Scrapping The Princeton Offense

[MtnWasp]

I posted these thoughts in the Louisville game thread and a couple of fonts expressed interest. So, I'll paste a long Hive post as a separate topic in case folks want to discuss/critique it:

Coach Pastner made an interesting remark in a recent presser that he decided to simply scrap the Princeton offense going into the tournament in Hawaii. Since then e have been initiating the offense with the use of high pick and rolls to get the PG into the paint.

The Princeton offensse is a "One-in, four-out" offense where the "one-in" is the Center who triggers the offense from just outside the foul line to cutters or spot-up three point shooters. A misnomer about the offense is that it is slow. It is a half court set but every team runs a half court set. It is predicated on having a skilled Center ("One-in") who has excellent court awareness, excellent passing ability and can shoot the ball facing up. It is also predicated on all four of the "four-out" players being able to make the defense respect the perimeter shot which will open the floor and create space for back-door cuts. Having four perimeter shooters is about spacing and stretching the defense to give room for cutters.

GT had been trying to run this offense for 3.5 seasons. It is an interesting history:

In year one the offense was of great benefit for a few reasons. Lammers was a revelation and was perfect to run it. Q Stephens was an outside threat and had the quickness to be a cutter and Okogie had the right combination os slashing and shooting ability at the other wing. That combo was enough to challenge defenses, especially when they had not seen us yet. The lack of three point shots from the guard spots was a limitation, but Lammers, Okogie and Q were enough to be competitive.

We ran into trouble in year two because GT didn't have a versatile, stretch 4 to replace Stephens. The staff did a remarkable job of developing Gueye into an capable post-up scorer, but he did not have the skill set to play one of the "four-out" positions and was not a face-up threat, nor did he have the court awareness to be the "one-in" trigger man that would have allowed Lammers to step-out (nor was Gueye an adequate belly- up post defender).

Therefore, the offense was left with "Two-in" and "Three-out" and that the offense didn't really work efficiently with that configuration because it negated the spacing benefits of the offense and allowed defenses to sag. Of course, all the injury mayhem didn't help: Lammers' ankle, Okogie's finger (7games), Alvarado's Elbow (7 ACC games) and Haywood's shin.

Year three was also bad. One of our most efficient scorers was Gueye, but the problem was the same. He didn't have the skills to be the trigger man in the Princeton offense, but also didn't have the skills to play one of the "Four-Out" spots. When Banks stepped in, he initially didn't have the skills to be the Princeton post trigger man either. He didn't show good enough hands, passing ability or court awareness to do what Lammers did. He did start to show some capability late in the year, however.

The offense in year three was also torpedoed by an epic shooting slump from the outside shooters. The offense was mired by not having a true Princeton trigger man, had to play "two-in, three-out" much of the time (which didnt work well, like in year two) and we couldn't hit from three. No Bueno.

This year, the problems of the post emerged again. One of the best players on the team, Moses Wright, was not best suited for the Princeton offense. His skills are wasted setting him up in the corner when he is best getting the ball at the elbow. Also, Banks reverted back to having very unreliable hands at the trigger, and his court awareness seemed to come and go like a San Francisco fog. It just didn't work at all.

In four seasons, the Princeton offense has been undermined at GT for a few reasons:

1. After Lammers left, not having a Center with the skills to be an appropriate trigger man, face-up shooter to run the offense.

2. Having a four that is much more effective post scorer than perimeter scorer (thus precluding "Four-out")

3. Poor three point shooting.

Interestingly, the staff seems to have recruited a Center (Gigiberia) that is well suited to run the Princeton offense. And if we are fortunate enough to land Kai Sotto, he could definitely do it also. On the other hand, Meka doesn't bring a Princeton skill set. Moses Wright's skill set is not well suited to be a "Four-out" or a "One-in" in the Princeton offense, so as long as Wright is here, I don't anticipate seeing the Princeton offense next year either.

So, what is the plan moving forward, are we going to try to get back to "One-in, Four-out" or it is scrapped for good? Maybe Panther can ask coach Pastner if we are done with it forever at a future presser.

 

[GTHomer]

I'll add the thoughts I posted also with a few edits.....

