Changes in SEC play

[Jason94]

Our offensive explosion in league play doesn't make sense on the surface (why would our offense suddenly get so much better when we are simultaneously playing much better competition?), but it can be explained by a couple of factors (well, three but two are related). The first factor extends to the previous point - our turnover rate has dropped dramatically from non-conference play to conference play. In SEC games our TO rate is a very low 14.7%, which is 2nd in the league - before league play we exceeded this rate in 10 or the 13 games (including 5 of the 6 losses). In last 4 games we've been below 15% in each game (15% for the season would rank a team 13th in the country overall). This sudden aversion to TO's has limited empty possessions, and even if we aren't shooting any better we are getting more shots off and even misses have offensive rebounding opportunities. The second factor is we have dramatically increased the number of fouls we have drawn against SEC opponents. We are attempting over 4.1 FTA for every 10 shots from the floor in league play but beat that rate only one time in pre-conference play and were below 2 FTA per 10 shots five times prior to SEC play. Simultaneously our FT% has shot up to almost 76% from the line - we were below 70% prior to league play. These two (or three) factors have made a massive impact in our increased scoring output. Robbins had a major part to do with the latter but Lawrence has also stepped up greatly. But it has been a team effort to reduce turnovers as most everyone has seen their TO rates drop dramatically.

Defensively we are giving up more points than we are allowing, and it isn't necessarily any one issue - we weren't turning over opponents prior to league play and that has continued. We are giving up slightly more offensive boards and more trips to the FT line, and have seen opponents shoot a bit better all over the floor, but not dramatically so (our FT "defense" has teams shooting almost 78% against us - not sure why this is outside of bad luck). Our blocked shot rate has fallen off greatly and will continue to do so with Robbins out.

I sure wish that the offense had figured things out prior to SEC play. We almost certainly would have beated Gramling State, Southern MIss and VCU, and sitting at 13-6 instead of 10-9 would have made a world of difference in terms of post season hopes. It will likely either be the difference between a NIT bid and a NCAA bid, or no postseason play and an NIT bid. That is a massive difference and one that was seemingly completely avoidable. Even in the best case scenario where we surprise a bunch of teams and win 10 or 11 games in league and make the tournament, it is the difference between a 10 seed and a 5 or 6 seed.

[commadore]

FT % can be explained by something Jordan Wright said in a post game interview. He said the team practiced free throws every day and had shot between 5-6,000 shots. That will do it.

[Nashmann]

Free throw shooting a huge part of the game. When Stute got fouled shooting a 3 I thought great....expand the lead. Then he misses all 3....I thought this might be the choke point. Then Lawrence comes down next possession and misses his 2 I thought for sure this was it. At the end of the game, "Ice Trey" swishes 4 highly pressurized free throws which made all the difference. So they can make or break you!

[Jason94]

FT % can be explained by something Jordan Wright said in a post game interview. He said the team practiced free throws every day and had shot between 5-6,000 shots. That will do it.

Maybe - I'd guess it might have as much to do with luck than anything else - If all it took was practice to raise the team's FT% 10 points, why wouldn't everyone just do that and why wouldn't we see a 10 percentage rise in FT% over time? This would also suggest that CJS didn't think that FT% was that important and didn't have his players practice those shots despite having one of the highest FT rates in the country.

FT rates for players can fluctuate from season to season and they can certainly fluctuate over a 10 or 20 game sample. There is almost zero chance that the players nor the coach were unaware of how important FT shooting was to the point of neglecting them until recently. Note that I don't know if this improvement is permanent and representative of a new reality of our FT% or something that is a 6 game anomoly that will revert to something closer to 70%. All I am doing is noting that the combination of getting to the line more frequently along with hitting more of our FT shots has had a dramatic effect on our scoring. It is very possible that our FT% goes down through no fault of the players or coaches.

[commadore]

Luck? Jason, the increase that we have had is way too great to be luck. Under this reasoning why practice for two hours a day. Why not just hope for luck that we start running better sets and playig better defense?

It is more likely they stressed this after practice and were coached on form if needed.

[Jason94]

Luck? Jason, the increase that we have had is way too great to be luck. Under this reasoning why practice for two hours a day. Why not just hope for luck that we start running better sets and playig better defense?

It is more likely they stressed this after practice and were coached on form if needed.16

It's 6 games - a total of 152 FTA. The difference between 76% and 70% is 9 made free throws in those 152 attempts. Less than 2 extra makes per game. It is very easily possible that luck has a factor in what is going on here. I hope it is not luck and we shoot 76% from the line the rest of the way out - that would make our offense quite impressive.

I had combined the two together, because quite honestly, the rate at which we are getting to the line is something that is more impressive and more of the reason why we are scoring more. We went from averaging 16 FTA per game in the non-conference schedule to over 25 in SEC play so far. The extra 9 FTA at 76% is an extra 6.8 ppg. At 70% it is 6.3 ppg - not a huge difference between the percentages, but a massive difference in scoring because on those possessions where we are shooting FT we are getting about 1.5 PPP as opposed to around 1.0-1.1 PPP in all other possessions.

