I've been watching some of the other conference tournament games this week and it has solidified a few thoughts in my mind about our offense.
Everyone agrees that WHEN it works, it's a really fun offense to watch. It creates some mismatches and misdirection that leads to easy shots. Generally, we score enough points to be "competitive."
But it has some key deficiencies, in my mind, that I think show themselves at the most critical times.
The biggest is that it feels like more often than not, our guys are trained first and foremost to immediately set up the half court offense and begin one of the same few series of passes and movements that we always employ, and to me that takes away a lot of the improvisation and aggressiveness that otherwise might exist. We very rarely push the ball effectively on fast-breaks. Very rarely do we have a player who drives to the basket from the wing one on one. A lot of times it feels like we are afraid to just play basketball. The offense is a great one to use when we WANT to use it, but I don't think it's super effective when we HAVE to use it (like at the end of a close game, for example).
And I get that the system is the system we use, but I just wish there was more flexibility. Use it sometimes, when there are no other options. But don't default to it pre-emptively on 85% of our possessions. We now are recruiting at a level where we have athletes who can be aggressive and make creative basketball moves on their own. We don't need to just spend 25 seconds looking for (or forcing) a back-door pass or setting a series of screens to end up with an off-balance three-pointer with no one in position to rebound it.
Maybe I'm totally off-base with all this, but when you watch how other teams play and see basic basketball things happening in their offenses that rarely or never occur in ours, it stands out.
Everyone agrees that WHEN it works, it's a really fun offense to watch. It creates some mismatches and misdirection that leads to easy shots. Generally, we score enough points to be "competitive."
But it has some key deficiencies, in my mind, that I think show themselves at the most critical times.
The biggest is that it feels like more often than not, our guys are trained first and foremost to immediately set up the half court offense and begin one of the same few series of passes and movements that we always employ, and to me that takes away a lot of the improvisation and aggressiveness that otherwise might exist. We very rarely push the ball effectively on fast-breaks. Very rarely do we have a player who drives to the basket from the wing one on one. A lot of times it feels like we are afraid to just play basketball. The offense is a great one to use when we WANT to use it, but I don't think it's super effective when we HAVE to use it (like at the end of a close game, for example).
And I get that the system is the system we use, but I just wish there was more flexibility. Use it sometimes, when there are no other options. But don't default to it pre-emptively on 85% of our possessions. We now are recruiting at a level where we have athletes who can be aggressive and make creative basketball moves on their own. We don't need to just spend 25 seconds looking for (or forcing) a back-door pass or setting a series of screens to end up with an off-balance three-pointer with no one in position to rebound it.
Maybe I'm totally off-base with all this, but when you watch how other teams play and see basic basketball things happening in their offenses that rarely or never occur in ours, it stands out.
