Hello! This is the start of a new series titled What Went Right (or Wrong), a five-week offseason series about teams that heavily over- or underachieved in 2022-23. This first week is free, but the next four weeks will be behind a paywall. If you reply to me with the phrase “offseason deal,” I’ll DM you a code that gives you 40% off for a year, aka $18 for a full season (+offseason)’s worth of content.
At a certain point in history, what Southern Miss basketball had become over the last several years was unfathomable. The combined Larry Eustachy/Donnie Tyndall run of 2009-2014 (123 wins overall, 36-12 C-USA record over the final three) is one thing, of course, but this is a program with a relatively steady baseline. From 1985 to 2014, a span of 29 seasons, Southern Miss only made three NCAA Tournaments, but they consistently managed to be competitive.
Among those 29 seasons, just five saw four or fewer conference wins, and every single season saw the Golden Eagles at least accumulate double-digit wins on the whole. A beacon of success they were not, but they were never truly wretched. Then, Tyndall left for Tennessee, and USM hired Doc Sadler to replace him. Right before the 2014-15 season, Southern Miss got hit with some bad news that they surely already knew a little bit about: Tyndall committed recruiting violations to an absurd extent.
Suddenly, 123 wins in a five-year span became this monstrosity.
Sadler left as soon as he possibly could - aka, after that 20-13 season - and USM plucked Jay Ladner, he of a 76-88 career record, from Southeastern Louisiana. SELA had managed a solid 22-12 season in 2017-18, their second-most wins in a season in school history, but USM was a different beast to tangle with entirely. For three years, Ladner simply couldn’t make it work: single-digit wins in all three seasons, a 10-43 conference record, and a team that entered 2022-23 ranked 324th by KenPom.
They were merely the lowest-ranked Sun Belt squad by a full 50 spots. All appeared hopeless, particularly for a team that ended up returning just 34% of minutes and 24% of points from a 7-26 basketball team. What happened next was obviously very easy to see coming.
A 25-8 record, a first-place Sun Belt finish after being picked dead last in the conference, and more Quadrant 1 wins (two) than the program had from 2015-2022 (one).
So: how’d they do it? How did 2023’s greatest success story come from a program exiting its worst season in school history?
Step 1: Completely overhaul your roster
Of the 2021-22 Southern Miss Golden Eagles, an impressive zero players were seniors. In the old days - AKA, like 2018 or earlier - this would have meant ~90% of minutes and scoring returning and a huge analytical jump to be expected year-over-year. Had USM returned their 2021-22 roster, there’s a good chance they would’ve ranked #1 in America in minutes continuity. That stat isn’t everything, but considering the top five teams in minutes continuity in 2022-23 won an average of 23.4 games each and won 70% of their conference games, a jump in performance should’ve been expected.
That would’ve been fine had Ladner and Southern Miss kept the same roster. Here’s the 2021-22 roster; the names not struck out played for the 2022-23 team.
Of the six guys who played 16+ minutes a night for USM in ‘21-22 - all of whom had the option to return - just one, forward DeAndre Pinckney, came back. Ladner had to remake the roster during an offseason where he was very much on the hot seat. How do you convince players to come play for a team that just went 1-17 in conference play?
Well, having playing time available in spades certainly helps. But every move Ladner made seemed to hit, and each major portal acquisition filled a specific role that elevated Southern Miss to new heights:
Neftali Alvarez (PG, Mercer) missed a significant portion of the season due to injury, but when he was available, Southern Miss’s defense hit a new level. Lineups with Alvarez at point held opponents to a schedule-adjusted 96.7 points per 100 possessions, which is kind of a big deal when your team gave up 111.8 per 100 the year prior.
Donovan Ivory (wing F, Green Bay) was a key player for a 5-25 Green Bay team, but he was a key player for a 5-25 Green Bay team. Not much should’ve been expected here. Instead, he played the part of a strong defender and role player. While Synergy data isn’t necessarily perfect, it points out Ivory as a tremendous finisher at the rim, which was key for a team that didn’t have terrific deep shooting.
Austin Crowley (combo G, Mississippi) was forced to play out of position as a point guard for a bad Ole Miss team; he found a home with USM as a 2-guard that could handle the ball well but not be forced to handle it all the time. Crowley was arguably USM’s best on and off-ball defender, their best all-around scorer, and their go-to guy in crunch time. Not bad for a player who started just four of his final 23 games under Kermit Davis.
Felipe Haase (wing F/PF, Mercer) was entering his sixth (!) season of college at his third school; while playing a similar schedule at Mercer, he’d averaged around 12-15 points a game and 6-8 rebounds. For USM, Haase merely posted his highest PPG, blocks per game, FT%, and shot 41% from three on nearly five attempts a game. All of that is nice, but it’s massive when you’re a 6’9”, 253 power forward that can score from anywhere and when he posts the best PPG figure a forward/center has had for the Golden Eagles since 2012-13.
Had these four players merely brought over their scoring averages from their previous schools, you would’ve expected Southern Miss to score about 4 points fewer per game on average. Even that would’ve been optimistic; the only player transferring down from a tougher conference than the Sun Belt was Crowley. It would’ve been reasonable to guess that Haase, Ivory, and/or Alvarez would all be less efficient against a harsher expected schedule.
Every move USM made - both addition and subtraction - worked. Every player who returned got better. In particular, Crowley and Haase were the perfect pair for a team that hadn’t had good guard or forward play in years.
So: they made over the roster. What else did Ladner do to change the narrative?
