Xavier Post Game Thread

[nomar]

Wow Malachi Smith is averaging less than both Stewart and Ross. I know he has been very inconsistent but we need a little more scoring from him.

Fun fact: Smith is 16/56 from inside the arc. That's crazy.

 

[freescooter]

Much like the refs, I didn't see any flagrant… Until I watch the replay a couple of times, then I saw that Smith clearly pushed him. The exact same thing the refs saw.
When I heard them call the flagrant I said to my wife "what? That's ridiculous!" Then they showed the replay, and I said "oh they're right, that was a shove."

I kind of agree though I thought when the whistle first blew that they were calling a block on Smith. He clearly fouled the Xavier guy though I think it shouldn’t have been called flagrant. What I thought happened was once they reviewed it the saw Smith clearly committed a foul and they missed it. So given that UConn had the game in hand and they couldn’t call a common foul they basically called the flagrant to get around the problem. I’m guessing if it was 65-63 they don’t make that call.

 

[JustbrewitMan]

Try not to - love the kids stroke. But last night he had a lot of open looks and missed pretty badly on them. He's shooting 28% - that is a really bad number.

I think it’s another case where if you watch the games, you can see how he has gotten to where he is. Early season, it seemed like he was taking a high volume of low-percentage 3’s, plus it seemed like he was always trying to draw fouls on his 3s. Likely a function of teams hawking him this year as the team’s best 3pt shooter based on last year’s phenomenal shooting on a large sample size. A decent sample of less-than-quality shots put him below 30%.

Then, he clearly got hurt in the Butler game. And has probably aggravated it here-and-there. I think he’s been taking better quality looks, but who knows what effect his wrist is having on ability on those looks. So he’s still below 40%.

Honestly, I’d love if we could just rest him after STJ for the Butler, GTown, Creighton stretch to try and get him healthy and straightened out for the stretch run into the post season.

 

[JustbrewitMan]

At this point we need to treat last season as Solo's fluke 3pt shooting year. He's had 20+ games to get it going, shot allocation needs to be dialed back.

There is a quantifiable chance that his 3pt shooting last year was a total fluke. It’s more than 0%, but I don’t think the “true” story on Solo is that he is really a sub-30% 3pt shooter

 

[RuffRuff]

Impressive

 

[aceboon]

There is a quantifiable chance that his 3pt shooting last year was a total fluke. It’s more than 0%, but I don’t think the “true” story on Solo is that he is really a sub-30% 3pt shooter

32% as a freshman without using arbitrary cutoff points(that 45% figure that was thrown out in this thread isn't even factual), now 29% as a junior on a 3ball that has been broke since October(unless the new BY narrative is that he's had a wrist issue all year). I would love to see him go nuclear to cap off the season but this is probably a topic we'll have to re-visit next season.

 

[KingAG]

32% as a freshman without using arbitrary cutoff points(that 45% figure that was thrown out in this thread isn't even factual), now 29% as a junior on a 3ball that has been broke since October(unless the new BY narrative is that he's had a wrist issue all year). I would love to see him go nuclear to cap off the season but this is probably a topic we'll have to re-visit next season.

You don’t shoot how he shot last season and be a bad shooter. I think that close to impossible. Something is off, but if you recall he was arguably the best shooter in CBB last season. Fluky would be if he shot around 35-36%. He was undeniably a dominant elite shooter last season. And the year before you could clearly see that potential as well. He didn’t get many opportunities after the OOC schedule.

 

[RuffRuff]

You don’t shoot how he shot last season and be a bad shooter. I think that close to impossible. Something is off, but if you recall he was arguably the best shooter in CBB last season. Fluky would be if he shot around 35-36%. He was undeniably a dominant elite shooter last season. And the year before you could clearly see that potential as well. He didn’t get many opportunities after the OOC schedule.

Totally - and he has beautiful form. Kid was actually shooting around 44% up until the last few weeks. The kid is in a funk. It started a couple games before the BE tourney last year, shot 30% over his last 6 after being about 44-45 most of the year.

At some point you have to make a call when you have alternatives. If he's shooting 28% going into the last week, you might have to make adjustments.

 

[Lafayette]

I tend to think having 4 3pt shooters (Silas, Solo, Alex, Braylon) plus Reed, Jr., and all are moving in our heavy motion offense, it's really hard to guard all 4 and still seem to be able to double team Reed, Jr.

Reed, Jr., had a number of layups, dunks, and short shots vs Xavier, and we saw what happens if Silas is just unaccounted for on the 3pt line (as well as Ross).

And I keep saying with out top 5 defense we get more stops thus we get more offensive chances:
Xavier - 18/49 shooting, 8 O Rebs contributed
UConn - 34/60 shooting, 12 O Rebs contributed

Our shots made is closer to their shots taken (-15 diff) then their shots made (+16 diff)! We also had 26 assists for those 34 shots!

So given we get more chances means more shots, means on any given night we get pretty good looks, we score more and win.

Keep this going on Friday night and just get some of our shooters open looks and we will rock. Plus Tarris has been really good against Zuby.

 

[SubbaBub]

28 and 15 from the 5 spot would be a problem for any opponent.

 

[inWV]

Beatdown mode: ENABLED.

Did you guys see the Reed stat? I forget the exact # but he's like 19/20 over the last 3 games. Braylon looked incredible tonight!

Those rainbows are one thing. The tips and steals and pesky D for a kid that slight is definitely another. The kid has springs in his shoes.

 

[Excalibur]

that 45% figure that was thrown out in this thread isn't even factual)

The game logs I looked at didn’t include the postseason. My bad, I guess. 16-36 is 44.4%. Include the postseason and it drops to 40%. And while it’s somewhat arbitrary it’s pretty easy to build the narrative that once he got his feet wet after being thrown into heavy minutes as a freshman that were never intended for him, he shot the ball pretty darn well. And he shot over 40% for about 1 and 3/4 seasons consecutively.

Seems like far less of an anomaly when you look at it that way.

 

[thekollieman]

Metrics crack me up. I remember watching a baseball game a few years ago where they had this ticker by the scorebox showing the % chance each team had to win the game.
It was Rays vs Orioles.
The Rays were up 8-1 in the 7th and the tracker said that the O's now had a 0% chance to win the game. They ended up scoring 4 runs in the 8th and the analytics updated to the O's now having a 30% chance to win

If you have ZERO chance to win.....ummm...

Like when the weather apps say 0% or 100% chance of precipitation… not so!

 

[AllHusky]

I wasn't trying to argue or morph this thread into anything , it just caught my attention during the press conference , seemed a little off and figured this was a place where I could ask people who have better knowledge, a question about it. That's all

Not you, just in general we all like to have something to be agreeably disagreeable about.