Yea - not a bad thread idea. I know there are plenty of things that I believe are true, but the stats don't end up proving it out. With that said, sometimes there are in-game "feel" type things that we seem to ignore... or perhaps just say, our strategy will work in the end. IDK.

bobinator said:

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We should do a basketball board mythbusters thread on some common narratives on our team and whether they're true.

I think my current #1 is what this thread is getting at which is "teams shoot wide open threes against us and we struggle against teams that shoot the three well."

We're like 6-2 against Top 100 3pt shooting teams.

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some of it is for sure based off of previous years

bobinator said:

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It's also what I'd call a "negative event bias." Nobody remembers our own made threes, only the missed ones, and they don't remember the opponents missed ones, only the made ones.

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100%


I'm tired of disproving the "Buzz teams always start slow and finish strong" myth.

I wish there was a "success on inbound play" statistic, I see a lot of "Buzz can't run an inbounds play"

The problem is that teams with good shooters are showing they can get them open whenever they want. If they are hitting them, it's very hard for us to win and recipe for us winning is an extremely ugly game where we hit our FT's.

I think the issue is due to distribution and makes it feel like the Ags can't shoot the 3-ball. Below are the 3PT numbers to date for the season overall and conference. My percentages are based on attempts.



Some big things stand out:
1) Taylor and Hef, while overall are shooting over 0.300 for the season, they are both WELL under 0.300 in conference. Feel like that, especially with Wade will trend back up. I would expect a drastic trend up.
2) Phelps and Manny are shooting better in conference than the season overall. They are barely below 0.300 for the season, so while there may be some regression for them throughout the conference, it shouldn't be extreme.
3) Wilcher is shooting 0.400!!
4) Solo, Jace, and Andersson are shooting 22%!! of 3s for the season and 26%!! for the conference, so a slight increase on attempts in conference. They are all WELL below 0.300.

The most glaring issue is Solo, Jace, and Anderson are taking WAY, WAY too many 3s. Their attempts need to decrease to maybe 10% of all future attempts going forward and their shots need to transition to Phelps, Wade, Manny, Hef, and Wilcher.

My overall summary is this: I think Talylor and Hef will trend up - they need to keep shooting. Phelps and Manny may see some slight regression, but I want them shooting. Solo, Jace, and Andersson have got to have their 3pt attempts drastically reduced. Need to find ways to get Wilcher more 3pt attempts.

2 of those things (Wade and Hef, and Z and O) you can't really do much to change. However, you have complete control on Solo, Jace, Anderson, and Wilcher. You change the distribution of Solo, Garcia, Jace, the 3-ball will get instantly better.

I'm not sure that 8 games (5 for Taylor) really means a lot.

Like Carter was 6/18 going into last night so you'd say he should more and then he does and he goes 0/5.

Hefner was 5/23 going into Ole Miss so you'd say he should shoot less but we don't win that game without him being ready to pull the trigger and going 3/7 in that game.

Our shooting just is what it is. The key is to separate out nights where shots just weren't falling (like last night) with games where we have a hard time manufacturing good looks. There's not much we can do about the first one, but there is with the second one.

Our offensive sets are pretty basic, and especially in games where officials are letting a lot of contact go off the ball we have a hard time getting people open or finding ways to get it to Payne closer to the basket.

But it's also just a tough league defensively. 6 teams are in the top 20 in the country in defensive efficiency, another 5 are in the top 50. It's a hard league to score in.

bobinator said:

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I'm not sure that 8 games (5 for Taylor) really means a lot.

Like Carter was 6/18 going into last night so you'd say he should more and then he does and he goes 0/5.

Hefner was 5/23 going into Ole Miss so you'd say he should shoot less but we don't win that game without him being ready to pull the trigger and going 3/7 in that game.

Our shooting just is what it is. The key is to separate out nights where shots just weren't falling (like last night) with games where we have a hard time manufacturing good looks. There's not much we can do about the first one, but there is with the second one.

Our offensive sets are pretty basic, and especially in games where officials are letting a lot of contact go off the ball we have a hard time getting people open or finding ways to get it to Payne closer to the basket.

But it's also just a tough league defensively. 6 teams are in the top 20 in the country in defensive efficiency, another 5 are in the top 50. It's a hard league to score in.

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I agree 8 games doesn't mean a lot in a vacuum, which is why I compared to the season overall. Wade is not going to shoot 25% for the rest of the season.

As far as Carter - when you compare to the season, you'd expect regression, even if going 6/18 into last night. I don't think he's a 0.333 shooter.

I don't agree that our shooting is just what it is (ok, to a point I do). When you have Solo, Jace, and Andersson taking ~25% of your 3pt attempts (if you take Jace out Solo and Andersson are taking ~14% of all 3pt attempts), that's something that is fixable. You can't find a way to distribute 10% of that over 5 guys in Taylor, Hef, Phelps, Manny, and Wilcher?

I get the league's defense is tough, but you're actively letting your statistically worst three 3PT shooters take a quarter of the shots. Defense being tough or not, that's correctible.

I'll be honest with you; I'd don't want to see Solo or Garcia take another 3 unless it's about to be 0.00 at either half for the rest of the season. While that unrealistic, I'd be fine with Jace shooting 10% of all 3pt attempts if Solo and Garcia combined had 5% or less of all attempts.

It's still a little more complicated than that. You have to consider the alternatives when Garcia and Solo are shooting.

First off, I do agree that neither should be shooting early in the shot clock. Garcia maybe if he'd act like a shooter instead of a hostage being forced at gunpoint to shoot. But you're right there, they both shoot too much early in the clock.

