Positives from the Tulsa Game

[Paesano]

So in one post we can't help and in another we should overplay the 3 and allow ourselves to get beat to the rim without a competent shot blocker. I know everyone is emotional because we have given up a lot of threes on the year but, really? Let's play this scenario through. As I'm sure everyone knows, if you multiply your 3pt% by 1.5 you get what you equivalent 2 point shooting percentage is to score the same amount of points. Tulsa shot 42% from three on the game the equivalent of 61% on 2's. If we over play 3's and give up up blow bys and layups because we have no help and no shot blocker what do you think that shooting percentage on 2's at the rim will be? I promise you it won't be less than 90% and that's low balling even a bad D1 team. Bad trade. Even if you over play the perimeter and get blown by with help principles and stop the penetration the argument is counter productive because if you consistently get blown by you are 2 passes or less from giving up a an even more wide open 3 every time. The problem is not scheme. The problem is technique and reaction. Proper close outs are not easy and these players clearly were not taught it younger otherwise Ollie wouldn't waste valuable practice time in the middle of the season teaching division 1 players close out technique. As for the reaction part only experience can fix that, but the lack of this doesn't mean you compensate by abandoning one of the 3 most fundamental principles of defense.

Does KO have the entire coaching staff and all his family and friends registering and posting on the boneyard now? Lots of "new faces".
Joined: Yesterday

 

[notthestuff]

Nonsense. We have people inside. More often than not the trade (and the one we make on offense) is that the dribble past and then pull up for a shorter jump shot. They'd be lucky to shoot 50% on those. Watch how good teams play now. They do not give up the three.

We pull up for the 15 footer because teams don't respect anyone's ability to make it so they wait for Jalen at the rim and stay on Larrier and Vital because no one else is a threat. If Jalen makes that shot consistently (which he did for a stretch in Tulsa) it changes the entire dynamic of the offense. Kemba made his living there Junior year.

From 3 against Duke:

South Dakota: 10/22
BC : 15/26
Florida State: 15/32

From 3 Against Michigan St:

Stony Brook: 13/26
North Florida: 11/29
Southern Utah: 11/26

Teams that hunt threes find threes that doesn't mean you overplay to the point of allowing yourself to beat off the dribble. If you don't contain penetration your defense is toast and the looks will be better.

 

[notthestuff]

Does KO have the entire coaching staff and all his family and friends registering and posting on the boneyard now? Lots of "new faces".

Like I said, I'm no apologist. The program is in shambles and KO made his bed. I want the program to succeed, period. That doesn't mean everything he is doing is wrong and that things stated on this board aren't completely factually incorrect to anyone who's ever coached at a reasonable level in the sport.

 

[HuskyHawk]

We pull up for the 15 footer because teams don't respect anyone's ability to make it so they wait for Jalen at the rim and stay on Larrier and Vital because no one else is a threat. If Jalen makes that shot consistently (which he did for a stretch in Tulsa) it changes the entire dynamic of the offense. Kemba made his living there Junior year.

From 3 against Duke:

South Dakota: 10/22
BC : 15/26
Florida State: 15/32

From 3 Against Michigan St:

Stony Brook: 13/26
North Florida: 11/29
Southern Utah: 11/26

Teams that hunt threes find threes that doesn't mean you overplay to the point of allowing yourself to beat off the dribble. If you don't contain penetration your defense is toast and the looks will be better.

There is no either or here. Nobody is advocating that we stop defending any area of the defensive end of the court. It's a shift in prioritization. Offenses have changed, and the emphasis is on three point shots and dunks/layups. The two point jump shot is viewed as a low yield shot, some coaches are asking players not to take them. Defenses need to change to adjust to this new reality. That means staying a little closer to your man on the perimeter at the expense of him possibly getting by you.

It's no different than deploying an extra cornerback, who is going to hurt your run defense. The offenses have changed, so you need to change to stop them. We haven't. Ollie is running an NBA offense from 10-15 years ago and a defense designed to stop offenses from 10-15 years ago.

