Great is a giant stretch, but definitely enough talent to make the tourney

I'll reserve "great" until we get well into conference play. They could be decent to good and I credit Bucky and coaches for making some really positive progress from the beginning of the season. It looks liked I had hoped it might look which makes me feel like we chose very well on the coaching hire . First test was pulling together a potentially competitive roster from almost nothing which I think was nothing short of an A+. Second test of rounding the team into a cohesive squad … A …so far …but everyone knows the 2nd half of the semester is gonna be a lot more challenging.

I watched the fsu and pitt games with absolutely no idea what to expect except for a giant cluster with frequent stuck in the mud disaster moments.

All I can say is wow. We are fun to watch in the very least. Will definitely watch again.

I see fewer WTF moments each game. I'm guessing that's both team chemistry and better alignment of the players with the system and vice versa.

For me it continues to be improvement on defense including putting us into transition offense regularly. Buzz mostly did that with rebounds.

And other teams have benefitted over the years by us dribbling into traffic (mentioned above) all the way back to BCG. This board mostly viewed that as lack of a pure pg or just inadequate "handle," plus frustration when we went into motion turning into repetitive weaves or just n meaningful shot. I see progress on that on offense but I don't see us on defense creating the same turnovers our opponents get from us yet.

I'll be honest: if we can manage all of this, grow the team, and win, I will take those wins and put them under my pillow and sleep peacefully. So nothing I mentioned is a deep flaw or showstopper.

AggieEyes said:

---

Agreed. I really like what we've seen lately.

Few things to clean up.

1. Too much dribbling 1:1 and then taking a poor % shot

2. Our press often get broken easily resulting in easy pts (high risk / high reward)

3. Guards need to have more spatial awareness in the half court. Often dribbling into traffic resulting into TOs.

It's an insane difference from what we saw during the Ok St game.

Kudos to the coaches and players.

---

1. Too much dribbling 1:1 and then taking a poor % shot

I'm convinced no matter our coach or team there are fans who will be mad at "iso ball". We are 4th in team assists and our assist rate ranking much be up at or near the top as well.

2. Our press often get broken easily resulting in easy pts (high risk / high reward)

This is part of this style, it happens but yes the rate it happens can be reduced.

3. Guards need to have more spatial awareness in the half court. Often dribbling into traffic resulting into TOs.


Ok, don't dribble into traffic - got it.

The numbers do look like it if you look at the advanced metrics.

Quote:

---

2. Our press often get broken easily resulting in easy pts (high risk / high reward)

---

I think I'd argue that this is not really the case. We just have certain players that are bad individual defenders. They get blown by whether we're playing half court or full court. Bucky has kind of talked about this, that when you play full court defense and the opponent gets an easy shot everyone wants to blame the scheme, but maybe that guy would have gotten an easy bucket in the half court too.

I think it's just a fact that this team's strength is not going to be its defense. At least not in the ways anyone is used to looking at defense.

Seemed like the scoring drought is a circular reference; tempo slowed down to half court, missed shot results in not full court press in the same way, slow defensive series without creating a TO, rinse repeat?

Lane had some nice takes to break both of the runs I believe? Does the system need made baskets to prevent droughts? I mean, made baskets /= no drought in itself, but without the ball being inbounded does that put us behind tempo?

During the longer run, i wanted us to snow bird a couple of guys giving up the easy lay in on defense with the plan to hit an open 3 on the other. Would be wild!

I thought the droughts are partially due to having weird lineups in the game and partially due to us still not being fully committed to the system yet. Bucky keeps talking about how we have to be extremely aggressive all the time but when we get tight we tend to fall back into old habits and we get too passive.

So if you're looking at this from a coaching /game management perspective who's the most likely player(s) that can spell Agee when he needs a blow or gets in foul trouble? It's probably a combo of players but from what I think I see Vinson is the tip of that spear. Need all the bigs to step up tho

The second drought had Griffen, Agee, Mgbako in at least I thought? I remember thinking maybe it was a weird lineup, but then thought there were people i thought could score - either creating or second chances. But I was watching in my car at soccer so I could be wrong.

I think the extremely aggressive jives with how it felt. Not attacking on transition defense, and not attacking on a secondary break on offense. I'm sure that can lead to some avalanches of runs against us though.

I feel like the runs we give up start with our own turnovers. We seem to turn over the ball in bunches and get down on ourselves leading to bad defense and opponent runs.

I told my wife early in the season that I thought an even or negative turnover differential was the telltale sign of our struggles and when we see that turn we'll know we're getting better. You can't build a system built on turning over your opponent only to equal that effort with your own turnovers.

And I think we've had positive turnover differentials the last 4 games or so...we'll see if that continues to be a leading metric.

