It feels like all that low screen to high screen stuff is just to get the ball in her hands and THEN start the offense. And it only worked less than half the time. Mostly she ran around, didn’t get open and we went to plan B, which was someone else do something while she stands and watches. Some of it is on Paige -she just doesn’t cut hard enough and demand the ball, but a lot of times the screens aren’t good enough and/or the passes aren’t good enough too. So we run around accomplishing nothing to get the ball to our playmaker instead of just letting our playmaker have it. I feel like of her made baskets, one was legitimately set up for her (a 10 foot baseline jumper on a back cut). The rest she created herself after finally getting the ball and driving on her own or with a simple ball screen. So let’s not waste all this energy getting her the ball.
It isn’t pretty offense, but some simple Paige/Strong two person pick and roll or pick and pop has the potential to be a Stockton-Malone type of thing where you can keep doing it and make teams show they can stop it. I always thought Bueckers had a very unique skillset of being able to make high degree of difficulty passes and shots and it feels like we are leaving most of her tools in the toolbox and turning her into kind of an ordinary player. She had one “nice pass” moment today (lob to Strong for a layup) and made a little over half of her tough 2s - but I don’t like that recipe for success.