Numbers that are tough to stomach

[braves12]

I agree with BradleyBrave in that you can't just chuck up 3 pointers if you don't have good 3 point shooters. I am for a balance of inside to the bigs, driving to draw fouls, and 3 point shooting. I actually thought BU did all 3 yesterday......not great....but they tried. The thing I see missing is the old throw it in and throw it back out. They did more of this in 2006. Also I would like to see a few more fakes by the bigs inside and go to the basket hard, not just turn and shoot. Also I would like to see the drivers drawing more fouls and not falling away from the defense. I would like to have the winning ticket for the raffle also, but that might be asking too much...

[Out of Bounce]

Fine. Let's just keep chucking up 3's at a 20% clip and see how many games we win. With no post presence to keep the defense honest, and a line that's a foot farther than it was last year, it sounds like a great idea.

Come on BB, chucking and 20% Tell me how we get a better inside game with only one big playing at a time. Help me understand. I have suggested and I am on record as wanting to go bigger before day one and still do. Maybe with Wilkens coming and more time for AT we can have two bigs in at the same time. If that happens, then what you read below just may happen

[BradleyBrave]

Its not a great idea but how can you run a four guard offense without shooting threes? If we stop shooting threes and dont have a post up threat how should we score?

We can run our 2006 hi-low pretty effectively with guys like TW, TB, AT, SS, and DC. Yeah, our bigs aren't the greatest, but I don't think they're utilized to their fullest either. We ran the 4-guard offense because we had to. We don't have to anymore. Our best season came when we weren't running it.

[braves12]

I am not sure why when other teams play BU man, and the 5s go out to set screens that Wilson, Brown, Dunson, or Roberts can't go low and post up whoever is guarding them. There are lots of ways to score points in the paint and draw fouls on the other team......it just doesn't have to be the 5s.

[SFP]

I respectfully disagree.

Signed,
Herm Edwards

OK I agree with you here after I re-read my post but I do believe that if they do play for the 40 minutes that wins will follow.

[Out of Bounce]

Totally disagree. As long as TW launches those high arching 3 point attempts, then he should lay off the threes... someone on the staff needs to work with TW on this... It is the main reason his 3 point percentage is down this year. Also, TB needs to work on the three as well as the mid range game in practice to make him a more all around player. TB has time to improve on this and I am confidant he will do so.

I agree with you Beni, I am not sure where all that arch came from. The coaching staff needs to work with him and get him back to the shot he had last year. He shot 41% from the 3 last year and is throwing up air balls and rainbows for 22% this year so far not to mention his free throw shooting up on till Sunday, where he did better. Something is wrong and he needs to work on both.

[Out of Bounce]

We can run our 2006 hi-low pretty effectively with guys like TW, TB, AT, SS, and DC. Yeah, our bigs aren't the greatest, but I don't think they're utilized to their fullest either. We ran the 4-guard offense because we had to. We don't have to anymore. Our best season came when we weren't running it.

I agree with what you say here. I just would like to see two bigs in the game at the same time. Develop a good inside game and good things will start to happen. AT's game would benefit a lot with playing with another big while helping the other bigs.
EM and SM, 3 shot has picked up the past couple games. TW shot has gone south and needs Big help. I to just don't want to chuck up 3's but I just can't see giving up on a wide open 3 unless like I said theres a better wide open shot.
A good inside game with two bigs is just what this team needs to win big the rest of the year. The inside game of SEMO Sunday was NO indication of what lies ahead. I hope we understand that and do what it takes to improve the inside game (2 Bigs at the same time or shoot 45 to 50% from the 3.)

[dogsrus]

Shoot threes...go big....drive and dish...inside out...it all doesn't matter. Just do it the ISU way, schedule cupcakes and be sitting at 9-0 with nothing to spin but the schedule.

I'm sure even some of OUR fine posters could manage to somehow explain how a SOS in the 200's and and RPI close to 300 is not as bad as it seems.

[braveatheart]

Team numbers

BU's team FG% - .429
BU's team 3-point FG% - .296
BU's team FT% - .681
BU's assist/turnovers - 119/147
BU opponent's 3-point FG% - .384
BU opponent's PPG - 69.8

Individual numbers

Theron Wilson's 3-point FG% - .222 - Why does he continue to shoot them?
Theron Wilson's FT % - .696 - Not good. He gets there so often it should be better.
Sam Maniscalco's 3-point FG% - .267 - Hopefully this goes up as he plays more 2 guard.
Sam Maniscalco's FT% - .704 - This needs to be better.
Eddren McCain's FT% - .474 - Beyond terrible.
Taylor Brown's 3-point FG% - .10 - Why does he continue to launch them?
Taylor Brown's FT% - .476 - See comment for McCain.
Darian Norris's FG% - .294 - See comment for Sam.