Good analysis of Pastner's offensive philosophy and willingness to change based on the personnel. IMO, Sjolund could be a wildcard for next season, especially if he improves his footwork on defense. We know he can shoot and having a threat like him on the court could help open things up for slashers.

 

[ESPNjacket]

Yes. I posted this about a week ago in a discussion of this topic:

↑
YlJacket: Agree Banks doesn't have good hands - then why do you start the year with him as a primary playmaker at the high post?

ESPNJacket: This is the great mystery of the season and the primary reason for the disappointing season, IMO. If we start the preseason practices playing the offense we are currently running one would expect we'd be better at it by now.

 

[deeznats]

I was posting about Banks in the high post back in December. It never made sense.

 

[g0lftime]

No reason to run the Princeton next year if Jose is back. The O is SO much better with him attacking the paint. Great post Wasp. It actually says Partner has recognized he needed to change. Of course without Jose we would not have much of an O either. He has been outstanding recently.

 

[MtnWasp]

ESPN, my guess is the reason Banks started the season as the trigger man was that he showed some promise at the end of last season. He had a streak of games where he was much more steady and clear headed in terms of court awareness.

Then this season, he has gone back to being an inconsistent and muddy-headed player. I call guys like this "coach killers." It is glaringly obvious what he does well and everyone looks at those things and says, "that guy is GOOD!" But then, there are things he does poorly or (even worse) is inconsistent that may not be so obvious but kills the possession.

I have some idea about why he plays like he does, but I will keep that speculation to myself.

But I agree completely that it is the primary reason for a disappointing record for the team. That being said, I think an even bigger factor for switching the offense was exploiting the strengths of Moses Wright. In the "One-in, Four-out" offense, Wright was off in the corner. He is not effective receiving the ball out there, but is highly effective receiving the ball at the elbow. But that messes up the spacing of the Princeton offense.

We saw the same spacing problem with Gueye. Gueye was an efficient post scorer. We tried to play him in one of the "Four-out" spots with Lammers and that didn't work very well for the same reasons it doesn't work for Moses Wright. But Gueye couldn't play the pivot (which would have allowed Lammers to move to one of the "Four-out" spots (which I where I think Lammer wanted to play in his Senior year)). So, even though Gueye may have been our most efficient scorer, he ended up, by the end of the season, mostly riding the bench in both years 2 &3.

My question is, are we done with the Princeton set for good? Gigiberia might be a good Princeton pivot. But Wright is the problem, from my view. Wright's game simply doesn't fit a "Four-out" role. Unless they see it the way Yljacket sees it, to play Wright in the pivot.

 

[glandon1960]

Agree - I posted a couple times in December that the personnel we have not did not fit the offensive scheme they were trying to run ... i.e. Banks is not Lammers in the high post, and Moses does not need to shoot outside 15 feet (allowed his man to clog things up for cutters). This led to way too many hero plays late in the shotclock (assuming we did not turn it over before then).

I wish they had seen/recognized this sooner .. it was somewhat apparent last season .... so credit to the staff for making a much needed change ... bad for the staff by not recongizing it sooner (may have cost us the UGA/ARK games). I have no problem they tried to continue what ran with Lammers at the '5', but it did not take all of last season to see Banks is much more effective screening/rolling/in low post.

This system fits the personnel better - and it looks like they have been adding wrinkles each week as teams adjust ... for example, initially it was only ball screen at top of key ... now we see ball screens on the wings and double screen up top. We do have people - Usher, Cole, Wright - that do very good job cutting to the basket from the corner, and I've see them run Devoe or another guard as one of hte screeners and that person fades behind the line for potential three.

 

[ESPNjacket]

ESPN, my guess is the reason Banks started the season as the trigger man was that he showed some promise at the end of last season. He had a streak of games where he was much more steady and clear headed in terms of court awareness.

Then this season, he has gone back to being an inconsistent and muddy-headed player. I call guys like this "coach killers." It is glaringly obvious what he does well and everyone looks at those things and says, "that guy is GOOD!" But then, there are things he does poorly or (even worse) is inconsistent that may not be so obvious but kills the possession.

I have some idea about why he plays like he does, but I will keep that speculation to myself.

