Game thread - @ Kentucky, 12/14/2019

[Peacone36]

We look pretty decent. Some offensive droughts here and there but overall pretty good. The tech on Moses was BS!!!!!

big time

 

[Peacone36]

This is the issue and it isn't just tempo for number of possessions - though pushing the ball for easier shots would be really helpful for this offense. We run our sets (such as they are) at an ungodly slow pace which makes us a whole lot easier to guard. We don't get a lot of movement and the ball generally sticks with whoever has it. We get very few shots in rhythm or easy points off our offense. DeVoe has to put his shoulder into someone's chest or Moses is pivoting 3 different ways before he jump hooks.

We don't have the athletes who can simply break down other teams players at the ACC level (Bethune Cookman yes - UK or even SYR no). Jose would certainly help but even he wouldn't break down high level defenders. DeVoe for as good as he is - isn't the kind of player you can say "put the team on your back and create". That isn't his game. It isn't realistic to think he is going to take a high level athletic defender off the dribble in space.

Watch good teams with similar talent to us and see how fast they run their sets. VT is a good example. Watch how fast their guys come off of screens or work the weave they run around the 3 point line and then watch us run our offense. Thorobreds versus Clydesdales. The speed is what gets them open shots. Easy shots that we don't get.

I wasn't enamored with everything Bilas said today, but he was spot on when he said DeVoe ws out of rhythm and it was hurting his offensive game. We don't do anything to help him get an easy bucket or a couple of easy shots to get in rhythm. Everything is hard and he has to create 90% of his shots. Again, not his game. If we simply ran sets a lot faster and got him a bit of help with down screens and other movement to occupy help defenders, he most likely is a different player.

The defense we ran today was well coached against a high end team like KY. The zone is a perfect approach. Which is why it is so frustrating to me to see us run a slow plodding offense that doesn't do anything to help the talent we do have.

Virginia is the case study here. Playing slow isn’t the problem. Virginia plays slow, Michigan plays slow, Louisville even plays slow. The key is being efficient in the offense that you run. Currently we are in the bottom 15% of PPP according to Synergy and 195th in Kenpom in adjusted offensive efficiency.

also, according to Kenpom we are 98th in tempo, meaning we aren’t terribly slow on offense. It would actually be Pastner’s fastest paced team since he’s been here by nearly 100 spots.

Also, Kentucky keyed on Devoe. Maxey face guarded him all game and never helped off of him. Just need others to step up.

 

[Connell62]

Is anyone surprised that our offensive sets are slow or look sloppy with our floor general on the sideline in a walking boot?

 

[Bogey]

Is anyone surprised that our offensive sets are slow or look sloppy with our floor general on the sideline in a walking boot?

Not me

Sent from my ASUS_Z01RD using Tapatalk

 

[Peacone36]

Is anyone surprised that our offensive sets are slow or look sloppy with our floor general on the sideline in a walking boot?

last season with Jose in 31 games: 0.85ppp, 13th percentile.
season before that: 0.847 PPP, 11th percentile.

 

[Connell62]

last season with Jose in 31 games: 0.85ppp, 13th percentile.
season before that: 0.847 PPP, 11th percentile.

Last season was last season, Devoe was a freshman and everyone was a year younger. Besides, I could give a **** about where our tempo ranks according to Kenpom. If you don’t think not having our Jr PG on the floor has hampered our offense, you’re smoking something.

 

[Peacone36]

Last season was last season, Devoe was a freshman and everyone was a year younger. Besides, I could give a **** about where our tempo ranks according to Kenpom. If you don’t think not having our Jr PG on the floor has hampered our offense, you’re smoking something.

Just quoting stats Shane. It’s your job to defend them

 

[gte447f]

Is anyone surprised that our offensive sets are slow or look sloppy with our floor general on the sideline in a walking boot?

We miss Jose, and we should be better with him on the court, but as Peacone points out, us being woefully inefficient offensively is not a new trend, and I personally do not accept that it is due to Jose's absence.

Devoe came up as a point guard. He has said as much on tape in interviews. He has played one year as a shooting guard, his freshman year at Tech. He is the best ball handler on the team, including better than Jose. Granted he is not as aggressive at the point as Jose, but he should be more than capable and adequate considering his overall skill level is higher than Jose's.

I don't know much about Parhum other than his 35 point game against KY at VMI, but as the smallest and quickest guy on the court I have to believe he also came up as a point guard and should be able to hold his own just fine. But again, he does not have Jose's aggressive mentality.

Pastner has mismanaged Jose's absence. For example, in the KY game, he thought the best option to replace our injured starter, was to go to the 4th guy on the depth chart, Moore. Uhhm... OK, sure coach, that might work. He has also resorted to just accepting it as an excuse in all of his talking points lately.

 

[YlJacket]

Hampered it - for sure. Took away our best penetrator - yep. Put Bubba in a position he isn't used to and likely retarded his production - yep too.

