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Gonna pick on nelson a little bit from this thread but he's a big boy so he can take it:
Just look at the game yesterday. Even when he started getting buckets, it came from within the flow of the offense – no clear-outs, or pounding the rock, etc. It was good, smart, modern PG play.
As for starting our penetration 25-30 feet from the basket... we do that b/c Jalen is freaking unguardable when he's dribbling downhill. It's all based upon the high screen-and-roll, and Jalen's relative gravity, which is smart. If you throw a second defender at him then he's usually able to split them and we can play 5-v-4 for a second, and if you don't he'll turn the corner every time and either rain mid-range Js or toss lobs.
The offense was still mostly subpar, but big problems that existed at the end of the year were all things that should be fixed next year:
• Jalen was the only player on the team capable of taking and occasionally making bad shots, which meant rapid and pointed ball movement from all five our our players was the only way to really punish a double-team. If we'd had another guy out there capable of scoring via dribble penetration past a hard, emergency close-out, we'd 1) get a lot more buckets at the rim, and 2) generate a lot more trips to the line.
This year if you sent a double at Jalen, he had to pick the right pass immediately, then that guy would have to swing the ball to the right spot, and then that guy would maaaaybe have his feet set to catch-and-shoot. If it didn't happen with that level of precision we almost certainly weren't scoring, b/c none of Rodney, Vance or Vital was really that good at putting the ball on the floor to get to the rim even against a scrambling defense.
Alterique, MAL and Larrier are all superb at this very thing. Having just one of them on the court along with Jalen should lead to more easy buckets for us.
• Our two best shooters were just learning to shoot at the college level. We usually see significant improvement in shot selection from the flow of the offense, as well as slight tweaks to footwork & release point when freshmen become sophomores. Both Vance & Vital exceeded my expectations as freshmen, and if they do the same as sophomores we're in really good shape.
• Ollie was addicted to feeding Brimah in the post. It's one of my major gripes with him this year – post touches for Brimah were absolutely worthless, yet we'd still give him 5 or 6 a game. Enoch isn't exactly Moses Malone, and Carlton and Cobb are unknowns at this level, and Durham was waaaay too in love with his Dirk fadeaway (which didn't fall, not once), but any of the above will prove more fruitful than feeding Brimah was. Fewer turnovers, fewer missed shots.
• Facey never understood how to pass out of a double team. Kentan's senior year kind of ended in the middle of February when every coach we faced started sending hard, big-to-big doubles at him. He couldn't see over them so he didn't pass over them, and he had no idea how to adjust. Durham is a MUCH better passer, so if he's our starting 4 I'm less worried about the efficacy of big-to-big doubles. And if it's Larrier/Jackson as our starting pseudo-4, anyone who sends a big-to-big double is asking to give up an open 3 or lay-up.
Ollie seems to have made a point of recruiting big men who can pass, by the way. It's the first or second appositive you see when reading about both Carlton and Cobb, who are limited in other ways (athleticism) but seem to be better basketball players than the guys they're replacing.
• Jalen was injured. I forgot who ran the numbers, but in the 11 games before he turned his ankle he was putting up 17/5/7 on 44/40/88 shooting splits. In the five or six games afterward he went for like 8/3/4 on 36% shooting, and only came alive against Houston & the 2nd half vs. Cincy.
• Ball security will improve across the team. As a sophomore PG Shabazz's turnover rate was 18.3% (19.2% as a frosh). As a sophomore Jalen's turnover rate was 18.1% (18.2% as a frosh).
As a junior, Shabazz's turnover rate was 14.4%. I expect Jalen to make a similar improvement, and that will certainly have a knock-on effect teamwide. Vital's ball security was really impressive the second half of the season, and Vance got rid of his happy feet. Eliminate the 3 TOs a game we got from feeding Brimah on top of that, and we should be in a better spot.
And here's why our offense might not improve as much as we want:
• I am not convinced we will be a good defensive rebounding team, and if that's the case we won't be a good running team. Transition baskets are the lifeblood of many high-level college offenses, and you can't run if you don't rebound. Hopefully Durham and Enoch really make a leap this summer, because Jalen+Alterique+Larrier running 3-on-2 means buckets.
