I totally get what you're saying. But it's tricky for me bc at the beginning of the year, Coach pretty much told the guys to ONLY worry about deflections. We were scoring like no one's business then. So is it as simple as feeling pressure coming down the stretch, more than the message from the coach? Bc I agree it concerns me when I hear "We know we'll win scoring 80, but we gotta win when we score 60." It feels as if it almost becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Just hang around at 50-50 for 35 minutes, then try to close it out. That's what I hear, and that's why it makes me nervous. But the message itself isn't all that different from our normal M.O. So why only now is it more concerning? Bc of our recent scoring outputs? Obviously yes...but I just don't know for certain that we're correctly identifying the reason for the "change", if there even is one. It feels like an intangible thing, to an extent. Almost like a form of PTSD, where we so fully expect the past to repeat itself that we'll search high and low to confirm our beliefs. Not saying it's right or wrong, just another way of looking at it.
Also, not sure if they track this, but are we taking g longer per possession lately? We have to be, right? Lots of shot clock violations. It could be a simple fix to point at that and put an emphasis on getting into the offense as early into the clock as possible.
According to Kenpom's adjusted tempo calculations, UC currently is averaging 64.2, #331 in nation
Iowa St., both SMU games & Tulsa were at a pace below 60
Only +80 was Fairleigh Dickinson
70 + Penn St., Lipscomb, Texas Southern, Marshall, 1st Temple & Tulane and 1st South Florida
Houston, 2nd Temple & Tulane, UConn & X all 66-67
Rhode Island & Butler losses were 62 & 67 respectively - SMU loss - 54
I wonder way our tempo is down this year. I get that in the past we weren't as talented, so we would try and slow the game down but this year we have just as much or not more talent as every team we have played. You would think we would speed up the tempoAccording to Kenpom's adjusted tempo calculations, UC currently is averaging 64.2, #331 in nation
Iowa St., both SMU games & Tulsa were at a pace below 60
Only +80 was Fairleigh Dickinson
70 + Penn St., Lipscomb, Texas Southern, Marshall, 1st Temple & Tulane and 1st South Florida
Houston, 2nd Temple & Tulane, UConn & X all 66-67
Rhode Island & Butler losses were 62 & 67 respectively - SMU loss - 54
Last time I checked tournament games are the same as true road games, so everyone using these statistics to determine what we will do come tourney time can't just forget it. We don't have much to look at but we've played two neutral court games this year (even though one was basically a home game for Rhode Island, still counting it.)
Our stats from those two games :
UC / Rhode Island
42.6% (23/53)- FG 44.8% (26/59)- FG
40%. (8/20) - 3pt FG. 38%. (8/21)- 3pt FG
Assists per FG (UC) - 8/23 (34.7%)
UC / Penn State
50 % (30/60) - FG. 36% (17/47) - FG
37.5% (6/16) -3pt FG. 20% (5/20) - 3pt FG
In neutral court game we also:
Out rebounded teams - 64 to 54 and offensively 21 to 14
Out stole teams 14 to 9
And turned it over less 25 to 28
Now like I said this is a small sample size, but this was against two top 100 teams, Rhode Island (57) and penn state (83). We shot 46.9% from 2 and 38.9% from 3 combined in those two games, pretty sure if we shoot that a run in the tourney is looking good for us. Again, final point. TRUE ROAD GAMES are not the same as neutral court games.
It's just shooting outside of our own gym in general that concerns me.
I completely understand, but road games are such a huge difference vs a neutral court. And we played pretty well in both our neutral court games this year. But only two games isn't much to go off of. Unfortunately we won't know how this team will respond come tournament games until we play some. Hopefully we step up in the conference tourney and make it happen. Would love to see us get through the tourney shooting close to 50% and high 30s from 3.
I really don't mind about tempo. What matters to me is efficiency. 2 of the top 3 teams on kenpom rank 325 or worse in tempo. We have the worst efficiency by far in the top 25 of KenPom in our best offensive year under Cronin.
We have turned a corner but we're not there yet on Offense. Newest recruits are promising.
The tempo is definitely a Caupain thing. If you listen to post game, you can hear Mick talk about yelling at Troy to actually friggin go. Sure sometimes you see him grab Troy and instruct him before he goes up the court but thats rare.
Also you here Mick talk about guys passing out of good shots in hopes of getting a better one.
This team moves the ball better than any other Mick Cronin team you rarely see the ball stall in someone hands for more than 5 seconds, which is a specialty of past teams. Right now the team is in a shooting funk whether thats from fatigue, confidence, or defensive game plans from the other team IDK. But I do not believe any of this is on Mick and if you are trying to blame him, I think you just have an axe to grind.
Watching this team, yeah I get frustrated when shots aren't going in, but what I've found myself doing a lot less of this year is getting upset with shot selection.
For the 18th ranked team in the country with a 23-3 record.Caupain is a senior now. If he still can't play uptempo to the coaches standards (as some say, I don't fully believe it) then that becomes a coaching issue. I stated this earlier in the year that Mick should have benched him when it was said that Mick was frustrated at Caupain for playing slow. He didn't, and Caupain still plays at a horribly slow pace.
Yeah and like I said earlier in the thread, the teams we play in the NCAA haven't faced us before. Will be tougher to scout us, especially if we advance to play a 2nd game with the 2 day turnaround.
Caupain is a senior now. If he still can't play uptempo to the coaches standards (as some say, I don't fully believe it) then that becomes a coaching issue. I stated this earlier in the year that Mick should have benched him when it was said that Mick was frustrated at Caupain for playing slow. He didn't, and Caupain still plays at a horribly slow pace.
I like mick but I do agree with this to some extent. Does seem like we play scared and different against better teams. We always let teams stay in the game doing this.We now have an 11 year sample and it's clear to me Mick Cronin's teams are incapable of maintaining an efficient defense when we are playing well offensively and there is some rhythm to the game. That's why he gets so scared against good teams and wants to play rock fights.
In most cases, when that occurs it is evidence of a lack of talent. We have to make the games ugly against good teams to win because we cannot compete.
We now have an 11 year sample and it's clear to me Mick Cronin's teams are incapable of maintaining an efficient defense when we are playing well offensively and there is some rhythm to the game. That's why he gets so scared against good teams and wants to play rock fights.
In most cases, when that occurs it is evidence of a lack of talent. We have to make the games ugly against good teams to win because we cannot compete.
I did see that and thought it was a very good point. Not only are the teams we are playing now facing us for the second time, we are also first place in their conference. I promise they've seen plenty of our games and you better believe we are getting everyone's best shot. Not saying people won't be giving it their best on the tourney but we all know what it's like when the top team comes to town. Our defense is very hard to beat for a team that hasn't seen anything like it. Some of the more offensive conference, PAC 12, ACC aren't used to this on a nightly basis. And like a lot of people have said we just aren't defense this year, we can score if the game goes that way. We've struggled here and there but that's when the other team did too, we haven't been blown out once.
It's also easy to just assume teams will want to zone us...But if it's something you haven't played all year, it's not as easy as it sounds. Especially if we're willing to go smaller with Evans as a "4" at times.
Great argument.We now have an 11 year sample and it's clear to me Mick Cronin's teams are incapable of maintaining an efficient defense when we are playing well offensively and there is some rhythm to the game. That's why he gets so scared against good teams and wants to play rock fights.
In most cases, when that occurs it is evidence of a lack of talent. We have to make the games ugly against good teams to win because we cannot compete.