That was a solid first 5 minutes.
The zags looked nervous for a while there.
Luke made some stupid mistakes.
That no call then travel on Eli was horrible.
If yo keeps hitting that three weeks might be in business. They need to get some luck in threes.
Tyler - did you notice that when Dastrup came in the game and became an outside threat, Williams had to come out on him and that opened up the middle and Haws made an easy layup for two of his four points?
Dastrup shined against the best teams BYU played all season, Utah and Gonzaga. I’m still upset about the PD no PT issue.
Basketball is about 3 fundamental principles: player spacing, player movement, and ball movement. You design your system to utilize those to get good shots.
Having 5 players space the floor is like magic, all of a sudden the defense is playing a different game. Old School guys don’t like it but that’s the truth. Look what their spacing did to us. Even Williams can shoot well.
I hope somebody is willing to help Rose clean the egg off of his face. Putting Dastrup in the game, even though it was too late, exposed his coaching decisions throughout the season.
I harped on this all season long and I feel like Moses or something. I told everyone this is what would happen. There is a very real possibility that if Dastrup had been given the opportunity to develop with game minutes BYU would be going to the ncaa tournament.
If someone wants to argue that statement, bring it on.
Whatever, it’s over, WCC-ZAGA refs, tired BYU team, outcoached again. I have no interest in the alternative of the NIT. In the era of P-5 conferences, media dominance, the WCC rec refs and Gonzaga pro league influence, it all sucks. Give Rose one or two more seasons and if he can’t produce let him retire. I was dumb founded at the Bracketologist from ESPN cutting in on the game in the first half. Dickie Baby-what a joke. These announcers are media clowns.
Jim: You are exactly right on the PD point. I’m sure that even the frequently stubborn Grasshopper will admit you were right.
I posted the following about a week ago, with my notes from last night inserted in CAPS:
“Dastrup:
Big (HE’S STILL BIG). VERY good shot blocker for a guy without huge hops (BLOCKED A SHOT LAST NIGHT). VERY good face up shooter (AS EVIDENCED). Good midrange game. Coordinated enough to take one dribble from the FT line and elevate to throw down over big men (HAHA WHO’S THE PROPHET NOW :-)). Can score facing or with his back to the basket (HE WOULD HAVE BUT WAS HACKED ON THE RIGHT ARM BUT THE REFS WERE RIGHTLY LETTING STUFF GO BY THAT POINT). Can make threes (BEAUTIFUL), and even when he misses it’s obvious he has a good stroke. Hustles (ENOUGH THAT HE PUT ENOUGH LIFE IN OUR DEAD TEAM THAT COACH FEW CALLED A TO AND BAWLED OUT HIS STARTERS). Teammates love him. Fans love him. Media loves him. More highly recruited out of HS than all our other bigs COMBINED. The ONLY one of our bigs with “big time” scholarship offers. YEP; SOUNDS LIKE WE SHOULD NEVER PLAY HIM…”
I was very happy for PD last night, but watching it just MADE ME MAD. This was a perfect example of what is wrong with our team: we have a nationally rated, highly recruited big man who could have been a double digit scorer on a team BADLY in need of a talent upgrade, and he sits on the bench all year. Why? Because of some mystical notion that Worthington is some kind of “Defensive Quarterback” as Blaine Fowler likes to say? What a disaster.
Lol. Right on. I almost turn off the sound when Blaine Fowler is calling the games. He constantly talks about how great everybody is (on both teams), what amazing coaching is being displayed by both teams, what a bright future everybody has, and how well each game is being officiated. Barf.
Against SM we were moving the ball the best all season. We got some great layups and throw downs. We only shot 11 3 point shots. Against Gonzaga, we simply didn’t have the same motion after the first 18 minutes. We started relying on our 3 point shot again after we ran out of gas. The NCAA’s play with a rest day in between on the weekends. It would be nice to be able to have the WCC tournament with a break between the semi’s and final. I’d like a chance to play them with a rest day in between.
3P attempts are irrelevant to my theory, just that all 5 threaten from 3. Take the extreme, 0 3P attempts in an imaginary game next season, but all 5 threaten 50% from three. The defense dictates where shots come from. My goal is straining the defense by forcing them to glue defenders to shooters, accomplished by a 5 man threat. Leave anyone open and they can knock it down and therefore it’s imperative to not leave them open.
This works because it opens the paint to attack. Forcing the defenders to stick to their man has a cascading effect if you add in the player movement and ball movement. Lanes and openings develop. Players lose their dominant position relative to the hoop and all of a sudden we’re getting dunks and uncontested layups not because we are a dominant interior team, but because we are a threat from the three. Teams used to covet players that could be a stretch 4 and pull out one interior defender. Now they want stretch 5s because they figured out that the spacing it provides by dragging a shot blocker out to the perimeter increases the expected value of a shot at the hoop from any other player.