• Teams will not have to sell out to defend us vertically. I sort of killed Amida above, so let me praise him here: The lob was a devastating weapon, and one that teams had to defend against on literally every trip down the court. That in turn opened up space in the mid-range for DHam the last two years, and then Adams this year, because guys couldn't help away from that baseline rim run. If they did it was the easiest two points we could get (and when people ask me "what's your favorite UConn dunk of all-time?" my answer will just be "Amida," because we've never had a dunk scripted into our offense like that and used as such a court-tilting weapon. If you want to see this at the highest level, just watch what Rick Carlisle does with Nerlens Noel on the Mavs for the next decade).
Nobody's going to have to defend the baseline from Enoch like that. Durham, however... I hope KO is clever enough to use Juwan in the Brimah role for at least 70% of our sets next year, especially when teams are hedging hard to keep our PGs out of the lane.
• Catch and shoot. God bless Rodney for finally eliminating the useless-ass ball fake from his game somewhere around midseason. You want proof that our staff is constantly working to improve fundamentals? There you go. Vital did the same (his ability to absorb lessons like this during the course of his freshman season is really heartening, and he's already the best off-the-ball cutter we've had since Denham). Vance has been a little slower, and needs to understand that a lot of our ball movement is designed to get him the split second of airspace he needs to hoist. If he hesitates, he's just subverted the whole process.
The one who really worries me, though? Larrier. Go back and watch the first 3 games and you'll see him get so many catches in good spots with the defense scrambling behind the play to catch up... and he lets them. He's so talented that he was still scoring 15 ppg on 50% shooting, but he made those shots harder than they had to be. And on top of that, there's a demoralizing, team-wide rhythm-breaking effect when your go-to scorer eschews good looks from within the team's structure in order to freelance (this was my biggest complaint about DHam).
I'm convinced that can and will be coached out of him. I'm hoping it happens by November rather than March.
As for whether or not the defense will be better... um, we might be boned.
We "run" virtually zero isos. The only times we play iso-ball are at the end of the shotclock once our stuff has broken down against a good defensive team (this happens to everybody from time to time) or when Jalen's on the bench and Rodney loses his mind. One of the surest signs that Jalen really gets it, from a PG perspective, is that despite his natural talent he almost never devolved into 1v1 basketball. I honestly wish he'd have done it a little more this year!
Just look at the game yesterday. Even when he started getting buckets, it came from within the flow of the offense – no clear-outs, or pounding the rock, etc. It was good, smart, modern PG play.
As for starting our penetration 25-30 feet from the basket... we do that b/c Jalen is freaking unguardable when he's dribbling downhill. It's all based upon the high screen-and-roll, and Jalen's relative gravity, which is smart. If you throw a second defender at him then he's usually able to split them and we can play 5-v-4 for a second, and if you don't he'll turn the corner every time and either rain mid-range Js or toss lobs.
The offense was still mostly subpar, but big problems that existed at the end of the year were all things that should be fixed next year:
• Jalen was the only player on the team capable of taking and occasionally making bad shots, which meant rapid and pointed ball movement from all five our our players was the only way to really punish a double-team. If we'd had another guy out there capable of scoring via dribble penetration past a hard, emergency close-out, we'd 1) get a lot more buckets at the rim, and 2) generate a lot more trips to the line.
This year if you sent a double at Jalen, he had to pick the right pass immediately, then that guy would have to swing the ball to the right spot, and then that guy would maaaaybe have his feet set to catch-and-shoot. If it didn't happen with that level of precision we almost certainly weren't scoring, b/c none of Rodney, Vance or Vital was really that good at putting the ball on the floor to get to the rim even against a scrambling defense.
Alterique, MAL and Larrier are all superb at this very thing. Having just one of them on the court along with Jalen should lead to more easy buckets for us.
• Our two best shooters were just learning to shoot at the college level. We usually see significant improvement in shot selection from the flow of the offense, as well as slight tweaks to footwork & release point when freshmen become sophomores. Both Vance & Vital exceeded my expectations as freshmen, and if they do the same as sophomores we're in really good shape.
