Franck Kepnang CB'd to the good guys today

6,219 Views | 45 Replies | Last: 3 yr ago by bobinator
Proposition Joe
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bobinator said:

Still think it's wild that you bang that drum. Like at Christmas one morning Buzz woke up and was like 'oh s***, we should try letting Nebo play in the post.'

Not banging a drum at all - it was obvious if you watched the season play out. We wanted to move the ball quickly down the court and shoot a lot of 3's. Except we weren't getting good looks from 3 and were hitting at a damn near historically bad clip.

This idea that Nebo didn't "establish" himself until late in the season isn't supported by any of the game data. He was shooting 70+ % from the field through January. He was a force when he touched the ball from Game 1, he just wasn't fed the ball enough because we wanted to play a different style of offense.

Games when Nebo had 11+ shots: 4-0
Games when Nebo had < 5 shots: 2-6

Can all but guarantee that his touches reflect a similar result -- when we moved the offense through him we scored, when we didn't we struggled... and it took Buzz far too long to shift the offense to go through him.

Maybe the cause of that was planning for Starks (who could create his own shot) to be on the roster. Maybe the cause of that was Nebo's preseason injury that put into question his durability as the offensive centerpiece. But it was undeniably obvious we didn't go through him early, and started to go through him late and that's when the 3 point shooting stopped being embarrassing.
bobinator
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AG
The problem though is that it discounts the improvement of the rest of the team that had to happen.

This is the same argument we've had since the middle of the season, but you're basically saying we weren't even trying to post it, which is what I don't agree with. I think we were trying, we were just terrible at it.

You can talk about his shooting percentage, but the reason his percentage was so high early in the season is because he basically never shot it. So it's like everything else, it's a chicken/egg thing. He was basically a lob and put back guy a year ago, so it's not like there was plenty of proof out there that he could be effective as a post up guy.

Nebo himself improved a ton over the course of the year, so it's not really fair to say we should have been doing things in November that we were doing in March when Nebo himself couldn't do those things in November.

And that's not even talking about how much of a disaster the rest of the team was around him. Miller and Jackson were next to worthless in non-conference play and even Mitchell and Flagg were awful for stretches. His teammates had to get better at getting it to him where he could be effective, they had to get better at scoring themselves so their defenders couldn't just leave them standing wide open, etc.

It all adds up together. It's not just like one day we decided 'oh hey let's try getting Nebo the ball' and then all of our problems went away.
Proposition Joe
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bobinator said:

It all adds up together. It's not just like one day we decided 'oh hey let's try getting Nebo the ball' and then all of our problems went away.

Except nobody said that.

This idea that Nebo early in the season was just so unpolished that all he was good for was putbacks simply isn't based in reality. His problem was touches.

It's crazy that people for some reason think Buzz isn't slow to adjust when we watched Flagg go from potential all SEC to damn near useless because for half the season because he "didn't get the offense".

Now as we've all seen there's typically a reason that Buzz is going for the long-term changes to the players and the programs, but it's silly to ignore that we didn't try and run the offense through Nebo early in the season.
Pumpkinhead
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AG
bobinator said:

Still think it's wild that you bang that drum. Like at Christmas one morning Buzz woke up and was like 'oh s***, we should try letting Nebo play in the post.'
Heard what happened is...BK called Buzz shortly after the Orlando debacle and told him 'Buzz, my friend, I don't know how else to say this, but ya'll looking like the worst team in D1 has created a bunch of 'Kennedy Left The Cupboard Bare For Buzz' threads on TexAgs. Would you please use Nebo more to show that I left you at least a couple of functional players?'

And Buzz felt sorry for BK and that is when the turnaround began.
bobinator
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AG
Obviously I was being a touch hyperbolic, but you did literally say "when Buzz stopped trying to force a square peg in a round hole and started centering the offense around Nebo." like all of a sudden he had an epiphany.

This really isn't that big of a deal, but it's the summer and everything else to talk about is annoying so why not talk about this.

All I'm saying is I don't think it's fair to say that we didn't try running the offense through Nebo early in the season. In some games, we did try it. Buzz isn't an idiot. Our offense was historically bad, so we were trying some things, but if you don't have any other scoring threats, you can't get the ball into the paint.

But also, you act like Nebo was this known quantity on offense. He basically didn't practice leading up to the season, he didn't play in our first game and a half, and there was plenty of reason to think going into the year that Mitchell and Flagg were going to be the guys we ran our offense through.

So making it sound like Buzz was just being stubborn by not running the offense through Nebo all season just seems wildly unfair in my opinion. It's not like Nebo was a guy who averaged 15 and 10 the year before.

As Nebo proved he could do more on offense, he got the ball more, and as our other guys improved and became threats of their own, it created even more space.
Proposition Joe
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Nebo put up 0.413 PPM shooting at ~70% last year.

