Shooting Slumps

[SaveOD238]

Losing streaks suck.  They especially suck when the season is on the line.  But I think this streak comes down to one problem: the terrible three point shooting streaks of McEwen, Anim, and Bailey.

In our 6 out of 7 win streak those guys shot 42-105 for 40%

Xavier: 4-9
@Georgetown: 4-13
St John's: 7-19
@Butler (L): 11-19
@X: 8-22 (Anim was 5-9!)
DePaul: 0-9 (this is where the wheels started to come off)
Butler: 8-14

In the 4 of 5 losing streak they've shot 21-79 for 26%.

@Nova: 3-11
Creighton: 4-19
@Providence: 3-11
Georgetown: 4-11
Seton Hall: 3-13
@DePaul: 4-14

The difference between 40% shooting (including that terrible 0-fer against DePaul) and 26% shooting is easily the difference between wins and losses against Nova and DePaul, and it would have kept us in the game in the three blowouts, if not turned the tide.

I didn't realize how badly we miss the Hauser's until this last month.  Those guys, especially Sam, were excellent and consistent three point shooters.  Bailey, Anim, and McEwen have shown they can get hot, but don't have the consistency.  And it's not like they've been taking bad shots...it's been a ton of wide open looks clanking.

I'm pretty close to being a NoJo...but can you blame the coach for the team going into an extended shooting slump? Or is that on the players?

[Jay Bee]

What is the relevance of FG%?

[WhiteTrash]

I'm pretty close to being a NoJo...but can you blame the coach for the team going into an extended shooting slump? Or is that on the players?

While not totally absent of logic, I don't get this take on who's to blame. In college hoops the head coach is also the GM. These are the guys Wojo wants on the court. He should be game planning to the strengths of his players. Wojo is sleeping in the bed HE made. I would be more likely to point fingers at the players if we lost A game with a 90% FT shooter missing 4 in a row or the like. Unfortunately, MU isn't dealing with a single blown game, this is a sustained trend of falling apart at the end of a season.

As a successful coach once said, "you are what your record says you are". What are MU's season ending records?

[NickelDimer]

What is the relevance of FG%?

What’s the relevance of any metric, eh? Boys are playing like trash. Boys are being “coached” like trash.

[Markusquette]

While not totally absent of logic, I don't get this take on who's to blame. In college hoops the head coach is also the GM. These are the guys Wojo wants on the court. He should be game planning to the strengths of his players. Wojo is sleeping in the bed HE made. I would be more likely to point fingers at the players if we lost A game with a 90% FT shooter missing 4 in a row or the like. Unfortunately, MU isn't dealing with a single blown game, this is a sustained trend of falling apart at the end of a season.

As a successful coach once said, "you are what your record says you are". What are MU's season ending records?

It's not like there's a ton of options on the bench. He basically has to play everyone at this point. Nobody besides Markus is a really good shooter.

[mu03eng]

I think you are mis-remembering the slump last year as well. The team shot like garbage at the end of the season as well (Sam went 1-7 from 3 against Georgetown as an example).

Bottom line, when the team depends on jump shooting to win, they are more subject to the variance that comes with jump shooting. This team could absolutely catch fire in the tournament and make the Elite 8 if they start hitting shots. The most frustrating thing of this slump is that on offense they are absolutely getting good looks, they are just not hitting them at all other than Markus.

[f/k/a humanlung]

The bigger issue, imo, is the coaching slump we have been experiencing.

[JamilJaeJamailJrJuan]

Yep. Pretty simple really.  Need Sacar and Bailey to pull their heads out of their asses and regain some confidence.  I have very little hope for Koby, but at least a couple decent games from him would help.

Without positive contributions from those 3, we don't have any chance.  Markus can't do it all himself with 3 defenders draped all over him at all times. 

[RIP Marquette Gyros]

Agree we are missing open shots, but at the same time we are turning the ball over like crazy. We desperately need a legit ball handler.
 

[Phuket MU Fan]

Yep. Pretty simple really.  Need Sacar and Bailey to pull their heads out of their asses and regain some confidence.  I have very little hope for Koby, but at least a couple decent games from him would help.

