The venerable Sunday feature you see will henceforth structure itself around a new standing rule. It will be assumed without having to be explicitly stated that Virginia is both:
Suffocating opposing offenses to a ridiculous degree, and
Missing a herculean share of its 3-point attempts.
Pointing out either side of this particular coin can no longer qualify as anything close to a hot take.
On the other hand, here are some genuine hot takes I think I can prove.
Feast Week is more predictive than you think
Rejoice! The annual and ample buffet of tournament basketball known as Feast Week is upon us. Holiday tournaments tend to collectively include many of the best teams in the country, and the opportunity to see so much high-level basketball on neutral floors has become a cherished rite of November.
But what does Feast Week really tell us in basketball terms?
The tropical locales, the occasionally strange playing spaces and the fact that teams play on consecutive days all constitute distinctive traits that are baked into the week. Such elements can make holiday tournaments feel like a distinct type of small-sample-size basketball far removed from the "real" tests furnished by the upcoming thousands of possessions in conference play and, of course, by the NCAA tournament itself.
Who knows? Maybe that will indeed be the way it plays out with Feast Week 2019. It's entirely possible that, come March, we'll look back at this week and think, "Man, all those holiday-tournament winners really didn't do much in the field of 68." Stranger things have happened in college basketball.
Over the past 10 years, however, the relationship between November and March and even April success has in fact been rather striking. Look no further than the 2019 national championship game, when 2018 Battle 4 Atlantis champion Virginia defeated 2018 Hall of Fame Classic winner Texas Tech. To get that far, the Cavaliers and Red Raiders had to defeat a 2018 Maui Jim Invitational semifinalist (Auburn) and the 2018 Las Vegas Invitational winner (Michigan State), respectively.
Nor was the 2019 Final Four all that unusual in this respect. In fact, the most recent national champion that didn't win a holiday tournament was Louisville in 2013. (The Cardinals finished second to Duke at the 2012 Maui Invitational.) No fewer than nine of the past 10 national finalists have reached Monday night in April after winning a holiday tournament in November.
Looking at holiday tournaments that have been played over the past decade, 60 of 71 champions went on to make the ensuing NCAA tournament. There are no guarantees, of course, and certainly Notre Dame can tell a tale of woe about winning the 2017 Maui Invitational only to lose Bonzie Colson for 15 games and miss the field of 68 entirely.
Still, an 85% hit rate for NCAA bids is pretty good. A title this week is nothing to sneeze at.
Speaking of hit rates, the differences in subsequent performance recorded by first- and second-place teams in these events are interesting and possibly even suggestive. After all, it's not clear that there should really be any appreciable differences between the two finalists in a four- or eight-team November event.
Nevertheless, holiday-tournament champions have fared measurably better than the runners-up when both types of teams have reached the NCAA tournament over the past 10 years. On average, Feast Week champs have performed about half a win above NCAA tournament expectation based on seed, a finding that remains mostly and intriguingly intact even when we remove holiday-tournament colossus UConn and its relatively low-seeded national title runs in 2011 and 2014 from the mix.
Feast Week runners-up, on the other hand, perform almost exactly as would be expected in the NCAA tournament based on seed alone. Do multiteam events in November uncover rosters that are just hard-wired to be good in tournament settings? Or do teams that win titles during Feast Week gain a slight placebo effect merely from having already advanced through a bracket?
Possibly a little of both. Anyway, in addition to enjoying Feast Week now, remember it when you fill out your bracket in March.
Evansville leads the nation in being baffling
Since beating then-No. 1 Kentucky at Rupp Arena earlier this month, Evansville has gone 0-3 against Division I opponents. Walter McCarty's men lost by two on their home floor to SMU before losing 85-68 to East Carolina and 78-70 to George Washington at the Islands of the Bahamas Showcase.
The win in Lexington was made possible by outstanding defensive rebounding and by limiting UK to 43% shooting on its 2s. In the three Division I games since that victory, however, Evansville opponents are connecting 52% of the time inside the arc and SMU, for one, pulled down no less than 45% of its missed shots against the Purple Aces.
It's one thing to accept conceptually that college hoops will continually surprise us. It's another thing to encounter the extremes Evansville's already charted in just 200 minutes of basketball. Erratic yet didactic Aces, consider yourselves saluted for your partially unwitting services on behalf of understanding the game.
Even these takes aren't as hot as Aaron Nesmith's start
Last January, Aaron Nesmith made his first start for Vanderbilt as a freshman. The good news for Nesmith is that he quickly became a fixture in the lineup, making 19 consecutive starts in his first season. The bad news for Commodore fans, however, is that Vandy lost all 19 of those games.
Now it's a new season, Jerry Stackhouse is in his first campaign as head coach in Nashville, Tennessee, the Dores are two points in an overtime session at Richmond away from being undefeated and Nesmith leads Division I with five made 3s per game. Whenever someone talks about the challenge presented by the new 3-point line, think of Stackhouse's startling sophomore.
As if connecting on 57% of his 3s isn't enough, Nesmith is also shooting 69% inside the arc. To be sure, Vanderbilt is still rebuilding and SEC play promises to bring some hard knocks to a lineup that remains quite young. Just the same, Nesmith and teammates such as Saben Lee, Scotty Pippen Jr. and Clevon Brown are gradually leading the Commodores to a better place.