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Thanks wuf, I was wondering why that wasn’t posting.
Where your argument still uses numbers to compare and justify, I merely took numbers completely away from the decision process. The ‘eye test’ is subjective, but you still have actual on-court results to rely on. To me, it was a weak schedule with few things truly standing out that screamed ‘select me!’ – even if one feels the team passed any ‘eye test. I’m considering the entire body of work.
But you’re still using numbers. You’re using win-loss records. I doubt you watched most of the games SMU played in their OOC schedule. I doubt you saw any games those teams played. You’re going by their W/L record, what you know about their conference, and the fact that their RPI is bad. But again, I’m not arguing that their OOC schedule was good. I’m arguing that they blew away most of it (which is what good teams do) and had a bunch of good games in conference, and their overall schedule wasn’t nearly as bad as RPI suggested it was.
The RPI formula has been adjusted several times over the years, so “arbitrary” isn’t really accurate. You’ve mentioned several other formulas that you claim are better. While it’s obvious that they’re different, it’s not obvious that they are in fact better.
It’s arbitrary because there’s no reasoning, either mathematical or practical, for the weights that things have been given, and there never has been, as I pointed out in my post above.
I don’t want a “formula” that claims to be predictive. The job of the Selection Committee is to evaluate what has already happened, not predict the future.
This is a line that the NCAA has often brought up, but it’s a complete straw man. What we’re trying to find is the best teams. The way you determine who is the best team is to see if they beat other teams. Putting aside matchup considerations (which none of these systems bother with anyway), saying “team X has played better than team Y” and “team X is likely to beat team Y” are exactly the same thing, only one is phrased descriptively and one is phrased predictively. If your system does a good job at figuring out how good teams are, then it will have predictive value.
Using margin of victory is a double-edged sword as discovered during the BCS era. Plus there are many games where the final margin is not indicative of how close the game was for 39 minutes…then the fouling and missed 3-pt shots skew the final margin.
Margin of victory is a better indicator of team quality than W/L record. This has been shown over and over again in studies from various sports and various skill levels. Over a large enough sample size, if we were to predict the results of college basketball games and you used only W/L record and I used only MoV, not only would I beat you, but it wouldn’t be particularly close. Are there individual games where MoV doesn’t indicate how close the game was? Sure, but I don’t actually care about individual games, I care about games in the aggregate. And even if that is true, it’s not an argument of not using MoV, it’s just an argument that MoV doesn’t tell you everything (which no one would ever assert). MoV still gives you way more information than W/L record. Also, if you’re really afraid of people running up the score (which is a seriously insignificant problem), you can add something to your formula which gives diminishing results for blowouts (as BPI does).
Though I don’t entirely agree with the methodology he uses, this is a nice little article showing that at least a couple other systems outperform the RPI in predicting NCAA Tournament results
https://harvardsportsanalysis.wordpress.com/2013/02/19/rpi-prediction/
There’s also a really long article here at Basketball Prospectus that talks about the history of RPI, some of its weaknesses, and some of the ways that coaches can try to game it.
http://www.basketballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=2451
Lastly, you don’t really even need a side-by-side test to see which system is better. RPI is ludicrous on a conceptual level. Why is strength of schedule worth 75% of a team’s rating? Because we said so, that’s why. Why is a home game suddenly worth twice as much if you lose it? Who the heck knows? Because we said so. Everything about it is arbitrary.
Again, nothing is stopping the committee from making decisions NOT based on numbers. If SMU was denied mostly due to non-conference schedule, then let’s take a look at it without quantitative data:
You’re entirely missing the point. Nobody is arguing that SMU’s non-conference schedule was good. Why does that matter more than their entire body of work? As I mentioned above, Wellman’s quote wasn’t just about their OOC SOS, it was that their whole season strength of schedule was so much weaker than anyone else in the field. As I pointed out, if you use better ranking systems to find SOS, it still comes in on the low end, but well within the range of many other at large teams. Their OOC SOS was bad, but not much worse than teams like Ohio State, Cincinnati, Iowa and Pitt when you use an actually competent rating system (again, remember that when you’re talking about the SOS component the NCAA references, you’re talking about SOS as calculated by the RPI formula).
