NJIT
 

Wednesday, November 30th, 2022
7:00 PM
Fifth Third Arena
ESPN+

The Bearcats (4-3, KenPom #74) welcome NJIT (1-5, KenPom #331) this evening to start a stretch of 7 consecutive home games that will lead the team into 2023.

The Highlanders are the first of back-to-back America East Conference opponents to visit Fifth Third (with first place Bryant being the next) and are led by 7th-year head coach Brian Kennedy.

NJIT returns three starters from last year's team that finished 11-18 and #342 in KenPom. Their top returnee is 5th-year 6'5 forward Miles Coleman who averages 18 and 5 while shooting nearly 44% from deep.

As a team, they struggle to shoot the ball, but have played competitively in some of their recent losses by playing slow (currently #332 in Adjusted Tempo) and keeping the game low-scoring.

Once Bearcat-recruit Paul McMillan IV is the first man off the bench for NJIT and is averaging 5.4 ppg, 1.6 rpg, 2.0 apg over 20 min/game. He shoots 28% from the field, 11% from 3 (1-9) and 92% from the FT line (12-13).

The Bearcats are 19-point favorites.

NJIT is top 20 in the country at getting to line, but then they shoot under 60% there. They're also a terrible offensive rebounding team, probably because they don't attack the glass to shut down transition and keep the pace slow.

It ends up being a blow out, but the first half it was still a struggle to get distance between them. I'm surprised how much some of these guys struggle.

DDJ and Nolley were lighting it up tonight. Lakhin could do whatever he wanted inside. MAW and Phinisee hit some outside shots, but they shouldn't be attempting 8 threes between them. Biggest disappointment was Davenport, who couldn't create anything with the ball in his hands and got torched on defense a few times even against a terrible opponent.

Decent outcome against a bad opponent.

I still worry about how we're going to score against decent teams when Nolley and DeJulius aren't shooting a combined 58% from 3, but I'm sure we'll learn a lot about this team against a much tougher Bryant squad on Sunday.

Didn't watch game but heard my main man McMillan played like garbage. Still think he's upgrade over MAW and Rob!

He had a rough first half and better second half.

I don't think he would've added any value to this year's team.

We'll see what type of player he develops into 2-3 years from now.

Imagine if we stopped shooting 3's so much and we focused more on getting Vik more looks. He's actually scoring more per 40 minutes than anyone right now. Also imagine he could stay on court for 25-28 minutes. Also imagine JDs shot starting to fall. That would take some pressure off Nolley and DDJ. It might also help to get Skillings in the game more as he is the only reliable perimeter guy to get to the rack (which we need more of). We have some options.

The biggest problem is defending while the scorers are in. Rob may need to start over MAW. Or take some minutes from JD and give to Hensley or Skillings. We have to get some defense out there to play with Nolley, Vik, and DDJ.

I would like to try this lineup out for an experiment. Our top 3 scorers with possibly our top 2 defenders. I think Hensley and Rob could lock down the best two players from 1-4. Giving our scorers a breather on court at the same time.

Vik
Hensley
Nolley
DDJ
Rob

It may surprise you that our bench all have better plus minus numbers for the season per minutes played (other than Kalu) than our starting 5 (excluding Reed and Newman because of low minutes played). I think that has to do with not being able to stop opponents from scoring with our starting 5. Try a hybrid. We are getting very average scoring from MAW and JD right now...but we could get a LOT better on D with a couple of bench options.

MAW plus minus avg for season adjusted for minutes played is .17 (9th out of 10 on team) pts per minute. Rob is at .39 (4th). JD is at .26 (7th) and Hensley is at .51 (3rd). Skillings is actually leading the team at .54 right now but I'm not sure it's his D...but probably a bit of O and D combined with rebounding.