Buckets
Golden Hoya (over 1000 posts)
Posts: 1,656
|
Post by Buckets on Mar 7, 2016 15:21:02 GMT -5
On an individual basis, close to every guy on the roster is better on offense than defense, particularly DSR, Govan, Copeland, and Cameron. So while KenPom has the offense at 60th and the offense at 116th, given the talent on the roster, I think it's a worse season for the offense. The defense is a little worse than you'd expect, the offensive whole is nowhere even close to the sum of its parts.
|
|
EtomicB
Blue & Gray (over 10,000 posts)
Posts: 14,907
|
Post by EtomicB on Mar 7, 2016 15:36:12 GMT -5
This site has always blamed the defense of this team over the years when game or season outcomes don’t go as we hope. Trying to blame the offense on the other hand has always led to a reflexive counter that the offense was just fine and those complaining were ignoring “the stats” and simply putting more emphasis on style rather than effectiveness. You read stuff like the offense was just fine, shots simply didn’t fall or players didn’t execute, etc. Here’s the thing….the defense has been pretty bad this season. But I think most of us understood early on that the defense was going to be a glaring weakness of this team. So the one thing the Hoyas needed was a consistent, potent offense which this team was very capable of producing. And yet in almost all of the team’s losses the blame could arguably be attributed to an offense that sputtered at the wrong time or too many inappropriate times. It was either more games in which the team suffered through unacceptable scoring droughts or games in which the team found itself in a hole because its offense wasn’t able to keep up in the first half only to start clicking in the second half when it was (ultimately) too late. Its true defenses win championships and with THIS defense the Hoyas weren’t going to cut down any nets in March. And yet a team can still have a very good to great regular season when it has enough offensive fire power. These Hoyas have that offensive firepower. But there were far too many frustrating games in which it looked as if the team was clueless in how to attack a zone or how to take advantage of their height inside or how to get to the FT line to end droughts or how to do something else on offense when the threes weren’t falling. Yeah, giving up 50 points to a team is inexcusable. But falling behind teams by 20 points in a first half because the team doesn’t know how to punch back quick enough when it gets punched in the mouth is equally bad. A few things: - There have definitely been a few times at the end of games where JT3 has said things along the lines of "the shots didn't fall," or "we got good looks, they just didn't go in." Generally, I have disagreed with those comments. There have been many games where we have taken contested, bad shots, which is the reason they haven't gone in. For those who say I am an apologist for the program, please note that here I am disagreeing with what JT3 has said. - Defensively, this is easily the worst team JT3 has had. On KenPom, we are ranked 116. The worst defense we ever had previously under JT3 was 2014 (ranked 107), and then 2005 (98th). But, you don't need statistics to tell you that our defense is putrid. - Offensively, this has been one of JT3's worst seasons, though statistically KenPom says 2013 was worse. Keep in mind that team was basically Otto Porter and very little other help offensively. That's the team that beat Tennessee 37-36 over forty minutes. That was not a great offense, but Porter grew over the season, and JT3 basically allowed the offense to go through him (we were not running anything close to pure Princeton), and it worked okay. Plus, that team had the number 2 defense nationally. - JT3 knows how to coach defense. The real problems started with the rule changes. In 2012 and 2013, we had the 10th and 2nd best defenses. 2014 was 107, 2015 was 42, and this year sits at 116. Not coincidentally, our fouling got much worse after 2013. For JT3's entire career, his teams essentially fouled at average or better than average rates. From 2005-2013, these were our ranks on that category: 175, 23, 78, 163, 102, 89, 175, 175, 154. Starting in 2014, however were were ranked: 331, 305, and this year 345. We are currently ranked 345 out of 351 teams when it comes to fouling opponents. We are literally in the bottom 1.7% (of all Division 1) when it comes to how badly we foul. Now, West Virginia is the worst in the country, but the reason they are good anyway is because they apply full court pressure AND they force a lot of turnovers (they are second best nationally at forcing turnovers). We do not force turnovers with our press AND we foul all the time. It's basically the worst combination possible (which is why I say the calls for full court pressure are misguided). What is the effect? The most direct effect is that we give the other team a lot of free throws. The huge free throw disparity persisted right up to the end: since the beginning of conference play (including the Connecticut game), Georgetown took 367 free throws, and made 284 (77.38%). Our opponents have taken 559 and made 416 (74.4%). Over our last 19 games, our opponents took 192 more free throws than us, and made 132 more free