Aggies -26.5
Total is 142.5

Nice win on Friday but still need to tighten up some things.

Just Win!

Mikesyracuse1

Jab the Jaguars!

I am expecting Aggies cruise to win, but struggle to cover the 26.5 spread.

Ags 95
Jags 70

Hope to see a huge a higher "Assists" count in the box scores.

Three point shooting has been really good so far hope that continues. Garcia jacking (and making) a 3-pointer early in the game has been fun to watch in the last couple of home games. Hope that continues.

Gig'm Aggies

What 1997 said

When not in transition work on polishing up the half court offense. Isolation is fine in some situations but you have to have a better plan for better teams and for when the refs are swallowing their whistles.

I don't really care about point spreads, you have to prep for the tougher games and there's no substitute for doing so in a game vs practice.

Not expecting to be able to tell much about the team from this game - get the win, stay healthy.

ETA: Free throw % improvement would be one thing the other team doesn't have an effect on that I would like to see certain players improve on. But I don't expect miracles week over week.

Quote:

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We will have to abandon our clear out 1 on 1 offense if we are going to see the assist count increase.

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I don't think our offense is quite this simple. It's not just five out iso ball like some kind of AAU team.

I do think we obviously went into Friday's game with the message to just ruthlessly attack their guards, but most of the time we're working off of a high screen trying to draw defenders off the dribble and then either drive it, find the big moving to the basket, or kick it out to a shooter if you draw in the defenders. I'm not saying we're UCONN out there running all kinds of complex sets or anything, but it's also not like we're just going five out.

Friday we just drove it practically every time, but I think there's a few reasons for that.

A) It was working.
B) Manny is going to drive it every time. I'm still holding out some hope that as Phelps gets up to speed and builds some chemistry with his teammates that he's going to have a higher pass rate, but Manny is who he is, he's going downhill come hell or high water.
C) Clear emphasis on making Ohio State's guards play defense. I don't know if this was something we saw in the film, or if we decided Ohio State didn't have much good depth at that position, but whatever the case, we were absolutely hell bent on making them defend. I think this had a compounding effect on Ohio State's offense. This is a team that normally shoots the ball well, but they were terrible offensively on Friday. Some of that was our defense, but I also think their guards got tired.

bobinator said:

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Quote:

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We will have to abandon our clear out 1 on 1 offense if we are going to see the assist count increase.

---

I don't think our offense is quite this simple. It's not just five out iso ball like some kind of AAU team.

I do think we obviously went into Friday's game with the message to just ruthlessly attack their guards, but most of the time we're working off of a high screen trying to draw defenders off the dribble and then either drive it, find the big moving to the basket, or kick it out to a shooter if you draw in the defenders. I'm not saying we're UCONN out there running all kinds of complex sets or anything, but it's also not like we're just going five out.

Friday we just drove it practically every time, but I think there's a few reasons for that.

A) It was working.
B) Manny is going to drive it every time. I'm still holding out some hope that as Phelps gets up to speed and builds some chemistry with his teammates that he's going to have a higher pass rate, but Manny is who he is, he's going downhill come hell or high water.
C) Clear emphasis on making Ohio State's guards play defense. I don't know if this was something we saw in the film, or if we decided Ohio State didn't have much good depth at that position, but whatever the case, we were absolutely hell bent on making them defend. I think this had a compounding effect on Ohio State's offense. This is a team that normally shoots the ball well, but they were terrible offensively on Friday. Some of that was our defense, but I also think their guards got tired.

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I hope you are right about there being some method to the madness. However, this has been in our offense for the last couple of years at a fairly high rate. Also, I think it is more than just Manny and I don't have the same perspective on it working. It seems like we fail to finish a fair amount of the time. If we continue to utilize the ISO I hope we at least increase our shooting percentage. The one aspect I like, at least from Friday's game, is we are getting to the free throw line. However, we have to consistently finish there as well.

That high screen offense or whatever you want to call it has been our offense for the last several years, but that's different from "clear out one on one" offense.

Now, it has ended up being that at times because of lack of options. Other than Marble we haven't had a big that could create any offense on their own the last couple of years, Payne has that ability which is why Ohio State was forcing the issue on him so much (which is also why our three point shooters were so open a lot of the time.) We also don't have any guards or wings with much ability to create going to the basket. Taylor and Boots could at times depending on the matchups, but Phelps is probably better at that than either of them were. We also haven't been able to shoot the ball from distance at all. Everyone was either bad at it (Carter, Hefner, Radford) or wouldn't pull the trigger fast enough (Obaseki, Garcia, Washington (maybe?)).

Taylor is good at it, especially off the ball, and will pull the trigger, but you have to have someone to pass him the ball to do that. Wilcher looks pretty good at it so far too and Garcia has been much quicker to shoot it this year, all positives.

I'm not saying we're going to be looking at this team in January as some kind of smooth offensive juggernaut, I think this is a team built on physical basketball, offensive rebounding and getting to the free throw line. I just think it's going to look at least a little cleaner as we go.

we covering?