A Crazy Frustrating Meaningless Exersize.

[fan2011]

I decided to go back and see what our losses would look like if we held teams this year to the shooting percentages we held our opponents to on average last year. This is what the scores would be:

Richmond 75, JMU 70
Richmond 59, WVU 67 * this one didn't change, our 3pt/FT shooting were way off.
Richmond 56, Florida 77 *this one didn't change either. Offense was really off again.
Richmond 70, Texas Tech 76
Richmond 73, Saint Joseph's 67
Richmond 65, URI 60

We wouldn't have won every game, but we would have 3 more wins and be in really good shape. Based on shooting percentages alone, which is certainly not the whole story, our team allowed JMU, Saint Joe's and URI to score an average of 15 more points per game against us this year than last year's defense would have allowed. Essentially all those points have come from 3-pointers. To me there appears to be one essential hole in our game that we must fix immediately.

 

[Ulla1]

fan2011, nice analysis. But you're right, a frustrating exercise! OSC

 

[spider fan]

Bring back the defense. Agree three point defense is a necessity.

 

[SpiderRick]

Forget the defense; sit the defensive specialists and play 5 people who aren't afraid to score, whoever they may be.

 

[fan2011]

Forget the defense; sit the defensive specialists and play 5 people who aren't afraid to score, whoever they may be.

I can't believe how common this sentiment is, it is baffling. Do we watch the same games? There are barely any players in the country who are more efficient than ours on offense (unless they are playing our defense of course) and you are asking us to score even more? There isn't much more efficiency that can be squeezed out of our offensive possessions. You guys must think we should hire Grinnell's coach to replace Mooney. It doesn't matter how good your offense is when you consistently let your opponent shoot a huge number of threes and hit 50%+ of them (or 70% like last night).

 

[MolivaManiac]

I can't believe how common this sentiment is, it is baffling. Do we watch the same games? There are barely any players in the country who are more efficient than ours on offense (unless they are playing our defense of course) and you are asking us to score even more? There isn't much more efficiency that can be squeezed out of our offensive possessions. You guys must think we should hire Grinnell's coach to replace Mooney. It doesn't matter how good your offense is when you consistently let your opponent shoot a huge number of threes and hit 50%+ of them (or 70% like last night).

+1. We are 27th in the country in offensive efficiency and we are 200th in the country in defensive efficiency.

 

[spiderman]

I'm with you , 2011.
I get frustrated too when the ball gets to Deion or Trey on the perimeter and it feels like we're playing 3 on 5. but somehow it doesn't hurt us. the ball eventually gets back to TJ or TA in a good spot and they're shooting 57% and 52% respectively ... despite the perceived extra attention on them from the defense. on the few shots DT and Trey take, they're efficient. I'm not looking for someone to take shots away from TJ or TA right now.

SDJ might be hurt by the lack of other scoring options, though. he forces too much to me, mainly on his low percentage drives. I'd prefer he let the game come to him and pick his spots better. get him some clean looks from 3. but maybe he has to force because he's one of the 3 that can create a can scoring opportunity.

Wood has seen his minutes decrease, which is a little surprising. the other options haven't shown then can shoot straight. hope that picks up.

 

[fatherspider]

It s

+1. We are 27th in the country in offensive efficiency and we are 200th in the country in defensive efficiency.

Still doesn't mean we have to keep DT and td in the game. They aren't helping much either on D obviously. The defensive philosophy has to change. Period. We get cooked by any guards that have speed. Zone up or pack it in.

 

[urmite]

I can't believe how common this sentiment is, it is baffling. Do we watch the same games? There are barely any players in the country who are more efficient than ours on offense (unless they are playing our defense of course) and you are asking us to score even more? There isn't much more efficiency that can be squeezed out of our offensive possessions. You guys must think we should hire Grinnell's coach to replace Mooney. It doesn't matter how good your offense is when you consistently let your opponent shoot a huge number of threes and hit 50%+ of them (or 70% like last night).

What is wrong with this approach? All we have to do to make it work is play with 5 basketballs each possession...

Honestly just trying to show it isn't as simple as it seems...

 

[urmite]

Btw 2011, what was Pomeroy's predicted record for this season preseason (and the first 14 games)?

And if JMU & Cal were reversed, how close would we be to that prediction?

 

[fan2011]

Btw 2011, what was Pomeroy's predicted record for this season preseason (and the first 14 games)?

And if JMU & Cal were reversed, how close would we be to that prediction?

I don't remember his preseason prediction for individual games but I am almost certain his overall prediction was 18 wins. His current prediction is also 18 wins, but has us favored in 11 remaining games.