But I agree completely that it is the primary reason for a disappointing record for the team. That being said, I think an even bigger factor for switching the offense was exploiting the strengths of Moses Wright. In the "One-in, Four-out" offense, Wright was off in the corner. He is not effective receiving the ball out there, but is highly effective receiving the ball at the elbow. But that messes up the spacing of the Princeton offense.

We saw the same spacing problem with Gueye. Gueye was an efficient post scorer. We tried to play him in one of the "Four-out" spots with Lammers and that didn't work very well for the same reasons it doesn't work for Moses Wright. But Gueye couldn't play the pivot (which would have allowed Lammers to move to one of the "Four-out" spots (which I where I think Lammer wanted to play in his Senior year)). So, even though Gueye may have been our most efficient scorer, he ended up, by the end of the season, mostly riding the bench in both years 2 &3.

My question is, are we done with the Princeton set for good? Gigiberia might be a good Princeton pivot. But Wright is the problem, from my view. Wright's game simply doesn't fit a "Four-out" role. Unless they see it the way Yljacket sees it, to play Wright in the pivot.

I thought it was pretty obvious that Banks was better suited to play in the low post than the high post. He has terrible hands and poor ball handling skills.

I would expect us to be done with Princeton for the time being, if not forever. Our bench knowledge of the system left with Hardy, IMO.

Playing high pick and roll takes a lot of reps to become good at it. I hope we stick with it. There isn't enough continuity in college basketball to become Stockton and Malone but they should get better at it with reps together. Jose is good at it but our screeners look very uncertain on the roll. I think that should be expected with a late December scheme switch.

 

[MtnWasp]

All true. One thing to consider is that the offense we are running now is even more dependent on Alvarado breaking down the D than the Princeton set. And Alvarado was hurt for a good stretch.

A question is, would our present offense look any less dysfunctional without Alvarado?

 

[ESPNjacket]

All true. One thing to consider is that the offense we are running now is even more dependent on Alvarado breaking down the D than the Princeton set. And Alvarado was hurt for a good stretch.

A question is, would our present offense look any less dysfunctional without Alvarado?

I think if we were more proficient at pick and roll concepts then it would appear to be less Alvarado breaking down the defense than it would look like a smoother pick and roll. I don't think Devoe or Parham would struggle to run a high pick and roll to start the offense. I think Moses is best suited as a combination of a low post guy and off-ball cutter with that type of set.

Just to be clear, I think Alvarado is by far our best pick and roll point guard. I think the other guys could make it work well enough to start an offense.

 

[tsrich]

I'll add the thoughts I posted also with a few edits.....

Good analysis of Pastner's offensive philosophy and willingness to change based on the personnel. IMO, Sjolund could be a wildcard for next season, especially if he improves his footwork on defense. We know he can shoot and having a threat like him on the court could help open things up for slashers.

I actually think it's not a good sign for Pastner that he tried running this offense for 4 years, when we only had the personnel to do so 1 of the 4.

 

[slugboy]

I actually think it's not a good sign for Pastner that he tried running this offense for 4 years, when we only had the personnel to do so 1 of the 4.

1] This isn’t like the NBA, where the GM picks the players and the head coach has to live with the picks. (Even the NBA isn’t usually that cut and dry). College head coaches run the recruiting for their team. In college, if you’re missing key personnel for your system, it comes back to the coaching staff.
2] I don’t know all of the offensive systems that we have and haven’t tried to run, but after Hardy left, Pastner talked a lot about moving to positionless basketball, and we tried that for a long while. We didn’t have the outside shooters to make that work. I’m not sure which coach specializes in that system, but a naive fan like me would think that one of the coaches knows how to coach positionless basketball if that was our direction.
2a] We’ve tried other schemes (just mentioned above), but decided to go back to more of a cutting-friendly scheme.
3] There’s the old saying “the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, and the next best time is today”, so I’m not going to give Pastner grief for abandoning a system.
4] I don’t know if we have deep knowledge of the system we’re trying to coach—ideally, Reveno, Schwartz, Wilkins, and Pastner would all know the same system really well.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[alagold]

I would have hoped that he has enough offensive knowledge to come up with a Offense that best fits his players skills.OBVIOUSLY not one that stresses the 3pt shot.When you have as many TOs as he has and a low scoring something is BADLY wrong.

 

[CuseJacket]

I actually think it's not a good sign for Pastner that he tried running this offense for 4 years, when we only had the personnel to do so 1 of the 4.

