Breaking Down McNeese Basketball Ahead of Vanderbilt’s First Round Matchup – Sports Illustrated

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The madness of March is about to commence. But for Vanderbilt basketball, it is hoping it will not be featured in one of the notable upsets in the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament.
The Commodores were given a No. 5 seed in the South Region and will be playing No. 12 seed and Southland Conference Champions McNeese Cowboys. It is an intriguing matchup of play styles that will clash midday in Oklahoma City on Thursday. It will be a high-flying and high-powered Vanderbilt team taking on a McNeese team that is hoping to muck a game up and force Vanderbilt to play as slow as it can.
So, what kind of team should Vanderbilt fans expect their Commodores to see when Vanderbilt and McNeese tipoff? Here is a statistical breakdown of the Cowboys’ offense and defense.
As aforementioned, McNeese wants to slow the game down and force Vanderbilt to play more to its speed. The Cowboys rank 246th in Division I in adjusted tempo, meaning that they are toward the bottom of college basketball in pace of play.
But it is when they are on offense that Vanderbilt can exploit McNeese if Vanderbilt is firing on all cylinders this week. McNeese is not known to have a highly-touted offensive game. While it has not lost a game since Feb. 2, McNeese has scored 80 or more just three times in that stretch. Perhaps the magic number Vanderbilt’s offense needs to get to is around the 80-point range to feel good about its chances, but it will not be easy.
Moreover, McNeese does not have much of a three-point component to its offense as it shoots the ball at just a 31.6 percent clip on the season. Its adjusted offensive efficiency ranked 91st in the country.
McNeese is a team that does take plenty of two pointers and tends to drive to the basket more than shoot shots from the outside. McNeese is led by freshman guard Larry Johnson, who averages 17.5 points and 5.5 rebounds a game.
If McNeese’s offense does give Vanderbilt trouble, it will be because of the size it has at guard with Johnson being 6-foot-4 and Javohn Garcia being 6-foot-3. That size has helped McNeese become one of the better teams at grabbing offensive rebounds and providing itself second chance opportunities. McNeese has an offensive rebound rate of 35 percent and turnover rate of just 14 percent, which ranks 33rd in the nation.
Overall, Vanderbilt’s defense is certainly good enough to stop a McNeese offense. Defensive rebounding will be critical for the Commodores, but the lack of three-point shooting from McNeese certainly helps Vanderbilt’s scouting defensively.
If McNeese is able to pull off an upset Thursday, it will more than likely be because of its defense. The Cowboys are 49th in the country in defensive efficiency, per KenPom. The average defensive possession length is 365th in the country, which means that it forces its opponents to go deep into the shot clock often.
But the stat Vanderbilt must pay attention to most is McNeese’s steal and defensive turnovers percentage. Nobody forces more turnovers in the entire sport than McNeese. About one out of every four possessions, McNeese forces a turnover (24.6 percent of the time).
Steal percentage-wise, McNeese is also first in the nation in, stealing 15.3 percent of its opponents’ possessions. Both those defensive stats say this: ball control and ball handling for Vanderbilt is of the utmost importance in the Round of 64. Having an uncharacteristically bad day of handling the ball could be the difference between a season ending or continuing.
But what McNeese does not have a lot of on defense is size. McNeese does have 6-foot-10 Jerrell Colbert, but McNeese tends to run a starting lineup of four guards due to its lack of size in the paint.
This will be an area Vanderbilt can use to its advantage. If Vanderbilt’s bigs with the likes of Jalen Washington, Devin McGlockton and AK Okereke are able to control the rebounds, Vanderbilt will have a great chance to avoid an upset.
When looking at this matchup, the two things Vanderbilt has to make sure to hone in on is taking care of the ball and making the open shots when McNeese’s defense breaks down.
Vanderbilt and McNeese tipoff Thursday at approximately 2:15 p.m. CT on TruTV.
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Graham Baakko is a writer for Vanderbilt Commodores On SI, primarily covering football, basketball and baseball. Graham is a recent graduate from the University of Alabama, where he wrote for The Crimson White, WVUA-FM, WVUA 23 as he covered a variety of Crimson Tide sports. He also covered South Carolina athletics as a sportswriting intern for GamecockCentral.
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