The only above average teams they played against they lost – Virginia and Arkansas.
How are we defining “above-average” though? Tournament teams? Top 50/100 RPI? If so, you’re using the thing you’re arguing for to defend itself. In terms of national average, Wyoming is an “above-average” team that SMU beat by 8 on their home court. Rhode Island is an “above-average” team that SMU whipped by 30.
Also, why doesn’t SMU get credit for a close loss to Virginia at a neutral site (which, I’d wager, is better than the best win of several teams that made the field)? Why don’t they get credit for not only beating the average-to-bad teams that they played, but wiping the floor with them?
I’m not advocating that we should use only a computerized ranking system to select the teams. What I am arguing is that the ranking system we use should be better. Any of the systems out there, BPI, Sagarin, Kenpom, I don’t care which, all of them are not just better than RPI, they’re MUCH better.
In the case of SMU, it’s not that they were kept out because people wouldn’t look at the numbers. The committee said they passed the eye test, but when they looked at the RPI and the RPI-generated SOS, they weren’t good enough. The problem isn’t that they didn’t check the numbers, the problem is that they checked the wrong numbers.
If you don’t see a problem with a rating system that is arbitrarily weighted, has little predictive value, and doesn’t incorporate margin of victory, then I guess we’re done here.
So the RPI and the Selection Committee reward teams for playing and beating good teams and penalizes those that don’t. Personally, I’m OK with that philosophy.
That’s fine. My philosophy is that I’d like the committee to actually reward the best teams, which is what they’re supposed to do.
Not true at all. I’ve torn apart the RPI calks in the past. I may have to try and find that or do a new one.
RPI is 25% your record (with some [bad] adjustment for home/away since 2004), 50% your opponents’ record, and 25% your opponents’ opponents’ record. That’s how it’s calculated. So an individual win or loss for you has more effect than an individual win or loss by an opponent’s opponent (because there are so many more games that go into that 25%), but in cumulative, the record of your opponents’ opponents is given the same weight as your record.
SMU fell into the same pit that has swallowed many teams and coaches that insist on scheduling an OOC schedule that was an absolute joke. It happened to VT and Seth Greenburg several times, got Herb at ASU once, and got Penn State several years ago. It’s a repeatable phenomen that has been discussed here as well as by Jerry Palm (now at CBS Sports).
You can argue whether this is fair or not, but that is a different argument. Combine a poor OOC schedule with middle of conference regular season results and poor conference tourney performance and you will quite often end up in the NIT.
But that’s exactly the point. I’m arguing that the system is broken, and RPI is a large part of why that is, because it weighs strength of schedule so heavily and calculates it so poorly. I think everyone on the selection committee would tell you that they’re trying to select the best 68 teams (or however many it is when you take away automatic bids). That’s their goal, to get the 68 teams that have had the best seasons. By any reasonable measure, SMU was easily one of the best 68 teams. Not just barely, but definitely. In the upper half, in fact. If the system in place is keeping them out, the system is wrong.
Even that quote you referenced is referring to the SOS portion of the RPI. When you use RPI, SMU’s SOS was 129 (or, since all I can find now is end-of-year, post-tournament numbers, 135) according to RPI. Going by BPI, their SOS is 87, not far off from St. Louis (76), Tennessee (84), Creighton (81) and San Diego State (91), who all got at-large bids. Going by Kenpom, they were 93, again very close to teams like San Diego State and Cincinnati.
Again, just to be clear, I’m not attacking anyone and I don’t have a problem with these posts because RPI is still being used by the selection committee. I just think it’s absolutely crazy that they are still using it.
Well – it’s one of the NCAA’s tools to measure success. One could argue it’s the backbone on which all criteria are based…. RPI determines your quality wins, SOS and your ranking… And there’s definitely a correlation to seeding.
And to me, that’s a serious problem. Because RPI isn’t just a simplistic tool, it’s a bad tool. The way RPI is calculated, the games you win and lose are exactly as important as the games your opponents’ opponents win and lose. That’s absolutely crazy. There’s no justification for any of the weights applied to the RPI formula (and there never has been). It’s a relic from an era when nobody was thinking about sports statistics in the way we are now, and there’s genuinely no reason anyone should be using it.
