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Perhaps the better phrasing would be, "how far along is this team in relation to your preseason expectations", but nonetheless, ten games in, and on the cusp of conference play, is a good time to step back and grade the terrain.
A blind assessment of the numerical returns would leave most of us disappointed. Even accounting for the expected learning curve, we were favored to win three of our four losses, and the loss to Yale - even with a hobbled Boatright and an injured Purvis - drew cringes from even some of our more high-spirited posters. Two wins over Columbia and Central Connecticut State doesn't erase those prior missteps, but it does restore some level of optimism heading into conference play.
But regardless of your opinion, how the route we took to get here - with Purvis missing significant time, Boatright playing at 50% for a game or two, and Calhoun just recently suiting up - transmits conflicting signals of encouragement and reserve. It is easy to remain optimistic when the season is viewed in certain terms: we've played half the season without a couple of indispensable cogs, we're an extremely young team, and despite this, we're two last-second heaves away from sitting at 10-2 with a pretty stainless resume.
In addition, Ollie’s two teams since he was promoted to head coach have displayed demonstrable growth throughout the season, and the track record of UConn teams headlined by a veteran point guard remains very much impeccable.
On the contrary, it’s always difficult to gauge rate of development. What may appear to some as the turning of the corner could be just the pivot point of another frustrating series of inconsistent play. As the saying goes, progress isn’t always linear, especially in a sport where coaches are constantly scheming to expose any underlying flaws in your system. Our last two championship teams have taught us this better than any.
Personally, I think this team has the chance to be very good by the end of the season. For starters, our starting lineup has been intact for all of six games (I’m not counting the West Virginia and Yale games, when Purvis was visibly hobbled), and when they have shared the floor together they have generally pounded people. Keeping them on the floor at the same time against stiff competition will be a challenging task given Brimah’s propensity to pick up fouls, but I’d rather have that problem than have a starting lineup that’s not any good.
I, along with many others, have noted that this team could be fundamentally flawed if they continue to brick threes at their current rate. However, there is reason to believe that this early-season trend could be less debilitating than we previously feared. On the season, UConn has shot just 31% from three on 159 attempts, which on the surface is something that is extremely difficult to construct a good team around. But when you dig deeper, the numbers are more promising. Omit Sam Cassell’s 8 for 36 collage of bricks from the portfolio, and the season-long percentage climbs to a more respectable 34%. And the starting lineup has been more than adequate from downtown, posting a season-long percentage of 37%.
The point here isn’t to disparage Cassell – who I’m sure is a much better shooter than those numbers indicate – but rather to illustrate the likely uptick in shooting percentages as the rotation is condensed. If Rodney Purvis continues to shoot in the neighborhood of 40% from three and Omar Calhoun (just 1 of 8 so far) can convert at a 35% clip, this team should have enough shooting to scrap together an efficient offense that can attack in a variety of ways and bend defenses in ways that our previous teams could not.
The anatomy of UConn’s 2014-15 offense is much different than that of the prior two teams, but with additional repetitions, there is plenty of reason to believe this version can be equally effective. Boatright is obviously the best player on the offense, and as invaluable as any player in the country, but the complementary pieces are fascinating to monitor. Rodney Purvis and Daniel Hamilton aren’t natural pick-and-roll players at this stage (Purvis especially, who must expand his passing capabilities if he has visions of the NBA), but they’re far more potent in exploiting narrow driving lanes than some of our past wings, and Ollie has re-popularized the curl screens that are more designed to get the ball to the two of them in favorable spots on the floor than to generate immediate baskets.
Amida Brimah, meanwhile, is developing into the college version of Tyson Chandler (offensively), a pick-and-roll beast whose dives through the lane briefly paralyze the defense and allow for easy releases to shooters. This is also where, despite advanced statistics that would indicate otherwise, the advanced mid-range games of our guards – Boatright, Purvis, and Hamilton, all of whom are proficient at hitting pull-ups and runners in the lane – makes us hard to defend. If the hedge man plays it soft in fear of a lob, those three can make you pay. And if you swarm the guard, it’s tough for weak side defenders to impede the progress of Brimah until his head is above the rim. A lot of times Brimah isn’t even involved in the pick, but whenever his defender vacates his body to stop the ball, the end result is usually predictable.
