I am excited by it. Bucky seems to do a good job in coaching in the caos.

I dont want to look it up, but i doubt we had a 30 assist game at all last year and doubtful we had very many 20 assist games. That's because we played isoball and shot so poorly.

It's tough to defend 5 guys that can score. It's also tough to defend a last second offense that has multiple weapons and ways to attack. When the play is always going to be give it to Wade Taylor, it's easier to defend.

Yeah in a third as many games we're more than halfway to our assist total from last year. Though it's hard to rack up assists shooting 31% from 3 for a whole season. Hefner was sixth on the team last year in assists and we already have seven players with more than he had. It'll be close on whether Lane catches Taylor, but second on the team last year was Phelps and right now we have four players projected to have more than he did.

We're also #2 in overall assist rate, or the percentage of our baskets that are assisted.

This is obviously mostly good, but it also speaks a little bit to our lack of players who can create on their own.

Outside of phelps and wade who created on their own last season? Payne I guess if we gave him the ball.

That part wasn't a comparison to last year, just an observation about our offense.

I was just pointing out that being an extreme outlier in assist rate partially points to the fact that we don't create many buckets on our own. Like Alabama has the best offense in the country and they're #159 in assist rate.

Hefner missed so many, he kept other player's assist stats down. Hefs assists were higher because he could not pass to himself!

I kid,......sort of

I was looking at these same stats today, it's really an incredible difference to see the assist rate so high. Also the 3 pt percentages and ft percentages are much higher than last year. A much more appealing team to watch and infinitely more efficient offensively.

As bobinator said, there's still an obvious weakness in terms of having a guy that you can hand the ball to and say "score", but I'll gladly take the trade off of having a group of guys that seem to be willing to share the ball like this.

Hill or Griffen could possibly be shot creating scorers if called on to do it but it's kinda not the way this system works imo. Like others have said you have to be committed to the system and the system is based on getting open shots in transition and ball movement .

The system still needs guys who can attack the gaps in the defense and get to the basket. Hill is definitely one that can do it. We need to see more of it from Griffen and hopefully Mgbako.

Otherwise we get pretty easy to defend pretty quickly by better teams.

I don't believe Mackenzie can so it. Loose handles, no hops and can't finish.

bobinator said:

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It's truly remarkable that Taylor racked up 129 assists considering how terrible the rest of our team was at scoring the basketball. He literally assisted a shade under 18% of all of our non-Wade-Taylor baskets.

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Hes averaging 7 assists per game in the gleague in only 26 min/per game he's a really good creator that he didn't get much credit for here as he shouldve

100% true we have to attack gaps and I feel like Hill, Griffen, Lane and Holloway have done some of that but maybe not enough to know who is the "go to guy" like we knew with Wade. Isaacs has shown flashes as well.

Wade kinda had to be the "go to guy" with maybe the occasional flash from Boots or Phelps .

Lane, Isaacs and Holloway need to drive the gaps but they need to drive to pass rather than drive to score unless the lane is just wide open. Lane is very good at it.

He was also the all time leading scorer and got his jersey retired. I guess you mean credit on this board?

The only real critique I recall of Wade here was occasionally his shot selection and timing of said shot selection was suspect.

halfastros81 said:

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He was also the all time leading scorer and got his jersey retired. I guess you mean credit on this board?

The only real critique I recall of Wade here was occasionally his shot selection and timing of said shot selection was suspect.

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I didn't mean it like that. More that his passing ability was underrated because the team around him couldn't shoot

Got it . Yes , agree his passing was under appreciated

bobinator said:

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I was just pointing out that being an extreme outlier in assist rate partially points to the fact that we don't create many buckets on our own....

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Nor do we need to the way our O is run and the "prohibition" on the mid-range. this is mostly a passing offense til we get it to the open person.

i mean, other than a big that catches down low and makes a few moves, or a perimeter guy that upfakes and drives for a layup, doesn't seem there would be much opportunity for unassisted buckets.

There's plenty of opportunities, we're just not very good at taking advantage of them yet. But that was a known issue coming into the year so not like it's a huge surprise.

But it's why we're pretty easy to guard at times by athletic teams like SMU. If teams have the length to just switch around the outside we get pretty easy to guard.

But it's also why Marcus Hill is so important, he's the one guy that's good at it right now.