throws than us. This literally means we gave our opponents, on average, more than 10 free throws per game. Considering that we lost many games by single digits, this is actually a huge reason why we have played so poorly. Now, some say we foul because we cannot defend. That might be true, but there's no reason why we should be 345th worst in the country. And we did not get there because referees have it in for us. We were just horrible at fouling. Keep this in mind: as bad as we are, even if we play normal defense, we give up about 1.01 points per possession (1.05 in conference play). Even if somebody is shooting 60% on FTs (well below average), they are still going to be getting about 1.2 points per possession (maybe slightly different when accounting for misses on the 1 and 1). Even bad defense is better than giving free throws, even to a poor free throw shooting team. - The reactive response would be, "We need to draw more fouls!" The thing is, we are actually 139/351 nationally at drawing fouls. I think it just seems like we don't draw enough because the other teams all get so many more because of our awful fouling rates. - You said, "And yet in almost all of the team’s losses the blame could arguably be attributed to an offense that sputtered at the wrong time or too many inappropriate times." I don't see how you could say that the losses could be attributed to offense when the defense is so bad and we are spotting our opponents so many free throws. Against Villanova, it was 27-6 after 9 minutes and 34 seconds of play. By my count, there were 18 possessions for each team in that sequence. That means Villanova scored 1.50 points per possession. The best team in the country offensively, Michigan State, scores about 1.22 per possession. Thus, in order to keep up with Villanova through offense alone, our offense would have had to score well more points over that ten minutes than the best offense nationwide regularly scores. This underscores that regardless of how good the offense might have been, it would not have mattered - we were so bad defensively, that we would have been in a hole regardless. Granted, it may have been a smaller hole, but you cannot give up 1.5 points per possession and expect to beat anybody. Clearly, scoring 6 points in 10 minutes is horrible. That was admittedly a horrible offensive stretch, so I get the frustration. We should have done better. But, if you're looking to place blame for close losses on anything, it's got to be defense and fouling. Forget keeping up, it would have helped to just stay closer.. What if they scored 8 extra points in that 9 minute span, now the score is 27-14.. Which in theory means they're down 46-35 at the half so when they go on that run led by LJ the game would have felt winnable.. What MCI seems to be saying is that better offensive flow may have helped to take the sting away from the terrible defense.. I agree with him..
|
|
|
Post by aleutianhoya on Mar 7, 2016 15:49:01 GMT -5
This back-and-forth is darkly funny, as there's really nothing - not a single thing - that this team does well. Yes, it is particularly inept at playing defense, but it is also well below average at every single skillset required to play good team basketball. I agree with this! On offense, we have one guy that is outstanding at penetrating to the hole and finishing. We have a collection of players any number of which might be on shooting catch-and-shoot shots, but most of which are not on any given night. And we have one guy that is a very good all around player, but lacks the quickness to take consistent enough advantage of his many attributes, given that the opposition often keys on him. That's it. And it's not nearly enough. Our only real hope on offense is that LJ has a very good game and two or three of our shooters are very much on. It would help a lot if one of those two or three is DSR. And our only real hope on defense is that the opposing team's players all suffer calf cramps as they go up to shoot uncontested layups. All we need is for those things to happen on four consecutive nights at the Garden.
|
|
|
Post by hoyasaxa2003 on Mar 7, 2016 15:55:36 GMT -5
Forget keeping up, it would have helped to just stay closer.. What if they scored 8 extra points in that 9 minute span, now the score is 27-14.. Which in theory means they're down 46-35 at the half so when they go on that run led by LJ the game would have felt winnable.. What MCI seems to be saying is that better offensive flow may have helped to take the sting away from the terrible defense.. I agree with him.. I don't disagree with you. Clearly, we would be a better team and would have had closer games if our offense was better. That is pretty obvious. To the degree that's MCI's point, I also agree with him. What I am saying is that even if we had one of the best offenses in the country (let's say top 20 offense), there is a high probability we still would have lost a lot of games. Maybe we would have been an NCAA team, but I think it's unfair to expect that level of offense out of a team when your defense is so awful otherwise. It puts a LOT of pressure on the offense to score when the defense is so bad.
|
|
hoyainspirit
Platinum Hoya (over 5000 posts)
When life puts that voodoo on me, music is my gris-gris.