Kept us from running sets as anything more than a glacial pace - no. Kept us from running "violent cuts" - no. Kept us having anyone off the ball standing around waiting on the ball to maybe make it over to them - no.

I don't argue not having Jose hurts. I would argue not having Jose keeps us from running anything resembling an efficient offense.

FWIW one of the reasons to run a Princeton type of set (recognizing we don't run the true Princeton offense) is that it doesn't require a classic ball centric point guard. It is supposed to distribute the ball around the team in quick efficient passing with lots of cuts and ball movement.

 

[Peacone36]

Last season was last season, Devoe was a freshman and everyone was a year younger. Besides, I could give a **** about where our tempo ranks according to Kenpom. If you don’t think not having our Jr PG on the floor has hampered our offense, you’re smoking something.

you’re correct, why establish a history when arguing points? It’s much more in your interest to just call me a ****ing hater. The point is, no metric supports your optimistic views that things will be fine. Once again, I’m correct in criticizing a coaching hire and you’re wrong with your blind following and optimism. It’s hard teaching you this lesson time and time again.

 

[Tech93]

We can all debate about our offense and the absence of Jose and coming of Usher, but we will all have a clearer picture soon. Think we will see some offensive improvement, but not as much as some on the board are thinking.

 

[Connell62]

you’re correct, why establish a history when arguing points? It’s much more in your interest to just call me a ****ing hater. The point is, no metric supports your optimistic views that things will be fine. Once again, I’m correct in criticizing a coaching hire and you’re wrong with your blind following and optimism. It’s hard teaching you this lesson time and time again.

LOL..You haven’t taught me **** that I don’t already know broskie. I’m not naive enough to believe that it’s all rainbows and sunshine with our offense or our team in general, and I’m not sold that Pastner is the long term answer, but it could be a hellva lot worse.

You want to talk about facts but you disregard the fact that our program was in the dumps well before Pastner got here. It’s not a defense of Pastner to say that offense has been slowed because we have lacked offensive talent. So I’m not surprised that our tempo or offensive numbers are poor, and they look even worse when we don’t have two of our best pieces offensively.

I know you like to go around spouting off **** to make yourself look smart or some type basketball savant, but save that **** for someone else. Everyone knows where you stand and it’s easy to look right when our team isn’t at full strength. Despite what buttons he pushes or what the facts are, you’re not going to give any credit or even look at the big picture. Sure, let’s wave a magical wand or fire that silver bullet and insert some cash into the budget to fix all of our problems, that would be great.

 

[sidewalkGTfan]

We can all debate about our offense and the absence of Jose and coming of Usher, but we will all have a clearer picture soon. Think we will see some offensive improvement, but not as much as some on the board are thinking.

+1....I hope Usher is really good cause he's been talked up a ton while we've been waiting for him to be eligible.

 

[Peacone36]

LOL..You haven’t taught me **** that I don’t already know broskie. I’m not naive enough to believe that it’s all rainbows and sunshine with our offense or our team in general, and I’m not sold that Pastner is the long term answer, but it could be a hellva lot worse.

You want to talk about facts but you disregard the fact that our program was in the dumps well before Pastner got here. It’s not a defense of Pastner to say that offense has been slowed because we have lacked offensive talent. So I’m not surprised that our tempo or offensive numbers are poor, and they look even worse when we don’t have two of our best pieces offensively.

I know you like to go around spouting off **** to make yourself look smart or some type basketball savant, but save that **** for someone else. Everyone knows where you stand and it’s easy to look right when our team isn’t at full strength. Despite what buttons he pushes or what the facts are, you’re not going to give any credit or even look at the big picture. Sure, let’s wave a magical wand or fire that silver bullet and insert some cash into the budget to fix all of our problems, that would be great.

I haven’t ignored that, I’m simply saying that Pastner is not the solution.

 

[dtm1997]

Hatin' ***...

 

[YlJacket]

We are putting awhile lot of faith in Usher. I hope he is up to it

 

[MiracleWhips]

Last season was last season, Devoe was a freshman and everyone was a year younger. Besides, I could give a **** about where our tempo ranks according to Kenpom. If you don’t think not having our Jr PG on the floor has hampered our offense, you’re smoking something.

100% agree.

 

[lv20gt]

When you don't have the pieces, I think you have to try to get the upper hand with scheme, and that's where I think we are lacking right now. Scheme wise, I think we have regressed a lot since Pastner's first year when we had a unique identity with Lammers at the high post and aggressive cutters constantly going to the basket.

First off, I think people are remembering the first year offense a little favorably. It had an identity, but it wasn't overly efficient.

Second, when it comes to scheme, Basketball is much less of a defined sport than football. Football the offense can call set plays every single time, because there is a definitive beginning and end and for the most part the defense is the one reacting. The defense can dictate that you do some things and not do others, but that's a relatively small number of things. The opposite is true in basketball for the most part. The way the defense is defending greatly determines what the offense has to do and so offense in basketball is more about concepts than a hard and fast scheme. There are obvious exceptions but that's true in general. There's a reason Cuse runs zone against everything while a team that runs the weave only does it for part of a game.

