Oso planning to go pro
Until this team decides to stop throwing the ball all over the place or dribbling the ball off there legs, this year is over. 20 turnovers a game is a minimum of 20 pointsa game added to MU's score. Until they figure that out, you can talk all you want about improvement, moral victories, buttom line there losses. Somehow Wojohas to figure out an offense that simplifies plays, slow it down, do something, after 24 games I do not see much improvement there. I was taught to take the ball tothe free throw line on the fastbreak and then make a decision, to either pass to the open man or shoot a free throw. That is a simple drill that should be ingrained inthere head. Not sure what Cohen was thinking, but maybe it is about coaching.
No...and after reading many many psosts from people on this board that do...I have to say I'm MUCH better off, if this is the type of "intelligence" a degree from MU gets you. It sure is on full display I will say that.
As noted above, this is a team-wide issue — not one that lies only with the point guard position.We've seen way too many unforced turnovers (balls lost out of bounds without a defender involved), traveling and carrying calls. Entry and outlet passes have been inconsistent, leading to too many steals and balls thrown out of bounds. And although Wojo encourages aggressive play and driving to the basket, we've got to cut down on charges.We don't have to be the best team in the Big East at protecting the ball. Xavier averages 13.0 turnovers per game, fifth in the conference. But we can't be the worst. Imagine if we had only committed 13 turnovers instead of 20 in yesterday's game. Totally different story.
The most annoyed I got during the game was when the play-by-play guy would say that Marquette is one of the youngest teams in the conference. If you're doing play-by-play do the research to discover that MU is the eighth youngest team in Division I.
With this team, how would you get from 20 to 13 turnovers? My argument is that if you pull in the reins to accomplish that, you take so much pressure off a defense like Xavier's that you pay too heavy a discount in points per possession, and you are probably worse off in the final score...with experience, danger to MU decreases and the danger to the opponent increases. I believe that I am not alone among Scoopers in believing that that process is already underway.
People want to watch us slow the pace and turn into a half court offense?
That's not what I want. Like I stated above, that's not what Wojo wants, either. He wants his team to push the pace and be aggressive. I enjoy that style of play and have no issues with our pace. But he's also talked repeatedly about giving away too many possessions.Dribbling the ball off your foot doesn't have anything to do with pace. Neither does getting called for carrying the ball. Or throwing an outlet pass over the head of the receiver. Or passing into a double team on the low block. Those are mental errors. Cut down and those and you'll start to see a big difference on the scoreboard.
Agree thAt the Fox1 broadcast team are not good. Brian Anderson is terrible. He always talks up the opponent whether it's a Marquette or Brewer game and he is very boring. He should be fired. We deserve better.
Simplify the offense? Really??? So leading the sixth ranked team in the country for over three quarters of the game - on the road- with the eighth youngest team out of 351, isn't good enough for you, and you'd cut short the learning process and switch the offense away from the player's strengths to try and make things better?
LOLOLOLOLOLPlayer's strengths? Are you out of your mind? We don't play at all to our players' strengths on offense.
Care to elaborate?
Let's not be a slave to "efficiency" to determine how to run the offense. Descriptive not necessarily prescriptive.
Do I place a high value on efficiency? Sure. But my issue is that our staff almost deliberately seems to put a reverse value on it.And this isn't just efficiency. This is saying that taking a young, turnover-prone team and having them run at a fast-break pace in a defensive-minded league is a bad idea. Bailing out on your center as soon as you get the ball in to him, leaving him in a double-team without an outlet pass is a bad idea. And yes, also having your least effective scorers take the highest volume of shots is a bad idea.Against top-200 opposition, in games that were played at a pace of 72 or fewer possessions in regulation (including both IUPUI and ASU), we are 5-3. In games played at a pace of 73 or more possessions in regulation, we are 1-6. So if we are more likely to lose as the number of possessions goes up, why on earth are we playing a fast-paced offense? It makes no sense and completely goes against our players' strengths.EDIT: Also, one of those two slow-paced losses was the DePaul game, decided on the final shot, while the sole fast-paced win was the 1-point victory over LSU. So we are 1 point in either direction from being 6-2 in slow paced games and 0-7 in faster paced games.
But if that's the way that they want to play, they have 2 freshmen and 1 sophomore guard who will get used to playing fast paced and improve in the system over the next 3/4 years. Carter and Cheatham with 4 years in the same system should pay dividends when they are upperclassmen.So while this year it's ugly, they will likely limit turnovers better with each year of age/experience in the system.