End of game offense

[classof70]

I hate that delay game in the last three minutes.  It takes all the energy out of a team that thrives on energy.  It's poor coaching.  I wish Crean would ditch it.

[Norm]

Combine that with no stops on defense and its a bad recipe for wins.

[CTWarrior]

I think they go hand in hand.  Our offense becomes keep away and our defense becomes don't foul.  Tonight it bit us.  You can't play like that when you can't make free throws.

[lab_warrior]

At this point, I'd rather we just keep playing, rather than that stall offense.  This team is just not good enough to put the dagger in anybody.  It has happened way, way too many times this year.  I'm really getting sick of us having 5-7 point leads and pissing them away.

[CTWarrior]

To be fair, we haven't blown that many games because of the stall, but a lot of games where we had 10 point leads became nail biters.  Tonight it got us though.

[maxpower773]

we lost because of free throws really, not the stall offense. in 2 possesions, ours and theirs, we wasted over a minute...if we could make free throws then that's perfect, its what you want. they had to make a last second shot to win with no timeouts...not an ideal situation to score in. hats off to smith...even though i don't like him anymore.

[CTWarrior]

My problem with the stall is that on our last possession before they were forced to foul, we basically traded any shot at scoring for running 35 seconds off the clock.  When you know what terrible free throw shooters we are, you cannot stop trying to score by running your offense when you have the opportunity.  We are easy to defend late in games because the defense does not have to worry about us taking advantage of an overplay or a missed steal attempt because we will not attempt to score until there are less than 5 seconds on the shot clock.  Couple that with a defense that goes from aggressive to just don't foul, we pretty much guarantee that the opposition will outscore us down the stretch.  We just bank on the clock running out before they can catch up.  It is totally at odds with Crean's gung ho attitude about everything else he does and the types of players he recruits.

That's why I have a problem with it.

[ONeills Barstool]

Pretty good effort, play and shooting got MU to a 57-50 lead with somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 minutes to go.  To that point, I think second half stats were something like 4-6 3pt shooting and 9-9 from the FT line.  MU was playing defense with high intensity, the crowd was jacked up (best all year by far) and all was well.

Then came the prevent offense!  Then came the traveling TO...pretty sure that shouldn't happen when running the prevent offense!  Then came the missed front end of a 1 and 1......Then 1 of 2 at the line....then 1 of 2 at the line again.  UGH

To have a 57-50 lead and lose 61-59 stings BADLY.  I gotta hand it to the 'Ville as they made some HUGE shots down the stretch but it really should never have come down to that. 

[bananahammock]

TC's coaching in the last 3-4 minutes  with a moderate lead has been poor since he got here! 

[NotAnAlum]

I think there is a difference between being "careful" with a lead and stalling.  I think you probe and make them play D but you don't take anything but an uncontested shot until late in the clock.  What we did tonight was stand 25 feet away from the basket and stall.  That is not good basketball unless you have 5 Novaks on the floor.  And I think it did cost us this game.
Of course quite frankly we weren't very good at running our offense anyway tonight.  These guys have gotten back into that mindset that was their problem earlier in the year.  They think that when you drive the driver MUST get to the rim.  Most other teams regularly drive to set up the outside shot.  When we had this problem earlier I remember Crean saying "The drive is more for the other 4 players than it is for driver".  He needs to tell them that again, particularly the way Fitz is shotting.

[NavinRJohnson]

There was no stall offense. Was really no different than the entitre game. It was just half court offense, and our half court offense stinks. Couple that with poor defense and an inability to make free throws and you're cooked.

[nathanziarek]

Seriously? McNeal holding the ball at half court for 20+ seconds without moving wasn't a stall offense?

If this team could hit 70% FT, the game could have ben in hand. But Crean seems either unwilling to acknowledge that his methods don't work with lousy FT shooting or is trying to challenge his players.

[muwarrior87]

yeah, crean's methods don't work with free throw shooting, crean is the one out there every game missin the ft's. Crean didn't get the guys to be clutch at Pitt and a few other games...i mean listen to yourself. This team has been streaky from the line all year. They've shot very well some games and then slumped and hit only half their ft's in others. This is soooo obviously Crean's fault.

And the offense really wasn't that different down the stretch. During the whole game there was a lot of hold and dribble unless they could run w/ it. Then they did. They didn't get the 5th foul on Caracter when they had the chance which would have killed UL down low w/ both big men fouled out and leaving them not many other options. And then McNeal missed the front end of the 1 and 1 which could have gotten us 2 more pts and if James hits the front end of his two, game's over, that's 3 pts we didn't have and would have won if we did.

[Murffieus]

If TC goes for the shot right away early in the possession cycle then he gets criticized for that too-------no TC did the right thing using the clock with a 5-7 point lead with 3-5 minutes to go. The only fault i can find is in the "end game" of those possessions where we are sitting on the ball. We don't seem to have a plan at that point as to what to do to get a good look-----IMO have to have a quick rehearsed set that results in a designated "go to guy" to take that shot or dish for a score at the end of the possession.

[Harrison]

Agree witha couple execptions.  the stall is OK, the problem is we dont start to run the offense until about 7 seconds left and end up forcing a bad shot at the buzzer.  Do the same thing but start with 15 to allow for option B.  The free throws killed us.  Wesly1-2, Jerel missed front end, DJ 1-2.  But maybe the biggest killer was milking the clock and getting the ball back after a miss with the opportunity to milk 35 more and Fitz commits and unforced travle with 25 seconds left on the shot clock 30 feet from the basket.   that possesion turns into 25 more seconds off the clock and the game is over whether we scored on the possesion or not.

[CTWarrior]

If TC goes for the shot right away early in the possession cycle then he gets criticized for that too-------no TC did the right thing using the clock with a 5-7 point lead with 3-5 minutes to go. The only fault i can find is in the "end game" of those possessions where we are sitting on the ball. We don't seem to have a plan at that point as to what to do to get a good look-----IMO have to have a quick rehearsed set that results in a designated "go to guy" to take that shot or dish for a score at the end of the possession.

I have to disagree, Murff.  If, as somebody above said, you want to run an offense where you only take a layup or a wide open shot inside 10 feet or something the first 25 seconds, I'm OK with that.  But we don't even make the other guys play defense!  So now they can choose to either rest or overplay for steals secure in the knowledge that we won't even try to make them pay for missing a steal attempt.  They don't have to worry about offense-defense substitutions because defensive ability isn't required.  And I further think the "try not to lose" attitude infects our defense, which tries only to slow up the offense without fouling.  Then, when the game time is under 35 seconds the opponent has closed the gap to where we are forced to have our foul shooting, perhaps our biggest weakness, keep us on top.  Against Pitt we made our free throws.  Last night we didn't.

We went up 7 and looked to be close to a knockout punch and took our foot off the gas.  Drives me nuts.  I understand the kid made a low percentage shot to beat us, but our goal at the end of these games should be to give the opponent no shot to beat us.