how to win with a short team

[THRILLHO]

I'm pretty amazed with just how short this team is this year, so I wanted to look at other teams in the last few years with similar heights that made the tournament with at-large bids and how they did so. There's been some indication from Wojo's public comments and the couple of scrimmages that Wojo's strategy is full court pressure, create TOs with pressure, and I was curious whether this approach has a track record and what the alternatives might be. Since kenpom allows you to sort by average height (weighted by playing time) as well as effective height (height of PFs and C's), I was able to easily find short teams in the last several years to make the NCAA tournament. First, unsurprisingly, there are very few tournament teams amongst the shortest teams. Second, some of those teams have taller _rosters_ than ours, but might be ranked as shorter because their tallest players don't play much. This means the stat might be a bit misleading, and some of these teams have flexibility that MU will lack while Fisher is sitting. That means they can play their best 5 players when it's not too much of a disadvantage but still haul out their 6'10" tank when the opponent requires it.

With those preliminaries, I'll get to the teams. What follows is each team followed by the best summary I can come up of how they were successful based on their kenpom stats. I obviously recognize this pure stats approach is limited, but I do not watch every team's game and I don't have the ability to pull up archival footage. If anyone has better informed analysis of these teams please correct it and I will edit out my mistakes.

2014 Stephen A. Austin
KP Rating: 57
Offense: 38
Defense: 102
Seed: 12
Summary: Better offense than defense. Played slow on O and fast on D. Defense had great TO% with horrible EFG%. Gave up very few 3p attempts. Rebounded pretty well on offense. Shot well on 2pfgs. Very tight rotation in tough games. Got great offensive production out of 6'6" center, who shot 45% from 3 on 46 attempts. He also had a large number of steals.

2014 Iowa State
KP Rating: 21
Offense: 6
Defense: 72
Seed: 3
Summary: Much better at offense than defense. Rarely committed turnovers and shot 2pfg very well. Played very fast on offense and slow on defense. Had decent height at 2-4. Defense did everything well _except_ forcing turnovers. Very small 7 player rotation. Had two elite players in Deandre Kane and Georges Niang.

2014 Oklahoma State
KP Rating: 26
Offense: 27
Defense: 37
Seed: 9
Summary: Offense and defense both pretty good. On offense minimized turnovers. Fast on offense and slow on defense. On defense forced TOs and limited FG%. Gave up average # 3pfg attempts, but limited 2pfg%. Bad at getting and preventing ORBs. Had elite PG (Smart) and PF (Nash)

(No short teams got at-large bids in 2013)

2012 Murray State
KP Rating: 29
Offense: 91
Defense: 15
Seed: 6
Summary: Very good defense and OK offense. Forced tons of turnovers but also good defensive EFG%. Allowed very few 3pfg attempts. Great at shooting 3's. Elite PG (Canaan). Pretty short rotation.

2011 UAB
KP Rating: 65
Offense: 86
Defense: 54
Seed: 12
Summary: OK offense but better defense. Did not force many turnovers. Good 3pfg defense. Playeed pretty slowly all around, though especially on offense. Shot a ton of 3's, with only average accuracy (34.2%). Had two 6'8" regulars and a 6'9" freshman so actually not that short.

2011 George Mason
KP Rating: 24
Offense: 24
Defense: 48
Seed: 8
Summary: Excellent offense and pretty good defense. Great shooting and gave up few turnovers. Shot very well from 3 but shot relatively few of them. Very slow tempo overall but glacial defense. Pretty good defensive EFG%. Had a few 6'9" players. Pretty short rotation.

2010 Marquette
KP Rating: 30
Offense: 22
Defense: 59
Seed: 6
Summary: Excellent offense and pretty good defense. Great shooting and very few turnovers. Shot great from 3 and took more than average but not that much more. Defense forced turnovers and limited free throws. Defense limited 3p shots but gave up very high 2pfg%. Glacial tempo on both sides of the ball. Small roster with very small rotation. Had a few borderline elite players in Hayward, Butler, DJO.