Nebo put up 0.433 PPM shooting at ~70% this year.

He put up 12pts a game at SFPA as a sophomore against lighter competition (but put up 11 and 7 when he play vs us).

He wasn't some bum off the street that we were't sure understood the game. It simply wasn't the style of play Buzz wanted to go with, and it wasn't until mid/late-season that he finally shifted from it.

I love Buzz, but to act like any coaching and strategy decisions he's made are above reproach is silly. Again, Flagg went from potential all-SEC to lost for half of the season. Long-term he'll get us where he wants to, but there were absolutely some mis-steps last year.
bobinator
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AG
I'm not saying he's above reproach. I especially thought our defense in some games was absurd.

I just completely disagree that it was simple as starting to run the offense through Nebo. It's just a wild oversimplification of the problems we had early in the season.

And you could probably count on one hand the number of baskets that Nebo had the season before that weren't either lobs, put backs, or quick shots at the basket. He showed absolutely no ability to create his own shot in the post.
Pumpkinhead
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AG
Nebo started showing an offensive skillset by the middle of conference play, that I didn't recall seeing before. He started showing some really nice footwork in the post, including well executed spin moves while sealing the defender off, plus nice looking baby hooks, and so forth. He wasn't by any means a one or two-trick pony there at the end. I was really impressed. He had it seemed developed like half a dozen possible tricks that he could go to. Defenders certainly had to start worrying about a lot more stuff he might do than just lobs or put backs.
Proposition Joe
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He was showcasing that stuff long before middle of conference play.

Go back and watch the game vs Texas in early December. He was an absolute beast in the post.

I think some of you checked out early in non-conference. This idea that Nebo was just some put-back specialist and nothing more is pure fiction. We were simply too slow to adapt the offense to go through him.
bobinator
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AG
I was thinking about the Texas game also being the first time he really showed the ability to score on his own against anyone worth anything.

I even remember thinking "why doesn't he do this more?" during that game.

That game kind of goes against your theory because we were definitely trying to go through him.

But if you can't admit that Nebo was a lot better at the end of the year than he was at the beginning of the year then I'm not sure it's even any fun to debate the scheme changes.

You make it seem like Nebo was this dominant big man wasting time waiting for his coaches and teammates to catch up, when he was also evolving as a player and leader.
Proposition Joe
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bobinator said:

I was thinking about the Texas game also being the first time he really showed the ability to score on his own against anyone worth anything.

I even remember thinking "why doesn't he do this more?" during that game.

That game kind of goes against your theory because we were definitely trying to go through him.

But if you can't admit that Nebo was a lot better at the end of the year than he was at the beginning of the year then I'm not sure it's even any fun to debate the scheme changes.

You make it seem like Nebo was this dominant big man wasting time waiting for his coaches and teammates to catch up, when he was also evolving as a player and leader.

I haven't made Nebo out to be a dominant big man, it's actually you trying to make Nebo out as some unknown "put back" type guy before really coming out of his shell in February, and that's simply not the case. The season prior in conference play when he played 20 minutes or more he was putting up 12+ pts a game.

The Texas game is actually a perfect microcosm of how Buzz handled the season as a whole -- having a plan for how he wanted the offense to go but not having the players that could run it effectively and taking way too long to shift to running the offense through Nebo.

It wasn't until 12 seconds left in the 1st half that Nebo even put the ball up (a nice dunk assisted by Wendell).

Before that bucket, we were -12 points vs Texas. Nebo had taken 0 shots.

The last play of the half was a feed to Nebo, the first play of the 2nd half was a feed to Nebo. From the 00:12 1H on, Nebo took 10 shots.

During that time we were +2 points vs Texas.


Texas couldn't stop Nebo in the post, but it took the entire first half before Buzz started running the offense through him.


Now, maybe Buzz had his reasons -- maybe it was he wanted to develop Flagg or his guards more, maybe he didn't think Nebo was "ready" to have the offense run through him, maybe due to the injury he didn't think he had the stamina for it.

But denying that running the offense through Nebo was the best way for this offense to excel is simply and saying he somehow "wasn't ready" until February is just false.

bobinator
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AG
He was a putback/lob/quick move guy. I don't see how you possibly don't think that. He had shown basically no evidence of being good with the ball in his hands for long. And his inability to get the ball out of double teams was one of our problems early in the season.

He wasn't a good passer and he had basically no low post moves.

So coming into the season and early in the year, you'd think the best way to use him was the way everyone wanted us to use Williams, as a screen and roll guy. And we tried that plenty, but it didn't work because nobody had to respect the screen because we shot so poorly.

We're obviously not going to agree on this, I just think it's a major oversimplification. And your continuing assertion that we weren't trying anything new on offense throughout non-conference is just wrong. We tried a whole lot of stuff that didn't work.

That actually goes back to your Flagg thing. It might have helped him more if we'd have just stuck with something for a while.
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