 

[72Spider]

So what does that mean? We were favored by 10 agnst RI.

 

[Spideroldie]

+1 Father! You said:
"The defensive philosophy has to change. Period. We get cooked by any guards that have speed. Zone up or pack it in."

If I recall correctly, we had very similar personnel back in the John Beilein days, and our zone defenses worked out very well then, even with relatively slow-footed defenders. Zone defenses also allow a team to play out to beyond the 3-point line, and still have some "back-up" under the basket.

However, I believe it is more an issue of not trying to teach other defenses, and being inflexible, and staying with one defense that now seems to truly be a BAD FIT for our current personnel. Maybe it worked when we had the shot-blockers as "fail-safe," but a single, inflexible, defense is clearly not working now! Even VCU mixes up their defenses, with a new coach and new personnel, for heaven's sake.

 

[keefusb]

Our opponents, especially A10 teams, have figured out our defense. When I re-watch our games, I see a lot of offensive rebounds by our opponents that either get tapped back in, or increasingly, I see kick-outs for open 3's. I also see many more opposing 3 point shots made from behind screens, especially the URI game.

Mooney will NOT change the defense, plus it's probably too late in the season to do so anyway. I hear folks talking about how efficient we are at scoring, but I think that is due to the performance of 3 players. I think we should let KF and MW play much more than they do, I think we lose little on defense, and we gain 2 guys on the floor who are better scoring threats.

We should also be getting our other bench guys a few more meaningful minutes each game to give the other guys a rest. We can't last an entire season only playing 7 guys, we will run out of gas by A10 tourney time, if not sooner. I heard many folks speculating that our run after Ced went down a couple years ago ended because we simply ran out of steam, and crapped the bed our last few games. I think there is something to it.

 

[SpiderK]

So what does that mean? We were favored by 10 agnst RI.

We were 4 point dogs against URI according to Vegas.

Zone would let our guys rest a few seconds also.

 

[keefusb]

Perhaps it's time to look at the pack line. 64W has been very successful with it, to me it looks like the only way to consistently beat the pack line is to pass over the top of it. Probably too late to use it this year, but we can always throw a penny in the well for next season.

Again, I think it would help our defensive intensity to play more than 7 guys. It would be interesting to see the difference in our defensive stats between the first and second half, I would guess we perform significantly worse defensively in the last 10-15 minutes of games due to fatigue. Same with FT's.

 

[SpiderTrap]

If your saying get rid of Trey (probably our best defender and one of our better rebounders) and Deion (our only other rim defender besides Allen) and put in Wood (loves to shoot outside threes) and Fore (best athlete on team, but young and inexperienced) - you would be asking this team to score probably about 85 points a night. Right now they get 77,and we give up 72 - we all know giving up 72 is way too much. We need to be around 62 a night.

But the key is you just assume playing these guys will lead to more points - but not exactly. Because for every shot Fore and Wood take, that is one less for Cline, Allen, and Jones. Not saying this lineup should not play together - but for long stretches, your taking away touches from a potential all-American in Allen (not many guys are hovering around 20 points and 8 rebounds) and Cline - who has shown potential to go off any night and score 30 points. Not to mention ShawnDre, once he gets back to 100%, is our best penetrator and guard we got.

 

[Eight Legger]

As I mentioned in another thread, I am in favor of going with an all-offensive lineup. We've already proven that we can run and outscore two good teams (Cal and Wake) and we put up a good number of points on UNI and ODU, too. That's how we are going to win this year. Our defense has not improved at all, and frankly I'm not going to wait around hoping for it to magically get better at this point.

Our best chance to win RIGHT NOW is to focus on offense and do whatever it takes to outscore our opponents. That might mean a lot of 88-85 games, but so be it. I get that more Wood and Fore means fewer shots for the other three scorers, but right now when we play DT and TD at the same time, the defenses can sag back on Terry and TJ and SDJ anyway. So it's not like they are getting easy looks that often. They're having to work their asses off to get those looks. But if we had 5 scorers on the court, we'd end up getting better looks more consistenly, IMO.

Our defense can't really get much worse at this point. Let's go all in on offense and have some fun.

 

[fan2011]

As I mentioned in another thread, I am in favor of going with an all-offensive lineup. We've already proven that we can run and outscore two good teams (Cal and Wake) and we put up a good number of points on UNI and ODU, too. That's how we are going to win this year. Our defense has not improved at all, and frankly I'm not going to wait around hoping for it to magically get better at this point.

