Lack Of Attention To Detail On Offense

[Brad Palmer]

Maybe it's because we're still such a young team, or maybe it's because JC has always allowed such individual freedom on offense, but we have an alarming lack of attention to detail with the ball. This may cost us a close game(s) and is also worrisome in regards to "one and done" tournament play.

*** There have been at least 7-8 times this season where UConn has thrown away the ball on an inbounds pass underneath their own basket. And these are essentially plays where the other team is allowing us to inbound the ball. 100% of the time it's been because of non-movement without the ball, lazy screens, lazier passes.

*** At least a dozen times per game, UConn has an offensive possession where I find myself saying: "That was the best shot we could get?" From Bazz's "looks like not much is going on here, so I'll jack up a deep 3", to TO and AO's puzzling "ultra-high" ball screens that seem to either never find the body of the defender or get ignored by the guards, to Giffey's...wait, he gets no PT anymore (sarcasm intended).

*** A lot of fast breaks this season that should have ended with easy layups but instead end up with turnovers.

Granted JL and RB can bail us out of many lackluster offensive possessions, but at some point a precision half-court offensive set needs to be run. Why not maximize your potential and why make games tougher than they need to be? 5 additional solid half-court possessions per half yesterday would have had turned out the lights on USF.

 

[Giddyup5]

Offense is the last thing to usually tighten up on a lot of Calhoun's teams.

I'd be more worried if we were playing poor defense.

One thing that I wish was a little better at this point in the season is rebounding. I know the numbers don't show much of a difference compared to last year but with the talent and size we have, we should be absolutely dominate every team on the boards. The eye test alone shows that most of our bigs are average at best at boxing out and rely on their size. If everyone, but mainly AO and AD improve their boxing out skills it will help us absolutely dominate the boards and result in more possessions and shots to go around for the entire team.

 

[Brad Palmer]

Lack of attention/carelessness in basketball is often a hard trait to change. While I agree the offense will tighten up, it often puzzles me from this perspective: Do the coaches not care as much about what's being done in the half-court offense? It seems that when the things I mentioned are done, there is little or no attempt to change them (in-game) by the coaching staff. Either your team runs an offense properly or it doesn't.

Curious as to how the coaching staff decides how much set offense should be run as opposed to how much they just "let the players play". Because there are a heck of a lot of possessions where we look as if the play/set should be called: "Do Whatever You Want To Do". No saying this is necessarily a bad thing in small doses, but when you end up with 63 points and have no crispness on the offensive end, it should be a concern.

 

[ctchamps]

Lack of attention/carelessness in basketball is often a hard trait to change. While I agree the offense will tighten up, it often puzzles me from this perspective: Do the coaches not care as much about what's being done in the half-court offense? It seems that when the things I mentioned are done, there is little or no attempt to change them (in-game) by the coaching staff. Either your team runs an offense properly or it doesn't.

Curious as to how the coaching staff decides how much set offense should be run as opposed to how much they just "let the players play". Because there are a heck of a lot of possessions where we look as if the play/set should be called: "Do Whatever You Want To Do". No saying this is necessarily a bad thing in small doses, but when you end up with 63 points and have no crispness on the offensive end, it should be a concern.

I see it differently. The season started out in which most of the shots were taken by the 1-3 and a lot of the plays were run to get JL free on screens. And then JC made the declaration that he wanted to get more production from the 4 and 5 and so plays were designed to get the ball to the bigs. Most of the turnovers or failed possessions are "over dribbling" is the result to the team trying to execute JC's system and the execution of that system is not down.

 

[Silk City]

You can add our failure to draw up successful end of half plays as well. We live and die by the star player isolated at the top of the key, usually resulting in a tough jump shot.

JC is elite at finding talent, developing it, motivating it, and preaching fundamentals to it. However he is not an elite innovator when it comes to calling set offensive plays. It can be frustrating at times but JC's other skills make his overall system work. Obviously I would like to see a little more set cuts/screens on inbounds and halfcourt plays in crunch time, but I think we're gradually improving in that regard. The back cuts we utilized last year with Kemba and Shabazz led to a lot of easy layups, and that play was pretty much never used just a year earlier.

 

[caw]

Interesting thing to look at this year compared to last year through 12 games. Obviously harder schedule last year.

This year's team is 48.8% from the field in 12 games with 6 games above the 50% level (Columbia, Coppin St., UNCA, Arkansas, HC and Fairfield). Only Wagner (44.7%), Maine (41.7%), UCF (42.4%), FSU (48.1%), Harvard (47.3%) and USF (43.8%) were below 50%. So far they are 323/662 from the field (71/192 = 37% from 3).

Last year with Kemba the team was at 45.0% from the field but only had 3 games above 50% (Kentucky, Harvard and UMBC). They were 325/722 from the field last year at this point (72/220 = 32.7% from 3).

Of note on the season last year, outside of Kemba the team was 159/484 = 32.8% from 3.

So UConn may not be running it's sets as well, but it is shooting the ball much better this year which makes a huge difference.

Also interesting: last year through 12 games the team had 179 offensive rebounds with 397 missed shots+73 missed foul shots (about 38.1% of misses) and this year it has 155 with 339 missed shots+88 missed foul shots (36.2%).

I know included missed foul shots but I feel that skews the data a bit, considering foul shots are probably the hardest thing to get an offensive rebound on and last years team was a considerably better foul shooting team at this point in the season. I'm also not sure how many of those missed Free Throws were rebounds and which were first of two. Looking solely at FG attempts missed the rates are much closer (45.1% last year and 45.7% this year).

Considering how much players like Napier and Lamb grew throughout last season I hope to see a similar improvement through this year from players.