On this play, Amida’s defender is obviously way too high defending a basic pick-and-roll between Brimah and Boatright. He’s at the foul line to stop Boatright’s dribble penetration, while Brimah is already crashing towards the left block. Facey’s presence as a non-shooter can occasionally muck up the spacing of this play, but it’s partially negated here by the screen he appears to be setting on the right wing. If Facey’s man ventures too far off, Cassell has a chance to get a wide open look in the right corner if executed properly. It also doesn’t hurt that this pick-and-roll is run in the middle of the floor, which can confuse defenders into blowing assignments (am I on the weak side or the strong side?). If the weak side defender crashes down on Brimah, Hamilton is open on the wing for a three. As it is, his man stays home, and Brimah completes the first of many dunks over an overwhelmed Coppin State defense. This is why shooting is so vital.
Adding length and athleticism to the equation obviously complicates matters, particularly when you’re a smaller point guard like Boatright. But this is the sort of snap shot that demonstrates the challenges UConn’s new, quick-moving offense presents to defenses. Offense, in essence, is about being able to draw rifts in defensive structure through pick-and-roll and then zipping the ball side-to-side until the gash opens up. Moving the ball from the strong side to the weak side in a timely manner is something that virtually all NBA teams can do but most college teams can’t (which is why many do not enjoy watching college basketball). Some of this is obviously due to talent disparity, but other coaches simply are not good at teaching it. We have one of the better ones on our side, which is why I’m incredibly excited to continue to monitor their growth.
Whereas statistics – where you should shoot the ball from on the court, where you shouldn’t – aren’t always entirely transparent, they’re usually a fairly good indicator of how a team is performing defensively. And a rough gauge of how good a team is on that end is generally fairly accomplishable by asking two questions: how many three pointers and how many layups have we given up? So far, the answer for UConn is too many.
How teams go about prohibiting threes and layups may vary, but being able to protect the rim is generally a prerequisite for success. If you’re looking to angle a pick-and-roll towards the side, which most teams do, you’re probably doing a good job of avoiding layups and threes. But that isn’t always attainable, which is why programs like UConn have always invited dribble penetration when a shot blocking menace like Thabeet was patrolling the paint. This is doubly beneficial, as it forces difficult shots at the rim and eliminates the three.
But UConn, despite ranking 26th in the country in defensive efficiency, hasn’t executed these principles very well so far this season, and much of their difficulty defending has less to do with pick-and-roll coverages than it does careless ball-watching, missed rotations, and lackadaisical closeouts. Fouling – another indicator of bad defense – has also plagued them, particularly when it is not necessary. There have been several instances where Brimah has a block timed perfectly only for there to have a foul negate it. One of the things some of our younger perimeter defenders will have to learn is that when you get beat off the dribble, instead of recovering back to your initial man, it is better to recover back to Brimah’s man or whoever else is the next rotation. A lot of mistakes can be erased if they are not compounded.
There is no reason this should not be a top ten unit by the end of the season. That they could hold the #1 offense in the country to below 40% from the field tells me that the physical abilities are there. Boatright is still as good defensively as any guard in the country when he’s locked in (like he was against Duke and Texas), but he has been guilty of falling asleep at the wheel against some of our lesser opponents. As a senior captain, he cannot allow that to happen (and yes, I am aware that he is carrying an enormous workload on both ends) if for no other reason than that the entire team feeds off his energy.
This team has flaws, but I’m growing increasingly confident that they are not of the alarming variety. For all of the griping about Brimah’s rebounding (and it is a problem, make no mistake), being afforded the luxury of pairing him with a superb rebounding four like Facey, in addition to Hamilton and Boatright, also excellent rebounders, increases his margin for error. Moreover, Brimah’s rapidly expanding offensive game enables us to live with Facey’s shortcomings in a way we probably wouldn’t have been able to if somebody like Olander was our starting center.
The AAC is bad, and we are good. In this respect, I don’t mind setting a lofty bar of 15 conference wins; Temple, SMU, Cincinnati, and maybe some combination of Tulane, Houston, Tulsa, and Memphis will give us stiff road tests, but running the table at home and batting .500 in tough road environments is an attainable goal. The talent gap between us and the rest of the conference is very wide. But fulfilling those goals will require better focus and more attention to detail than what we’ve seen so far. If everybody on the team fully commits themselves to mastering Ollie’s system with the same degree of veracity that last year’s team did, then I see the sky as the limit. It all starts Wednesday afternoon in Hartford against maybe our biggest challenger for the crown; I hope they are ready, because I know I will be.
