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Message: [QUOTE="Billy Jack, post: 4498692, member: 4173"] I disagree that they have lots to fix. They lost these 3 games by an average of 9 points. That means that if a handful of plays had gone in the opposite direction, the outcome would have been different. That’s not a call for a major overhaul. For example, our guys committed 27 fouls in the PC game, 8 above their season average. If they dial it back, then they force PC to have to make shots. To compound the situation, PC made 83% of their FTs in that game when they normally hit 73% of their FTs. So, they really took advantage of those FT opportunities that we gave them. Just by reverting to their normal FT%, they would have scored 4 fewer points. And we shot only 56% from the line when we normally shoot 74%. That’s another 4 points. If both teams had simply shot their season normal on uncontested FTs, it would have been a 4 point margin instead of 12 points. Combine that with fouling less and it’s a whole different game. The take from this game is that they have to work on playing tough defense without fouling so much. Same thing in the Xavier game. We shot only 44% from the line, they shot 82% when their normal is 73%. If both teams revert to normal, it’s 3 more points for us, 3 less for them and now it’s a 4 point margin instead of 10. X committed only 9 fouls vs their normal of 17. Change that and you change the outcome of the game. I focused on free throws because FT shooting is not something that should fluctuate with how the game is played. They are uncontested shots, so a team should pretty consistently hit at about the same rate from one game to the next. The Marquette game was more complicated because there wasn’t an aberration that is likely to change simply by things reverting to normal. But we did beat ourselves with 16 turnovers, which is not like us. Marquette does that to teams and Shake’s been teaching that same havoc defense for more than 10 years. Marquette is top 40 in the country at forcing turnovers. But it’s something we have control over. Having experienced it once, we should be better prepared next time. When a team turns the ball over it’s beating itself by giving the other team more scoring opportunities and reducing their own. Let’s hope that we don’t beat ourselves again. After all, this was just a 6 point game and it wouldn’t have taken a lot to get a different result. All of this says to me that a major overhaul is not needed. Instead we need to focus on little things which will result in different outcomes. [/QUOTE]

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