At the SEC preseason basketball meetings.
We are going to play an up tempo offense taking advantage of the 3 point line.
This was days before the season started.
Which team was he watching???

Is Mitchell are great 3 point shooter?

Yeah, I was always skeptical also, I'm just saying it's not exactly fair to say what we might have looked like with those two playing.

Without them we have basically one player who can create his own shot and he's been playing poorly.

Hop, I did know that Our best player was out. But how can you even try to be competitive with a 3 point style of play when the rest of the team shoots 21, 21 and 27% in the first three games. Surely one player will not carry this team. Have the rest of the players changed from shooting 40% in practice to 20% in the games. Something doesn't compute.

I think it's pretty simple. Nobody else but Starks can create their own shot, so it's going to be difficult to get good looks. We've taken a lot of threes that simply weren't good shots.

But yes, on a team that's extremely thin, one guy could make that big of a difference, and two guys can certainly make that big of a difference. If Mitchell could also break down defenders on the bounce, then it's going to get other guys better looks.

And Gilder is probably the team's best shooter, threes that would be taken by him being taken by Collins and Chandler is a huge difference.

The shooting though is less of a concern to me than the tempo. Without Gilder and Mitchell it's even more important for us to create some chaos on the court because if we're playing anyone with any sort of defense, if they have time to get set up in the halfcourt we're basically screwed. We have one guy that can create their own shot and nobody that is good at posting up.

We do have some guys who can create havoc around the rim, and we've got some good athletes that can attack the basket off of one bounce.

I have to admit: I'm bad at imagining the harder ways to create shots. I had to be taught how to set a pick, how to create a ball screen, how to create the RPO of the court: the pick and roll (which we don't have the talent for most likely, but I'll mention it), moving without the ball, passing not to get it out of my hands but to execute a specific design to get the defense to do something. All of that was learned behavior...

greg.w.h said:

---

I have to admit: I'm bad at imagining the harder ways to create shots. I had to be taught how to set a pick, how to create a ball screen, how to create the RPO of the court: the pick and roll (which we don't have the talent for most likely, but I'll mention it), moving without the ball, passing not to get it out of my hands but to execute a specific design to get the defense to do something. All of that was learned behavior...

---

Yeah, that would require...


coaching.

bobinator said:

---

Probably one that had two of its best three guards playing?

---

By all reports, they really did practice and work on playing a faster tempo this off-season. And we have actually seen indication of that mindset at times in the first 3 games. But yes, losing Gilder and Mitchell right out the gate (2 out of their 3 starters in the back-court) obviously must have been a big curve-ball.

bobinator said:

---

I think it's pretty simple. Nobody else but Starks can create their own shot, so it's going to be difficult to get good looks. We've taken a lot of threes that simply weren't good shots.

But yes, on a team that's extremely thin, one guy could make that big of a difference, and two guys can certainly make that big of a difference. If Mitchell could also break down defenders on the bounce, then it's going to get other guys better looks.

And Gilder is probably the team's best shooter, threes that would be taken by him being taken by Collins and Chandler is a huge difference.

The shooting though is less of a concern to me than the tempo. Without Gilder and Mitchell it's even more important for us to create some chaos on the court because if we're playing anyone with any sort of defense, if they have time to get set up in the halfcourt we're basically screwed. We have one guy that can create their own shot and nobody that is good at posting up.

We do have some guys who can create havoc around the rim, and we've got some good athletes that can attack the basket off of one bounce.

---

Pugliese on the radio yesterday said that is exactly what the Aggies were doing to Gonzaga for much of the first half, playing faster and running - which was actually helping A&M keep things close. Then, he said Zags came out of the last media timeout before first half and finally started to play more deliberately and slower paced game (i.e., began to play their style instead of more chaotic like what A&M was doing) and that was key to Gonzaga finally taking control of that game.

I didn't actually watch the game myself (was on too late), just relaying some of Pugliese's remarks.

DukeMu said:

---

greg.w.h said:

---

I have to admit: I'm bad at imagining the harder ways to create shots. I had to be taught how to set a pick, how to create a ball screen, how to create the RPO of the court: the pick and roll (which we don't have the talent for most likely, but I'll mention it), moving without the ball, passing not to get it out of my hands but to execute a specific design to get the defense to do something. All of that was learned behavior...

---

Yeah, that would require...


coaching.

---

Was THAT what it was? I thought they were teaching me how to cheat at jungleball...

So you base your whole offense on 5 players? That's idiotic.

Sorry but I don't think most coaches in college look at their best 3 players and say we are going to do X. Most college coaches have an offensive philisophy and recruit players to fit that system then tweak stuff based in abilities. Don't tell me BK has an offensive philosophy.

Many coaches can adjust to their personnel.

Some coaches cannot adjust to a good player going down.

That's how you separate the good coaches from the bad.

Injuries happen, matchups change, and you have to adjust to those.

But a team that has to wholesale change their philosophy and scheme because of an injury, or two, likely isn't recruiting properly and/or developing the players and roster properly.

You may have to if you one of those great, transformative players but these guys we've lost aren't at that level.

TXAggie2011 said:

---

Injuries happen, matchups change, and you have to adjust to those.

But a team that has to wholesale change their philosophy and scheme because of an injury, or two, likely isn't recruiting properly and/or developing the players and roster properly.

You may have to if you one of those great, transformative players but these guys we've lost aren't at that level.

---

I think some of us are kind of talking about different things at this point, because I also don't think we've exactly done a bang up job on the coaching front this season by any stretch.

But the offseason sell was moving from being a deliberate front-court focused team to being a more up-tempo backcourt-focused team. Part of that was shooting more threes.

So, I don't think we've 'wholesale changed our philosophy' from what it was going to be because of the injuries. It does appear that we're still trying to push the tempo and play more of an open style most of the time, it's just not working, at all.

What I'm saying is that it's hard to fault Kennedy for how it currently looks since the team that we were hearing about and the one that we're seeing are very different. Having two of your best three guards missing is a huge deal, especially at the beginning of the season, and especially when the new scheme you're trying to run hinges on quality guards.

Now... whether the transition to that system was ever really going to work anyway, why we're so bad at some of the basics of the game, how our roster is in the shape it's in, etc, those are all still more than valid complaints.

I think that comes down to "fool me once..." regarding an up-tempo style of play.

Yeah I mean most of us were pretty skeptical of that anyway. On three fronts really. One, that we'd actually do it, two that we'd stick with it, and three, that even if we did actually do it, that we'd be even remotely good at it.

My only point on this thread was just that we might look considerably better with Gilder and Mitchell playing, no matter what style it is we're trying to run, and that two shooters can make a world of difference to your team shooting.

I think it was pretty easy to be skeptical of the change in style when considering how slow our offense has been each of the previous 7 years. Especially when we had already heard early in BK's tenure that he wanted to push the pace, and we never saw that. I was also skeptical because we haven't been good at creating outside shots even in our previous inside-out offense and we don't have any particularly consistent or proven shooters.


I'm interested to see where our offense goes down the stretch, because without Gilder we don't have anyone who appears to be a truly consistent scoring threat, unless Mahan turns into the player he apparently was in juco. He looked good in the second half last night. Starks can be a threat, but he is also a major liability. If this team doesn't start knocking down some shots, we are going to get 2-3 zoned to death and we haven't consistently beaten a 2-3 zone in 8 years.