A blind assessment of the numerical returns would leave most of us disappointed. Even accounting for the expected learning curve, we were favored to win three of our four losses, and the loss to Yale - even with a hobbled Boatright and an injured Purvis - drew cringes from even some of our more high-spirited posters. Two wins over Columbia and Central Connecticut State doesn't erase those prior missteps, but it does restore some level of optimism heading into conference play.
But regardless of your opinion, how the route we took to get here - with Purvis missing significant time, Boatright playing at 50% for a game or two, and Calhoun just recently suiting up - transmits conflicting signals of encouragement and reserve. It is easy to remain optimistic when the season is viewed in certain terms: we've played half the season without a couple of indispensable cogs, we're an extremely young team, and despite this, we're two last-second heaves away from sitting at 10-2 with a pretty stainless resume.
In addition, Ollie’s two teams since he was promoted to head coach have displayed demonstrable growth throughout the season, and the track record of UConn teams headlined by a veteran point guard remains very much impeccable.
On the contrary, it’s always difficult to gauge rate of development. What may appear to some as the turning of the corner could be just the pivot point of another frustrating series of inconsistent play. As the saying goes, progress isn’t always linear, especially in a sport where coaches are constantly scheming to expose any underlying flaws in your system. Our last two championship teams have taught us this better than any.
Personally, I think this team has the chance to be very good by the end of the season. For starters, our starting lineup has been intact for all of six games (I’m not counting the West Virginia and Yale games, when Purvis was visibly hobbled), and when they have shared the floor together they have generally pounded people. Keeping them on the floor at the same time against stiff competition will be a challenging task given Brimah’s propensity to pick up fouls, but I’d rather have that problem than have a starting lineup that’s not any good.
I, along with many others, have noted that this team could be fundamentally flawed if they continue to brick threes at their current rate. However, there is reason to believe that this early-season trend could be less debilitating than we previously feared. On the season, UConn has shot just 31% from three on 159 attempts, which on the surface is something that is extremely difficult to construct a good team around. But when you dig deeper, the numbers are more promising. Omit Sam Cassell’s 8 for 36 collage of bricks from the portfolio, and the season-long percentage climbs to a more respectable 34%. And the starting lineup has been more than adequate from downtown, posting a season-long percentage of 37%.
The point here isn’t to disparage Cassell – who I’m sure is a much better shooter than those numbers indicate – but rather to illustrate the likely uptick in shooting percentages as the rotation is condensed. If Rodney Purvis continues to shoot in the neighborhood of 40% from three and Omar Calhoun (just 1 of 8 so far) can convert at a 35% clip, this team should have enough shooting to scrap together an efficient offense that can attack in a variety of ways and bend defenses in ways that our previous teams could not.
The anatomy of UConn’s 2014-15 offense is much different than that of the prior two teams, but with additional repetitions, there is plenty of reason to believe this version can be equally effective. Boatright is obviously the best player on the offense, and as invaluable as any player in the country, but the complementary pieces are fascinating to monitor. Rodney Purvis and Daniel Hamilton aren’t natural pick-and-roll players at this stage (Purvis especially, who must expand his passing capabilities if he has visions of the NBA), but they’re far more potent in exploiting narrow driving lanes than some of our past wings, and Ollie has re-popularized the curl screens that are more designed to get the ball to the two of them in favorable spots on the floor than to generate immediate baskets.
Amida Brimah, meanwhile, is developing into the college version of Tyson Chandler (offensively), a pick-and-roll beast whose dives through the lane briefly paralyze the defense and allow for easy releases to shooters. This is also where, despite advanced statistics that would indicate otherwise, the advanced mid-range games of our guards – Boatright, Purvis, and Hamilton, all of whom are proficient at hitting pull-ups and runners in the lane – makes us hard to defend. If the hedge man plays it soft in fear of a lob, those three can make you pay. And if you swarm the guard, it’s tough for weak side defenders to impede the progress of Brimah until his head is above the rim. A lot of times Brimah isn’t even involved in the pick, but whenever his defender vacates his body to stop the ball, the end result is usually predictable.