I haven’t seen the actual hard numbers but I suspect a “road” win over a team ranked between 150-250 may be worth more than a home win over 40-85…I would like to see those numbers.
Home wins and road losses get multiplied by .6 in the calculation. Road wins and home losses get multiplied by 1.4 (so a road win is more than twice as valuable as a home win over the same team). This is also a terrible way to calculate how good a team is, but at least they’re trying.
If RPI was blindly used to fill the NCAAT, I would agree. But the Selection Committee has an entire process that it goes through to fill and seed the tournament. RPI is clearly a part of that process, but still only one part.
Sure, and since we’re not in the room we really have no way of knowing how influential RPI is. But the fact that we’re using it at all is still crazy. If we’re trying to figure out the best 64 teams, using RPI is counterproductive to that.
If the process were terrible, then it would be easy to point out teams that were unfairly left out of the NCAAT. It’s always possible to argue Team A vs B, but I can’t really think of any recent teams that clearly deserved to be in, but were left out.
I mean, I can go digging back through tourney snubs, but just last year SMU clearly should’ve been in. They were ranked in the top 25, the NCAA committee even said they “passed the eye test”, but RPI doesn’t care about close losses and blowout wins, and the way RPI calculates strength of schedule is dumb, so their resume didn’t look as good to the committee as it should have. Better ranking systems (BPI, Kenpom, Sagarin) all had them ranked right around 30th in the country, and had their schedule ranked much higher (still not great, but inside the top 100 instead of 135th, as RPI had it). I’d just about guarantee that if you replaced all the RPI-based numbers in that selection committee room with Kenpom numbers or Sagarin numbers, SMU makes it, and we have a slightly better tournament because of it.
Not a knock against this post, as I understand that RPI is a thing that the selection committee supposedly uses to make their decisions, but posts like these always remind me how absolutely bonkers it is that we’re still using RPI to talk about which teams deserve tourney berths. It’s such a terrible, meaningless statistic, and it boggles my mind that it wasn’t phased out years ago.
That’s two great defensive efforts in a row. If we keep that up, we can hang with anyone.
Had to listen to most of the game before catching the last 10 minutes on TV, so more in-depth thoughts will have to wait till I catch the replay. Just a couple things though.
– The ascension of Cat Barber continues. His decision making and aggressiveness are just at a totally different level than they were early in the season, and he’s maintained his defensive effort as well. He had a play late in the second half that was just awesome, and one he never would’ve made earlier in the season. He got a big switched onto him and attacked, got denied, patiently brought it back out, attacked again on the baseline, drew help, and made a beautiful pass to Anya in the middle of the paint. Just a gorgeous play where he didn’t rush anything and made all the right decisions. If he works hard in the offseason at adding some muscle and improving his finishing around the rim, he has a chance to be crazy good.
– The work by Beejay (as well as the back line help rotations) against the pick and roll was outstanding today. Beejay has often struggled this season when put in P&Rs, getting lost in between showing and getting back to his man (witness the crucial and-1 play down the stretch of the Virginia game). He was great today, repeatedly shutting things down and not letting his guy (often Harrell) get a free run to the rim.
I don’t really understand the hand wringing about Gott at this point in the season, particularly after a game in which the team played very well. Gott has significantly exceeded expectations in 2 of his 3 full seasons here, and I don’t think he’s under performing this season with respect to the roster.
The fact is, we’ve played a brutal conference schedule and we’ve been really unlucky. I know, nobody wants to talk about luck as a factor in basketball games (and, to be clear, if I’m a coach I’m not talking to my players about how unlucky we’ve been, but as someone analyzing a team’s performance, I’m going to take it into consideration). Studies have continually shown that the outcomes of close games really comes down to luck, and most teams, even great teams, are going to win about 50% of their close games on average. We’ve had rotten luck this year. We’ve gone 2-7 in games decided by less than 5 points. If you flip two of those games, we’re actually in really great shape. And if you think this is some chronic failure on Gott’s part, the last 3 years we’ve gone 10-7, 6-6, and 6-6 in games decided by less than 5 points.
