Quote:
Originally Posted by waterhead
It's going to be a tougher year to win for us because of the schedule strength and playing off campus. We may not really have a comfortable home to play in so we should be both battle tested and neutral/road game tested when it counts. I say neutral just because it's not our preferred arena we will be playing in. I hope to see a lot more attacking play this year. Less threes and more driving the lane and producing fouls. We settled for 3's too much last year. Our road scoring was not good. We need to look for, and be aggressive for, higher % shots. We also need to run and press more to create easier buckets. We have a great starting 5 and a deep bench so we should take full advantage of that.
|
I personally don't think we shot too many 3s last year. With Caupain at PG, we were going against a set defense all the time. Hard to have guys driving the lane when the other team is set and only has to extend out to 20 feet. Plus, a 20'9" shot is just a flick of the wrist for these guys. If you want efficient offense in modern basketball, you MUST shoot the 3 and have the majority of your team doing it. It sounds good on paper to talk about attacking, drawing fouls, etc but in reality it isn't that easy. If it was, Shaq Thomas would've been an All-American. Playing inside-out with guys like Clark and Washington is the way to go for this year's team imo. Feeding the post and banging 3s is going to be key. Getting Broome on the move and driving will be nice but that will have to happen more with screens to give him more space and try to create a mismatch. It wouldn't benefit us very much imo if he tries to be the Sacred Heart version of Broome who doesn't use his teammates.
I agree about the pressing and creating easy buckets that way. And maybe with bigs who can shoot, we'll have more space in the lane for guys like Broome, Cumberland, and Williams to operate. But running the offense that way seems like a bogged down, inefficient way to use our talent this year. We have tons of depth, guys who can hit 3s, and guys who can score in the post. Those seem like more efficient ways to score to me, compared to taking guys off the dribble and getting in the lane. Obviously that needs to happen some, but I know Coach Cronin has put an emphasis on passing a lot in the last couple years. I don't feel like you'd be using Evans and Clark the right way if you didn't utilize their passing abilities and ability to stretch the floor in the halfcourt.
I guess basically, I'd like to see guys creating shots for each other with crisp ball movement and mismatches off of screens. The 1 on 1 type stuff shouldn't be a main offensive philosophy. It should be situational...bc we do have guys who can get a bucket in iso situations. But with so many mouths to feed on this year's team, I'd hope that we stress playing with all 5 guys on offense. And in the halfcourt, with our personnel, that will mean shooting a good amount 3s.