 

[Dream Jobbed 2.0]

Remember when James jones from Miami stole that inbounds pass from Marcus white and beat us back ,in what was it 2003?

It was Shamon Tooles and Darius Rice.

 

[jibsey]

The rest of the season is going to be painful. I see moments against bottom feeders that will serve as fool’s gold for KO’s apologists, but a .500 conference record would be shocking at this point. It’s been demoralizing, chat during the games is almost extinct.

 

[notthestuff]

There is no either or here. Nobody is advocating that we stop defending any area of the defensive end of the court. It's a shift in prioritization. Offenses have changed, and the emphasis is on three point shots and dunks/layups. The two point jump shot is viewed as a low yield shot, some coaches are asking players not to take them. Defenses need to change to adjust to this new reality. That means staying a little closer to your man on the perimeter at the expense of him possibly getting by you.

It's no different than deploying an extra cornerback, who is going to hurt your run defense. The offenses have changed, so you need to change to stop them. We haven't. Ollie is running an NBA offense from 10-15 years ago and a defense designed to stop offenses from 10-15 years ago.

I'm certainly not going to argue jumpers inside three are devalued because of course they are and I'm not going to get into the offense in general. I agree with the first statement that it's not either or. What I disagree with is that this is a scheme problem. You can defend both with proper technique and that's what is/should be taught but you don't change your emphasis and teach players to close out in a way that will allow dribble penetration in order to prevent someone from even taking 3's. If a team wants to find a 3, they will find a 3 and sometimes they go in and sometimes they don't. This isn't a "the defense is outdated" issue. There are core defensive principles that all coaches teach and no one teaches what you suggested in your initial post unless you are dealing with a spot up shooter who can't dribble who you want to put the ball on the floor. If you allow dribble penetration to guards you are going to end up with far better looks than Tulsa got and everyone would be screaming about how we can't contain the penetration. Players need to be able to close out effectively to contest shots and contain the dribble.

At the end of the day Tulsa's best player shot 1/10 from 3 and 3/15 overall. Their 4th leading scorer went off and hit a couple open but several highly contested 3's. You don't reinvent defense because of that. You get better at what you're doing and make sure the uncontested shots are contested better next time.

 

[MuchoDogYears]

Like I said, I'm no apologist. The program is in shambles and KO made his bed. I want the program to succeed, period. That doesn't mean everything he is doing is wrong and that things stated on this board aren't completely factually incorrect to anyone who's ever coached at a reasonable level in the sport.

Not sure how to say this but just because help principles are part of the common core of the coaching world doesn’t mean that you use them blindly regardless of the score, the team that you’re playing, the players on your team, or the time on the clock.
We’re half way through the season. If the players have not shown any improvement on running a scheme, then that’s on coaching. Either the coach is a lousy instructor in the gym or he doesn’t have the right personnel for the scheme. Either way the failure is on the coach, not the players.

 

[DMIL]

So in one post we can't help and in another we should overplay the 3 and allow ourselves to get beat to the rim without a competent shot blocker. I know everyone is emotional because we have given up a lot of threes on the year but, really? Let's play this scenario through. As I'm sure everyone knows, if you multiply your 3pt% by 1.5 you get what you equivalent 2 point shooting percentage is to score the same amount of points. Tulsa shot 42% from three on the game the equivalent of 61% on 2's. If we over play 3's and give up up blow bys and layups because we have no help and no shot blocker what do you think that shooting percentage on 2's at the rim will be? I promise you it won't be less than 90% and that's low balling even a bad D1 team. Bad trade. Even if you over play the perimeter and get blown by with help principles and stop the penetration the argument is counter productive because if you consistently get blown by you are 2 passes or less from giving up a an even more wide open 3 every time. The problem is not scheme. The problem is technique and reaction. Proper close outs are not easy and these players clearly were not taught it younger otherwise Ollie wouldn't waste valuable practice time in the middle of the season teaching division 1 players close out technique. As for the reaction part only experience can fix that, but the lack of this doesn't mean you compensate by abandoning one of the 3 most fundamental principles of defense.