As I’ve said before, my problem with Gott is at the defensive end, and I am disappointed that we haven’t been better this year in that regard. There are major issues on that side of the ball that need to be addressed, and I haven’t seen any evidence yet that they will be. I’ve been saying since before the season though, next year is the one that really matters in regards to seeing just how good we can be under Gott. Every significant contributor on next year’s team will have been with us at least a year, and we’ll have graduated the team’s worst defender. If they can’t mold that roster into a competent defensive unit, regardless of what the win/loss results are, then we’re going to have a limited ceiling with this coaching squad.
Xphoenix, you’re right. The quick shots all came after the flagrant foul. We had the ball 9 times for a total of 80 seconds after the flagrant.
But that’s not really true. 1) We certainly had quick shots before the flagrant, and 2) you can’t really count the last 3 possessions, since we were down 5 with 45 seconds to go, of course they were quick shots.
The real question isn’t “did we take quick shots?” The real question is “did we take good shots?” So lets look at those possessions down the stretch after the flagrant was called.
1) Cat makes an and-one layup, 12 seconds left on the shot clock.
– Fantastic possession and great result. No complaints here.
2) Lacey missed 3 off of Turner penetration, 26 seconds left on shot clock.
– It’s a relatively quick shot, but it’s also a good one. The ball actually moves really well on this possession, and Turner pump-fakes, drives to pull in help, and gets Lacey a great open look in rhythm. It’s a terrific look that we’d take any day of the week.
3) Cat missed layup, 28 seconds on the shot clock.
– Again quick, and again I have no problem with it. It’s terrific recognition by Cat. Both of the interior help defenders have their backs to him and the whole side of the floor is cleared out for him. It’s a defensive lapse on Virginia’s part, Cat gets all the way to the rim, and Perrantes makes a great defensive play to make it a tough finish. You can complain about Barber not being strong enough to finish, you can’t complain about the shot selection.
4) Turner missed 3 in semi-transition. 32 seconds left on the shot clock.
– This is the only shot I’d say is actually poor shot selection. Turner gets a decent look (Brogden is sleeping a bit, and gives Turner more space than he should have) and it’s understandable to want to get a good shot before UVA gets their defense set, and that’s a shot that Turner is comfortable shooting, but we probably could’ve gotten a better shot.
5) Lacey layup over Gill, 12 seconds left on the shot clock.
– The ball movement actually isn’t particularly good on this possession, but Lacey gets Gill to switch onto him, and he takes him off the bounce for a tricky little finger roll (probably a tougher finish than the shot Cat missed earlier, but Lacey makes this one).
6) Martin missed 3 after Lacey kick-out, 20 seconds on the shot clock.
– As I said earlier, I think Lacey makes the right pass here, and if Martin takes that shot in rhythm right off the catch it’s a really good look. After he jab steps and hesitates, I wish he had pulled it back outShots didn’t fall, and some bounces on rebounds didn’t go our way and we lost. There were certainly moments of poor shot selection earlier in the game (as every team has), but other than the Turner 3, I have no real problems with our shot selection down the stretch.
The flagrant on Martin is a terrible, inexcusable call. If you’ve played pickup basketball before, you’ve probably done what Martin did at least once. You’re running back up the court and not really paying attention, and you ram into a guy. It happens all the time. If Nolte doesn’t act like he’s been shot with a cannon, nobody even notices.
The 3rd foul on Brogden was debatable. He was doing a pretty darn good job of moving his feet and not reaching in on Trevor. The 4th foul was really bad. He had inside position and clearly beat Martin to the spot to intercept that pass. It shouldn’t have been a foul, and if it had happened to us we’d be up in arms about it.
As to State’s shot selection:
We have some issues with shot selection. Kyle often has too quick of a trigger on long twos. Ralston often takes tougher shots earlier in the shot clock than I would like (though he has largely cut the long 2s out of his game, which is a huge improvement from last season). Lacey takes tough shots, but he makes a whole ton of them, so I really don’t have a huge issue with his shot selection.
