Dan Hurley's Offense Year 4

[superjohn]

We could be shooting 46% from three point range and there would be people posting on here that we can’t shoot the three…

IMO the we suck at three point shooting thing is greatly overstated. It's not as good as other aspects of our game but Cole, Gaffney, Polley, and Hawkins are good three point shooters. Martin and Akok can also hit them when open.

 

[JustbrewitMan]

IMO the we suck at three point shooting thing is greatly overstated. It's not as good as other aspects of our game but Cole, Gaffney, Polley, and Hawkins are good three point shooters. Martin and Akok can also hit them when open.

Yep, and to further support that point, we're shooting 37.8% as a team through our first 3 games.

And that's with Polley starting the season 3-15 (20%). Granted, Martin, Akok, & Gaff are not gonna continue their combined 15-24 (62.5%) pace, but when everyone gets enough sample size to regress up/down to their average, I'm guessing we'll be still somewhere near a 35-37% mark. Which is pretty darn good...that range would have us in the Top 3 of the Big East based on historic team averages.

 

[HuskyHawk]

I'd like to hope that Murray has an impact on Hurley. Remains to be seen. But so far, very little of the weave, very little of the big hand-off at the top of the key. Both did nothing but burn clock, pushing us to hero ball bail out shots.

My main hope is that Hurley can check his need for control and let things flow. He is the brake. He can't freak out if we make a mistake. That means pushing it up quickly, even after made baskets and attacking the defense earlier in the possession if possible. Sanogo is going to occupy people, so somebody is going to have a shot or a driving lane. Get the ball there and go. Hesitation is our enemy (so far Whaley is the most hesitant on offense). There is a challenge for these guys in recognizing that "move the ball" is good, but move the ball beyond the guy who has a good look is bad. Overall recognition of what is a good shot, or drive opportunity seems better to me. Not having the "one guy" actually helps.

 

[auror]

Trying not to get over excited as we have only played #352, 346, and 285 in KenPom ratings. The most positive I can draw out of this is they are beating the teams they should be beating and by margins they should be beating them by. Every player looks to have taken a step in the right direction and let's hope they can continue running the offense when a talented team gets them out of their comfort zone.

As your username puts it, the best way to track performance against expectation against cupcakes is to look at the cumulative spread +/-.

The first game we covered a 34 point by +17 points. The second game we didn't cover a 42 point spread by -7. The third game we covered a 28.5 spread by +24.5 points. So on average we're covering the spreads by 11.5 points with 2/3 covers of +15 over the spreads. The middle spread was insanely high (I took Coppin) because of the Coppin schedule/back-to-back narrative. Coppin is about as good as the other teams but the spread was 7 points higher for no reason. We essentially covered what the spread should have been.

It means we've performed exceedingly well compared to Vegas expectations. Those strongly mirror KenPom and other metrics, which means I expect we'll climb in those as some of the pre-season training wheel weights drop off and when the NET shows up we'll be ranked quite strongly. The numbers say we've played like a top 15 team.

 

[Dream Jobbed 2.0]

Still not drawing any meaningful observations at this point. But the fast break seems improved.

Our D and fast break will be so good we may not need any offensive sets

 

[MexicoHusky]

Still not drawing any meaningful observations at this point. But the fast break seems improved.

That's the most positive thing I've noticed. In particular when compared to this time last year. Maybe even the end of year last year. This time last year the fast break was horrible. At times it seemed horrible by design. PGs were on the wing. Wings pushing the ball. PGs didn't give it up to wings even when they were in the appropriate locations on the floor.

 

[ThabeetDown]

RJ is shooting 40% from 3.

Have you heard of sample size? What do you think will be more common, 3-3 or 2-7 or 1-5 from last night? I know his career numbers are ~40% too but we know he’s a volume scorer which means volume misses.

Also, I said at that rate. If he’s taking 5+ 3s he better make more that’s literally my point. 2/5 is a big difference than 2/7.

 

[TheChamps990411]

Known as a defensive minded coach coming in, the question on here seemed to be could he put together a competent offense. The team really struggled his first 2 years with mostly KO guys and then took a small step forward in a bizarre season last year. Only to fall flat on their faces in two big post season games.

It's early and it's mostly cupcakes that look like a bunch of 8th graders going against NBA all stars, but wow has the offense seemingly taken a huge step forward this year. No running the weave for 25 seconds and jacking up a last second 3. No brining Sanogo out for screens at the top of the key for no apparent reason. They all know where they need to be on the floor. They move the ball quickly. They are aggressive but smart getting their shots.

3 point shooting is going to be critical to our success. I like that Hurley has been running offensive sets to get us quality looks from deep. Lots of open 3s. Now we just need to start knocking them down.