So on the mark here.

 

[DMIL]

Not sure how to say this but just because help principles are part of the common core of the coaching world doesn’t mean that you use them blindly regardless of the score, the team that you’re playing, the players on your team, or the time on the clock.
We’re half way through the season. If the players have not shown any improvement on running a scheme, then that’s on coaching. Either the coach is a lousy instructor in the gym or he doesn’t have the right personnel for the scheme. Either way the failure is on the coach, not the players.

Defense is a mind set. It takes a lot more input and time for a young, inexperienced group that has not played together to pick up. One analogy is with an Offensive line in football. Not only is talent critical to a good O' line but experience and time together as a unit is just as critical. These are facts here so you need to add that to your either or scenario. This really should not be about " It's all on Ollie" narrative. Some of it is on him, not all of it.

 

[notthestuff]

Not sure how to say this but just because help principles are part of the common core of the coaching world doesn’t mean that you use them blindly regardless of the score, the team that you’re playing, the players on your team, or the time on the clock.
We’re half way through the season. If the players have not shown any improvement on running a scheme, then that’s on coaching. Either the coach is a lousy instructor in the gym or he doesn’t have the right personnel for the scheme. Either way the failure is on the coach, not the players.

Of course there are rare times you abandon help. A perfect example is up 3 with less than 10 seconds left you want to face guard to the point where the only shot a guy can get is falling out of bounds to his right. I guess another example would be if the team you were playing had no players who could dribble by any of your players. Other than those instances, I can't think of another where you'd ever eliminate help.

If you want to limit threes the only way to effectively do it without allowing a layup line is to stop penetration while aggressively pressuring the ball, don't double team ever, hedge harder on ball screens, and switch on any screens away from the ball. One is 100% dependent on the abilities of your players and the second, third, and fourth have tradeoffs that you have to live and die with.

All I'll say to your last point is you may be right, he may not be getting through and I have no way to factually dispute that. But, sometimes it takes a team longer than we'd like to build good habits and 3 months of practice with a brand new team contrary to popular belief here is really not that long.

 

[DogMania]

we still can't inbound the basketball. it's been five years of not being able to do the simplest thing

One thing I've observed over the years, is when the team is struggling in so many fundamental areas they tend to be more focused on those and don't work as much on the situational things like a variety of inbound plays. They tend to work on just getting it in. This is really no different than when Calhoun was coaching though their execution of just getting the ball in maybe more of a problem of personnel. The more mature the team the more the coaching staff adds to the game plan. This team is struggling the simply execute on both ends of the floor. With that said, I don't know if Ollie has the same capability to deploy and teach inbound plays that are designed to score like JC did back in the day. Nor does the team have the personnel to execute them.

 

[August_West]

Of course there are rare times you abandon help. A perfect example is up 3 with less than 10 seconds left you want to face guard to the point where the only shot a guy can get is falling out of bounds to his right. I guess another example would be if the team you were playing had no players who could dribble by any of your players. Other than those instances, I can't think of another where you'd ever eliminate help.

If you want to limit threes the only way to effectively do it without allowing a layup line is to stop penetration while aggressively pressuring the ball, don't double team ever, hedge harder on ball screens, and switch on any screens away from the ball. One is 100% dependent on the abilities of your players and the second, third, and fourth have tradeoffs that you have to live and die with.

All I'll say to your last point is you may be right, he may not be getting through and I have no way to factually dispute that. But, sometimes it takes a team longer than we'd like to build good habits and 3 months of practice with a brand new team contrary to popular belief here is really not that long.

You should post more. If just for @superjohn s benefit if no one elses.


Good post.