Posts: 8,393
|
Post by hoyainspirit on Mar 7, 2016 16:00:52 GMT -5
Forget keeping up, it would have helped to just stay closer.. What if they scored 8 extra points in that 9 minute span, now the score is 27-14.. Which in theory means they're down 46-35 at the half so when they go on that run led by LJ the game would have felt winnable.. What MCI seems to be saying is that better offensive flow may have helped to take the sting away from the terrible defense.. I agree with him.. In the 1st half, we shot 10-29 (34.5%), 1-13 (7.7%)! 'Nova only took 2 more shots than we did, despite our 9 first half turnovers. Those 9 TOs resulted in 17 'Nova points. Better shooting and fewer TOs would have most assuredly lessened the sting of our awful 1st half defense. That said, I thought the defense was worse. We allowed them to shoot 10-14 from 2, primarily layups, tip ins, and dunks. Sixteen of those 20 points scored off 2s were points in the paint. They scored too easily. That's never going to get it done.
|
|
|
Post by hoyasaxa2003 on Mar 7, 2016 16:03:24 GMT -5
On an individual basis, close to every guy on the roster is better on offense than defense, particularly DSR, Govan, Copeland, and Cameron. So while KenPom has the offense at 60th and the offense at 116th, given the talent on the roster, I think it's a worse season for the offense. The defense is a little worse than you'd expect, the offensive whole is nowhere even close to the sum of its parts. So you're saying that our players are better on offense than defense, so the offense was worse? That makes no sense. The defense is not "a little worse than you'd expect." It's a lot worst than you would expect. You say the offense is "nowhere near even close to the sum of its parts." Says who? I would agree that Copeland, for much of the season, seemed to underperform his talent. Maybe Campbell too. But, once you get past that, it's not so clear. DSR may not have been outstanding, but at worst he was very good, and easily our best player. Hayes outperformed all expectations before he got hurt. Govan has been a very solid freshman, Derrickson has shown spots of talent, and I don't think anybody expected Kaleb Johnson to do better than he has. LJ Peak has steadily progressed and improved this season offensively; defensively, it's been a little rough because of fouling but he's improved. Cameron has never been good, so you could not have expected him to contribute much. So really, where is this "nowhere even close to the sum of its parts" offensively? I think you've got a good argument on Copeland and Campbell, but after that, not so much. In a macro sense, I agree that this team - on paper - should have the talent to have been much better both offensively and defensively. The same could have been said of the 2009 team. In both cases, it turned out not to be the case. "Talent" is really an intangible trait people apply to athletes. To use a different sport, baseball is full of "talented" Triple AAA players who are rising stars for years, and they never do anything at the major league level. Talent is useless if it doesn't result in performance. And, if you want to put blame on somebody for that, it's probably a combination of players and coaches, though I probably put more emphasis on the players than many others would. I firmly believe it's not effort - there is no indication anybody has given up, otherwise our almost-comebacks would have never happened.
|
|
rockhoya
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
Posts: 3,830
|
Post by rockhoya on Mar 8, 2016 11:05:55 GMT -5
On an individual basis, close to every guy on the roster is better on offense than defense, particularly DSR, Govan, Copeland, and Cameron. So while KenPom has the offense at 60th and the offense at 116th, given the talent on the roster, I think it's a worse season for the offense. The defense is a little worse than you'd expect, the offensive whole is nowhere even close to the sum of its parts. So you're saying that our players are better on offense than defense, so the offense was worse? That makes no sense. The defense is not "a little worse than you'd expect." It's a lot worst than you would expect. You say the offense is "nowhere near even close to the sum of its parts." Says who? I would agree that Copeland, for much of the season, seemed to underperform his talent. Maybe Campbell too. But, once you get past that, it's not so clear. DSR may not have been outstanding, but at worst he was very good, and easily our best player. Hayes outperformed all expectations before he got hurt. Govan has been a very solid freshman, Derrickson has shown spots of talent, and I don't think anybody expected Kaleb Johnson to do better than he has. LJ Peak has steadily progressed and improved this season offensively; defensively, it's been a little rough because of fouling but he's improved. Cameron has never been good, so you could not have expected him to contribute much. So really, where is this "nowhere even close to the sum of its parts" offensively? I think you've got a good argument on Copeland and Campbell, but after that, not so much. In a macro sense, I agree that this team - on paper - should have the talent to have been much better both offensively and defensively. The same could have been said of the 2009 team. In both cases, it turned out not to be the case. "Talent" is really an intangible trait people apply to athletes. To use a different sport, baseball is full of "talented" Triple AAA players who are rising stars for years, and they never do anything at the major league level. Talent is useless if it doesn't result in performance. And, if you want to put blame on somebody for that, it's probably a combination of players and coaches, though I probably put more emphasis on the players than many others would. I firmly believe it's not effort - there is no indication anybody has given up, otherwise our almost-comebacks would have never happened. Reread his post. I don't think you understand what he was trying to say about our relative strengths
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Mar 8, 2016 11:24:04 GMT -5
Defense creates offense. Better defense means more breakouts more steals more fastbreak points and easy scoring opportunities.