Which is why Lawrence has a much higher TS% than Thomas - thomas may be 100% from the line, but Lawrence gets there far more often and even at 71% it is better than either can get per possession shooting from the floor. And why Pippen was so effective despite very pedestrian shooting percentages. The ability to draw fouls can have a massive effect on your offense. Combine this with good overall shooting percentages and decent offensive rebounding while limiting turnovers can make an offense look very, very good. That is what is happening right now to Vanderbilt.

I give a ton of credit to CJS for adjusting his offense to utilize players better, especially the players who should be starters. Unfortunately, this happened about 10-12 games too late, and put us in a tremendous hole WRT making the tournament. The way the team is playing now, we should have easily gone 10-3 in preconference play and likely would have knocked off at least one of Memphis, St. mary's and NCSU. Which is where I thought we would be at the start of the season. The good news is that the SEC is not quite as strong as it looked at the beginning of the season, with UK, ARk, Auburn, LSU, Ole MIss, USC all being worse or a whole lot worse than their preseason predictions suggested. 10 or 11 wins are out there with the home game against UK, at LSU, MSU at home, Ole Miss at home all looking to be very winnable.

[commadore]

Luck? Jason, the increase that we have had is way too great to be luck. Under this reasoning why practice for two hours a day. Why not just hope for luck that we start running better sets and playig better defense?

It is more likely they stressed this after practice and were coached on form if needed.16

It's 6 games - a total of 152 FTA. The difference between 76% and 70% is 9 made free throws in those 152 attempts. Less than 2 extra makes per game. It is very easily possible that luck has a factor in what is going on here. I hope it is not luck and we shoot 76% from the line the rest of the way out - that would make our offense quite impressive.

I had combined the two together, because quite honestly, the rate at which we are getting to the line is something that is more impressive and more of the reason why we are scoring more. We went from averaging 16 FTA per game in the non-conference schedule to over 25 in SEC play so far. The extra 9 FTA at 76% is an extra 6.8 ppg. At 70% it is 6.3 ppg - not a huge difference between the percentages, but a massive difference in scoring because on those possessions where we are shooting FT we are getting about 1.5 PPP as opposed to around 1.0-1.1 PPP in all other possessions.

Which is why Lawrence has a much higher TS% than Thomas - thomas may be 100% from the line, but Lawrence gets there far more often and even at 71% it is better than either can get per possession shooting from the floor. And why Pippen was so effective despite very pedestrian shooting percentages. The ability to draw fouls can have a massive effect on your offense. Combine this with good overall shooting percentages and decent offensive rebounding while limiting turnovers can make an offense look very, very good. That is what is happening right now to Vanderbilt.

I give a ton of credit to CJS for adjusting his offense to utilize players better, especially the players who should be starters. Unfortunately, this happened about 10-12 games too late, and put us in a tremendous hole WRT making the tournament. The way the team is playing now, we should have easily gone 10-3 in preconference play and likely would have knocked off at least one of Memphis, St. mary's and NCSU. Which is where I thought we would be at the start of the season. The good news is that the SEC is not quite as strong as it looked at the beginning of the season, with UK, ARk, Auburn, LSU, Ole MIss, USC all being worse or a whole lot worse than their preseason predictions suggested. 10 or 11 wins are out there with the home game against UK, at LSU, MSU at home, Ole Miss at home all looking to be very winnable.

To quote my wife, "get a life, dude."

[Versus75]

Less than 2 extra makes per game….

… the 2 extra makes could equal 3 points.

I was telling our players through the TV yesterday: “If you’re going to miss a free throw, make it be the second one.”

[Jason94]

Luck? Jason, the increase that we have had is way too great to be luck. Under this reasoning why practice for two hours a day. Why not just hope for luck that we start running better sets and playig better defense?

It is more likely they stressed this after practice and were coached on form if needed.16

It's 6 games - a total of 152 FTA. The difference between 76% and 70% is 9 made free throws in those 152 attempts. Less than 2 extra makes per game. It is very easily possible that luck has a factor in what is going on here. I hope it is not luck and we shoot 76% from the line the rest of the way out - that would make our offense quite impressive.

I had combined the two together, because quite honestly, the rate at which we are getting to the line is something that is more impressive and more of the reason why we are scoring more. We went from averaging 16 FTA per game in the non-conference schedule to over 25 in SEC play so far. The extra 9 FTA at 76% is an extra 6.8 ppg. At 70% it is 6.3 ppg - not a huge difference between the percentages, but a massive difference in scoring because on those possessions where we are shooting FT we are getting about 1.5 PPP as opposed to around 1.0-1.1 PPP in all other possessions.

