was on the floor, he attempted just 10% of the team's shots. That's comparable to 2019 Shaq Doorson, who basically only attempted dunks off of offensive rebounds. It's a very low number for a guard/wing who is not a defensive menace. (even Nojel Eastern, for example, was 14%) So that's going to have to change for Mulcahy or else he's going to be very easy for teams to defend which will gum up the works for the rest of the offense. And it should change! He showed some pretty crafty moves at times when he was able to get into the lane and he made some smart cuts to get easy layups. He passed up some wide-open three-pointers that he shouldn't have. Again from my eye test and watching him in warmups, his shot isn't that bad. I'm not expecting him to morph into Sasha Stefanovic and start hitting shots with a defender draped all over him, but if he's open in the corner he needs to fire.
And it all meshes together. If an opponent is respecting Mulcahy standing in the corner, then maybe they're a step late to help on a Young or Mathis drive. Or if Young has cut down his turnovers then a coach might stress that they need to help when he drives. Now you have Mulcahy or Mathis open for a three pointer. The offense needs to be a rising tide lifting all boats.
Myles Johnson - 19
Cliff Omoruyi - 19
Mamadou Doucoure - 1
Dean Reiber - 1
I'm grouping these together because the big men situation looks pretty straightforward to me. I don't see a situation where any of these players are out on the floor with another aside from an emptying-the-bench situation. Omoruyi and Johnson have different skillsets but neither is a threat to shoot the ball from distance and in today's game you simply can't have two guys out there like that. Illinois ran into this issue with Kofi Cockburn and Giorgi B, and Giorgi actually can shoot a little bit. So I think we'll either see one on the floor or the other and that's that.
So let's talk about their skillsets. Johnson is the second-best offensive rebounder in the conference. He's a very good defender who can muscle up with anyone inside, and he's a reliable enough post presence on offense that you can run some things through him. Pikiell has raved about his passing but to me it's only been okay. He doesn't panic when teams run an extra defender at him but from my memory he just makes a basic pass out of it. There's nothing wrong with that -- his assist rate was higher than Jalen Smith, higher than Cockburn, but lower than Xavier Tillman and Kaleb Wesson. It's possible I'm not giving him credit in this area, but nothing about his passing particularly stuck out to me.
Clearly the issue with Johnson is avoiding fouls. BUT! He actually made a pretty big stride forward from his freshman year in this department, even if it didn't feel like it. He went from 6.1 fouls per 40 minutes down to 4.2 (6.5 to 5.0 in conference play). Many of these were drawn on the offensive end, too, which is something that I think the coaching staff is specifically going to gameplan to better avoid in 20-21. Johnson should also naturally improve, though likely not as drastically as from freshman to sophomore. And of course there is the matter of how last year was an especially stacked season for big men in the conference.
Meanwhile Cliff Omoruyi is a little bit more springy and mobile than Johnson. Whereas Shaq Carter was just about the same type of defender as Myles, Omoruyi I think is going to be able to better match up with the stretch 5s in the league like Wisconsin's Nate Reuvers and Micah Potter, whereas Myles Johnson matches up better with bruisers like Kofi Cockburn and Trevion Williams. (Nobody in the country matches up well with Luka Garza) I also expect him to be an improvement over Carter on the offensive side. There will be freshman issues but Omoruyi is the kind of guy you can run some offense with, while Carter pretty much got all of his points on putbacks. I think his presence will also let Pikiell be a bit more bold keeping Johnson in the game even with foul trouble. I don't expect to see much of Doucoure/Reiber at all.
Oskar Palmquist - 12
Mawot Mag - 7
These two are the biggest wildcards and are a secretly huge factor because they'll be ones primarily backing up Ron Harper Jr. Palmquist is going to provide more offense while Mag will be in there for his defense. If either proves to be more game-ready than I expect then they would cut into the minutes of the Mathis-Young-Mulcahy group. There are minutes available at the 3 spot with McConnell's injury and we know Pikiell likes to roll out some long lineups.
Projected starting lineup:
Baker
Mathis
Mulcahy
Harper
Johnson
Where this team could be better than 2019-20
I expected that the offense would improve from 2018 to 2019 mainly on the back of stronger three-point shooting. That really didn't happen. They improved only from 312th to 296th which certainly doesn't account for their overall offensive rise from 152nd to 72nd. So I think there is still room improvement behind the arc. Losing Yeboah hurts, but he only shot 34%. (which was 2nd on the team but is not exactly sharpshooting) The upside here is that Harper shoots 37%, Baker 35%, Palmquist is in the 33% range, and Mathis/Young/Mulcahy stay above the 30% threshold. It's not going to be a high-volume shooting team, but getting from 30.8% to even just 32% would help a lot.
Turnovers. This is one hidden reason the team improved last season. In 2018-19 they turned it over on 19.1% of their possessions. In 2019-20 it was 17.9%. Not a giant raw difference but it took them from 224th to 104th in the country. Jacob Young's high rate sticks out like a sore thumb, and if he can pull that down from bad to merely average they should crack the top 75. Rutgers doesn't shoot well which means they have to make it up on volume and that means not giving the ball away and also getting offensive rebounds.
Where this team could be worse than 2019-20
Free throw shooting. Yes, it's scary that they'll be even worse from the stripe but Yeboah and McConnell were the best two free throw shooters. In order to counteract that loss, Mathis, Harper, Young, and Mulcahy (all under 70% last season) are going to have to improve, especially Young who was under 60% and draws a good amount of contact. Harper did shoot 12-12 in a game against Penn State, so there's a chance it clicks, but I find it doubtful. Myles Johnson improving to even a 50% free throw shooter would also go a long way, but he's a 37% shooter over two years so I don't see much reason to be optimistic about that.
Defense. This one is tough because the metrics did not match my eye test last season. The numbers say Rutgers had the #6 defense in the country, and the #2 defense in Big Ten-only games, behind only Michigan State. This does not gel with my memory and frustration of blown switches and wide open shots. And that's true: opponents LOVED to attempt three-pointers against Rutgers, they just didn't make very many of them. How much of this is luck vs. skill is up for debate, but let's remember that Bryant had a pretty open shot at a three-pointer at the buzzer in the very first game. Things would have been much different if that had gone in. The 2018-19 team "allowed" opponents to shoot 35.3%, 226th in the country. The 2019-20 team "held" opponents to 31.2%, 72nd in the country. Was there a big difference in how well they closed out? Not really. I chalk a lot of that up to luck.
Having a feared shotblocker like Myles Johnson inside certainly helps discourage teams from trying to work it inside but that doesn't explain it all. I think teams will continue to shoot a low percentage on two-pointers, and continue to chuck up three-pointers at a high rate. The only difference is I expect more of the threes to go in, which will damage the defensive rating. The defense will still be good, but not #6 in the country good. Top-25 is a reasonable goal.