|
|
|
Post by HometownHoya on Mar 8, 2016 11:47:18 GMT -5
Defense creates offense. Better defense means more breakouts more steals more fastbreak points and easy scoring opportunities. I agree entirely, but many of our players are guys that make a shot on offense then are ready to play D to get the ball back. Offense is what lights the fire to play good D which will lead to better O. When they are missing shots on O they forget to play D because they are thinking about the next shot they need to make. Either way, this is a bit of a pointless argument, if we have any wish to be competitive we need to be MUCH better on both sides of the ball.
|
|
|
Post by hoyasaxa2003 on Mar 8, 2016 12:12:12 GMT -5
Either way, this is a bit of a pointless argument, if we have any wish to be competitive we need to be MUCH better on both sides of the ball. Yes. We should all be able to agree on that.
|
|
rockhoya
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
Posts: 3,830
|
Post by rockhoya on Mar 8, 2016 12:17:29 GMT -5
Defense creates offense. Better defense means more breakouts more steals more fastbreak points and easy scoring opportunities. I agree entirely, but many of our players are guys that make a shot on offense then are ready to play D to get the ball back. Offense is what lights the fire to play good D which will lead to better O. When they are missing shots on O they forget to play D because they are thinking about the next shot they need to make. Either way, this is a bit of a pointless argument, if we have any wish to be competitive we need to be MUCH better on both sides of the ball. I agree, it's painfully obvious.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Mar 8, 2016 12:31:51 GMT -5
Defense creates offense. Better defense means more breakouts more steals more fastbreak points and easy scoring opportunities. I agree entirely, but many of our players are guys that make a shot on offense then are ready to play D to get the ball back. Offense is what lights the fire to play good D which will lead to better O. When they are missing shots on O they forget to play D because they are thinking about the next shot they need to make. Either way, this is a bit of a pointless argument, if we have any wish to be competitive we need to be MUCH better on both sides of the ball. It is a silly argument I agree but I've never heard a coach say we have to get our offense going so we can play better D... What you wrote above is true for every team imo.. You can see a team go on a run and their defense/energy ticks up but it's not a strategy you can employ in a game for 40 minutes for obvious reasons
|
|
|
Post by johnnysnowplow on Mar 8, 2016 12:41:22 GMT -5
It's pretty simple really - we are dead last in the BE (and by a wide margin) in only 2 stats: fouling and forcing TOs. Not only do we not create easier offense by forcing TOs, we compound that by giving up the easiest points the game of basketball has to offer in the form of FTs.
|
|
|
Post by hoyasaxa2003 on Mar 8, 2016 12:45:52 GMT -5
It's pretty simple really - we are dead last in the BE (and by a wide margin) in only 2 stats: fouling and forcing TOs. Not only do we not create easier offense by forcing TOs, we compound that by giving up the easiest points the game of basketball has to offer in the form of FTs. Exactly on point. And this is also why full court pressure isn't the solution. If anything, it causes us to foul more, and we get no turnovers. We also tend to have other teams pass over the pressure for easy baskets. Without fixing the fouling and without forcing more turnovers, there's really little hope of improvement.