Our average time of possession is 19.1 seconds. That’s 258th in the country, which is well slower than the national average. Quick shots tend to stand out in our minds, but we don’t shoot an abnormally large number of them. The problem is less the quick shots, and more what happens after the first shot opportunity is shut down. We often have a primary action that starts a play (Turner running off a set of baseline screens, Lacey/Cat P&R with a big, etc.), but when that action gets shut down there’s not a secondary option to switch to. The defense bends to shut down the first option, but there’s nothing in place to take advantage of how the defense has shifted. The ball doesn’t ping around the perimeter to create open shots. The upshot of this is that we’ll work an offensive play and it’ll get shut down, then the ball gets brought back up top with 15-20 seconds left and Lacey/Cat pound the ball while they offense sets up a different play. So we’re using a lot of clock, but we’re not getting a lot of motion and moving the defense around.
All that said, our offense is ranked 38th in the country, so it’s not like it’s a disaster.
Live by the 3, die by the 3
We don’t have to shoot a 3 all the freaking time.
On the season, State shoots threes on 30.9% of our field goal attempts. That’s 258th in the nation, and 9th in the ACC. We are not a team that shoots a huge amount of 3 pointers.
For this game, we shot 17 3s out of 57 FGAs. That’s 29.8%, just under our season average. We did not shoot an abnormally large number of 3s in this game. We did not shoot them well. We also didn’t shoot 2s very well, largely because Virginia is a really, really good defensive team. Regardless, if Ralston hits that quick 3 in transition (a shot he shoots, and makes, a lot) or Caleb hits the wide-open 3 in the corner, none of us are talking about this.
Also, by the by, I think Trevor absolutely made the right play on that drive. He hadn’t beat Brogden off the dribble, and Anthony Gill is standing right there with 2 feet in the paint. He gets Caleb a wide-open look with probably 5-6 feet of space between him and the defender, and he should’ve just shot the ball off the catch.
The flagrant was bad, but so were the two consecutive foul calls on Brogden, which probably had a bigger impact on the game. I mean, as far as the officals’ competence, the flagrant is way worse, since they looked at the replay and still called it (seriously, just inexcusable to call that), but in terms of game impact the Brogden fouls were pretty poor calls that probably helped us more than the flagrant hurt us.
Absolutely no shame in that loss. It’s another close one, and in infuriating fashion, but our guys played their butts off against a great team. That’s the best defense we’ve played all year, and I honestly didn’t think this team had that in them. We missed a whole bunch of 3s that were pretty good looks from guys who normally hit them, and the ball just didn’t roll our way at the end. It’s disappointing because this was our best shot at getting another signature win, but I’m not upset at all with how our guys played.
Cat Barber has been playing like the guy we all were hoping he would be over the last 3 games. That’s a huge positive sign going forward. If he stays this aggressive, it gives us an element on offense that we desperately need.
I didn’t expect this team to be great this year. I expected us to be on the bubble, probably a little outside (which is where we are now), and that an NCAA bid would be a success with this roster. My problem with this team and with Gottfried is the same problem that I had coming into the year. They’re bad defensively, and I don’t know if that’s ever going to change.
This is a good offensive team. We rank 31st in the country on offense (for comparison, last year we were 25th). That’s not elite, but it’s very good, and frankly it’s much better than I expected we’d be this season. Of course, I didn’t know Trevor Lacey would be this good, but it’s still an impressive showing for a team that graduated the second best offensive player in the country last year. There are places to make improvement, sure (I’d like to see more secondary action off screens for Ralston, less long 2s early in the shot clock, and quicker/smoother transition into the next set if an initial play is shut down), but on the whole I think the offensive talent on this roster has been well utilized.
As for player development, I think there are some really encouraging signs. The Martin twins are much improved from the beginning of the year, and have the look of being really solid players for years to come. Abu is almost unrecognizable from the player he was at the beginning of the year. It’s startling how much he’s improved. Cat seems to have responded very positively to his benching, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen him play with as much confidence on the offensive end.
