Our Offense...

[aggypryd]

With the lack of talent and experience on our team last season, I was led to believe that we were VERY Princeton-like to shorten the games and hide some deficiencies. But with the improvement of post-players, more experience with the system, and improving talent, is it a possibility that we will “open up” the offense some?

I am quite fond of our offense because I realize that most defenses are not that patient and we’ll exploit you if you aren’t. But with the talk of getting star recruits, it got me ta thinkin’…will our offense hinder the recruitment of players like Macklin, Crews and others?

[idhoya]

no. this offense gives everyone a chance to score. If you're a passer, great. If you're a defensive guy or cutter, great. Most importantly, you have to be a solid to better than average ball handler. If you're a guy who can do a myriad of things, this is the place for you. This system rewards versatility. Even Roy, who is a great passer, can move and stick a 12 footer.

[SirSaxa]

My guess is as the talent increases, JT3 will open up the game on offense. But when it "isn't there", he can fall back on running the more traditional Princeton -- that is, on a possession by possession basis. But even the traditional Princeton, with great athletes and ballers running it, can be an unstoppable thing of beauty.

ON defense, I expect the addition of the four frosh will give us the depth and quickness to be a lot more aggressive. Especially with pressing and trapping.

The biggest question for me, is who is going to rebound and how much. I Hope the answer is EVERYONE!
That was a BIG shortcoming on last year's team.

[aggypryd]

sirsaxa said:

The biggest question for me, is who is going to rebound and how much. I Hope the answer is EVERYONE!
That was a BIG shortcoming on last year's team.

Definitely!!!

We got killed on the boards last season. We had a lot of “one & dones” on offense. I’m quite sure Jeff and Roy will be more aggressive on the boards this year, but since we take a lot of outside shots and the rebounds are usually long, we’re going to need our perimeter people to contribute also.

[bmartin]

I think the freshmen add athleticism and depth that call for more pressing and trapping on defense. That should pick up the tempo and create more transition baskets.

[TrueHoyaBlue]

aggypryd said:

With the lack of talent and experience on our team last season, I was lead to believe that we were VERY Princeton-like to shorten the games and hide some deficiencies. But with the improvement of post-players, more experience with the system, and improving talent, is it a possibility that we will “open up” the offense some?

I am quite fond of our offense because I realize that most defenses are not that patient and we’ll exploit you if you aren’t. But with the talk of getting star recruits, it got me ta thinkin’…will our offense hinder the recruitment of players like Macklin, Crews and others?

I think that just in the process of speeding up the offense (as will happen through increased familiarity, conditioning, and depth), we will see an offense over the next few years that develops into something remarkably different from what we saw last year. We were young, inexperienced, and undermanned, and so the gameplan was to slow down the game and cut down on the number of possessions -- and as we're able to hang with the big boys, I think you'll see a lot more running, though still a focus on make the good extra passes for favorable matchups, as well as continued movement without the ball.

Princeton offense doesn't always equal slow and methodical, though it does always include ball movement and looking for the best shot. And when the best shot is a post-up move by Jeff Green, or an ankle-breaking drive and dish (or drive and dunk) by Jessie Sapp, those moves will be there. In fact, better penetration by our guards will actually make the Princetown O a lot more effective.

[the_way]

sirsaxa said:

My guess is as the talent increases, JT3 will open up the game on offense. But when it "isn't there", he can fall back on running the more traditional Princeton -- that is, on a possession by possession basis. But even the traditional Princeton, with great athletes and ballers running it, can be an unstoppable thing of beauty.

ON defense, I expect the addition of the four frosh will give us the depth and quickness to be a lot more aggressive. Especially with pressing and trapping.

The biggest question for me, is who is going to rebound and how much. I Hope the answer is EVERYONE!
That was a BIG shortcoming on last year's team.

I think you make a great point. JTIII doesn't strike me as a "system" coach. He always laughs at people saying he runs a "princeton" offense. He always says that it just an offense that focuses on sharing the ball. I think JTIII did basic stuff this year with the defense and offense. Once he gets his types of recruits and the years progress, I think you will see JTIII really work his magic. The basic tenets will remain the same of the offense, but I think he will tweak it according to his talent. Also, we needed a princeton offense for our team. We went from one extreme to the next in offensive philosophy. We went from having no offensive philosophy to having a highly structured philosophy. The princeton offense requires great fundamentals, intelligence, and movement with and without the basketball. That is something these players and program BADLY needed.

The princeton is designed for the princeton-type players. Meaning, with lesser talent, it is the ideal offense to be competitive. Like our team this year that wasn't deep and had a lot of inexperience. When you have talented players, I think you need to tweak the offense according to the talent. There is no need to run a rigid-princeton offense with a Iverson, Sweetney type talent, or Ewing's last two teams at GU. When he gets the horses, JTIII will make the proper adjustments.

