Yeah there's a lot of layers here, I just don't think people give enough credit to it being a thing we actually practice, has roles and strategies behind it, and is actually a teachable skill that we work in. We're not exceptionally good at it just because we have bigger hearts than other teams or whatever.

I'd probably equate it more at being good at recovering fumbles. Like... yeah... that's a good skill to have, but maybe don't fumble it so much...

It would obviously be better if we were good at shooting AND good at offensive rebounding.

PJYoung said:

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LOL it's great that something I thought of as a fairly recent development is over 20 years old.

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Don't beat yourself up. It took NBA front offices over 3 decades to realize that 3>2

The difference also lies in the margins.

Our defense + rebounding paired with bad free throw shooting and terrible floor shooting? Good but not great team.

Our defense + rebounding paired with decent free throw shooting and bad floor shooting? Great team.

Our defense + rebounding paired with decent free throw shooting and decent floor shooting? That could be an elite, national contender.

Therein lies a bit of the frustration. Sure we CAN win this way... but sure would be nice to do the regular ball in the hoop thing AND play great defense and hustle for boards.

And we have to stop turning the ball over. We're not going to survive our shooting if we're also turning it over on 20% of our possessions.

Although I say that and we've won the five games where we turned it over at the highest rate and lost the one with the lowest. But I think that's more of a statistical oddity than it is anything that provides any real insight.

Those tend to come down to heart posture.

What about lung posture?

Regarding whether or not we are a "gadget" team...I'm going to post what is basically a team ranking of us this year, as well as all of the last 16 final four teams. The first rank is effective field goal percentage, the second is offensive rebound rate, the third is opponents fouls per possession, and the fourth is turnover rate.

Keep in mind this is just offense. Every one of these teams will also be good or bad at these same factors on the defensive end.

Team: EFG, ORB, FT, TO
Texas A&M: 284, 1, 14, 208

Team: EFG, ORB, FT, TO
Connecticut:7, 11, 160, 32
Purdue: 13, 5, 4, 149
Alabama: 10, 23, 49, 94
NC State: 171, 168, 263, 13

Team: EFG, ORB, FT, TO
Connecticut: 33, 3, 179, 235
San Diego State: 239, 62, 50, 104
Florida Atlantic: 24, 78, 212, 86
Miami: 25, 71, 334, 46

Team: EFG, ORB, FT, TO
Kansas: 29, 30, 150, 102
North Carolina: 106, 71, 257, 50
Duke: 9, 64, 278, 19
Villanova: 101, 82, 103, 28

Team: EFG, ORB, FT, TO
Baylor: 7, 6, 246, 55
Gonzaga: 1, 107, 112, 40
Houston: 154, 1, 58, 36
UCLA: 82, 85, 66, 23

Last year our turnover rate ranking was 17 and has dropped by a huge amount this year.

Yeah, it's awful.

But it is an area I think we can improve on, especially if Wade is still working his way back to 100%.

bobinator said:

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That's not really the point though, you're right.

I wonder if Buzz has decided that the randomization of shooting just is what it is, and he's decided to focus on offensive rebounding and drawing fouls because it's easier to teach or something.

Not saying I agree with that, but it just sure seems like we consider developing actual offensive skills an afterthought to offensive rebounding.

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QBs need to pay for pro throwing coaches and near-NBA quality need to pay for shooting coaches. They have time to teach defense and basic offense but not shooting.

Quote:

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the randomization of shooting

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what in the heck is this?

JJxvi said:

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Regarding whether or not we are a "gadget" team...I'm going to post what is basically a team ranking of us this year, as well as all of the last 16 final four teams.

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Thanks for sharing. Definitely lots of different ways to get to the final four, both offensively and (presumably important context not listed here) opponent path-wise. The randomness of the tournament creates for an interesting data set.

One thing I noted is i see significantly fewer teams that are bad at shooting than ones that are good at it, and I don't see anyone that is bad at shooting and also turns it over a lot.

Basically that on a given night you don't know how well you're going to shoot and that there's not much you can do to change it. Every team in the country shoots between 29% and 40% from three which in any given game is a difference of a few points.

I'm not saying I agree with it, I don't, but what I'm saying is I wonder if Buzz thinks we're better off overall spending practice time on getting better at offensive rebounding and defense than we are working on offense.

Like from a time standpoint, is the investment better in being the elite of the elite in OR% and defense, which you can do no matter how well you're shooting, versus working on things that could tick your shooting percentages up a few points.

One thing from a former coach, it feels helpless when your team shoots like crap no matter how much you work on it. Absolutely demoralizing to lose a playoff game by 2 points when numerous bunnies were missed and you beat the kids to death with the pads all year to work on making bunnies in traffic. Maybe Buzz feels like he can "control" how we rebound better than he can control how we shoot.


Next question under the same idea of the op. If getting fouled is so good, is it smart to play such aggressive defense all the time? i.e. should we lighten up and play more soft pressure with 10 seconds left on the shot clock? Seems like that's when we foul the most.

Part of the whole idea of our defense is to defend without fouling but we haven't been very good at it lately.

jeremy said:

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Maybe Buzz feels like he can "control" how we rebound better than he can control how we shoot.

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This is what I was getting at

I agree with that, but during the Buzz era, I bet most of our fouls are with in the last 10 seconds of a shot clock. That's why I don't like the "fly at a shooter eith your hair on fire" approach when the shot clock is winidng down. Stay on front and contest the shot. They'll miss a lot of those and we will foul a lot less. Especially on damn 3 pointers!

We don't foul three pointers all that often though. I doubt it's even statistically significant. Lately it's been lazy reaches that have been killing us. That and refs being wildly different game to game on what they're going to let go on the boards.

You may be right, but when it happens, feels like a back breaker.