|
|
rockhoya
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
Posts: 3,830
|
Post by rockhoya on Mar 8, 2016 12:53:15 GMT -5
I agree entirely, but many of our players are guys that make a shot on offense then are ready to play D to get the ball back. Offense is what lights the fire to play good D which will lead to better O. When they are missing shots on O they forget to play D because they are thinking about the next shot they need to make. Either way, this is a bit of a pointless argument, if we have any wish to be competitive we need to be MUCH better on both sides of the ball. It is a silly argument I agree but I've never heard a coach say we have to get our offense going so we can play better D... What you wrote above is true for every team imo.. You can see a team go on a run and their defense/energy ticks up but it's not a strategy you can employ in a game for 40 minutes for obvious reasons He's referring to the personalities of the players. Some players' D is fueled by their shotmaking. DSR, Copeland, and Marcus off the top of my head
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Mar 8, 2016 13:12:10 GMT -5
It's pretty simple really - we are dead last in the BE (and by a wide margin) in only 2 stats: fouling and forcing TOs. Not only do we not create easier offense by forcing TOs, we compound that by giving up the easiest points the game of basketball has to offer in the form of FTs. And it's pretty difficult to be bad at both. If you look at our numbers from last year ('14-'15) you see while we were still fouling way too much, we actually did force a decent amount of turnovers. Last year we were 31st in the country in Steal%. This year, 237th. And in forcing turnovers overall, we went from 101 to 292. A LOT of that difference came from our center position. Bradley and Jessie had about the same foul rate (a tiny bit higher) as Josh and Mikael, but only about 1/3 of the steals. I'd say that's about being crafty, experienced seniors... but Josh and Mikael were much better at forcing turnovers from the time they started getting regular minutes than Jessie was this year.
|
|
seaweed
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
Posts: 4,664
|
Post by seaweed on Mar 8, 2016 13:54:12 GMT -5
I agree entirely, but many of our players are guys that make a shot on offense then are ready to play D to get the ball back. Offense is what lights the fire to play good D which will lead to better O. When they are missing shots on O they forget to play D because they are thinking about the next shot they need to make. Either way, this is a bit of a pointless argument, if we have any wish to be competitive we need to be MUCH better on both sides of the ball. It is a silly argument I agree but I've never heard a coach say we have to get our offense going so we can play better D...
What you wrote above is true for every team imo.. You can see a team go on a run and their defense/energy ticks up but it's not a strategy you can employ in a game for 40 minutes for obvious reasons I have heard plenty of coaches talk about hitting shots so that you can get your press set - does that count?
|
|
|
Post by hoyasaxa2003 on Mar 8, 2016 14:13:08 GMT -5
It is a silly argument I agree but I've never heard a coach say we have to get our offense going so we can play better D... What you wrote above is true for every team imo.. You can see a team go on a run and their defense/energy ticks up but it's not a strategy you can employ in a game for 40 minutes for obvious reasons He's referring to the personalities of the players. Some players' D is fueled by their shotmaking. DSR, Copeland, and Marcus off the top of my head The problem is that nobody on here knows the personalities of the players. We see them in 40 minute spurts when they are playing an intense physical game. As fans, we interpret their body language, etc. but a lot of it is speculation. As far as Copeland, in the games where he's shot better, his defense has still been atrocious, so I don't buy into your theory.
|
|
|
Post by HometownHoya on Mar 8, 2016 16:14:41 GMT -5
He's referring to the personalities of the players. Some players' D is fueled by their shotmaking. DSR, Copeland, and Marcus off the top of my head The problem is that nobody on here knows the personalities of the players. We see them in 40 minute spurts when they are playing an intense physical game. As fans, we interpret their body language, etc. but a lot of it is speculation. As far as Copeland, in the games where he's shot better, his defense has still been atrocious, so I don't buy into your theory. In making the original post, I was thinking more of Tre and DSR who seem to get an extra step in their bounce on both ends when they start making shots. It doesn't necessarily stop Tre's bad defensive fundamentals but it does speed him up even more, allowing him to actually get those steals he gambles on. To me, DSR is also usually off on D if his shot is also off. Fortunately he is an experienced Senior and makes up for it in more ways then Tre. Govan actually also plays better D when he is rolling on offense, he runs the court better and is ready to be more physical on the block (sometimes too much so). I was never trying to assume the personalities of the players, I was pointing out what I've seen from a few of our guys when they get rolling on O, the D also improves. Not saying they become stoppers but they become more engaged.
|
|
rockhoya
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
Posts: 3,830
|
Post by rockhoya on Mar 8, 2016 16:47:36 GMT -5
He's referring to the personalities of the players. Some players' D is fueled by their shotmaking. DSR, Copeland, and Marcus off the top of my head The problem is that nobody on here knows the personalities of the players. We see them in 40 minute spurts when they are playing an intense physical game. As fans, we interpret their body language, etc. but a lot of it is speculation. As far as Copeland, in the games where he's shot better, his defense has still been atrocious, so I don't buy into your theory. There's more to it than just that, and it's not my theory. Figuring out player tendencies isn't exactly rocket science. Maybe your knowledge is limited to speculation, but mine is based on extrapolation and analyzing trends and outcomes and abilities.
|
|