The problems are at the defensive end, where this team is somehow worse (in relation to the national average) than last year, which feels like it should be impossible. We’re ranked 142nd nationally in defensive efficiency. Among ACC teams, that puts us barely ahead of Notre Dame and Virginia Tech, and well above Pitt, but well behind everyone else. It basically comes down to two factors. First, we rebound poorly. The only one of our big men who is a plus rebounder is Freeman, and he’s bad at everything else. The others tend to overcommit to the shot block (which is especially bad when both big men are trying to block the same shot), and have poor box out technique. The problem is compounded by the fact that Ralston completely loses track of his man a stunning number of times, and allows guys to sneak in from the wing for rebounds.
On that note, the other problem is perimeter defense. Cat is a really good defender, and has had several excellent games at that end. The wings are often a disaster though. Lacey is rarely egregiously bad, but he’s most often defending the weakest perimeter option, and seems to save most of his energy for offense. And that means that Ralston isn’t guarding the least threatening player, and that’s often catastrophic. While he can be a reasonably competent on-ball defender, Ralston loses his man all the time in off-ball action, gets screened easily, and often gets caught in no-man’s land between being and help and covering his guy. What that all adds up to is a perimeter rotation that often gives up far too many open looks, and when are staying in front of people they’re never exerting pressure. That last thing is the killer, as we are ranked 339th in forcing turnovers. 339th! There are only 11 teams worse are taking the ball from their opponent than we are. Between the offensive rebounds and the lack of turnovers, it doesn’t really matter if we make shots tough, opponents are getting so many more opportunities than we are that they’re bound to hit enough eventually.
After 4 years of Gottfried, I just don’t know if the guy can coach defense, or emphasizes it enough that the players buy in. This team has defensive talent. They have the athletes to hang with most teams. I’m not asking for an elite defense, but 142nd is inexcusable with this roster. It’s not just player development or effort though, it’s scheme too. If you’ve got a bunch of shot blockers who aren’t great rebounders (which we do), you should be leveraging that advantage by pressuring the perimeter. If you create turnovers, you don’t have to worry about the rebound for that possession. If you gamble and miss, you’ve got plenty of back line help. Instead, we let opposing teams dictate the way that they’re going to attack us. This team never imposes their will on defense, never. The closest we’ve come is in the Duke game, when we trapped Okafor pretty aggressively. For the most part, however, we’re a passive defense, and it’s really hard to win that way.
Cat constantly was picking up his dribble in the corners. He was weak with the ball and forgot how to dribble for a game. And he couldn’t make a free throw when we really needed him to. I don’t like to get on players but that is what transpired last night. Obviously not all on him but we needed a steady presence and he didn’t provide it.
I rewatched the game today before making that post, because I’d felt when watching live that Cat was playing very well on the whole, and wanted to watch against with a focus on him.
He beat the press with his dribble a lot more than I bet you remember him doing. There were several occasions when he spun away from double teams or just straight-up beat them down the court with his speed. Did he get caught in the corners some? Yes he did (though again, probably less than you think). Like I said, there were times when he needed to attack, retreat, then attack towards the middle. He’s not as good at that as Lacey is. But it’s extremely difficult to bring the ball up against an aggressive, trapping defense when you have no release valve to pass to, and the simple fact is that the coaches didn’t game plan this press very well. Also, he did not turn the ball over on any of those times he picked up the ball in the corner. In fact, of his 5 turnovers, only 2 are ones I would consider bad turnovers. Of the other 3, 1 was a schematic problem where Washington wasn’t where he should have been (middle of the court), on the press break. 1 was the fault of the inbounder, and the last was the dubious jump ball call.
Yes, he missed free throws. But if he makes 2 more of them, we’re talking about what a good game he had at the line, hitting 9-11, and we still lose by 12. Do I wish our PG was a better FT shooter? Absolutely, but I’m not going to harp on him shooting his season average from the line when he did so many other good things in this game. He was beat up from start to finish, but he stayed in attack mode and played, again, spectacular defense.
Before we get going, you need to know that the lead picture above^ was called a jump ball and not a foul. This kind of smothering defense and officiating helped create 23 turnovers for the Pack
No foul here! A fore arm in the back. Arms extended at 45 degree angles. Momentum with the body pushing Barber off balance and forcing him to rush a play/pass. This kind of ‘defense’ wears on you during a game.
Similarly, I think the following picture was from a possession where Trevor Lacey was actually called for a charge. No kidding.