On this play, Amida’s defender is obviously way too high defending a basic pick-and-roll between Brimah and Boatright. He’s at the foul line to stop Boatright’s dribble penetration, while Brimah is already crashing towards the left block. Facey’s presence as a non-shooter can occasionally muck up the spacing of this play, but it’s partially negated here by the screen he appears to be setting on the right wing. If Facey’s man ventures too far off, Cassell has a chance to get a wide open look in the right corner if executed properly. It also doesn’t hurt that this pick-and-roll is run in the middle of the floor, which can confuse defenders into blowing assignments (am I on the weak side or the strong side?). If the weak side defender crashes down on Brimah, Hamilton is open on the wing for a three. As it is, his man stays home, and Brimah completes the first of many dunks over an overwhelmed Coppin State defense. This is why shooting is so vital.
Adding length and athleticism to the equation obviously complicates matters, particularly when you’re a smaller point guard like Boatright. But this is the sort of snap shot that demonstrates the challenges UConn’s new, quick-moving offense presents to defenses. Offense, in essence, is about being able to draw rifts in defensive structure through pick-and-roll and then zipping the ball side-to-side until the gash opens up. Moving the ball from the strong side to the weak side in a timely manner is something that virtually all NBA teams can do but most college teams can’t (which is why many do not enjoy watching college basketball). Some of this is obviously due to talent disparity, but other coaches simply are not good at teaching it. We have one of the better ones on our side, which is why I’m incredibly excited to continue to monitor their growth.
Whereas statistics – where you should shoot the ball from on the court, where you shouldn’t – aren’t always entirely transparent, they’re usually a fairly good indicator of how a team is performing defensively. And a rough gauge of how good a team is on that end is generally fairly accomplishable by asking two questions: how many three pointers and how many layups have we given up? So far, the answer for UConn is too many.
How teams go about prohibiting threes and layups may vary, but being able to protect the rim is generally a prerequisite for success. If you’re looking to angle a pick-and-roll towards the side, which most teams do, you’re probably doing a good job of avoiding layups and threes. But that isn’t always attainable, which is why programs like UConn have always invited dribble penetration when a shot blocking menace like Thabeet was patrolling the paint. This is doubly beneficial, as it forces difficult shots at the rim and eliminates the three.
But UConn, despite ranking 26th in the country in defensive efficiency, hasn’t executed these principles very well so far this season, and much of their difficulty defending has less to do with pick-and-roll coverages than it does careless ball-watching, missed rotations, and lackadaisical closeouts. Fouling – another indicator of bad defense – has also plagued them, particularly when it is not necessary. There have been several instances where Brimah has a block timed perfectly only for there to have a foul negate it. One of the things some of our younger perimeter defenders will have to learn is that when you get beat off the dribble, instead of recovering back to your initial man, it is better to recover back to Brimah’s man or whoever else is the next rotation. A lot of mistakes can be erased if they are not compounded.
There is no reason this should not be a top ten unit by the end of the season. That they could hold the #1 offense in the country to below 40% from the field tells me that the physical abilities are there. Boatright is still as good defensively as any guard in the country when he’s locked in (like he was against Duke and Texas), but he has been guilty of falling asleep at the wheel against some of our lesser opponents. As a senior captain, he cannot allow that to happen (and yes, I am aware that he is carrying an enormous workload on both ends) if for no other reason than that the entire team feeds off his energy.
This team has flaws, but I’m growing increasingly confident that they are not of the alarming variety. For all of the griping about Brimah’s rebounding (and it is a problem, make no mistake), being afforded the luxury of pairing him with a superb rebounding four like Facey, in addition to Hamilton and Boatright, also excellent rebounders, increases his margin for error. Moreover, Brimah’s rapidly expanding offensive game enables us to live with Facey’s shortcomings in a way we probably wouldn’t have been able to if somebody like Olander was our starting center.
The AAC is bad, and we are good. In this respect, I don’t mind setting a lofty bar of 15 conference wins; Temple, SMU, Cincinnati, and maybe some combination of Tulane, Houston, Tulsa, and Memphis will give us stiff road tests, but running the table at home and batting .500 in tough road environments is an attainable goal. The talent gap between us and the rest of the conference is very wide. But fulfilling those goals will require better focus and more attention to detail than what we’ve seen so far. If everybody on the team fully commits themselves to mastering Ollie’s system with the same degree of veracity that last year’s team did, then I see the sky as the limit. It all starts Wednesday afternoon in Hartford against maybe our biggest challenger for the crown; I hope they are ready, because I know I will be.
David Borges @DaveBorges 