I get your point, and I don't necessarily disagree, but I wonder if the gripe should be slightly different.

How many coaches are successful when they materially change their offense year-to-year? Emphasis on materially; not tweaking. I'm trying to think of a few examples of this and generally default to the belief that you create an identity and tweak, rather than wholesale changes, unless you're intentional in migrating from what you inherited to where you intend to be.

Even if the answer is that we should stick with an offense come hell or high water, then the gripe becomes whether we selected/recruited/transferred in the right fits.

No matter what, somewhere in there is an alleged miscalculation by the coaches. I agree with @slugboy though re: better late than never. Ideally the learnings project forward to better offseason planning next year, year after, etc.

 

[CuseJacket]

Does anyone have KenPom or other stats that show the degree of improvement that this thread is talking about i.e., opponent adjusted at the inflection point where we changed offenses?

 

[MtnWasp]

A few thoughts:

Choosing the Princeton offense was really smart for year 1. The team had a miraculous roster of no shooting and no returning production. Again, the Princeton offense was chosen to create spacing to clear the paint for cutters since no one on the team could shoot the ball. Lammers was PERFECT at the high pivot and Okogie was a legit wing threat.

For year two they had Lammers, Okogie and Jackson returning and recruited a (supposed) good outside shooter with Haywood and Alvarado. So, I can see where they might want to keep the system. But injuries decimated that team.

In year three, the staff added a highly rated outside shooter in Devoe, Haywood shot ~38% from three when he played as a Freshman and got pretty hot at the end of his Freshman year after a slow start. Alvarado shot a similar percentage from three. And I think it is important to remember that Banks was not granted eligibility until the second game. So while Banks was not great for the Princeton offense, the staff didn't know he was going to be eligible until the last minute. So, criticizing the staff for not changing the scheme for Banks in year 3 is a little bit harsh. They TRIED to recruit some 3 point shooters, but Alvarado slumped, Haywood went all mental and Devoe took most of the season to even start to warm up from outside. Then there was the problem of playing Gueye with Banks in a way the exploited their post scoring efficiency without messing up the spacing.

I think the argument that we should have scrapped the Princeton offense leading up to this season carries more weight because we knew that Banks and Wright were going to play key roles and neither were well suited for scheme. But I think fans should consider that scrapping a system means a degree of starting over. That is to say, it is a pretty big deal because you are wasting all the coaching you put in to install the system up to that point.

In hind sight it is easy to say that the change should have been made earlier, but when a staff is trying to forecast that the pluses will outweigh the negatives of that kind of move, the choice may not be as obvious.

I think the offensive woes are a function of staff upheaval, off the court upheaval and recruiting failure to adequately recruit to the system they had in mind (and some recruits not panning out as expected). But it looks like things may be finally settling out.

While I understand the natural reaction to seeing a good adjustment is to ask why it wasn't done 6 months earlier, I prefer to applaud making a pretty bold move that turned out well.

 

[ESPNjacket]

A few thoughts:

Choosing the Princeton offense was really smart for year 1. The team had a miraculous roster of no shooting and no returning production. Again, the Princeton offense was chosen to create spacing to clear the paint for cutters since no one on the team could shoot the ball. Lammers was PERFECT at the high pivot and Okogie was a legit wing threat.

For year two they had Lammers, Okogie and Jackson returning and recruited a (supposed) good outside shooter with Haywood and Alvarado. So, I can see where they might want to keep the system. But injuries decimated that team.

Using Lammers in the high post to distribute the basketball was obviously a good move. That takes us through year 2.

Starting year 3, IIRC Pastner wanted to move to a motion offense (positionless basketball) and scrapped it early.

Year 4, well we know what happened. I don't know that I'd call it a bold move or a desperation move. That is a matter of opinion. I thought from listening to Pastner that he wanted to get away from the Princeton style in the off-season leading up to year 4. I'm not sure what changed it. Maybe it was Alvarado's absence early? Or that combined with Usher's absence early? I'm not sure.

Regardless of the reason or reasons, this team should have been a bubble team based upon talent and buried itself early and often.