Which is why Lawrence has a much higher TS% than Thomas - thomas may be 100% from the line, but Lawrence gets there far more often and even at 71% it is better than either can get per possession shooting from the floor. And why Pippen was so effective despite very pedestrian shooting percentages. The ability to draw fouls can have a massive effect on your offense. Combine this with good overall shooting percentages and decent offensive rebounding while limiting turnovers can make an offense look very, very good. That is what is happening right now to Vanderbilt.

I give a ton of credit to CJS for adjusting his offense to utilize players better, especially the players who should be starters. Unfortunately, this happened about 10-12 games too late, and put us in a tremendous hole WRT making the tournament. The way the team is playing now, we should have easily gone 10-3 in preconference play and likely would have knocked off at least one of Memphis, St. mary's and NCSU. Which is where I thought we would be at the start of the season. The good news is that the SEC is not quite as strong as it looked at the beginning of the season, with UK, ARk, Auburn, LSU, Ole MIss, USC all being worse or a whole lot worse than their preseason predictions suggested. 10 or 11 wins are out there with the home game against UK, at LSU, MSU at home, Ole Miss at home all looking to be very winnable.

To quote my wife, "get a life, dude."

Why, because I can type this stuff off my head in 15 minutes? Why not say, "thanks for edifying me", instead of some BS insult? I'll put money that my life if far more intersting than yours.

[Jason94]

Less than 2 extra makes per game….

… the 2 extra makes could equal 3 points.

I was telling our players through the TV yesterday: “If you’re going to miss a free throw, make it be the second one.”

No, this is 1.5 FT makes per game - 1.5 points. On the previous FT volume it would be about .7 ppg. Volume is far more important than accuracy, in terms of impact. We are scoring about 10 ppg more in SEC play than non-conference play.

[Versus75]

I'm just saying that if we shoot a significantly higher percentage on the first shot of the 1-and-1 situations we will get more shots (the second of the 1-and-1). That is indisputable, though a team might average only three 1-and-1 instances per game.

However, If one of the "2 extra makes" is the front end of a 1-and-1, it can become "3 extra makes" in a given game.

(I use 2 and 3 here because we can't score 1.5 points at the line in any possession.)

The difference is not huge, but it could be enough sometime. One of Houston's 10 missed free throws today versus Temple was the front end of a 1-and-1. It cost the team a potential TWO POINTS.

Houston lost by one point.


Just sayin'.

[commadore]

It's 6 games - a total of 152 FTA. The difference between 76% and 70% is 9 made free throws in those 152 attempts. Less than 2 extra makes per game. It is very easily possible that luck has a factor in what is going on here. I hope it is not luck and we shoot 76% from the line the rest of the way out - that would make our offense quite impressive.

I had combined the two together, because quite honestly, the rate at which we are getting to the line is something that is more impressive and more of the reason why we are scoring more. We went from averaging 16 FTA per game in the non-conference schedule to over 25 in SEC play so far. The extra 9 FTA at 76% is an extra 6.8 ppg. At 70% it is 6.3 ppg - not a huge difference between the percentages, but a massive difference in scoring because on those possessions where we are shooting FT we are getting about 1.5 PPP as opposed to around 1.0-1.1 PPP in all other possessions.

Which is why Lawrence has a much higher TS% than Thomas - thomas may be 100% from the line, but Lawrence gets there far more often and even at 71% it is better than either can get per possession shooting from the floor. And why Pippen was so effective despite very pedestrian shooting percentages. The ability to draw fouls can have a massive effect on your offense. Combine this with good overall shooting percentages and decent offensive rebounding while limiting turnovers can make an offense look very, very good. That is what is happening right now to Vanderbilt.

I give a ton of credit to CJS for adjusting his offense to utilize players better, especially the players who should be starters. Unfortunately, this happened about 10-12 games too late, and put us in a tremendous hole WRT making the tournament. The way the team is playing now, we should have easily gone 10-3 in preconference play and likely would have knocked off at least one of Memphis, St. mary's and NCSU. Which is where I thought we would be at the start of the season. The good news is that the SEC is not quite as strong as it looked at the beginning of the season, with UK, ARk, Auburn, LSU, Ole MIss, USC all being worse or a whole lot worse than their preseason predictions suggested. 10 or 11 wins are out there with the home game against UK, at LSU, MSU at home, Ole Miss at home all looking to be very winnable.

To quote my wife, "get a life, dude."

Why, because I can type this stuff off my head in 15 minutes? Why not say, "thanks for edifying me", instead of some BS insult? I'll put money that my life if far more intersting than yours.

Could be, but mine has been quite satisfying. Seen much of the world, fought the IRS for a living and never lost, helped write the 1986 tax act, testified before legislatures, volunteered for many charities, loved and am loved, have great kids, a fabulous church for which I have been treasurer since 1989, worked with handicapped kids, and retired in comfort. I have a God who loves me and forgives me my sins. Yours may have been most satisfying to you, but mine is exactly what I have always wanted.