The fine edge of the matter is what the coach is going to do about that?
Is this NBA light spread offense going to work at GT or in college?
Is there enough versatile talent for college kids to run it?
Is there enough practice time for college kids to get it?
Will he eventually punt and run some plays to get a guy like Ndongo some easier looks or does he ride this plan like Slim Pickins on the Bomb?
This is the $64K question. Background to me is it is a lot harder to find someone who can get to kids and have the gravitas to recruit like CDS is, than it is to find someone who can run the X&Os. So while I would agree with anyone that our offensive scheme sucks right now, I would rather have this issue than trying to run the best scheme imaginable with 2 star players.
Having said that, it is obvious that the NBA focused high ball screen focused offense we ran last year is not working this year. Whether it is because Ndongo and George have regressed this year or teams are now scheming for the look is at this point in time irrelevant. It is reality that has to be dealt with.
Schematically today NW simply doubled the guard after the screen and brought the back side defender in the lane to pick up the big on the roll. Soon as that happened the ball stuck with the guard and he pounded the ball (gave it a headache to quote Pastner) and never rotated it to the back side corner who was open. One of the primary stats in advanced analytics is the % of time a team scores goes up exponentially depending on the whether the ball is reversed from side to side by the offense. The idea is you stress the defense by forcing rotations. I can count on one hand the number of times GT reversed the ball today. Makes it easy on the defense and leads to a ton of turnovers as the defense can load up on a single side of the court.
The other dynamic we are suffering from is Terry is the only player who both has the mentality and ability to take their player off the dribble. George doesn't do it this year and McCollum has been hurt (not sure if he can do it or not at this point). You can't run this offense unless you have guys like Tatum and Brown who can penetrate/make a play when they want. Like George was able to do at times last year. The other side is guys like Obrian who arguably can hit catch and shoot 3's become ineffective.
Way too much background/venting. Question is going forward. My perspective is we have legit - not necessarily great - but legit offensive talent that unfortunately does not have a "screw you I am going to the basket" mentality. So you have to give them some help. I don't think this is that hard to do schematically to answer the series of questions you posed - but I do think CDS has to recognize the issue and back away from the system I fully expect he uses to tell recruits he will use to prepare them for the NBA. I am going to pick at your words for a second, but I don't think he has to start running specific plays for individual players. IMHO he has to introduce a couple of second sets that have motion concepts that will get the ball to move back and forth in the half court and get the defense to rotate a couple of times. That alone will improve the look and efficiency of the offense. Doesn't have to be a whole Bobby Knight or Mike Young motion offense - just commit to some down screen action/off ball screen action that facilitates the ball moving around the court. In short, let's have a set that has more than one or two guys moving at the same time
I have no doubt there is deep knowledge of these concepts both with CDS and the rest of the coaches on the staff. These concepts are well known at the AAU, college and pro levels. CDS knows them and can execute in about a million different ways. So there are a couple of key questions they need to ask/answer. Do they agree that the core scheme they want to use isn't working with the players they have now? I think that answer is obvious but his call. The second and I expect more germane question I expect is does CDS believe that keeping the current offensive system is key to his recruiting efforts going forward. Does he need to keep an NBA focused system to maintain the aura of being able to groom college players for the NBA? I don't think he needs to maintain the current system but he may well have a different opinion and if so I understand - as much as it is ungodly painful to watch the sausage being made while these guys are not NBA level yet.
