To be honest, our offensive talent level feels a bit concerning, at least as far as a super deep tourney run goes. Xavier’s three perimeter guys are shooting 52 percent, 49 percent and 47 percent. Ours are 41 percent, 38 percent and 34 percent (and two of the guys off the bench are 33 and 37). Sanogo is super talented on the low block and Hawkins can obviously be a handful when he’s on - but is young and lacks a little bit of the craftiness to find ways to score on an off shooting night. Last four games it feels like we’ve been forced to play into our weaknesses more consistently and we‘ve hit a bit of a valley. We simply need more from Newton (he shot 44 percent as a primary option last year and is 34 this year) … or maybe figure out if we can have Joey C and Hawkins out there together more often and figure out how to scheme defensively where that doesn’t hurt us at the other end. I don’t think we can rely on AK as a third scorer.
The other path is to be way better on D than we were today - the 99 team really had two scorers and the right role players around them and won a title, but they could lock in defensively in a way that’s rare (and played together for two full seasons). The 04 team had the inside-outside thing going with Ben-Emeka, but Ben was a complete scorer and we had Rashad as the third option (and Denham) and got away with Taliek and Boone as limited offensive cogs. The 11 team needed Lamb coming through as the third guy, and the 14 team needed Daniels as the third guy. Newton is the most likely one to be that guy on this team - but I think we need to start seeing it.