[aggypryd]

Way, I agree with what you say about tweaking the ‘O’ towards your talent…State and Princeton obviously had better perimeter people than they had in the low-post, so it made sense to run things that allowed them to slash towards the basket or to shoot the open 3…

But don’t you think the greater the talent, the more effective the Princeton-offense will be?

I think a more controlled system is exactly what Iverson needed…it would have made him a better “without-the-ball” player on offense…now THAT’S scary…could you imagine the panic going through the minds’ of defenders knowing that they have to account for a speedy, slashing, high-flying, back-dooring offensive weapon like Iverson?

I think we ran entirely too much 1-4 offense Iverson’s last year…I like how effective we were with Boubacar or Joseph up front, and Iverson running the baseline…just didn’t run enough of it for my taste…

I think the offense would have helped Pat and Sweetney too…teams would be a lot more reluctant to collapse on those two if they knew that Pat might find a cutting Wingate or Williams, or if there was a strong possibility that Sweetney was going to dish it off to Riley or Bethel…

Just my $0.02…

[TBird41]

One of the great things about the Princeton is how easily it can be modified. Look at the version the Kings run in comparison with the one we ran last year. More depth and more talent means we can run the more uptempo version or the slow down version, depending on the situation. We'll have the advantage of being able to keep up w/ high scoring teams and slug it out w/ the slow down teams.

I have to say I'm more pumped about being able to press and trap to our hearts content next year.

[ColumbiaHeightsHoya]

I think III is a very good coach and he will adjust the O according to the talent level. I think fewer boards is part of the set-up with a Princeton O since you have players set up high & outside. I could see us switching between this and a motion type O as guys develop. We definitely need to open it up but we couldn't last year as we just didn't have the depth, talent, or experience.

[SFHoya99]

Rebounding in the Princeton...

Defensive rebounding should only be affected in as much as the Princeton affects your personnel (i.e., playing Brandon at the 4 instead of the 3). With Roy's improvement potentially pushing Jeff to the 4, or Ewing, Jr. and DaJuan Summers manning the 3 and 4 in the years to come, complemented by bigger guards, I don't know if D rebounding will be much of an issue.

We had an issue this year because we had a 4 playing the 5, a 3 playing the 4, a poor rebounding 3 at the 3 and below average rebounding guards (but not too far).

On offense, it seems like the system doesn't encourage O rebounding, what with clearing the lane out so much. But the bigger problem, I think, was that we had weak transitiion D that forced us to abandon crashing the boards. If the frontcourt is allowed to collapse on the hoop, I bet the disadvantage isn't so bad.

[SirSaxa]

The issue of Boards, though, applies at Both ends of the court. We were deficient on O and on D.

The other point about the Princeton is the guys were learning it last year.
Things have to happen quickly in the Princeton. Ball movement, hitting the cutters, or taking the shot.
As most have mentioned, the keys are ball movement and sharing.
But there was too much "thinking" last year. not enough reacting.
You could almost see players thinking on the court.... uh, let's see... what did coach want me to do?
Oh yeah, make the pass this way...." By then, the D would be catching up.
this isn't a criticism, it is a realistic appraisal of the learning curve.
It got better as the season went on, but I bet we see a quantum jump this year, even with the addition of the 4 new guys.

If they defend us tight on the perimeter, it opens up passing lanes inside -- and especially cutting lanes, but we didn't have great cutters last year.

If they lay off the perimeter D, our outside guys have to kill them with threes.
I think we have the shooters to capitalize on it this year.

Our schedule is a lot tougher this year, so our OOC record may not be 8-3 again.
But the team will be well prepared for the conference, and our RPI should be improved.

Very exciting times for Hoya Hoops.

[the_way]

aggypryd said:

Way, I agree with what you say about tweaking the ‘O’ towards your talent…State and Princeton obviously had better perimeter people than they had in the low-post, so it made sense to run things that allowed them to slash towards the basket or to shoot the open 3…

But don’t you think the greater the talent, the more effective the Princeton-offense will be?

I think a more controlled system is exactly what Iverson needed…it would have made him a better “without-the-ball” player on offense…now THAT’S scary…could you imagine the panic going through the minds’ of defenders knowing that they have to account for a speedy, slashing, high-flying, back-dooring offensive weapon like Iverson?