Even if Dastrup played all 40 minutes of a game and never attempted a three because the other team denied him the opportunity, the simple fact that he dragged a center out of the center of the court geometry means he has contributed an increase in expected point values of shots from Eli, TJ, and Yoeli.
Or look at our current lineup. Hardnet is an interesting example because while he shoots 35% on 3s, he often doesn’t shoot when he’s open, this means the value of his mediocre or average shooting can be neglected because his defender falls off of him a few feet. TJ must be guarded constantly and he’ll often take and make shots he shouldn’t in the first place. Same thing with Eli, both of those guys are a threat and you have to stick to them or you’re going to lose. But yeoli while he shot spectacularly, still needs to bring his sub 30 3P% up to around 40%, which he can do. Zach also plays in the 4, well I can’t remember his last 3 so teams still guard him, but less enthusiastically. No one guards Yo’s 3. So PF position (except for Nixon sometimes) provides little or no spacing. Luke has never even attempted a three. There is zero reason to even bother defending Luke more than 9 feet from the rim. Luke could stand in the corner and his guy could wander to the other side of the court and harass a ball handler. You could rate the line up’s spacing as a 2.5/5 to use an arbitrary measure.
Take this alternate approach: Dastrup (leads the team in 3P%) at the 5. Got to guard him. Yo (assuming he continues to shoot a higher %) Nixon/Bergerson depending on the match up both of whom can shoot here from three and are willing to take open shots. Eli who must be guarded. And TJ to round it out. That lineup would either pound people from 3 if they left them open or if they deny the three, then it can attack the paint much more effectively.
I agree. space it out over a week and that would give an advantage to teams with less depth, and another encouragement for us to develop our depth.
I was thinking the same thing before we play Zags like space it out till Wednesday. WCC and other smalller leagues always have a week early for conference tournaments than those P5 schools do. Now we wait for another 5 days for selection Sunday (ncaa/nit).
When we are shooting 25 three point shots, we aren’t usually hitting on a great percentage. That means we have a lower over-all shooting percentages. Lower assists and less easier shots and this less points over all. We beat SM with only 11 three point shots.
Whether 3PA and 3P% are inversely correlated, I see no causal relationship from 3P attempts to %. I imagine if we focused on threes, 3P% would increase. I only care about 3P%, not a specific number of attempts.
I want to move the ball. I’m suggesting 5 3 Point shooters on the floor facilitates that.
The ease of the shot is irrelevant. I only care about the expected value of a given shot. An average Eli 3 is worth 1.23 points, Dastrup is a smidge better, an average TJ 2 point attempt is worth .982 points. Now the better we shoot from 3, the more an average 2 point attempt from anyone will be worth because it creates space.
Anecdotal. If we play 5 3P shooters our 3P% increases by sheer opportunity. Right now we are limited to a streaky TJ, Eli, a reluctant hardnet and Nixon occasionally…and dastrup whenever he shows up on the floor. Again, I don’t care 3PA just that our 3P% is dangerous to the other team.
If they fall off Luke, hardnet and Yo, when Eli drives or TJ threads a pass, the value decreases. Replace Luke with PD in the corner and Eli drives, sees 3 defenders, and kicks to PD for 3, then the expected value of the possession goes way up. I’d much rather have an open PD three than an Eli two contested by three people.
Again, I don’t care about attempts, Just that we shoot a high enough 3P% that if they are stupid enough to leave a shooter alone we can punish them for it. If we don’t shoot a single three all game but the threat of the three means that the value of a TJ drive or Yoeli floater goes up then there’s nothing to worry about. Some teams will try packing the paint and then we’ll need to take threes to space them out again, but that’s dependent on the defense, not the gameplan.
Look at the games where we shot 20+ 3 point shots. The percentages were low most of the time. We have been shooting a poor percentage from 3’s this year. SM game is what I was hoping all year. 10 - 15 a game and you would see a higher percentage.
Based on what we saw against SM, when we shoot 25 threes we are not playing hard. We stayed up with Gonzaga by not going crazy with 3’s for 18 minutes. Then, we got tired and started throwing up 3’s because we were tired. I think Gonzaga was somewhat winded but they were better 3 point shooters.
Are you trying to show a causal link between 3PA and 3P%? I don’t see it. Games with higher 3PA were often caused by athletic teams where we couldn’t penetrate the paint as effectively. So I would say instead that poor 2P% (due to a collapsing defense) led to an increase in 3PA which we couldn’t knock down at a high enough rate because defenders could zero in on Eli and TJ mostly and lock it down. That’s harder to do with 5 3P shooters. The Zag’s made the paint inhospitable in Game 2. Are we supposed force the pass or drive into traffic and try and finish over 3 guys? That’s when we must hit threes and why having 5 3 point shooters to keep defenses honest helps us to penetrate. Getting tired is part of that (again, develop the bench in the season).