But, that said, when it's late in the clock and they get the ball in the corner, provided there is a defender between them in the basket, a shot attempt, and thus the subsequent opportunity of an offensive rebound, is probably a higher percentage play then them trying to dribble it somewhere or make a difficult pass. Solo especially has a frankly awful turnover rate but Garcia's is high too. Both of them have turnover rates higher than Taylor or even Obaseki. The only player with a higher turnover rate than those two is Phelps and he's a point guard so you expect that.

People act like Coleman has literal sticks of butter for hands but his turnover rate is a lot better than those two.

bobinator said:

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It's still a little more complicated than that. You have to consider the alternatives when Garcia and Solo are shooting.

First off, I do agree that neither should be shooting early in the shot clock. Garcia maybe if he'd act like a shooter instead of a hostage being forced at gunpoint to shoot. But you're right there, they both shoot too much early in the clock.

But, that said, when it's late in the clock and they get the ball in the corner, provided there is a defender between them in the basket, a shot attempt, and thus the subsequent opportunity of an offensive rebound, is probably a higher percentage play then them trying to dribble it somewhere or make a difficult pass. Solo especially has a frankly awful turnover rate but Garcia's is high too. Both of them have turnover rates higher than Taylor or even Obaseki. The only player with a higher turnover rate than those two is Phelps and he's a point guard so you expect that.

People act like Coleman has literal sticks of butter for hands but his turnover rate is a lot better than those two.

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I agree it's more complicated than presented. I also agree that if they do get the ball in the corner late in the shot clock that I'd prefer them to shoot it than to try and dribble.

Here's what I don't know: how often are both Coleman and Payne in the game together? Because that's the only scenario where I can even remotely think they should be in the corner at the end of the shot clock. But I still think this scenario wouldn't result in the both of them combined being 10% of all 3pt attempts.

Look, all I'm saying is you've got your two worst 3-pt shooters taking ~13% of all or attempts, or three worst 3-pt shooters taking ~25% of the attempts, however you want to look at it.

I will acknowledge this: your best 5 shooters are shooting ~75% of all attempts, so I guess 75/25 isn't a terrible ratio. I just would like that to be closer to 80/20.

Really, Wade not shooting even 0.275 in conference is hurting worse than Solo, Jace, and Andersson. So yes, I made a fuss about those 3 shooting, but, if Wade gets back to shooting 0.300, or over, which I expect him to do, the Ags will suddenly feel like they're shooting 3s a whole lot better. Still would like to limit Solo and Andersson's 3 attempts where possible.

I did the math because I'm bored…

SEC only… A&M 3 point shooting percentage:
In our 5 wins = 30/116 (25.9%)
In our 3 losses = 23/71 (32.4%)

So we need to shot more at a lower make rate to win…got it.

bobinator said:

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People act like Coleman has literal sticks of butter for hands but his turnover rate is a lot better than those two.

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Mythbusters episode 2: Henry Coleman Literally has sticks of butter for hands

Follow up: he literally has hands made of smooth marble.

We give up too many uncontested 3's against teams that don't want to shoot mid range shots. Bama is the best example. They are trying to shoot 40 3's a game and we let them do what they wanted to do. Kentucky was a very similar game plan. We are what we are on offense but we can be a little better on def of forcing teams to do things they don't want to do.

I think the game plan was okay for Alabama. We just let them rebound way too many of their misses and we fouled them too much.

Kentucky didn't beat us because of their threes, they shot 33% out there. They beat us because we couldn't defend the paint and, again, fouled too much. They also had too many offensive boards but not to the extent that Alabama did.

Great thread.

Now, do Wade Taylor, 'cause he's driving me crazy!

Having a poor 3-pt shooting % is okay if you don't shoot so many 3-pointers.

bobinator said:

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We should do a basketball board mythbusters thread on some common narratives on our team and whether they're true.

I think my current #1 is what this thread is getting at which is "teams shoot wide open threes against us and we struggle against teams that shoot the three well."

We're like 6-2 against Top 100 3pt shooting teams.

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Haven't look at any stats, but My guess is this is so in general because we out rebound the heck out of those teams and get to the line a lot against them

I could be way off though

bobinator said:

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I think the game plan was okay for Alabama. We just let them rebound way too many of their misses and we fouled them too much.

Kentucky didn't beat us because of their threes, they shot 33% out there. They beat us because we couldn't defend the paint and, again, fouled too much. They also had too many offensive boards but not to the extent that Alabama did.

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Yep

Bama game was ours to win had we not missed 20 free throws

I think FT shooting has been more of an achilles heel for us than the 3 this year. Against tu, we shot 50% from 3 and made more 3's than they did and still lost. They made more FT's than we attempted and yet all we had to do was hit 60% of our FTs and we'd have won. Same goes for Alabama. If we had just hit FTs we'd have won that game too.

The reason they outrebounded us is because we are trying to rotate on the ball side and have no weak side box out. I'm not saying to change what we do the majority of the time. But we are letting teams get what they want by being very predictable on defense.

Isn't every team predictable on defense? You're talking about changing up our base defense against teams that are #2 and #5 in the country in offensive efficiency. I'd imagine we're probably better off doing what we do well than trying to change it up against teams that are that good. I guess we'll see how we handle Florida and Auburn. Especially Florida because they get their own misses almost as well as we do.

Said before the game that I think Alabama is just a nightmare matchup for us. They're practically impossible to slow down and without Taylor it was going to be very hard for us to try and match their scoring.

But we basically defend every team the same and lately our defensive rebounding has actually been a lot better. We've been the best in the conference at our opponents offensive rebounding percentage, it was just Alabama that really killed us rebounding over half of their misses and then Kentucky got 39% of theirs. Oklahoma got 35% of theirs in the game there that we won anyway, but otherwise nobody has gotten over 20%.