In a span of 72 hours, each of the Big East’s top four teams — squads that once fit neatly on the top two seedlines of most NCAA Tournament projections — lost. In and of themselves, the losses for West Virginia, Syracuse, Georgetown and Villanova won’t do anything to affect their NCAA Tournament acceptance and will do little to affect their seeding, but what they did do was reveal potentially fatal flaws, which are often overlooked as teams pile up wins.
West Virginia: The Mountaineers’ 98-95 overtime loss at Pittsburgh was the most excusable of the defeats suffered by the Big East’s top four on this holiday weekend, but it was also West Virginia’s second-straight loss. It may come as a surprise to some that it’s WVU’s defense and not its offense that has been mostly to blame in the team’s five defeats.
| Efficiencies | Defense | |||||||
| Opponent | PPP | PPP | eFG | Turn | Reb | FTR | 2PT% | 3PT% |
| at Purdue | 0.987 | 1.225 | 0.536 | 0.111 | 0.318 | 0.411 | 0.545 | 0.333 |
| at Notre Dame | 1.130 | 1.164 | 0.616 | 0.150 | 0.180 | 0.558 | 0.533 | 0.538 |
| vs. Syracuse | 1.065 | 1.080 | 0.622 | 0.300 | 0.458 | 0.578 | 0.667 | 0.333 |
| vs. Villanova | 1.044 | 1.142 | 0.618 | 0.251 | 0.460 | 0.431 | 0.600 | 0.455 |
| at Pittsburgh | 1.165 | 1.202 | 0.508 | 0.098 | 0.274 | 0.536 | 0.500 | 0.346 |
| Composite | 1.078 | 1.163 | 0.580 | 0.182 | 0.338 | 0.503 | 0.569 | 0.401 |
You can see that West Virginia is allowing 0.085 points per possession more than it is scoring in its five losses. The main culprit is field-goal defense. Despite the Mountaineers’ notable length, they are allowing opponents to make 40 percent of their 3-pointers and 57 percent of their 2-pointers in these defeats. For the season, West Virginia is ahead of only the comparatively tiny Marquette and Providence squads in 2-point defense among Big East teams. Read More
