Do we think Buzz will give any hints, or interviews, or statements in the offseason that will indicate he is looking to adapt his offense to whatever roster we end up with?

Would it just be as simple as him continuing talk about getting shots up and crashing the boards as enough of an indicator things will just stay the same? Does he even talk about the team really, from a system perspective, ni teh offseason?

Yeah I doubt we get anything, but that's even better, we can all just come up with wild theories based on the roster by the fall and anybody might be right.

Talking about this makes me ready for next season…but it's 7 mos away

I don't know either how much was chicken and how much was egg (coaching approach vs endemic limitations of the roster) but I do believe this… we won't be consistently good against top teams until we improve the ball movement.

Manny was the absolute worst about this. Guy was incapable of making a pass without thinking about it for at least 3 seconds. If he passed it at all.

90% of the time, if he got the ball he was pulling that **** out and calling a play that seemed to confuse the other 4 guys on the court every time.

zgolfz85 said:

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More so than in football, a defense first system in basketball scares me. You're simply going to run into a team that has an above their average shooting night and if you can't ratchet up the offense when need be, then you can't catch up (more often than not, I know we did against OU and Ole Miss). In football, a shut down defense can make it nearly impossible to get off quality passes…you just can't prevent a team from taking shots and if those first shots are going in…

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Long time reader, ultra rare poster...but this part intrigues me for a lot of reasons.

I think a "defense first" system can be a winning system if its married to a fast paced/spacing offense. I don't advocate for a "40 minutes of hell" philosophy where you're basically in a full court press the entire game, but if you're going to plot a winning strategy that's defense first i think it needs to also be an attacking offense. Lots of motion if you wind up in a half court set but push tempo and try and catch the other team before they can get set.

The last few years of Buzzball has been kind of painful to watch on the offensive side. I feel like i can pick up a lot and see what we're trying to do but in the college game, i feel like most offenses are very similar, with a lot of perimeter passing till the shot clock gets close to expiring. It's very on ball oriented with 2 or 3 guys just standing around till there's 10 seconds left on the shot clock and maybe a half-hearted pick gets set and the ballhandler just keeps dribbling a hole in the court before a last second shot.

If someone can point me to a basketball offense to watch (the perennial top teams like Duke etc all seem to have an actual offensive philosophy) that's indicative of what's out there, I'd love to see it. I just don't watch enough college ball to be knowledgeable in that area. I'm sure the last 2 weekends of the tourney will be great and a showcase of the best teams, but it feels like 70% of teams are guard/ball intensive hot potato till 10 seconds are on the shot clock and that makes it more of a "star" focused game, and I feel like Buzz's roster has talent more equitably distributed. In this layman's view, that would lead me to think an offense with multiple points of attack, heavy on motion and finding the weak points in the defense would be more successful than just making sure our best guy has the ball in time to fling up a prayer.

Flame away. Basketball is by far my favorite sport but I'm not an expert by any stretch.

So our whole offense style is because of "buzz paying Carter and Hefner six figures?"

I guess we'll find out next year because the roster will be very different. If the same issues reoccur then maybe we'll know.

JJxvi said:

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So our whole offense style is because of "buzz paying Carter and Hefner six figures?"

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Ultimately it comes down to that

HotardRat said:

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Manny was the absolute worst about this. Guy was incapable of making a pass without thinking about it for at least 3 seconds. If he passed it at all.

90% of the time, if he got the ball he was pulling that **** out and calling a play that seemed to confuse the other 4 guys on the court every time.

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Yeah, I tend to agree with you on manny. I don't think most top level coaches would have kept him as a point guard used sparingly when we need him and all the time when we don't. That was uniquely buzz. He's more of a 2/3 and certainly has the length for it. He'd have been far more dangerous as a scoring wing and defense guy because of his lack of "floor general" skills. His court vision is just not where we needed it to be for him to play the 1, occasional 2. It made for a really awkward dynamic.

bobinator said:

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Manny wouldnt have been good off the ball either because his shot takes forever and he doesn't move the ball. He's another reason we had to play the way we played because you couldn't run any sort of traditional offense with him on the floor.

People kill Hefner and Carter but to me Manny was a tier all by himself on frustrating players to watch.

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Agreed, but I always dreamt that the slow shot windup could be coached out of him…maybe pipe dream.