Those are all complaints about the officiating, and they’re whiny, “look at all the calls they missed” complaints. And as I said above, at least one of those pictures is wildly misleading. It reads like sour grapes, and it’s not a good look. No, nobody blamed the loss entirely on the officials, but there was a lot of griping about it, particularly since it was, in my opinion, a very competently called game.
We’re not a top 25 team. It’s not embarrassing to lose on a neutral floor to a top 25 team. I thought we’d be a little closer than this, but I’m hardly surprised that we lost.
The whining about the officiating is really offputting. You can find isolated pictures that look bad for either side. That picture of Trevor was absolutely an offensive foul when watched in real time. The game was called consistently and we shot 35 free throws. The problem wasn’t with the officials, the problem was that we missed a ton of free throws, had no plan against the press and weren’t strong with the ball. The later has been a problem all year, it just hasn’t hurt us until this game.
I’m putting this one firmly on Gottfried. There’s a difference between having young players not execute a plan, and having no plan. This was the latter. Most of the time there was no release valve for the point guard, and when there was a pass to the big man, there was no secondary action in place for him to have a place to go with it. They sliced up the passive Tennessee press a couple games ago, and thought they could do the same thing against an aggressive WVU press. And it wasn’t just the press, it was the way they trapped in the corners and on pick and rolls. We didn’t have motion in our sets to give escape valves and rotate the ball. Even when we beat the press, it never looked pretty, it mostly looked like we lucked into it.
Another coaching issue. I don’t know if Abu was told that he shouldn’t be dribbling the ball against a press, but he should have been, and if he ignored it the first time, there’s no reason he should’ve done it again. If you’re going to play a freshman extensive minutes against a heavy pressing team, he has to know what his responsibilities are, and Abu didn’t. Also, there’s absolutely no way he should be taking that 3. Those are coaching issues.
Cat tried to go behind the back a couple times against the press and lost the ball almost immediately. He had a couple times when he should have attack dribbled and backed away instead of crossing half court. He missed too many free throws. Thus ends my list of complaints for Cat Barber in this game. I thought on the whole he played great basketball. As I said, I think the problems with the press were largely a coaching problem, not a problem with Cat. He was more aggressive in the half court than he’s been all year, he got a bunch of free throws, made a few really nice passes out of penetration, and played spectacular defense. It cannot be overstated how good his defense was on Staten. Staten had 24 points, but most of those came either in transition, when Lee was on the floor, or when there was a switch (and none of the switches were Cat’s fault, I checked). Here’s what happened when Cat was matched up in the half court against one of the nation’s best point guards:
Cat drew 2 charging fouls on Staten and had a terrific steal in transition. He also forced a turnover on a bad pass and drew an offensive foul by fighting through a screen.
Staten went 4-9 from the field.
-2 makes were long, contested two-pointers.
-1 was a midrange jumper where Cat got wiped out by a great screen.
-The last one was a three-dribble floater in the lane where, honestly, Beejay should’ve blocked it.It was as good as you can play defense against a great player. Staten never got a clean look at the rim unless he already had a head of steam in transition. He never blew by Cat and drew help for a kickout (in fact, a couple times he did kick out to shooters, it was because Ralston helped too far when he didn’t need to, Cat was still in front of Staten). He was GREAT. There are a lot of reasons why we lost this game. Cat Barber is not one of them.
Haven’t been reading along with this thread, but just one insight I want to make about the last couple of games.
The development of Abu from the beginning of the season has been stunning. He was, to put it mildly, a disaster in the first few games of the year. Just had no idea what to do when he caught the ball, and threw up ill-advised long jumpers and contested hooks that had no chance of going in. He’s been gradually getting more and more confident, and he’s been really solid these last couple games. Those early game minutes he got are an investment that’s going to pay off big time by the end of the season.
Thoughts:
– His box score isn’t super impressive, but Caleb Martin played a terrific second half. He made a really tough floater in the lane, and played extremely solid defense. He did a great job anticipating passes and darting between guys on the perimeter of the zone to deter/contest shots.