• Ollie was addicted to feeding Brimah in the post. It's one of my major gripes with him this year – post touches for Brimah were absolutely worthless, yet we'd still give him 5 or 6 a game. Enoch isn't exactly Moses Malone, and Carlton and Cobb are unknowns at this level, and Durham was waaaay too in love with his Dirk fadeaway (which didn't fall, not once), but any of the above will prove more fruitful than feeding Brimah was. Fewer turnovers, fewer missed shots.
• Facey never understood how to pass out of a double team. Kentan's senior year kind of ended in the middle of February when every coach we faced started sending hard, big-to-big doubles at him. He couldn't see over them so he didn't pass over them, and he had no idea how to adjust. Durham is a MUCH better passer, so if he's our starting 4 I'm less worried about the efficacy of big-to-big doubles. And if it's Larrier/Jackson as our starting pseudo-4, anyone who sends a big-to-big double is asking to give up an open 3 or lay-up.
Ollie seems to have made a point of recruiting big men who can pass, by the way. It's the first or second appositive you see when reading about both Carlton and Cobb, who are limited in other ways (athleticism) but seem to be better basketball players than the guys they're replacing.
• Jalen was injured. I forgot who ran the numbers, but in the 11 games before he turned his ankle he was putting up 17/5/7 on 44/40/88 shooting splits. In the five or six games afterward he went for like 8/3/4 on 36% shooting, and only came alive against Houston & the 2nd half vs. Cincy.
• Ball security will improve across the team. As a sophomore PG Shabazz's turnover rate was 18.3% (19.2% as a frosh). As a sophomore Jalen's turnover rate was 18.1% (18.2% as a frosh).
As a junior, Shabazz's turnover rate was 14.4%. I expect Jalen to make a similar improvement, and that will certainly have a knock-on effect teamwide. Vital's ball security was really impressive the second half of the season, and Vance got rid of his happy feet. Eliminate the 3 TOs a game we got from feeding Brimah on top of that, and we should be in a better spot.
And here's why our offense might not improve as much as we want:
• I am not convinced we will be a good defensive rebounding team, and if that's the case we won't be a good running team. Transition baskets are the lifeblood of many high-level college offenses, and you can't run if you don't rebound. Hopefully Durham and Enoch really make a leap this summer, because Jalen+Alterique+Larrier running 3-on-2 means buckets.
• Teams will not have to sell out to defend us vertically. I sort of killed Amida above, so let me praise him here: The lob was a devastating weapon, and one that teams had to defend against on literally every trip down the court. That in turn opened up space in the mid-range for DHam the last two years, and then Adams this year, because guys couldn't help away from that baseline rim run. If they did it was the easiest two points we could get (and when people ask me "what's your favorite UConn dunk of all-time?" my answer will just be "Amida," because we've never had a dunk scripted into our offense like that and used as such a court-tilting weapon. If you want to see this at the highest level, just watch what Rick Carlisle does with Nerlens Noel on the Mavs for the next decade).
Nobody's going to have to defend the baseline from Enoch like that. Durham, however... I hope KO is clever enough to use Juwan in the Brimah role for at least 70% of our sets next year, especially when teams are hedging hard to keep our PGs out of the lane.
• Catch and shoot. God bless Rodney for finally eliminating the useless-ass ball fake from his game somewhere around midseason. You want proof that our staff is constantly working to improve fundamentals? There you go. Vital did the same (his ability to absorb lessons like this during the course of his freshman season is really heartening, and he's already the best off-the-ball cutter we've had since Denham). Vance has been a little slower, and needs to understand that a lot of our ball movement is designed to get him the split second of airspace he needs to hoist. If he hesitates, he's just subverted the whole process.
The one who really worries me, though? Larrier. Go back and watch the first 3 games and you'll see him get so many catches in good spots with the defense scrambling behind the play to catch up... and he lets them. He's so talented that he was still scoring 15 ppg on 50% shooting, but he made those shots harder than they had to be. And on top of that, there's a demoralizing, team-wide rhythm-breaking effect when your go-to scorer eschews good looks from within the team's structure in order to freelance (this was my biggest complaint about DHam).
I'm convinced that can and will be coached out of him. I'm hoping it happens by November rather than March.
As for whether or not the defense will be better... um, we might be boned.