Step 2: Also change everything you did offensively the previous year
Technically, this is the side of the ball that took the larger leap forward, though both the offense and defense in 2021-22 were horrendous. The 2021-22 offense featured a ton of inefficient pick-and-rolls, which is a problem when you have neither an efficient point guard nor a dominant paint presence to run said actions. By the end of the season, they were more or less on autopilot. When you’re 1-17 in conference play, can you really be blamed?
2021-22 USM took very few threes, struggled to score inside or outside, didn’t generate quality looks from much of anywhere, turned the ball over a lot, and didn’t produce second chances on the boards. Very much a “aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln” thing going on, obviously. While moving from the slightly tougher C-USA to the Sun Belt could be expected to help a hair, that alone wasn’t going to change things for the 341st-best team in the 2021-22 college basketball season.
What USM and Ladner did do, however, is alter their offense to best fit their personnel. Was it beautiful? Of course not; a 138th-place finish is a spot ahead of Florida, who were one of the toughest offenses to watch this season. But being 138th simply meant Southern Miss were far more functional on the attacking end than they had been in years.
First, Ladner largely scaled back the ball-screen heavy offense. USM ran fewer ball screens than 88% of D-1 men’s teams this year, and it wasn’t like they were efficient or created good shots when they ran them anyway. They figured out it wasn’t going to be a strength. Instead, a lot of actions were initiated through the Golden Eagles’ excellent frontcourt of Haase and Pinckney. Haase ranked in the 76th-percentile nationally in post-up efficiency, and for a big man, he was quite the talented floor spacer and passer.
The Golden Eagles became a much more inside-out oriented offense, one that relied far less on self-creation in the midrange. Haase especially was tremendous at scoring on his own, but he was able to find Pinckney or Denijay Harris cutting to the rim with the attention he drew. Along with this, Southern Miss went from an awful second-chance offense to a team that nearly cracked the top 100 in OREB%. It wasn’t because of any one player but rather a stylistic, conscious shift; only Harris and Pinckney ranked in the top 400 nationally in OREB%, and neither were top 300 guys. As a team, though, they simply knew where to attack.
Plus, Alvarez (when available) helped offensive spacing as the best perimeter passer on the team. Despite still struggling with deep shooting on the whole, this was a much-improved all-around offense that played to the strengths it had and attempted to work past the weaknesses it couldn’t erase.
Step 3: Get into the zone
There were a few hallmarks of Southern Miss’s defense from 2019 to 2022 - namely that it was pretty easy to score on - but one of them was not a serious press defense nor much of a zone. Ladner and staff dabbled in both at times, but rarely did they commit to the bit. In 2021-22, USM ran a zone just 7% of the time and a press 6%; neither were very effective.
The path to scoring on Southern Miss in 2021-22 was much like the path its offense attempted to envision but couldn’t execute: draw their frontcourt out to the perimeter over and over and run ball screens to great effect.
In desperate need of some sort of a change, 2022-23 saw Southern Miss completely change their defensive character.
Zone: 7.2% of the time in 2021-22; 35.4% in 2022-23
Press: 5.9% of the time in 2021-22; 28.6% in 2022-23
With his back against the wall, Ladner and his staff simply dialed up the pressure to an unforeseen amount. It worked wonders. Southern Miss forced its highest defensive TO% (19.9%, 78th) since 2014-15, its lowest eFG% allowed (57th, 47.8%) since 2006-07, and held their opponent to 1 PPP or lower in 20 of 33 games. In all, it was the best defense the school had seen since Donnie Tyndall roamed the sidelines.
However, this wasn’t just a case of great shooting luck. Southern Miss did benefit from opponents shooting about 2% worse than expected on threes, but considering this impact would’ve been a whopping 1.2 points per game, that doesn’t tell the whole story. For the first time in years, USM began running shooters off the line to some extent and forcing them to finish in the midrange or on runners against a lengthy defense.
This sort of hybrid defense - a zone that could look anything like a matchup zone, a 1-2-2, a 2-3, a 3-2, or even a 1-3-1 depending on the possession - really made opponents have to think and take some pretty ugly shots. No wonder their eFG% allowed was as good as it was.
With a second year to play against this system, it stands to reason that Sun Belt opponents could find some more success against it. However, this reminds me a little bit of playing against a Texas A&M with a lot less money and hype. I charted several possessions where even I wasn’t 100% sure what you’d call the defense they were playing. Was it a true man-to-man? Was it a matchup zone? Was it a 1-2-2 zone with a roving guard at the top playing man? (They did run that exact thing against UAB and Jelly Walker.) Sometimes, the best thing you can do is make college kids think too much.
Step 4*: Trying to sustain this
Going forward, Southern Miss finds itself in a fascinating position. While COVID-era experience rates a bit differently than that of pre-pandemic times, it’s obviously worth noting that every member of USM’s main rotation was a junior or senior. Haase’s eligibility is up, while Crowley has entered the NBA Draft with the option to return for one more go at it. If Crowley returns, as is generally assumed, Southern Miss should return about 62% of the minutes from a team that won 25 games.
While no situation is exactly the same, following up The Year with The Year, Part 2 has proven difficult. The nine teams that have jumped 150 or more spots in KenPom from one year to the next since 2017 have won an average of four fewer games the next season. While a 21-win season would still be an excellent follow-up to a 25-8 run, the data suggests that it’ll be really hard for USM to level up beyond the extent they already have.
Still, the seeds of a quality follow-up are there. Ladner seems to have found the offensive and defensive system that best fit his personnel at Southern Miss, which makes sense for a coach that took a couple of years to get things going at Southeastern Louisiana. He may have to hit on another portal move, possibly even two, to keep things progressing forward. If he hits at the level he did prior to 2022-23, Southern Miss should do whatever they can to keep him around.