Third, and broad scheme we did implement would probably be very reliant on our three year starting PG. Take away Lammers from that first year's team and we suddenly don't run that scheme anymore.

Devoe came up as a point guard. He has said as much on tape in interviews. He has played one year as a shooting guard, his freshman year at Tech. He is the best ball handler on the team, including better than Jose. Granted he is not as aggressive at the point as Jose, but he should be more than capable and adequate considering his overall skill level is higher than Jose's.

I don't know much about Parhum other than his 35 point game against KY at VMI, but as the smallest and quickest guy on the court I have to believe he also came up as a point guard and should be able to hold his own just fine. But again, he does not have Jose's aggressive mentality.

Devoe may have came up as a point guard but he doesn't have the mentality or instincts of one. A play early yesterday that made that clear is when Banks got the ball 30 feet away from the basket and was looking for an release Devoe tried to set up a back cut. Conceptually it made sense due to the way the defense was playing him, but the situation on the court dictated that Devoe fight to get the ball not run a back cut. The same is true for Parham. How often this year has Moses gotten a rebound and both guards started streaking down the sideline looking to catch the defense before they are set for a good shot and nobody coming back towards Moses to get the ball. Far too often and that demonstrates a SG's mentality rather than a PG.

A PG will leak out in that situation, but only when he knows it's safe for an outlet pass to be thrown to him. If the pass isn't open, he shouldn't be streaking down the court. But too often Bubba and Devoe do just that and then people yell at Moses for making a stupid pass when it leads to a turnover. Now when Jose is back, yeah, those two should go set up for shots and Jose should be the one worrying about getting open and be the one Moses (or Banks or Cole) look to outlet to. Until then though, they need to have an understanding of what the team needs of them. And yes, both have the skills to be a PG. It takes more than ball handling to be a PG though, and it's showing with the small things.

It would be a very different situation had Jose gone pro or something last year and we had to plan around him not being available. But that isn't the case. We look like a team that is missing a veteran PG. Maybe that's because we are just a bad offensive team with poor offensive coaching. Or it could be because we're missing a 3 year starting PG. If only we had the opportunity to wait and see which of those might be the case before making broad generalizations.

 

[Peacone36]

Hatin' ***...

just me being a non-fan. Of course my exuberance and expectation could be the equivilant of a non-fan. Then again my expectation of an actual tournament appearance could be ridiculous when statistics show that that certain players are valued higher than their actual performance.

 

[gte447f]

Devoe may have came up as a point guard but he doesn't have the mentality or instincts of one. A play early yesterday that made that clear is when Banks got the ball 30 feet away from the basket and was looking for an release Devoe tried to set up a back cut. Conceptually it made sense due to the way the defense was playing him, but the situation on the court dictated that Devoe fight to get the ball not run a back cut. The same is true for Parham. How often this year has Moses gotten a rebound and both guards started streaking down the sideline looking to catch the defense before they are set for a good shot and nobody coming back towards Moses to get the ball. Far too often and that demonstrates a SG's mentality rather than a PG.

A PG will leak out in that situation, but only when he knows it's safe for an outlet pass to be thrown to him. If the pass isn't open, he shouldn't be streaking down the court. But too often Bubba and Devoe do just that and then people yell at Moses for making a stupid pass when it leads to a turnover. Now when Jose is back, yeah, those two should go set up for shots and Jose should be the one worrying about getting open and be the one Moses (or Banks or Cole) look to outlet to. Until then though, they need to have an understanding of what the team needs of them. And yes, both have the skills to be a PG. It takes more than ball handling to be a PG though, and it's showing with the small things.

It would be a very different situation had Jose gone pro or something last year and we had to plan around him not being available. But that isn't the case. We look like a team that is missing a veteran PG. Maybe that's because we are just a bad offensive team with poor offensive coaching. Or it could be because we're missing a 3 year starting PG. If only we had the opportunity to wait and see which of those might be the case before making broad generalizations.

I agree with what you are saying in the 1st 2 paragraphs quoted above. But, this is where coaching is letting us down. Faced with the situation we find ourselves in, it is Pastner's job to get the players to do what the players need to/should do to give us the best chance of winning. Having the ball in the hands of Moses or James 25 feet from the basket is never ever giving us the best chance of winning. So it should simply be forbidden and should never ever happen again. It's Pastner's job to make this happen.

For example, with Moses and the outlet pass situation, personally (and granted no one thinks I am worthy of millions of dollars to coach basketball) my approach would be to tell Moses if he takes a single f***ing dribble or makes a single f***ing pass up the floor after a defensive rebound then he will go straight to the bench. Likewise tell Mike and/or Bubba if they leave a defensive rebounder without a hand off a single f***ing time they are going straight to the bench.

We have to wait and see as fans, but I'm tired of Pastner's wait and see attitude.