– I genuinely think Anya is the second most important player on this team (behind Lacey). His presence on the defensive end changes everything. Offensively, we need to make better use of him. Good things happen when he touches the ball in the post.
– On that note, we’re terrible at making post entry passes. Cat in particular has trouble with it because guys sag so far off him. It’s been a problem for the whole team though in all our games.
– I’m worried about the offense. They really struggled to create good looks against a good defense (and Richmond is a good defense). They did a better job with it in the second half, but heroball from Lacey is only going to take us so far. The team doesn’t pass well, and if our first option on a play is stopped, we really quickly get bogged down. That’s what you get with a young team though.
– The first half was the worst half of defense we’ve played, easily. Way too much falling asleep off the ball and poor/late close-outs. The second half was better, and the zone was surprisingly effective, though the triangle and two we tried was pretty disastrous.
This was fun to watch, and even though the level of competition was about as low as it’s going to get, there was some stuff to take away from the game.
– We were much more patient against the zone this game. We didn’t always get great looks, but we moved the ball side-to-side a lot better, and didn’t settle for tough shots early in the shot clock.
– Positive: We got a ton of point-blank looks at the rim. Negative: We missed a whole ton of them. I’m more encouraged by the former than I am worried about the later. If you’re getting great looks, you’ll figure it out eventually.
– The Martin twins have a ton of potential as valuable swingmen, and it looks like Caleb might be ready to be a real contributor this season. They both use their length really well playing defense on the ball.
– Abu is going to be awesome eventually. He really does have an NBA body right now. He’s also shown off some really good passing instincts. He’s super raw right now though, and just doesn’t really know what he’s doing if it’s anything other than catching and dunking. He’s going to be a monster in a year or two though.
– We do not throw lobs very well
– Ralston Turner…man, he just cannot play defense. It’s brutal to watch.
– Beejay Anya. That is all.
– Maybe it will change as we start running into some walls later in the season, but this team is so much fun to watch. They’re young, energetic, and look like they genuinely love playing together. Even our bench mob is like the perfect end-of-bench guys. They don’t just go out and want to get up as many shots as they can in their 3 minutes of mop-up time, they want to do it with as much flair as possible. So much fun to watch.I’ll copy over my thoughts from the post-game thread:
– Looking back at the stats, we gave up more offensive rebounds than I thought we did. Still, I like the way we look in that area. Washington, Freeman and Abu are all good rebounders, and Lacey does a really good job crashing from the guard spot. That was a major weakness last year, and I think it’ll be much improved this season.
– I love watching Trevor Lacey play. He needs to clean up his shot selection some, but he’s a plus defender and is so strong and decisive on his drives. Really excited to have him on the team.
– We start 4 plus defenders and bring one of the best shot-blockers in the country off the bench. There’s no excuse for us to be below-average at that end this season. Fouls will be a bit of a problem, but I’m not worried about that. Washington does so much good stuff. It’s not just the shot-blocking, he’s really, really good at corralling guys on the P&R and getting back to his man. His length and quickness let him cover a ton of ground.
– Turner is still a defensive disaster who loses track of his man way too frequently, but it hurts less when you surround him with good defenders, and we need his shooting.
– FTs are a problem, but I also think Cat is going to be better than 5-9 most games, so I’m not overly worried about that yet.
– What does worry me is how we bogged down against the zone. It’s not just that they didn’t quite know how to attack it. That’s going to happen the first time you play a zone in a season. There was some standing around and confusion about where to be, and that’ll get better. What worried me was that the passing wasn’t very crisp. Too often there were passes that didn’t hit guys in the hands. That’s the kind of thing that doesn’t lead to a turnover, but it takes away what might be a shot opportunity or slows down the next pass. That’s fundamentals stuff that needs to be cleaned up.
– Shot selection from the guards/wings needs to be tighter, especially against a zone. If you’re shooting a contested 18-footer with 20 seconds left on the shot clock, you’re doing something wrong.
– Abu needs to a) be told in no uncertain terms that he is not a three-point shooter, and b) carry a basketball around above his head all day. He missed out on two point blank looks because he brought the ball down.
– Anya had two really nice drop steps to get to the front of the rim. If he can stay on the floor, he’s going to be a real force.
