And it's still a bit early, but both DJ and Admon are generating 30% less FTAs, compared to last year. I'm guessing the bigger lineups are clogging the lanes and these guys are struggling to find room to penetrate.

I'm not disagreeing, just to be clear, because Hogg does need to take it to the basket more, but the defensive style is going to limit him somewhat. For one, most teams are going to zone us up which makes driving it to the lane very difficult, and when they're playing man-to-man Hogg is almost always being guarded by someone smaller than he is, which is going to make driving the ball difficult as well.

Long story short for Hogg though is that he's not athletic enough to create if his three pointers aren't falling. If he's making a decent percentage from three, then he can use some pump fakes and whatnot to help himself, but if the defense isn't really worried about him shooting threes then he becomes pretty limited pretty quickly.

Nice graph and analysis!
Sidenote: any thought as to why Middleton's ratio dropped so much from Sophomore to Junior year?

I noticed the 10 fta a couple of games ago, but was already piling on him pretty good so I didn't go there. But, great comparison. DO something different when you aren't hitting the 3's DJ, which for your career is so far pretty average.

Didn't he get injured his junior year?

austinaggie2008 said:

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Didn't he get injured his junior year?

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Yeah, that was going to be my anecdotal guess is that he didn't drive as aggressively after he got hurt.

Plus that year's team kind of sucked so I imagine there were a lot fewer fouls called just in general.

We were 317th in free throws attempted as a team that year compared to 45th the year before.

austinaggie2008 said:

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Didn't he get injured his junior year?

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Yeah he got hurt the first game of the season, missed the next 7 (and 12 over the whole season), and just never really seemed himself that year.

bobinator said:

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I'm not disagreeing, just to be clear, because Hogg does need to take it to the basket more, but the defensive style is going to limit him somewhat. For one, most teams are going to zone us up which makes driving it to the lane very difficult, and when they're playing man-to-man Hogg is almost always being guarded by someone smaller than he is, which is going to make driving the ball difficult as well.

Long story short for Hogg though is that he's not athletic enough to create if his three pointers aren't falling. If he's making a decent percentage from three, then he can use some pump fakes and whatnot to help himself, but if the defense isn't really worried about him shooting threes then he becomes pretty limited pretty quickly.

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Good point. The amount of zone teams are playing is probably compounding the spacing problem with always having 2 (and sometimes 3) post players on the court.

Re: being guarded by smaller players. I think Hogg needs (and has the potential) to grow into the type of player that punishes smaller defenders. Get him the ball near the paint, instead of 4 steps behind the 3 pt line.

They've actually done some of this and it will really help him next season. The problem with it this season is that we normally have at least one guy on the floor that defenders don't have to follow out to the three point line, and a lot of times we have two, so it's hard for Hogg to get space in the lane even against a smaller defender because defenses are already pretty packed in.

Though he's done it a few times this season already and he did it pretty well against Virginia Tech if I'm recalling the right game.

It sort of sounds counterintuitive, but this is something we'll see more from Hogg as we play teams that are better on defense. The tighter they try to guard us man-to-man, the more it should open up this particular aspect of Hogg's game.

Been a while since we had a chart on this board. I don't think I get the joke on this one.

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It sort of sounds counterintuitive, but this is something we'll see more from Hogg as we play teams that are better on defense. The tighter they try to guard us man-to-man, the more it should open up this particular aspect of Hogg's game.

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I want to hope you're right, but he played 105 minutes combined vs USC/VT/UCLA, took 47 FGA and shot just 1 FT.

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The problem with it this season is that we normally have at least one guy on the floor that defenders don't have to follow out to the three point line, and a lot of times we have two, so it's hard for Hogg to get space in the lane even against a smaller defender because defenses are already pretty packed in.

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Maybe some of that will change if last night was Hampton's offensive coming out party.

I didn't get to see much of USC, but UCLA isn't really a tight man-to-man defensive team. Plus in that game he didn't have a shorter guy on him, he had Ball on him most of the time. Virginia Tech he was shooting pretty well from distance so he didn't really need to get into the lane.

We'll see as the season goes on, but I think him taking advantage of smaller guys is actually something they've worked with him a lot on, we just can't really see it yet because of how teams defend us and the makeup of our team.

I miss Josh Carter. And graphs.

bobinator said:

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I didn't get to see much of USC, but UCLA isn't really a tight man-to-man defensive team. Plus in that game he didn't have a shorter guy on him, he had Ball on him most of the time. Virginia Tech he was shooting pretty well from distance so he didn't really need to get into the lane.