Our best chance to win RIGHT NOW is to focus on offense and do whatever it takes to outscore our opponents. That might mean a lot of 88-85 games, but so be it. I get that more Wood and Fore means fewer shots for the other three scorers, but right now when we play DT and TD at the same time, the defenses can sag back on Terry and TJ and SDJ anyway. So it's not like they are getting easy looks that often. They're having to work their asses off to get those looks. But if we had 5 scorers on the court, we'd end up getting better looks more consistenly, IMO.

Our defense can't really get much worse at this point. Let's go all in on offense and have some fun.

This might sound like a good idea but it has been tried before and never been successful. All you have to do is look at Grinnell (although they are D3). Or look at Davidson this year, they scored 85 points and lost to Saint Bonaventure. If all you care about is our score at the end of the game then by all means it is a decent idea. We might be able to get an extra few points out of our offense, but the other team's score matters too. Ignoring defense for the sake of little more offense is not going to generate more points for us than it is for our opponents.

 

[keefusb]

Just because we play MW and KF more minutes doesn't mean we have completely given up on the idea of good defense. The chief theme here is that our defense has been poor, our two most vaunted defensive specialists appear to add little offensively or be significant difference-makers defensively. Let's follow the "definition of insanity" theorem, and try something different, like starting KF and MW, and/or giving them more minutes, going a bit deeper into our bench, and sending one guy to crash the offensive glass. It's worth a try at this point.

 

[Eight Legger]

Right, I'm not advocating that we try to score 140 points a game like Grinnell, just throwing up random shots every 5 seconds. But I think we've had enough results bear out that offensively, we can be REALLY good when we have the right guys in the game. And our offense at its best is much better than our defense can be. So let's play to our strength instead of trying to jam a square peg into a round hole all season and failing.

 

[97spiderfan]

I think it less about getting more offense and more about putting the 5 best players on the floor for the most amount of time. Those 5 players in my opinion include MW and KF. I am concerned about Marshall's defensive liability in this situation, so would be OK with Deion being a glue guy defensively. Khwan in my opinion is just plain better than Trey in most facets of the game and needs to play more.

We have seen for 3 years now, that Trey and Deion as starters just don't give us what we need in terms of play making ability (you can make plays on both ends of the floor) to win consistently. I don't know why anyone would think running them out there together is going to result in anything different at this point.

 

[97spiderfan]

And frankly, if we run out the exact same scheme, personnel, that we have been doing at Fordham, I kind of hope we lose. I think it will take something drastic like losing to frickin Fordham, to force Mooney to do something just a little bit different and out of his comfort zone.

 

[LongTimeLurkerFirstTimePoster]

re: Zone up or pack it in.

Really? Pack a zone and keep the shooters open who are already torching us?

 

[Eight Legger]

Maybe a 3-2 zone would let us get out on the shooters? Whatever defense forces the opponent to go inside is what we should be utilizing at this point.

 

[97spiderfan]

re: Zone up or pack it in.

Really? Pack a zone and keep the shooters open who are already torching us?

Ha, yes. I think our defense is already packing it in, given the amount of open space opposing teams have to launch 3's.

 

[keefusb]

Unfortunately, it will take more than a loss to Fordham to get CM to change anything. Again, this board is a place to speculate and share ideas, I don't realistically expect any of our "new" ideas to ever see the light of day under CM.

 

[ur2K]

Fordham is much better this year, it's a game we can easily lose

 

[spiderman]

change for the sake of change isn't improvement. suggesting any straight zone is not exactly new and innovative. our defensive isn't good this year, but the philosophy is sound. we've got to play it better or get players out there who will.
our defense is intricate. suggesting that teams have figured it out is giving them a lot of credit when they can't even guard TJ on a simple inbounds play he's run 100 times.

 

[urmite]

Ha, yes. I think our defense is already packing it in, given the amount of open space opposing teams have to launch 3's.

It seems like some of our fans are...

 

[kneepadmckinney]

I shudder to think what our defensive rebounding would look like if we went to a 3-2 zone. I think that is a terrible suggestion.

 

[Eight Legger]

I shudder to think what our defensive rebounding would look like if we went to a 3-2 zone. I think that is a terrible suggestion.

What about a 5-0 zone? A 1-4 zone? A 2.5-2.5 zone? A 4-3 nickel?

 

[fan2011]

What about a 5-0 zone? A 1-4 zone? A 2.5-2.5 zone? A 4-3 nickel?

I like the 4-3 idea, but it may be a bit extreme. We could try the 4-2, it worked for the Ragin' Cajuns before:

 

[SpiderK]

I shudder to think what our defensive rebounding would look like if we went to a 3-2 zone. I think that is a terrible suggestion.

What defensive rebounding????