I think we ran entirely too much 1-4 offense Iverson’s last year…I like how effective we were with Boubacar or Joseph up front, and Iverson running the baseline…just didn’t run enough of it for my taste…

I think the offense would have helped Pat and Sweetney too…teams would be a lot more reluctant to collapse on those two if they knew that Pat might find a cutting Wingate or Williams, or if there was a strong possibility that Sweetney was going to dish it off to Riley or Bethel…

Just my $0.02…

I hear aggy, I can see with Pat and DEFINITELY Wingate. Pat was a heck of a passer. Wingate was the quickest player on the team at that time. But overall, I think you would need more cutters than just Wingate and Williams. I don't see Mike Jackson or Martin or Broadnax really cutting like that. It could work, but it wouldn't be necessary. Reggie wasn't really the cutting without the basketball-type. He was a pure-shooter and great scorer and rebounder.

In terms of the Iverson, I have to respectfully disagree. Iverson is LETHAL with the ball in his hands. The minute you take the ball out his hands and he becomes a 2-guard you help the opposing team. Its like I had said a while back, its like making Michael Vick a wide receiver or running back. Its doable, but you have more advanatages with the ball in his hands as QB.Iverson can penetrate and break down a defense at will. The main problem with Iverson was that JT2 had no offensive philosophy. He basically gave Iverson free reign. "Just Shoot it" was the offense during the Iverson years. The greatest example is that St. John's game you always refer to. (reverse dunk alley-oop game). Iverson torched St. John's one-on-one but everybody else on G'town stood around and watched, never warmed up and G'town wound up getting blown out after leading the game with Iverson carrying the team. I think the personnel of Iverson's teams wouldn't fit the Princeton O'. Iverson just needed to learn how to get his points while getting his teammates involved as well. Its was helter skelter in terms of him doing that because he was so young. Now, however, he is doing that this year with the Sixers. But the Sixers don't have any horses to run with Iverson.

With Sweets, he is a throwback, low-post player. I don't know if the Princeton calls for that alot. Sacramento didn't have it really nor did New Jersey in the NBA, two teams with the greatest success with the Princeton O. This year people on the board were screaming for Jeff Green to post-up more, but even when Jeff had a great opportunity to do so, he would kick it back out to stay within the realm of the offense.

[aggypryd]

OK, Way…I can buy that argument about Iverson…he definitely commanded the defense’s attention whenever he had the ball because they knew he could turn the corner on just about anybody…

“Iverson torched St. John's one-on-one but everybody else on G'town stood around and watched, never warmed up and G'town wound up getting blown out after leading the game with Iverson carrying the team.”

Yup…you’re right…they did the same thing in the Arizona game when Iverson went for 42(?) in the Preseason NIT…

Our offensive philosophy really did SUCK in those days…and it didn’t help that in ’96, as long as the person in possession of the ball was dribbling, there was no 5 seconds…

[the_way]

aggypryd said:

OK, Way…I can buy that argument about Iverson…he definitely commanded the defense’s attention whenever he had the ball because they knew he could turn the corner on just about anybody…

“Iverson torched St. John's one-on-one but everybody else on G'town stood around and watched, never warmed up and G'town wound up getting blown out after leading the game with Iverson carrying the team.”

Yup…you’re right…they did the same thing in the Arizona game when Iverson went for 42(?) in the Preseason NIT…

Our offensive philosophy really did SUCK in those days…and it didn’t help that in ’96, as long as the person in possession of the ball was dribbling, there was no 5 seconds…

Even though we lost that game against St. John's and I was mad, it was pretty exciting to see Iverson give an amazing performance that game.

[Filthyhoya]

With all the talk about the future and JTIII changing up the offense once he gets his type of recruits it dawned on me that I do not know how long JTIII will be at G'town. I'm hoping for at least 10-15 years but do we know the guarenteed years of his contract?

[TrueHoyaBlue]

I don't know, but I would guess that a first contract in this type of situation would be something like 5 years.

[SaxaCD]

Pete Carill once said something like "If you have slow players you'd be stupid to try to run, and if you have fast players, you'd be stupid not to run". Princeton played slow because the players they recruited weren't the top athletes in the country, but the "system" itself didn't demand a slowdown game. The pace of the game is predicated on the speed and athleticism of the players on the team, and I'm sure JT3 will tailor his O and D to what he has to work with.

[1227]

Does anybody have a sense as to how long JTIII plans on being here?

Is he using this as a springboard to another college program? Some high profile ACC or Big East school? Make his mark by bringing us back to the top and then move on to another program? I hope not.

[RDF]

Remember that when interviewed during BET Pops responded to a question about "style" of his son's team at GU and his response was "He's not able to play how he wants because he doesn't have the talent yet, I think a lot of people will be surprised to see how he's going to have the program play". You don't bring in talent and limit it, that's why I expect GU to play more uptempo this year and it's just nice to know we'll be able to play ANY STYLE of basketball as our team and players are versatile--which lends itself to more winning. If you can play in halfcourt and open court, you will be a tough matchup for opposition.

I think we'll see a much more uptempo team once III gets things established and I believe we'll see the beginning of that this season.