This graphic shows our challenge

Basketball Insider Board
#1

I’ve been saying all season that poor shooting was our limiting factor, and what would bounce us from the NCAAT. I still feel that way.

This graph shows a matrix of those teams that do/don’t have “good” shot selection, and how effective they are shooting (from wherever they do shot from). It indicates that, in general, we do take good shots…as to the great majority of teams in the NCAAT field…but we are among the worst at making them. At this point in the season, there’s not much we can do to “shoot better”…that will come (I hope) next season. Meanwhile, notice where Vermont is.

As an aside, I wonder where we’d fall on that matrix if Notae’s shots were excluded? I’d bet he takes close to half of the “bad shots” we have taken this season. Probably, the net results of doing that (omitting JD’s shots) would be to move us over to the right of the matrix a little…but it wouldn’t do much (if any) to move more toward the top…and that is the big problem.

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#2

That’s really interesting. I thought we would have more “bad” shots

#3

Can’t help but think that this is a statistic that doesn’t factor in competition. Seems to me that Purdue being among the top 10% in these categories carries much more weight than Loyola, Vermont, or Colgate.

I’m guessing it’s quite a bit harder to find and make good shots in the Big 10 than it is in the Missouri Valley, the American East or the Patriot League.

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#4

I think you make a good point.

But if you eliminate the teams from non-power 6 conferences, we will rank very, very low in effective FG%.

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#5

I’m going to catch some criticism here and it’s probably deserved a little. JD’s shooting philosophy is a lot like my wing shooting approach, spray and pray. With JD, he’s not so much pray as he’s good but there is a volume aspect approach. I’m not dogging him an a mean spirited way as I like him and I’m glad we have him. I guess it would be more like flipping a little friendly crap, like I do my son sometimes or a buddy.

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#6

My ol’ Pappy used to say “The way you beat the other team is to score more points than they do”. I have thought, with a smile, about that a lot this year. No two ways about it, we are a poor shooting team. Our D won us many games. We need to shoot better to get very far I’m afraid. There’s always hope…

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#7

We are toast then. Change ALL your brackets, LOL

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#8

Does the “good shot” model take into account - degree of difficulty? To me, JD takes more difficult 3’s than not. I’d like to see that change.

#9

We won’t face any team this weekend better than Auburn, Kentucky, Tenn, LSU. We were 6-1 against those teams.

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#10

If we took away JDs last 4 games we definitely would go up on that chart. He was 15-54! We went 2-2 in those games. and I noticed some other things looking over the season box scores that I didn’t necessarily expect. Notaes shooting percentage is all over the place, no surprise there. But he had good shooting and high scoring in a couple games we lost so I’d say he wasn’t the main blame for those Ls, Hofstra and a&m first time. The other thing is yes we won a lot of games from defense and rebounding and lost some from losing the rebounding and turnovers battle. But we also lost some when we did win the rebounding and turnover battle. We just shot terribly. It seems that sometimes we can’t overcome our bad shooting even when the opponent isn’t shooting that much better. If someone told me we would out rebound and force more turnovers at Alabama and they’d shoot 7-29 on threes, I mean come on. I guess we just have to say that to win, we gotta be tougher than the other team and win more possessions AND notae has to shoot a decent percentage and the team has to shoot a decent percentage. It’s hard for us to win if he doesn’t put up points. But it’s nearly impossible for us to win if him or the team together shoot 20-30% from the field. That’s a recipe to lose to Vermont or anyone. We just beat ourselves sometimes. Can’t do that. But amazingly we’ve figured out how to win despite our shooting woes. If this team gets on a hot streak offensively somehow then watch out.

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#11

Not significantly.

As a TEAM, we are shooting 31.1% from 3 over the last 8 games (last 6 of the regular season, plus the 2 SECT games). And this includes our 11/21 night against Mizzou, our best 3 point shooting night of the season.

Our fans are desperate to manipulate the numbers to show something that just isn’t true. We are NOT a good or even mediocre shooting team. Accept it, hope for a miracle run of good shooting…that is the right of any fan. But understand that it’s very unlikely to happen. For a game? Sure. For two or three games in a row…very unlikely. For 6 straight? I’m not going to say it because you KNOW the answer.

Now, that doesn’t mean we can’t do other things to stay close to some of the better teams we will quickly encounter if we do win a couple of games. Great defense. Rebounding. Taking “smart” shots and limiting our own turnovers.

