I orignally had this as part of another post I made today about the state of the college game today and it's physicallity, poor fundamentals, and lack of execution, but it it is more applicable here, and I added comments on defense. In all honesty, I think between parts of '05-'06 and '06-'07, we were about the most finese offensive team out there at times, and it was something to watch with the clean screens, crisp passsing working the angles, and good shot seelction and shooting. I just think that given how the game is played, it it is extremely hard to run our offense, especially when trying to do it undersized. And, espcially when we play only one guy with any size compared to what we did previous seasons.
All defenses have to do is get physical on the point and the ball screeners--push them out and fight them, and the ball winds up being past the top of the key, and the passsing lanes and angles get obstructed and aren't there. Also, why in the heck we run the same sets that struggle now and get the lone center (which is typically Matt who really isn't a center to begin with) 15 feet away from the basket (which results in no true post position for shooting or rebounding) for most of the possession is beyond me at times.
Given the lineups and the offense, I think that's why we are primarily left with some wing and a lot of corner threes--leaving us with poor shooting percentages. We really need 2 guys out there at the sametime who are not only adequately big and physcial, but in shape and agile enough to move from high ball screen to setting up an adequate post. In '05-'06 we had Marcellus, POB, and Zack to fill those roles, whereas last year we had JJ and Matt in addition to Zack to step into those roles, but I think the ability of Will to pentrate and find the open man in addition to Daniel helped to compensate for some screening and inside play. Having two guys like Dan and Will who could just say, "Forget about the screens, I'll just break you down, find seems, collapse the D, and pass," is very hard to do without when you don't have the bigger athletes out there.
With that being said about the offense, it still puts pleanty of points on the board. But what really has been consistenly lagging is the defense, which is pretty much the base defense we have run for the past few seasons. I think some of the same personnel decisions/differnces account for these short-comings (lack of big guys who are big enough to body up on D and rebounding, and another guard (or another player period) who is quick enough to recover on D when helping and doubling, but it may be to a lesser extent, The lack of proper execution on defense may be where Jimmy is getting at about addressing the teams problems. In other words, yes DC, Will, or even Sam may be a little more of benefit on offense (but given the present observations I made above, there is not much more room for improvement unless the players improve or Jimmy alters the offensive sets), but they just do not exucute on defense the way we need them to.
But it does irritate me to no end, like I have said many a time before, to see JC at 6'4"-6'5" and SM 5'10", plyaing post defense against guys 6" and/or 25 to 50 lbs. heavier. I think we would all rather see true 4 and 5 men, who may blow some plays outright several times for all to see, try to play defense and at least have a shot to guard based on size, than to have undersized players guys that may try, but have almost chance at all based on a complete mismatch.
P.S. Sam M is playing darn well--to the point of almost making me eat my words some. Way to go, and keep it up. However, given the offense Jim seems wedded to, Sammy just does not have the quickness to run it the way it has been before. In fact,we need to quick guards on the floor at the same time. Given what is happening now, I wonder if Jim will change things up next year in terms of what we run?
I don't live in Peoria and I really, really want them if they are available.