100% agree...absolutely need a passable offense because youre not just going to be able to score in transition every time (not to mention the absolute drain it is for your entire roster, you need to run 10 deep and sub frequently so your 5 on the floor can maintain the defensive effort) and every team in every game where you'll need to run some plays out of your half court set. I hope that Buzz truly does shape his gameplay plans around his personnel and can adapt. I don't see a system like we've had being super conducive to getting elite level talent if we don't actually have much of a half court set. I'm not asking for iso ball every time down the court, just...something.

Buzz has always been a dribble drive coach.

This is going to gel a very fascinating offseason to watch, particularly this portal window.

Think the players we pick up will tell us a lot about how the team is going to play.

I think we'll always be a tough, scrappy team
Under Buzz, but if he adds some guys that can reskin snore/shoot then that will tell me he's serious about having a good offense and could take us up ti the next level

As simply as I can put it: tomorrow has almost no clear connection to yesterday for this team. Buzz is the only connection and in six years his choices have been mostly baffling especially in recruiting.

If he wants to create a brand new team and philosophy from scratch, this is the year.

Defense first but with good offense as well works at UH year after year after year .

Yep. And they're a team that might not jump out offensively if you're looking at basic stats, but they're incredibly efficient, especially this year because they're finally really good from deep. That's why I think this Houston team has a shot to win the whole thing.

Maybe so but he needs to tweak it if he wants to #getbetter. He's proven he can be competitive with it but not next level competitive which is where I believe he and us want him to be.

I agree. UH, Duke, and Florida - one of these will win it all imo. Auburn has a shot but will have to play lights out to beat any of those 3.

I posted this on premium, but curious on thoughts over here. I'd avoided until now looking at everyone's final stat lines for the season, knowing the 3 pt numbers would anger me.

So, here's where we landed (rounded figures):

CJ obviously best from 3 at 41% on the year on 106 attempts (his career low), Andy in 2nd at 39% on 57 attempts and Manny in 3rd at 35%.

It's just mindnumbingly infuriating that CJ didn't get more shots on a team that desperately needed more 3s. I get his defensive liabilities, but come on.

More maddening though is that Andy was not developed by this staff to be a true 3 and D/rebounding guy, which would have made him a lock for the NBA. As it stands now, he's probably a G Leaguer who could work his way up if a more capable staff at the next level can make him that. He's clearly capable of having a lucrative career overseas at worst. With him, it's clearly a mental/confidence issue. He has a flat arc shot, but it goes in when he's confident. How this staff left that on the table when we desperately needed just anyone capable of making a 3 is beyond me. The previous 2 seasons, the dude went 40% and then 45% from deep…just 30 combined attempts, but still. I just don't get it.

HotardRat said:

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Manny was the absolute worst about this. Guy was incapable of making a pass without thinking about it for at least 3 seconds. If he passed it at all.

90% of the time, if he got the ball he was pulling that **** out and calling a play that seemed to confuse the other 4 guys on the court every time.

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Even that wouldn't be bad if he just caught it and drove immediately. The ball stopping so much this year with every player was infuriating

zgolfz85 said:

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I posted this on premium, but curious on thoughts over here. I'd avoided until now looking at everyone's final stat lines for the season, knowing the 3 pt numbers would anger me.

So, here's where we landed (rounded figures):

CJ obviously best from 3 at 41% on the year on 106 attempts (his career low), Andy in 2nd at 39% on 57 attempts and Manny in 3rd at 35%.

It's just mindnumbingly infuriating that CJ didn't get more shots on a team that desperately needed more 3s. I get his defensive liabilities, but come on.

More maddening though is that Andy was not developed by this staff to be a true 3 and D/rebounding guy, which would have made him a lock for the NBA. As it stands now, he's probably a G Leaguer who could work his way up if a more capable staff at the next level can make him that. He's clearly capable of having a lucrative career overseas at worst. With him, it's clearly a mental/confidence issue. He has a flat arc shot, but it goes in when he's confident. How this staff left that on the table when we desperately needed just anyone capable of making a 3 is beyond me. The previous 2 seasons, the dude went 40% and then 45% from deep…just 30 combined attempts, but still. I just don't get it.

