The idea behind our offense under Pastner has been to create spacing to attack the rim off the drive because of the lack of natural shooters/scorers.
The Princeton offense was a good choice because of Lammers. He was an effective trigger man because of his face-up ability, his passing ability and his court awareness. It worked surprisingly well in year one because we had Q Stephens and Okogie at the wings and defenses had to at least respect their shooting range. Those three (Lammers, Okogie and Stephens) were enough to give defenses something to think about despite the horrific lack of outside shooting ability of our guards.
After year one things got dicey. Q was gone and replaced by Gueye. Gueye didn't fit the Princeton offense. He wasn't robust enough to be a Center on defense, didn't have the playmaking ability to be the high post trigger and he lacked the face-up ability to play one of the "Four-out" spots. He couldn't do what Q did. That left us with two post scorers and that messed-up the spacing of the Princeton offense.
By year three we lost both Lammers and Okogie and neither Banks nor Gueye could replace Lammers. The perimeter guys suffered an epic shooting slump and nothing was working well. Banks did start to show some capacity to catch and distribute the ball late in the season but that might have been a net negative because it gave the staff hope that he could fill the Lammers role in the offense.
But this season, Banks demonstrated the bad hands and bad court awareness again. He is no Lammers. And Moses right was out of place in the corner. Wright was no Q. But Wright is very productive when he gets the ball at the elbow. So finally, the staff scrapped the Princeton offense because the personnel did not match the scheme. We now move the defense via the guards breaking down the perimeter defense off the dribble via pick and rolls. This is pretty standard stuff, it looks less dynamic because the players off the ball wait to cut until the guard has achieved daylight. But our version is way more dynamic than similar sets seen under Gregory or Hewitt's teams after Jarret Jack.
The Princeton offense has gone kaput at Gt for three reasons:
1. After Lammers, we didn't have a Center who could be a high post trigger/face-up threat.
2. Our Power forwards since Q have not had the skill set to be a perimeter threat but have been post scoring threats.
3. Persistent lack of three point shooting to spread the floor.
Gigberia and Kai Sotto could definitely solve problem #1. But Wright is back next year and he doesn't fit the "One-in, Four-out" prototype for a PF. Neither does Meka. I dont know if we go back to recruiting for the Princeton set again or not. Probably not?