We'll see as the season goes on, but I think him taking advantage of smaller guys is actually something they've worked with him a lot on, we just can't really see it yet because of how teams defend us and the makeup of our team.

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To agree with your earlier point, the vtech second half is where I definitely remember him playing/driving closer to the basket more often to change it up. It also happened to free Gilder up more, imo.
If Hampton can build on this game and show he can spot up and drain 3s that will help

bobinator said:

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Also I gave you a star, but I couldn't decide if I should give you one or report you to staff for using a graph for actual information purposes.

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Good post and poster!

He did against UCLA and got stuffed 5 times

machine20 said:

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He did against UCLA and got stuffed 5 times

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Stuffed? You're a white male over 45 and haven't played basketball in over ten years or more. How'd I do?

Hogg brings the ball down on his drives and winds up eating it...

0 for 2

If he said he got "packed" that would have been a much narrower range of ages. "stuffed" has maybe risen and fallen over the years, but I feel like everyone is used to that one.

Now, if someone says someone got "packed," then you're probably talking about someone age 28-35 or so.

bobinator said:

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Now, if someone says someone got "packed," then you're probably talking about someone age 28-35 or so.

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So true

I haven't played bouncing ball since the mid-aughts but in my day we said "bamboozled" whenever a big block occurred.

txag72 said:

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The problem with Hogg driving to the hoop is that he's not a very good ball handler and plays very soft. In the UCLA game when his shots weren't falling he tried driving multiple times and either coughed it up or got blocked.

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And therefore I do not understand this salivating over him and his NBA prospects.

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Amen. I was saying this last year and got blasted.

He is very soft. Won't play in the league. Wish I was wrong obviously, but let's not kid ourselves.

Not a high caliber defender, plays soft, and can't create his own shot. Glad we have him but just don't get anyone talking about him as an NBA guy

People said that (all that) about Middleton.

JMJLAW said:

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txag72 said:

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The problem with Hogg driving to the hoop is that he's not a very good ball handler and plays very soft. In the UCLA game when his shots weren't falling he tried driving multiple times and either coughed it up or got blocked.

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And therefore I do not understand this salivating over him and his NBA prospects.

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Amen. I was saying this last year and got blasted.

He is very soft. Won't play in the league. Wish I was wrong obviously, but let's not kid ourselves.

Not a high caliber defender, plays soft, and can't create his own shot. Glad we have him but just don't get anyone talking about him as an NBA guy

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He will almost certainly play in the league barring serious injury.

JMJLAW said:

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txag72 said:

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Quote:

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The problem with Hogg driving to the hoop is that he's not a very good ball handler and plays very soft. In the UCLA game when his shots weren't falling he tried driving multiple times and either coughed it up or got blocked.

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And therefore I do not understand this salivating over him and his NBA prospects.

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Amen. I was saying this last year and got blasted.

He is very soft. Won't play in the league. Wish I was wrong obviously, but let's not kid ourselves.

Not a high caliber defender, plays soft, and can't create his own shot. Glad we have him but just don't get anyone talking about him as an NBA guy

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What are you smoking

Hogg is more like 6'9" than his listed 6'8" and very skilled. After the game vs TAMU-CC, when for second game in row he had missed most of his shots and I was down on him, I later looked at the stat sheet and the guy had 9 assists. NINE.

He is streaky as hell and there is that sometimes 'passiveness' to his game, but when the guy's shot is 'on' it is not hard at all IMO to see what is interesting NBA scouts. That said, the inconsistency definitely seems to be holding down his draft stock as of now. a lot of basketball to played but sure looks like Hogg will need at least another season after this one to continue to get stronger and try to fix those issues.

Pumpkinhead said:

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Hogg is more like 6'9" than his listed 6'8" and very skilled. After the game vs TAMU-CC, when for second game in row he had missed most of his shots and I was down on him, I later looked at the stat sheet and the guy had 9 assists. NINE.

He is streaky as hell and there is that sometimes 'passiveness' to his game, but when the guy's shot is 'on' it is not hard at all IMO to see what is interesting NBA scouts. That said, the inconsistency definitely seems to be holding down his draft stock as of now. a lot of basketball to played but sure looks like Hogg will need at least another season after this one to continue to get stronger and try to fix those issues.

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Hogg critical to our inside out game. At 6 ft 8-9 in he has a clear vision and angle to make great entry passes. Midget combo guards like Hampton with 1.8 apg do not.

...and if DJ gets off the schnide and hit those open 3s, we're gold.

He'll continue to grow. That shot is too good to not start falling consistently. He's only like 19

I thought it would be appropriate to post a link to the original graph thread. https://texags.com/forums/7/topics/1304993/1