I dunno if this means much because it depends on game situations and doesn't account for garbage time play but here are some rudimentary season to date rebounding numbers for our bigs. Format is : Offensive rebounds per minutes played/Defensive rebounds per minutes played /Total rebounds per minutes played:

Agee: 0.101/0.275/0.376
Mgbako: 0.138/0.224/0.362
Vinson: 0.090/0.208/0.299
Feddy: 0.113/0.128/0.241
Clemence: 0.079/0.159/0.238
McDermott: 0.111/0.111/0.222

Just by that metric Mgbako is a lot better than I expected.
Feddy's numbers on defensive boards … pretty weak

bobinator said:

---

I thought the droughts are partially due to having weird lineups in the game and partially due to us still not being fully committed to the system yet. Bucky keeps talking about how we have to be extremely aggressive all the time but when we get tight we tend to fall back into old habits and we get too passive.

---

Agreed. I don't think there is a singular issue leading to the scoring droughts and I know this team is still learning the system, learning how to work together, etc. Hopefully, as the season progresses, the "chemistry" aspect will come together and things like prolonged scoring droughts will become either shorter or less likely.

These guys are still getting to know each other, know the coaches, and figure things out. Time and game experience will help that process along.

Runs are also just going to happen, this is basketball. We'll go on some, they'll go on some. That's true anyway but it's definitely true with the way we play and as many threes as we take.

During Pitt's run last night we had some bad turnovers but they also made some pretty wild shots that you just live with going in. I think they hit two or three step back threes at one point.

But like what Bucky is saying, you can't just suddenly get freaked out when the other team goes on a run and start being afraid to play loose and afraid to make mistakes. That's what I saw against UCF and again last night but last night we finally regrouped and pulled ourselves out of it.The other team hits a few shots and suddenly we start playing conservative ball because we don't want to miss a shot or we don't want to turn it over which then makes us easier to guard and leads to tough shots and turnovers.

This system, especially with this roster, only works if we play all out, all the time.

Clemence is out of eligibility after this season is he not?

I'm happy with this team at this stage. Brand new coach running a constant pressure defense with 12 new players relying on 3s. Tough to look good early on but these guys really improved last night.

#12 was outstanding. Reminded me a bit of John Lucas. ( Yeah, I'm old )

Agee anchored the middle but it would be nice to have another like him down there.

It was reported earlier in Summer that Clemence will have a year of eligibility after this season.

Ball Fan said:

---

It was reported earlier in Summer that Clemence will have a year of eligibility after this season.

---

Hopefully, after a year in the system, he will start making layups.

On paper pre-season, if asked who the three best players were, lots of folks would have answered Pop, Griffin, and Mgbako in some order? And right now it is actually Agee and the Spaniard?

Coaching staff has a lot of high-value chess pieces to work with and it will be interesting to see how they mix and match them based on the opponent. One of the things that has impressed me most about this team is the avoidance of silly fouls in spite of the pressure defense. Have we even had a player reach 4 fouls yet this season?

And Lane.

Pumpkinhead said:

---

On paper pre-season, if asked who the three best players were, lots of folks would have answered Pop, Griffin, and Mgbako in some order? And right now it is actually Agee and the Spaniard?

---

Everyone did nail how important Agee was going to be though and quite a few people thought Dominguez might be one of our better players. (Though I was dead wrong on the kind of stats Agee was going to put up.)

But those three need to be our best players, or at least among them.

Right now we look like a team that might be able to scrap and claw its way to the bubble, if those three can really get going we could be even better than that. Watching the SEC/ACC challenge the last couple of days when I watched the rest of the SEC I didn't see many teams that look like they're just in a completely different class of talent than we are.

If those three can get going and we keep improving I think there's some wins to be had in this league.

bobinator said:

---

Pumpkinhead said:

---

On paper pre-season, if asked who the three best players were, lots of folks would have answered Pop, Griffin, and Mgbako in some order? And right now it is actually Agee and the Spaniard?

---

Everyone did nail how important Agee was going to be though and quite a few people thought Dominguez might be one of our better players. (Though I was dead wrong on the kind of stats Agee was going to put up.)

But those three need to be our best players, or at least among them.

Right now we look like a team that might be able to scrap and claw its way to the bubble, if those three can really get going we could be even better than that. Watching the SEC/ACC challenge the last couple of days when I watched the rest of the SEC I didn't see many teams that look like they're just in a completely different class of talent than we are.

If those three can get going and we keep improving I think there's some wins to be had in this league.

---

The SEC is definitely down form last season

Still annoyed we had a great team last season and the SEC ended up being the greatest conference in the history of college basketball

Potentially a mediocre or good team seems much more accurate. Great is a huge stretch. FSU is awful we got blown out a few weeks ago to a good not great Oklahoma State team and beat at home by a not particularly good UCF team. We still have not beaten a top 100 NET team.