Beyond the Arc VMI relies on sharpshooters

By Jack Hunter

No NCAA Division I basketball team wanted Jake Stephens four years ago. He didn’t have the strength or stamina he’d need to play center. At 6-foot-8, he wasn’t quite tall enough to compensate for his weaknesses. But Virginia Military Institute Head Coach Dan Earl saw something nobody else did.

“He talked to me about being able to see the floor,” Stephens said. “I’m thankful he saw that in me.”

Most college basketball coaches didn’t think Kamdyn Curfman showed enough promise in high school to play Division I basketball. He’d planned to attend a preparatory school after he graduated from high school to give D-I coaches another chance to see him play. But in late spring of 2019, Earl gave Curfman his first and only Division I offer.

In seven years as head coach, Earl turned his team’s offense into one of the most explosive in the nation. Now, he’s headed to Chattanooga, where he’ll serve as head coach of a team that won the Southern Conference regular season and conference titles and advanced to the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2016.

“[Earl] meant a lot to me being my first college coach,” said sophomore guard Tanner Mans. “But at the end of the day he leveled up and it is a business.”

This past season, VMI was the 8th shortest D-I team, according to kenpom.com, the leading college basketball analytics website. Earl said he and his staff may not have been able to recruit the tallest, fastest and strongest players, but they managed to find players who could shoot, pass and play smart.

“We don’t always win certainly, and we have some holes, and we’re trying to get better at certain things defensively, rebounding, toughness—things like that,” Earl said in an interview in March, before he was hired at Chattanooga

“But we have an identity. We know what we’re doing, and I think the guys are bought into it.”

VMI is a small, state military institute in rural Lexington, Virginia, and that makes it hard to compete on the recruiting trail with other Division I teams. Earl and his staff became masters at finding the hidden talents and value in players that are missed by more than 350 Division I basketball programs.

“[Coach] knows I’m slow and not the greatest athlete,” said Mans, who had planned to play for a Division II team in Kansas before receiving an offer from VMI at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. “Coach said one of the biggest parts of my game is that I’m cerebral and know what plays to make out there.”

Design by Tyler Palicia

Earl’s approach to recruiting paid off. The Keydets finished the 202122 season with a 16-16 record, marking the first time VMI had consecutive seasons with .500 or better records in a decade. VMI also won nine Southern Conference games—the most since the 1998-99 season—and beat every team in the conference once this past season. and we have a lot of people that can shoot.”

VMI earned the No. 5 seed in the 2022 SoCon tournament after finishing the conference schedule at 9-9. Four of VMI’s conference losses were by four points or less. The team also lost its last two regular season games, in which Stephens couldn’t play. He had suffered an ankle injury that had sidelined him for two weeks.

Even so, Earl’s players scored another first for VMI by earning an invitation to the College Basketball Invitational after they lost to Wofford College by two points in the SoCon tournament quarterfinals.

The program hadn’t been invited to and played in a postseason tournament since 2014. The eighth seed out of 16 teams, VMI lost in the first round to the team that would win the CBI, the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

In the 2021-2022 season, Stephens, VMI’s star center, ranked second in points and rebounds per game in the conference. He was first in field goal percentage and three-point field goal percentage in the SoCon. Stephens ranked third in the country in three-point percentage, according kenpom.com. He also won two SoCon Player of the Month awards and was named first-team All-SoCon.

Curfman led the conference in made three-point field goals and was named second-team AllSoCon.

The emphasis on the three-pointer paid off. VMI led the Southern Conference in points per game this season.

The VMI coaching staff has relied on analytics over the past few seasons to increase efficiency on offense and defense. Assistant Coach Logan Dahms, VMI’s analytics specialist, said analytics have shown how valuable skills like passing and shooting are when compared to raw athleticism and size.

“We’ve found that skill is even more of an equalizer,” Dahms said. “There’s a path to success with a roster that’s more physically limited than your opponent if you can compensate for that skill.”

VMI relies on three-pointers more than any other team in the country. Almost 47% of the team’s points are scored from behind the three-point arc, and almost 55% of the team’s

The Keydets ranked 26th out of 358 Division I teams in points per game and 17th in effective field goal percentage, according to teamrankings.com. Effective field goal percentage adjusts for the added value of a three-point jump shot versus a two-point jump shot. “We probably have as much highutility internal data as any team in the country, except for maybe 10 or 20 teams,” Dahms said. “That allows us to have a really accurate picture of our roster and the strengths and weaknesses of our team.”

