A+ games for Hurley and Cole

[UConnSwag11]

For the fans that appreciate the progress made from 4 years ago, there should not be complaints with getting a road victory in the BE (against a team that was playing well recently), and beating the point spread by a wide margin.

For the fans that want perfection or close to that, there will always be complaints. I can understand that if we do want to beat the best teams we'll have to eliminate the mistakes from last night, and adjust. If adjustments can be made, then this team can be better.

 

[freshler40]

Sanogo has shown good hands before. In the beginning of the season I thought his hands were a strength. Weird.

Yes, he has regressed in some ways, seems to need to dribble first and move mostly away from the hoop. It would be good to see him go straight up, not pump all the time. He sure is a prize. It's wonderful to see his impact even being a freshman. He will grow and seems eager to get better.

 

[Matt '99]

Still confused as to why we haven’t made adjustments to teams doubling/tripling Bouk when he looks to penetrate the defense. Happened in the second half of nova and pretty much the whole game last night

 

[Hungryhusky99]

Still confused as to why we haven’t made adjustments to teams doubling/tripling Bouk when he looks to penetrate the defense. Happened in the second half of nova and pretty much the whole game last night

Kid has no handle . Not Hurley’s fault .

 

[Spaceman213J]

RJ was great. I love Hurley, but the 1st half was not great.
I did think a great adjustment that he/the team made was letting Bouk move without the ball. Instead of just giving it to him and putting the "Bouk show" on, they ran plays and screened to get him shots other than iso's and the pick and roll. That there can also save Bouk some energy and some wear and tear on his body during a game.

Sanogo looks like he's starting to press a bit. I don't confess to know what he's thinking but it's not uncommon for frosh to press when they see their seasons on the line and it's the last chance for seniors to make the tournament.

Finally, they need Jackson to shoot once in a while. He had 1 wide open three that he passed on after Bouknight had broken down the defense.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

The interesting thing is that whether over the full season or more recent, the team is better when Whaley and Sanogo are each alone than in lineups with them and another big.

But over the full season the team has played better with Carlton alongside another big than just Carlton alone. I'm guessing that's selection bias, where we only play that Carlton+2nd big lineup when we have a clear advantage. But likely you have a differing opinion on that.

My issues with Hurley go beyond his lineups. I think the numbers are impacted by the fact that we are simultaneously a dribble drive team while also loving 3's and doing it all out of 4 and 5 out sets. We end up with a lot of 3's off the dribble, which are lower percentage than 3's off the catch. Look at Cole if you want to see the difference. We also end up with a lot of kamikaze drives into the trees, especially in the pick-and-roll, which is why we suck so bad at the rim. The first look on the p-n-r needs to be to the screener. Hit the screener a few times and the penetration will be there for the guards.

Hurley has an old school offensive style but runs it out of a 4 out or 5 out set. I am fine with an old school style, but he needs an old school lineup with forwards at the basket getting dump offs and put backs. The lineups and style and formations don't quite fit together. And the numbers support that.

 

[the Q]

So that's who Q is!

Unc_nfirmed

 

[the Q]

I don’t think I’ve seen a guy gain like 3 full bpm after one game.

And I think Cole did that, or close to it from last night to today.

 

[navery12]

I don’t think I’ve seen a guy gain like 3 full bpm after one game.

And I think Cole did that, or close to it from last night to today.

Not sure what he was at going into last night's game, but he was at 3.4 right ahead of Gaffney when I posted this on the 17th. So at least 2 BPM and likely more since the Nova game wasn't great for him

• Jalen Gaffney has a BPM of 3.3, good for 8th on the team. Brendan Adams has a BPM of -0.3, good for 13th on team.
• If you like win shares better, Jalen Gaffney has 0.9 compared to Brendan Adams' 0.5.
• If you like PER better, Jalen Gaffney has a 13.2 compared to Brendan Adams' 7.8
• Or if all those advanced stats are too much we can look at shooting percentages. Jalen Gaffney is shooting 36.2% overall, 37.8% from 2, 34.4% from 3, 81.8% from the free throw line compared to 30.6%/29.6%/31.4%/65.2% for Adams

 

[Pudge]

Yes, he's a serviceable 5. He can't be the focal point of an offense (we saw that beginning of last year), but he does the yeoman work fairly well (his rebounding > his offense > his defense).

But we have 2 other good to serviceable 5s, though. One better on defense and the other better on offense. The issue comes when people go "Well we have these 3 pretty good (but not really good) bigs and our bench wings kinda stink, why don't we just play 2 at once? Let one play the 4? Really pound the opponent."

And it can work against some teams. Teams that don't space us out when we're on defense. Teams that really let us pound the glass.

But it has not been working. Here's the last 30 days (last 7 games) of any combination of 2 of Whaley, Sanogo, and Carlton vs. every other lineup and the overall average. On is with 2 bigs, off is any lineup without 2 of the bigs, and baseline is overall average.

We shoot much worse at the rim with 2 bigs. And much worse in the midrange with 2 bigs. And we turn it over more. And we take less bad midrange 2s and more valuable 3s with less than 2 bigs. It all paints the obvious picture: the paint gets clogged when we play 2 bigs.

Sheesh

You all forget that we lost our 10 game non-conference schedule. Carlton is a far better fill - Offense and Defense - in a game that the mid plays a 6-10 to 7 foot slug. Fairfield or Southern Illinois or Davidson or whomever. The way we are playing or Villanova or a ACC ... is not universally played by 200 other schools. Carlton has played fine this year; pretty much what I expected. His game face and attitude has been excellent ... kudos to Hurley for a Team environment.

I will yield to the Kevin Ollie fanboys. KO was a great 6 game coach in 2014. He had a career he could have nurtured ... we found he lacked some core components of what the HC at our level needs. It is interesting to watch a Penny or Juwan Howard come in. I think Brad Underwood's background is a better training ground ... but what do I know.

 

[Waquoit]

Sanogo has shown good hands before. In the beginning of the season I thought his hands were a strength. Weird.

Yup. I say it's "The Wall" and he gets it back soon.

 

[UconnU]

I thought Sanogo looked great as well. Catching tough passes, blocking shots, passing the ball, efficient 8 points and 7 boards playing 20+ minutes.