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Andy shouldve shot the ball more. Been wanting that for two years. It's in his skillset

With Wilcher though, he's a 5th year senior. He's been a role player his entire career. Thinking he magically wasn't going to be is wishful. It's one thing to not be a plus defender but he flat out killed us at times on that end to where even with his shooting he was unplayable against good teams. He was a worse defender than Wade which is saying something. Having them both out there at same time was disastrous

CJ not getting more shots was as you stated largely due to his defense, but it also didn't help that when he came into the game we could not get him open at all. When you're bad at setting screens and passing the ball, it is hard to get a guy open who everyone on the court knows is going to shoot the 3. We also had basically one set play for him, so if you watched 5 minutes of film, you knew what was coming. It was really annoying.

Being so married to our defensive style that we couldn't get a shooter on the floor or Payne on the floor earlier in the year really annoys me. I don't mind our defense, but I wish we'd be more willing to be multiple and throw different looks at teams to make sure we're getting our best guys on the court, or even to just show a different look every now and then. We are willing to give up a ton on the offensive end to be better on the defensive end and I don't always agree with it.

As for Andy I would argue he did develop a ton while he was here. He was not nearly the player his first year that he was this year. I am in total agreement for him it was all about confidence. Someone clearly got in his ear in February this year and told him to shoot the damn ball. At that point we also made a conscious effort to run more of the offense through him, which I agree should have happened much earlier in his career.

I think there's two layers to our defense that are hard to seperate without being able to see these guys in practice, and it's who's good and bad in our defense, and would they be good or bad in any other defense too.

Like one pro of our defense is allowed us to hide Wade Taylor, who is undersized, not super athletic, and not a particularly good fundamental defender anyway. But because we were already hiding Wade, it made it hard to hide anyone else too. This is why our defense wasn't nearly as good last year when Boots was also playing like 30 minutes a game. Replacing Boots with Phelps was a major upgrade defensively.

Another pro is that if you have a really high level athlete, they can guard more of the floor. Solo can basically guard a third of the floor by himself in this defense.

But a con of our defense is it does take some people who might be very good one-on-one defenders and it forces them to be part of a larger defensive system and play some roles they might not be as good at. Like Payne was very good when he was on the ball, in the post. High level on-ball post defender. But he is not good at reading and reacting.

But a lot of the "we give up too many threes" angst, which sometimes I agree with, is that makes the assumption that if we ran some other kind of defense, we wouldn't also give up a bunch of threes, which with this roster I would say isn't true. If you run a more Chris-Beard-style aggressive man to man, now Wade (and Wilcher and Hefner) are much bigger liabilities than they were before.

bobinator said:

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I think there's two layers to our defense that are hard to seperate without being able to see these guys in practice, and it's who's good and bad in our defense, and would they be good or bad in any other defense too.

Like one pro of our defense is allowed us to hide Wade Taylor, who is undersized, not super athletic, and not a particularly good fundamental defender anyway. But because we were already hiding Wade, it made it hard to hide anyone else too. This is why our defense wasn't nearly as good last year when Boots was also playing like 30 minutes a game. Replacing Boots with Phelps was a major upgrade defensively.

Another pro is that if you have a really high level athlete, they can guard more of the floor. Solo can basically guard a third of the floor by himself in this defense.

But a con of our defense is it does take some people who might be very good one-on-one defenders and it forces them to be part of a larger defensive system and play some roles they might not be as good at. Like Payne was very good when he was on the ball, in the post. High level on-ball post defender. But he is not good at reading and reacting.

But a lot of the "we give up too many threes" angst, which sometimes I agree with, is that makes the assumption that if we ran some other kind of defense, we wouldn't also give up a bunch of threes, which with this roster I would say isn't true. If you run a more Chris-Beard-style aggressive man to man, now Wade (and Wilcher and Hefner) are much bigger liabilities than they were before.

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totally agree, but I would say, for a lot of the 3s we gave up....seemed like a lot of mental lapses by the guys and not the defense itself. And worse, the games where a single dude would get hot and we'd just continue to let him get as many looks as he wanted.

That's exactly what I'm talking about. The raging against our defense assumes we wouldn't gave up those same looks in some other defense but whether we're playing our weirdo zone or a traditional man to man or some other kind of defense, if you can't stay in front of the ball it's not going to work.

bobinator said:

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That's exactly what I'm talking about. The raging against our defense assumes we wouldn't gave up those same looks in some other defense but whether we're playing our weirdo zone or a traditional man to man or some other kind of defense, if you can't stay in front of the ball it's not going to work.

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Ah, I agree with you then. Just seemed like all too often, our guys would take plays off or just have brain farts....against teams we couldn't afford to do that with.