He and the rest of the staff prioritize basic efficiency metrics, like how many points they score and allow per possession. They also emphasize the four components of any offensive or defensive possession: free-throw rate, offensive rebounding rate, turnover rate, and effective field goal percentage.

Dahms said the team has turned its focus on shot volume, which looks at how many shots the team takes in comparison to their opponents.

“We’re a pretty good shooting team, so we’re usually going to shoot a good effective field goal percentage compared to our opponent,” he said. “But we’ve struggled the past couple years turning teams over. So that turnover rate and rebounding rate combination causes us to oftentimes get fewer shot attempts.”

VMI forced its opponents to commit turnovers in only 14% of their possessions, which ranked in the bottom 15 of all Division I teams, according to teamrankings.com. The Keydets ranked 280th in the

country in total rebounding rate.

The team’s failure to force mistakes and grab rebounds gave opponents over five extra scoring chances per game. Extra scoring chances per game is a metric that compares how effectively each team collects offensive rebounds and forces turnovers compared to their opponents. The team tied for 349th in the country in effective scoring chances per game, according to teamrankings.com.

The Keydets also tied for last in the country on teamrankings. com in what’s known as opponent effective possession ratio. The metric looks solely at how a team’s opponent creates scoring opportunities through grabbing offensive rebounds and avoiding turnovers. VMI tied for last in the category because of an inability to turn opposing teams over and keep them from collecting offensive rebounds.

The metric shows that VMI was one of three teams in the country that allowed a higher number of offensive rebounds than the number of turnovers they generated.

Earl credited the team’s offensive success to players’ abilities to pass the ball. The team was 42nd nationally in assists per possession and 44th in assist-to-turnover ratio, according to teamrankings.com.

But the former head coach said not all teams prioritize passing when recruiting. “I give credit to [Earl] a lot because that’s a hard thing to see when you’re recruiting somebody,” Stephens said.

Earl said he’s “old school” in how he evaluates recruits because he still values the so-called eye test. That’s when coaches form opinions about recruits from watching them play instead of obsessing about their stats and measurables, like their height, wingspan and vertical leap.

But Earl said figuring out what motivates recruits is as important, if not more than the physical skills.

“We spend a lot of time on that,” he said. “If you have a certain level of basketball ability and you couple it with the right thing that makes those kids tick, that’s the kind of kids we want to coach.”

Stephens wasn’t a star coming out of Musselman High School in Inwood, West Virginia. If he had been, VMI wouldn’t have had a shot at him.

He was three inches shorter back then, at 6-foot-8. His brother, who played point guard, set him up for easy baskets.

Stephens said he’d run out of steam quickly, get tangled in his feet, and didn’t shoot nearly as many threepointers as he did this past season.

Stephens said he doesn’t blame the D-I schools that passed on him.

“I’m just thankful that I had a program take a chance on me,” he said. “It obviously worked out for both of us.”

VMI doesn’t have the gravitas of West Point, the Naval Academy or the Air Force Academy. That’s a big part of why Earl had to take chances on players like Stephens coming out of high school.

“It’s not that everybody goes here, you hand them a gun, and then they go fight in a war,” said Earl, who was an assistant coach at the U.S. Naval Academy before becoming VMI’s head coach.

Dahms said it’s important to make sure that recruits understand that there’s more to VMI than wearing a uniform, going to class every day, and complying with strict rules that cadets must follow.

“I feel good when we can really introduce people to what VMI is in the big picture, the lifelong picture, the 40-year picture,” he said. “Just getting people to that point, where they get to know us as a staff, they get to know our players, they see more of what the alumni network is like and what the VMI family is like. I think when people see that, they see how much value is here.”

Attending a military school didn’t bother Curfman and Mans.

“I got a little bit of an explanation [about VMI],” Curfman said. “But I feel like if I got the whole explanation or not, I would’ve been here anyway because [playing Division I] was my dream.”

Mans couldn’t visit VMI before committing in spring 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, he watched a five-minute video that the coaches put together for him.

“It’s just a good opportunity that I couldn’t pass up, coming from Kansas,” he said.

Associate Head Coach Ander Galfsky will serve as interim head coach while VMI searches for Earl’s replacement.

“Regardless of who our new coach is next year,” Mans said, “we as a unit will continue to get better and work extremely hard to continue the program’s momentum.”