 

[gte447f]

I would like to add that there was a material change (for the worse) between year one and year two in where Lammers played on the floor. Year one Lammers was usually positioned at the high post/free throw line. Year two he increasingly extended out to the top of the key which was not nearly as effective. I don’t know if it had something to do with his ankle, or trying to extend his game beyond the 3 point line for the nba, or how defenses adjusted to him in the high post or what, but he was better and our offense was better when he didn’t extend past the free throw line.

 

[YlJacket]

I’ll chime back in on this thread. I do think Moses will start next year as the “5” as I don’t expect a freshman big to come in and start except in some rare cases. Usually need time to adjust to the college game unless they are really elite. Could be wrong – we’ll see. And while I do think Moses has the capability to work offensively in the modified Princeton set we run – he has decent hands and most importantly can make the 15-18 foot shot from the foul line area – I don’t think we should or will go back to it simply because Banks graduates. The strength of our offense this year and next is our guards – Jose and DeVoe – so you run an offense tailored to them. And that is more the high pick and roll type of set. Though others would work as well – horn set, etc.


The issue we have right now with the high pick and roll set we run is that we have a strong propensity to disintegrate into one pick and drive offense with no ball movement or anything other than Jose or at times DeVoe trying to make a play against a set D. We start out games with passing and movement prior to a high screen but by halfway through the first half Jose brings it down, calls for a pick and then goes to the matt trying to get into the paint off that one screen. I play a game counting the number of times the ball reverses sides and this number gets woefully small when we go into our patented offensive blackouts. I really do believe the outlandish number of turnovers we have is directly related to the fact we don’t move the ball or the defense and thus we are driving against set defenses a lot more than we should. No wonder we turn the ball over like we do.


A high pick is simply a way to initiate an offense – shouldn’t be seen as “an offense”. The next iteration for us on offense is to get comfortable and confident in ball movement – and get to a point where we we know how to get defenses moving and can get the ball to different players in their comfort spot where they can do something with it. If Moses is at the 5 we can do that with a true 4 out system – if Moses is at the 4 then we need to look at how Mich State runs their 2 bigs or even how Mich did it under Belein and use him within 18 feet. Regardless of where Moses plays next year we need to be looking at how we move the ball and how we structure movement off the ball. Couple of off ball screens for DeVoe and/or Moore/Sjolund/Price would be a neat new twist to see.

As an aside, any roster with Banks and to a lesser extent Moses ain't structured to play positionless basketball. Banks ain't switching onto guards on the perimeter except in emergencies and putting him in any perimeter position on offense is a disaster. VT can come close to doing this as they don't have any true 5's. Duke could do it with Zion as a small ball center and run a 5 out offense. Any idea we can play true positionless BB is misguided. I would love to see us be more interchangeable with the 1-3 slots but that is about all we can do.

 

[MtnWasp]

Thanks for the analysis, YlJacket.

I don's see that our incoming Freshman class suggests moving to positionless basketball, either. But we are on a ton of long wings for 2021, so I don't know if long, rangy players will be the recruiting priority moving forward. That may allow some transition to positionless sets?

The "Turnover" issue this season probably deserves a thread of its own. It is probably the single greatest factor in the squad not being bubbly (or at least second to Alvarado's injury).

I haven't charted our turnovers, but my impression is that the team is an equal opportunity turnover machine. My perception is that our turnovers are equally distributed over all the ways a team can turn it over: Bad passes (poor entry angles, too low, too high, too hard, too soft), bobbled passes, dribbling errors (double dribbles, traveling, stepping out of bounds (my pet peeve)), and offensive fouls. My impression (which could be wrong) is that our ridiculously high turnover numbers are not due to being bad at just one or two of these things, but we do ALL of them more than the opposition.

I also agree with ESPN that the team was built to be bubbly but was undermined by inconsistent and just too many stretches of sloppy play. The season isn't over, but my impression (that may be wrong) is that the team was more undermined by the Alvarado injury and inconsistent play by individual players than it was a matter of coach bungling.

Even though the coach would get a mediocre grade by me for what he was able to get out of this squad, I still perceive the program may (depending on how we finish) have moved the needle this year (despite falling short of the bubble) and that the talent level and competitiveness of the program is better now than it has been in several years. We have a lot of productivity from this season with eligibility remaining. If we manage to land some of these 2021 recruits that we are getting to visit during the season, I will feel even more optimistic.