Final summary: Overall, it was hard for me to draw many conclusions and I'm not sure I have any better idea of what's in store than before I did this. One takeaway is that elite players can overcome roster deficiencies. If Burton takes a big step up and Taylor gets back on track, it may not matter that they're both playing a position up. No team on here looks exactly like MU at this point. 2012 Murray State is probably the closest, as they didn't have great offense and focused defense on creating turnovers (which seems similar at a glance) but had an elite PG and shot 3's well.

[tower912]

How many of the short teams combined the lack of height with the lack of experience MU is going to have?

[THRILLHO]

How many of the short teams combined the lack of height with the lack of experience MU is going to have?

I did keep an eye out for whether they were particularly experienced and was surprised to see that they weren't. But experience in your most talented players may play a role. (For example, if we somehow could make our most talented player, say Bane, have Derrick's experience that would be a heck of a player.)

[dgies9156]

Simple formula for short teams:

1) Play excellent defense.

2) Run their a*s off and use your depth.

3) Shoot well.

[PGsHeroes32]

ISU is an extreme outlier here.

You also left Ejim off the elite list lol. Guy was a beast.

That team may not have had 6'10 6'11 centers but that team had good size.

[TSmith34, Inc.]

Simple formula for short teams:

1) Play excellent defense.

2) Run their a*s off and use your depth.

3) Shoot well.

Point 2 could be a problem.  Point 3 remains to be seen for this team.

[Juan Anderson's Mixtape]

Score more points than the other team.    

[boyonthedock]

Threes.

[ATL MU Warrior]

Simple formula for short teams:

1) Play excellent defense.

2) Run their a*s off and use your depth.

3) Shoot well.

Judging by recent history, this formula = long season

[77ncaachamps]

Nothing is impossible.

[MU82]

All we need is for Burton to be Lazar, Taylor to be Jimmy and Duane to be DJO.

Not asking for much, am I?

[Johnny B]

Ask the 2010 team. Be one of the best 3 shooting teams in the counrtey.

[THRILLHO]

Simple formula for short teams:

1) Play excellent defense.

2) Run their a*s off and use your depth.

3) Shoot well.

Yeah, the question is how to do 1)? Keeping the ball out of the paint becomes more important not just because it's easier to shoot over our players, but also gets them into foul trouble. And then even if you succeed in keeping the ball out of the paint, how do you do that without giving up more open 3's? I thought it would involve higher steal% but it doesn't always. My guess is we will play full court a significant part of the game to slow them down a bit and limit their number of opportunities in the offensive set plus get an occasional steal. Then having smaller quicker guards on the court (like the D. Wilsons) to play pressure man defense, probably focused more on preventing entry passes than getting steals. But who knows, with our guard depth we may be willing to risk the fouls for more steals. Part of it probably depends on how Wojo feels about our offense. If our shooting really has improved and he thinks we'll be able to get makeable looks we may be content to play conservative on D, if he thinks our offense will have trouble scoring we may crank up the aggressiveness in terms of looking for steals.

[alexius23]

In the early McGuire years he had some not so tall teams as well....

[MU82]

The answer is far simpler than folks think:

Our midgets just need to reach up and punch opponents in the knees when the refs aren't looking!

[Loose Cannon]

Have we reached out to Charles Barkley for help.

[hdog1017]

Playing Wisconsin Lutheran is a good way to win. 

[MUsoxfan]

I agree. We should also play all of the UW schools. Bad for RPI, awesome for wins

[Windyplayer]

Score more points than the other team.    

I remember my first beer.

[ChitownSpaceForRent]

2005 Illini. Augustin was their only impactful big man. That was one of the best shooting teams in history though.

[rocky_warrior]

Play Wisconsin Lutheran every game

[NCMUFan]

Thank you for the research.  I am sure Wojo and staff are pondering that question day and night.

[PGsHeroes32]

I remember my first beer.

You did it wrong then

[tower912]

Play a shorter one.  

[dgies9156]

In the early McGuire years he had some not so tall teams as well....

I think the first couple of years, the tallest guy on the team was 6'6" or 6'7".

McGuire started in 1965-1966  and the first real aircraft carrier we had was Jim Chones about 1970-1971.

We made up for lack of height with quickness and tenacity. And we were meaner than anyone else!