Poor shooting...plain and simple

[reinko]

I think a lot of people are trying to come up with a ton of reasons why Marquette looked like a 6th grade girls catholic team last night.  So far I have read:
~Poor coaching
~Too much coaching
~No big men
~No leadership
~Fans weren't in to it
~Individually blaming players
~Turnovers
~FT shooting
~Referees
~Can't break a zone

It's just poor shooting folks!  We have missed an obscene amount of open looks, runners, no footers from the lane.  In a guard focused offense, if you don't shoot 45% from the field, you are going to lose. 

MU shot 32% (16-50) last night, if we would have shot 46% (23-50), thats at least 14 points right there.  In our last 6 games, Fitz and Cubes, arguably the two best shooters on our team are 10-40 from the field.

In our previous 3 conference losses we shot:
~40% against UCONN
~41% against WVU
~30% against L'Ville the first time

I think as a team, we are just slumping from the field, and eventually, hopefully some of those looks will fall. 

[mu03eng]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Ding ding ding, I think we have a winner here.  I think you are absolutely correct.  We aren't taking nearly as many bad shots as we were last year.  We have one or two, but for the most part we are getting good looks that aren't falling.  I don't know if they need to run lay-up lines or something but the number of bunnies missed is pretty ridiculous.  The shooting will improve and hopefully, just as bad as we are shooting now we will be shooting the exact opposite come tourney time.

I will now go back to the hole I'm hiding in to keep all the stupid negativity on this board from getting to me.

[Pago Warrior]

Agreed as stated in my post on another thread.

The shooting has improved versus last year in term of fewer bad shots taken.
Generally speaking this year, the shot attempts have been in the flow of the offense but simply haven't been falling.

[MUfan12]

Shooting is a big part of it, but it doesn't excuse awful rotations on defense. Nor does it excuse staying with an ineffective zone, or refusing to press to try and get UL out of their rythym offensively. Just blaming shooting is simplifying it too much.

[NavinRJohnson]

Agreed as stated in my post on another thread.

The shooting has improved versus last year in term of fewer bad shots taken.
Generally speaking this year, the shot attempts have been in the flow of the offense but simply haven't been falling.

UL was also all too happy to give the shots to McNeal and James in particular. Those shots may have been open, but they were open for a reason and the wrong guys were taking them. If they are able to knock them down, its a different game, but a risk worth taking for Pitinio.

[mu03eng]

Shooting is a big part of it, but it doesn't excuse awful rotations on defense. Nor does it excuse staying with an ineffective zone, or refusing to press to try and get UL out of their rythym offensively. Just blaming shooting is simplifying it too much.

Yeah but as pointed out before, if we make even 7 more shots that is at a minimum of 14 points, those other things aren't really even noticed.  Also as someone in another thread pointed out, in the first half we stopped them 6 straight possessions but didn't score any points....that changed the game....we made our stand, couldn't make anything off it and it was all downhill from there.

[denverMU]

LOUSY DEFENSE!!!! Enough said.

[bma725]

I think for a team like MU, their defense is their offense, and if their D is bad, their offense will suffer and they can't do much about it.  They win games when they play good defense, because the good defense leads to higher percentage shots which leads to better shooting percentages. 

It was brought up earlier when comparing the Providence/ND games to the WVU/Seton Hall games.  MU defended(and to some extent rebounded) the opponents much better in those games.  Forced more turnovers, forced more bad shots, forced guys out of position etc.  That led to MU having either a fast break opportunity or having a chance to score before the defense could set up the zone.  Whether it was full fast breaks or just beating the other people down the court off a rebound, that increased the easy baskets, and gave the jump shooters more time and better looks.

When the defense is bad and they aren't causing turnovers, they have no shot at being a good shooting team because their guys only shoot well in transition.  They don't have the guys that can curl around screens or hit a pull up jumper with any consistency.  They only really shoot well when filling the wings on a break.

So while its easy to say that they just need to shoot better, they only way they are going to be better offensively is if they aren't so bad defensively.

[reinko]

I don't think our defense is that bad.  It's actually the only thing that kept it a ten point game in the first half.  If our defense didn't show up in the first half last night we might have been 25 going into half.

As to solidfy my original hypothesis, the UCONN game is a perfect example.  We got smoked in every sense of the word (and trust me, I had to watch that debachle in person), but we actually made more shots from the field than UCONN did.  We were 26-65, and 10-21 from 3pt range, and UCONN went 25-46.  And i know they shot 20 more FT's than us, but still.  These shots need to start falling!

C'mon! We shot 20 more shots than they did!

[classof70]

Exactly.  Make some of the easy shots and it is a different team. Last night was another example.  Missed easy shots in the first 3 minutes.