Defense & athleticism will always be the staple of a Dan Hurley coached team, by good lord, if he can figure out the offensive piece as well... LOOK OUT!

Jim Calhoun had some of the same criticism for years. He turned out alright.

 

[Huskyforlife]

Have you heard of sample size? What do you think will be more common, 3-3 or 2-7 or 1-5 from last night? I know his career numbers are ~40% too but we know he’s a volume scorer which means volume misses.

Also, I said at that rate. If he’s taking 5+ 3s he better make more that’s literally my point. 2/5 is a big difference than 2/7.

2/7 would be 29%. Which is vastly below his career average(37%). Even if you assume his percentage drops off with more volume, you're projecting a massive fall off(-10%) from his % last season(39%), which I'll assume rarely happens. Further supporting this case, his 9 attempts per game as a freshman, converting 36%. Why wouldn't you assume his 2-7 and 1-5 are just off games, which happen to even the best shooters? Or are his 637 career 3pt attempts not a large enough sample for you?

 

[navery12]

As your username puts it, the best way to track performance against expectation against cupcakes is to look at the cumulative spread +/-.

The first game we covered a 34 point by +17 points. The second game we didn't cover a 42 point spread by -7. The third game we covered a 28.5 spread by +24.5 points. So on average we're covering the spreads by 11.5 points with 2/3 covers of +15 over the spreads. The middle spread was insanely high (I took Coppin) because of the Coppin schedule/back-to-back narrative. Coppin is about as good as the other teams but the spread was 7 points higher for no reason. We essentially covered what the spread should have been.

It means we've performed exceedingly well compared to Vegas expectations. Those strongly mirror KenPom and other metrics, which means I expect we'll climb in those as some of the pre-season training wheel weights drop off and when the NET shows up we'll be ranked quite strongly. The numbers say we've played like a top 15 team.

Probably a better gauge to use the KenPom spreads, they basically nailed the Coppin game down to the score (90-55 predicted vs 89-54). Same end result in 2 good beats to the cover and 1 push with Coppin State

 

[auror]

Probably a better gauge to use the KenPom spreads, they basically nailed the Coppin game down to the score (90-55 predicted vs 89-54). Same end result in 2 good beats to the cover and 1 push with Coppin State

Here's another fun one... Haslametrics. I don't know that it's better performing than some of the more well-known metrics, but it has the twist that it stops counting scores after a game goes analytically final (the time and score when mathematically it would be impossible or least extremely, extremely unlikely for the team to come back). Essentially filters out regular and extended garbage times and rewards peak butt whoopings.

UConn #6 overall (14th offense, 6th defense).

https://haslametrics.com/ratings.php

(Gonzaga currently has #1 offense and #1 defense )

 

[WhereistheDove?]

Still not drawing any meaningful observations at this point. But the fast break seems improved.

Agreed this is likely the most usable observation coming out of these three games. The bigs all seem more comfortable getting boards and quickly starting the transition offense, where it felt like they took too much time last year trying to get it to the PG and let the defense get back. Probably the biggest difference to me is Jackson, though. When he gets the rebound, he is immediately full speed up the floor and covers ground. If he can avoid the sloppy turnovers on the break, that is going to be dangerous against any team we play.

 

[August_West]

Completely valid until we play real competition, but the one thing I noticed is this team rarely takes bad shots. Sure, last night in the first 10 min they looked terrible, but it was shots just not going in more than anything. I think that's the real takeway so far -- nothing seems forced, there is a flow to every offensive possession. If RJ and Polley are going to continue to shoot at that volume from 3, they need to start making shots though. Sanogo makes everything easier, especially if teams swarm him with a double team. Shooters need to be ready to go if he can pass out of these double teams for open looks.

Cole made some bad decisions in the paint in the first 10 minutes against LIU , they werent good shots at all, but other than that I agree with your premise overall. We seem to not take too many bad ones. Let's knock them down. Polley cant be a 20% 3 shooter for the season. That would not bode well. Because Hurley is definitely running stuff for him and figures him prominently in that aspect (I hear him on the bench) .

 

[tzznandrew]

An improved Cole, Sanogo, Martin, Gaffney, and Jackson already makes this team way better than last year.

But that's just not how progress goes, typically. You take away a lotto pick who would have been an AA candidate (probably second team) had he stayed healthy, and that's hard to replace, even with great talent influxes.

In 2003, Ben Gordon, Emeka Okafor, Tony Robertson, Taliek Brown all got better. They added players higher ranked than we added this year. And the team was good, but definitively not better than the Caron led team because the alpha makes a team go.

We can see the same thing in 2010 and 2012.

Role players getting better is important, but you need a star, and removing one and filling the team with talented freshmen is usually—at least for UConn—lead to a worse year. Now, we may end the year thinking this team was better overall, but that may be because of how many games Bouk missed.