22-23 Team Discussion

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Chad gives a little more info on the state of the team on the most recent BCJ podcast. More based on his talks with those close to the team than his own observations. His comments on each phase are essentially.

- Offense: (Much?) Better than last year, a lot more options.

- Defense: Worse than last year, but slowly improving. Hopefully will get to at least average.

- Rebounding: The area we are worst at, especially defensive rebounding. Good rebounding is about mindset (wanting the ball) as much as physical attributes and we don't currently seem to have it. We need a Gary Clark/Tre Scott type who fights for every rebound, but we don't have one.

- An average defense that doesn't rebound well and gives up a lot of second chance opportunities is not a winning formula.

My take from his comment: The thing that differentiates our guys (especially at the 4/5) and earns them minutes may be rebounding. If we can't develop that 4/5, guards/wings who rebound well will probably get the nod all other things being close to equal. That favors Phinisee, Newman and (possibly) Reed/Skillings getting more minutes than anticipated.
 
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First Wes Miller radio show of the season. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-wes-miller-show-11-03-22/id1601885111?i=1000585022114

Some notes:

- Phinisee: will have an impact as a veteran and defender.

- Kalu: brings a lot on offense, but has struggled at both defense and rebounding. Wes thinks he has the size/athleticism to get there, but he hasn't been challenged by previous coaches.

- Nolley: Great on offense, struggled on defense early but has been steadily improving.

- Skillings: does some things that make you say wow, but also struggles on defense.

- We have multiple guys who can create and finish on offense.

- Offensive rebounding needs to pick up.

- We are huge on the wing, but Kalu and Ody are undersized and Vik is not a banger.
 
skyblade said:
Chad gives a little more info on the state of the team on the most recent BCJ podcast. More based on his talks with those close to the team than his own observations. His comments on each phase are essentially.

- Offense: (Much?) Better than last year, a lot more options.

- Defense: Worse than last year, but slowly improving. Hopefully will get to at least average.

- Rebounding: The area we are worst at, especially defensive rebounding. Good rebounding is about mindset (wanting the ball) as much as physical attributes and we don't currently seem to have it. We need a Gary Clark/Tre Scott type who fights for every rebound, but we don't have one.

- An average defense that doesn't rebound well and gives up a lot of second chance opportunities is not a winning formula.

My take from his comment: The thing that differentiates our guys (especially at the 4/5) and earns them minutes may be rebounding. If we can't develop that 4/5, guards/wings who rebound well will probably get the nod all other things being close to equal. That favors Phinisee, Newman and (possibly) Reed/Skillings getting more minutes than anticipated.
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What I find hard to fathom is rebounding not being better than last year. Both Vik and Ody were better than Ado and Koval. Plus we add a little bit of length with Nolley over Newman. Not much else has changed.

Defensively I see the problems. Less rim protection. Nolley in for Newman. I suppose Rob is an upgrade over Mike/MAW.
 
waterhead said:
What I find hard to fathom is rebounding not being better than last year. Both Vik and Ody were better than Ado and Koval. Plus we add a little bit of length with Nolley over Newman. Not much else has changed.

Defensively I see the problems. Less rim protection. Nolley in for Newman. I suppose Rob is an upgrade over Mike/MAW.
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Nolley and Kalu are both guys who's numbers rebounding wise are quite a bit worse than you'd expect given their size/athleticism. Kalu doesn't move particularly well, so that could play into it. But I think overall it's simply lack of effort/will to get every ball. We'll see if Wes can get it out of them, it's hard to take a guy who hasn't fought for every rebound over the last 4 years and suddenly turn him into that sort of guy.

Phinisee and Newman are the only guards/wings we have who are prover above average rebounders at their position. If DDJ, Nolley, Davenport and Kalu are below average rebounders at their positions (historically, they all are) that's a lot to make up for. Even if Ody/Vik do well, we need good rebounding at multiple positions.

I know I've said it already, but I don't think DDJ, Nolley, Davenport and Kalu can be on the floor at the same time. I don't care who the 5th guy is, you can't have 4 guys who are weak at defense (and potentially rebounding) and expect to be competitive against good teams. I know those 4 are the sexy picks to start, but if they are all who 3/4 years worth of stats say they are, somebody (Kalu most likely) is going to end up spending the majority of their time on the bench. Scoring points only helps so much when you can't get stops and can't rebound.
 
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Ezikpe has good rebounding numbers. OReb rate of 11 and DReb rate of 21 for his career. Whether that translates to a higher level competition is a legitimate question, but the stats are fine. Nolley's numbers are about average for a wing, but not great for a 3.
 
We finished the regular season ranked #41 on Torvik and #63 on Kenpom. Last year we were #96 on Torvik, so a big jump. We were #40 on offense and #63 on defense. This was Wes Miller's best team of his career, and the only time he's had an offense in the top 50, or even the top 100.

In the four factors, we ranked top 50 in only one category: taking care of the ball where we finished #26. We were top 100 in both offensive and defensive field goal percentage. On the down side, we ranked #253 in creating turnovers and #339 in free throw rate. Some of these numbers are in line with typical Wes Miller teams, especially the bad free throw rate.

Creating turnovers is an interesting area where I hope we see improvement going forward. In his first four years at UNCG, they never cracked the top 200 in creating turnovers. But they were top 50 in each of his last four years there, including peaking at #4 in the country. So that's one area where bringing in his own recruits and instilling his style of play may mean a completely different type of defense than we have seen the last couple seasons.

Similarly, UNCG was a poor offensive rebounding team in Wes's first four years but were #81 or better in each of the last five years, including top 35 in three of them. Adding length on the wings should allow us to fit the same pattern.

I think the biggest scheming success this year was how we defended the three point line. Opponents only took 30% of shots from beyond the arc, which was the 17th lowest in the country. Among major conference teams it would rank 4th behind just UConn, Creighton, and Arkansas. And opponents only shot 32% from three, which was #70 in the country.

Our offensive shot selection has been poor the last two years because we take too many midrange shots rather than getting to the rim, a troubling theme that is common for Miller's teams. But forcing defenses into inefficient shots was a strong point that I hope we can replicate going forward. If we can pair that with creating more turnovers and rebounding the ball better with longer and more athletic players, we could have a really good defense in the next few years.
 
Looking at the players, Lakhin led the team with a 117 offensive rating. He was good across the board, shooting a very efficient 63% from the field and grabbing 11% of available offensive rebounds. He also led the team in steal rate and had a turnover rate of just 13, down from 23 last year and lower than any of our guards.

DDJ had the next best ORtg at 115, the highest of his career by far. Most of that had to do with his 30 assist rate and 14 turnover rate. He shot it well from three at 37%, but still was not very efficient from the floor because he shoots nearly half of his shots (47%) from the midrange. Even though he makes a decent 42% of those, it's still a bad shot because it means only 0.84 points per possession. As a result, his effective field goal percentage was under 51, which is below average.

Nolley, Davenport, and Ody all had an ORtg above 110. Nolley shot 42% from three on more than 6 attempts per game. Davenport had a ridiculously low 8.8 turnover rate. Ody shot 56% from the field despite a mid year slump and had the highest offensive rebound rate on the team.

MAW was better than past years but still not great. He was less efficient from the floor than DDJ and his assist and turnover rates were both worse than last year.

Skillings and Reed each showed rebounding ability and had higher block rates than everyone but Lakhin and Ezikpe. I'm looking forward to their athleticism on the wings. They also both showed hot shooting streaks, Reed at the beginning of the year and Skillings at the end.
 
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