These are some absolutely woeful offensive numbers, and our defense of the 3 is bad as well. Hopefully one thing we have learned through 9 games is that we're not a good perimeter shooting team. Shooting 25 3's a game is not a good idea for a team that can't shoot. I thought it looked like we made a much stronger effort to work the ball inside than we have all year. I hope that it continues.

BB let me take issue with a couple of the team numbers first.
True our team FG% is only 42.9% but that is low only because of the 3 point %. In fact our 2 pt. FG% is 51.8% which is very good. The 2pt % ranks 59th out of 343 D1 teams. Our 3pt% is what kills us. 29.6% ranks us at 279 out or 343 on the 3 pointer.

Next our free throw percentage at 68.1% is not that bad. It is not that good but realy not that bad. According to Pomeroy that puts us at #170 out of 343. Very middle of the road. I think it just seems bad since last year we shot them at a 74.4% clip. We only have 2 players that are shooting worse than the team average. They are both freshmen that both look like shooters to me. If we take both them out of the average we have shot 72.2% as a team. Keep in mind that SM made his last 5 FT attempts to pull his average up to 70.4% and the two freshman replace Crouch 87.0% and Ruffin 83.5%. Two great FT shooters.
Also, our FT shooting has not cost us a game yet. In 3 of our 4 losses we would have still lost if we made all our FT's. The other loss (Butler) we would have had to make all our FT's (31) to tie the game. That is not realistic.

You do have a very good point on 3 pt % allowed. We allow teams to shoot 38.4% against us on 3's. That ranks us 294 out of 343. Not too good. I think our small gaurds hurt us a little there as other teams just shoot over the top of our 5-11 and 6-0 gaurds almost as easily as if they were wide open. If we get AW this year I bet he would help us a little on this.

This team runs the 3/4 gaurd lineup like last year and the year before but the difference this year is we have no JC or AW or DR to knock down the deep ball. JC and AW also defended the 3 better at 6'5" than the 5'11" guys who replace them. I will say that even though this team is small at gaurd they do seem to rebound better than last year.
It is hard to knock this team as I think JL thought he would have AW back by now and if we had him our 3 pt % would be up, our FT% would be up and our 3PT allowed % woud be down. I don't think JL really ever expected to have to solve these problems. Last year we had real rebounding issues and JL seems to have figured that our. Given a little time I think he will figure out the 3 pointer % and the 3 pointer allowed %.
Keep the faith.

[BradleyBrave]

Are we still taking issue with the numbers I mentioned in this thread? Our 3-point shooting, our FT shooting, our 3-point defense...all bad.

-UWM shot over 50% from 3 in the 1st half last night and put the game out of reach. They shot 41% for the game.

-We shot 27 3's and again shot in the 20's percentage-wise (.222).

-We took 83 FG attempts and missed 58 of them. That is truly amazing.

-We shot poorly from the FT line again.

Last night was a perfect example...these stats are not anomalies, they're very telling.

[BradleyBrave]

After last night's game, our opponents are now shooting .387 from 3 on the season. We're now also getting outrebounded. We're also getting outscored in the 1st half, but winning the 2nd half. That tells me that we don't come ready to play from the opening tip. We didn't get away with that last night, and won't when conference play starts. We just don't have the shooters to overcome the kind of deficits we could last year.

[it's boogie time]

Last night was a perfect example...these stats are not anomalies, they're very telling.

I love stats, but I don't think you need to dig deep to find the deficiencies in this team. The past two years, Bradley has outshot and outhustled the other team to gain their 20+ victories. Now that the shooting isn't at that high level and the other problems are still around, the victories are going to be hard to come by. Coach Les has his work cut out for him with this current rotation.

[BradleyBrave]

I love stats, but I don't think you need to dig deep to find the deficiencies in this team. The past two years, Bradley has outshot and outhustled the other team to gain their 20+ victories. Now that the shooting isn't at that high level and the other problems are still around, the victories are going to be hard to come by. Coach Les has his work cut out for him with this current rotation.

It took us 38 games to win 21 last year, so I wouldn't really say we outshot or outhustled too many teams.

[it's boogie time]

Much more than we are going to this year.

[Lakeview Brave]

What happend in practice that led us to start shooting free throws so much better? Its amazing that they could be so bad and now so good.