Without positive contributions from those 3, we don't have any chance.  Markus can't do it all himself with 3 defenders draped all over him at all times.

+1

[mu03eng]

Agree we are missing open shots, but at the same time we are turning the ball over like crazy. We desperately need a legit ball handler.

This is actually false, in most of our games that we've lost during this slump our TO rate has been below to well below our season average. The only exception was the Providence game.

[skianth16]

This is actually false, in most of our games that we've lost during this slump our TO rate has been below to well below our season average. The only exception was the Providence game.

Is the average a little inflated from some of the non-con stinkers, though? I seem to remember our early games being plagued by travels and other bad TOs, but then we got a lot of those issues under control by late December-ish. Or, maybe asked another way, have we had a higher TO rate in recent games compared to our BE averages?

[mu03eng]

Is the average a little inflated from some of the non-con stinkers, though? I seem to remember our early games being plagued by travels and other bad TOs, but then we got a lot of those issues under control by late December-ish. Or, maybe asked another way, have we had a higher TO rate in recent games compared to our BE averages?

http://www.barttorvik.com/team.php?team=Marquette

Select Turnover Rate from the pulldown

[Mr. Sand-Knit]

Losing streaks suck.  They especially suck when the season is on the line.  But I think this streak comes down to one problem: the terrible three point shooting streaks of McEwen, Anim, and Bailey.

In our 6 out of 7 win streak those guys shot 42-105 for 40%

Xavier: 4-9
@Georgetown: 4-13
St John's: 7-19
@Butler (L): 11-19
@X: 8-22 (Anim was 5-9!)
DePaul: 0-9 (this is where the wheels started to come off)
Butler: 8-14

In the 4 of 5 losing streak they've shot 21-79 for 26%.

@Nova: 3-11
Creighton: 4-19
@Providence: 3-11
Georgetown: 4-11
Seton Hall: 3-13
@DePaul: 4-14

The difference between 40% shooting (including that terrible 0-fer against DePaul) and 26% shooting is easily the difference between wins and losses against Nova and DePaul, and it would have kept us in the game in the three blowouts, if not turned the tide.

I didn't realize how badly we miss the Hauser's until this last month.  Those guys, especially Sam, were excellent and consistent three point shooters.  Bailey, Anim, and McEwen have shown they can get hot, but don't have the consistency.  And it's not like they've been taking bad shots...it's been a ton of wide open looks clanking.

I'm pretty close to being a NoJo...but can you blame the coach for the team going into an extended shooting slump? Or is that on the players?

Well pointed out.  Ive said we didnt miss sam when brendan is going for 12 and 7.  Cant rember the last time hes come near that with a bunch of 2-1 in there.

[Mr. Sand-Knit]

What is the relevance of FG%?

It measures if the ball goes in or not.  Its a game of makes or misses

[Spotcheck Billy]

Agree we are missing open shots, but at the same time we are turning the ball over like crazy. We desperately need a legit ball handler.
 

The TO's against DePaul wouldn't have been so bad if MU didn't commit so many offensive fouls, how many were there, 7 or 8?

[skianth16]

http://www.barttorvik.com/team.php?team=Marquette

Select Turnover Rate from the pulldown

Thanks for sharing. I don't remember ever seeing this. I'll have to bookmark it.

It looks like we have gotten worse in the last 5-6 games even though some of the losses came with rates below the season average. Like I thought, the season average was definitely impacted by some really bad games early on, though. Our 2 worst performances came in the first 4 games.

Even with a somewhat inflated average TO rate, your comment that most of our losses in the recent slump have come with TO rates below our season average doesn't seem right. We've lost 5 of the last 6, so I'm using the last 6 games as our slump period. In those games, 3 of our losses came with TO rates above the average, while only 2 losses came with rates below the average. Our lone win was with a below average TO rate.

Looking back a little bit, when we won 6 out of 7 games, just before the slump, 4 of those wins were at below average rates, and 1 win was right at the average. Just 1 win came with an above average TO rate. Put all that together, and in the last 13 games, 6 of our 7 wins were in games with average to below average rates, and only 1 win was from a game with an above average TO rate.

Not surprisingly, limiting turnovers seems to be a key ingredient to winning games for us. We need to do more than just that, but it definitely helps.