Our guys can hit clutch 3’s…but they’re not going to string a bunch of them together…despite how badly our fans wish they would.

#12

Agree with all of this. It’s definitely a weakness that we have to work around.

But, I haven’t seen you mention that we’re also 40th in the nation of adjusted offensive efficiency. One of the main reasons (and hasn’t been mentioned) - we make the most free throws per game on the nation. This is our equalizer.

Check out this insight that creates a rosier picture.

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#13

Good point on the FT, Ag…and that’s something else that we need to monitor. If we are staying around the perimeter jacking up 3’s (as we have in some games), we are hurting ourselves in 2 ways First, as noted, we are a BAD 3 point shooting team. Secondarily, if we aren’t driving, we aren’t going to pick up fouls and be getting to the line.

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#14

Saw analysis elsewhere that Notae and Umude shot well over 40% from 3 in February. That included our wins over Auburn Kentucky and Tennessee. (8-0 in Feb). So we need our Feb shooting form to show up.

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#15

My thoughts on taking bad shots, is that we don’t need to take a shot unless JWill has touched the ball at least once. When we go to JWill first it tends to draw the defense to him and he makes good things happen by passing to a guy back cutting under the basket or to someone open on the perimeter. We saw that Oscar couldn’t stop him by himself when we played Kentucky and JWill can shoot well enough to pull their center up and we have the height by our guys to make in tough under the rim. Our shot selection becomes very poor for stretches that just guts us at times. WPS

#16

Just testing…

Total… 33 6650 879-2000 . 4 4 0 210-685 . 3 0 7 571-758 . 7 5 3 371 888 1259 38.2 556 10 465 416 138 255 2539 76.9

So 44% from the field and 30% from the 3 ball.

The line reads 33 Games, 6650 Minutes, FG’s, 3 pointers, FT’s, OR
gp-gs min avg fg-fga fg% 3fg-fga 3fg% ft-fta ft% off def tot avg pf dq a to blk stl pts avg
879 out of 2000 Field 44%
210 out of 685 30% 3 ball
FT’s 571 out of 758 75%

#17

I have no problem with a three in transition, and JD has made a few of them. But if we have to set up in the halfcourt, JWill needs to touch the ball.

#18

Here are the stats for Feb They are 67 Made Attm 174 = 38.5%

at Georgia 02/02/22 99-73 W 40-71 . 5 6 3 15-28 . 5 3 6 4-7 . 5 7 1 7 28 35 38.4 17 23 13 5 11 99 79.3
MISSISSIPPI STATE 02/05/22 63-55 W 23-61 . 3 7 7 4-19 . 2 1 1 13-22 . 5 9 1 11 28 39 38.4 17 12 6 4 8 63 78.6
AUBURN 02/08/22 80-76 Wot 23-67 . 3 4 3 8-27 . 2 9 6 26-32 . 8 1 3 11 31 42 38.6 17 10 11 5 11 80 78.6
at Alabama 02/12/22 67-68 L 22-70 . 3 1 4 6-21 . 2 8 6 17-24 . 7 0 8 21 25 46 38.9 17 11 16 0 7 67 78.2
at Missouri 02/15/22 76-57 W 26-53 . 4 9 1 11-21 . 5 2 4 13-17 . 7 6 5 7 28 35 38.7 16 13 11 4 6 76 78.1
TENNESSEE 02/19/22 58-48 W 18-59 . 3 0 5 5-22 . 2 2 7 17-22 . 7 7 3 12 31 43 38.9 16 7 10 5 6 58 77.3
at Florida 02/22/22 82-74 W 29-63 . 4 6 0 7-18 . 3 8 9 17-20 . 8 5 0 12 27 39 38.9 18 13 6 2 5 82 77.5
KENTUCKY 02/26/22 75-73 W 28-58 . 4 8 3 5-18 . 2 7 8 14-17 . 8 2 4 8 24 32 38.7 13 14 12 5 5 75 77.4

We shot

#19

So 38.5% as a team, (in Feb) correct? To reiterate- The analysis I saw said notae and Umude shot ~45%+ in that stretch. Umude shot 6/14 (43%) in our last two losses to A$M and Tenner, whereas Notae shot 2/13, So I’m saying if Notae regains his Feb form (or someone else gets hot) we should be in good shape. Also, maybe Umude needs to shoot more?

#20

I think with our defense and size we can overcome a few missed layups or a few ballhandling gaffes, but just a few of each, and not both. And stay out of early foul trouble.