We should not overlook the silver lining in the dark cloud of pitiful shooting against Bama. We ran a surprisingly satisfying amount of zoom actions and moved the ball better.
Our off-ball players were in motion across the court and through the lane and we even reversed the ball some. The ball spent more time in the high wing area which enabled better passing to players cutting down the lane and allowed us to enter the ball more effectively into the blocks for post ups
The far fewer ball screens we did run were mostly for Newell which is always appropriate given his NBA skill level. Or were late in shot clocks as reasonable attempts to engineer shot opportunities. The hero ball attitudes and isolation schemes exhibited in the USC game were not a significant part of our game plan yesterday. CMW deserves some credit for the continuing transition away from a much more limiting and inefficient high post ball screen scheme.
The shooting was inexorably, eye-jabbingly awful. But had we hit free throws and made any reasonable percentage of our shots, the improved actions we were running would have kept this game close.
Silas, Montgomery and Leffew still don't appear to have fully bought into the zoom actions and they sometimes elected to drive the crowded lane instead of patiently waiting for the wing screens to develop. The problem also lies with our lackadaisical screening techniques which reduce the effectiveness of the zoom actions. Positioning of screens is poor and the recipients of the screen fail to make sharp cuts close to the screeners to effectively brush off the defenders.
Why are our screening techniques atrocious? Have those skills atrophied from our failure to run the actions in practice and scrimmages? Will they improve quickly now that we are running them often? Or did the staff purposefully value signing players with different skill sets other than the ability to run effective screening.
It won't move the meter to improve efficiency no matter how often we run off-ball screen actions if we don't run them properly. CMW already succeeded in changing the team culture to value and prioritize D. CMW also recruited in a way to improve our attitude towards rebounding too. Those skills involve hustle, desire and mindset.
Now we have to do the same to change team culture on setting screens and getting players free for open shots. Setting effective screens ought to be recognized and applauded by coaches, bench and fans just like laying down a sacrifice bunt to advance runners is in baseball. We are a work in progress but we would be showing some much needed improvement in O efficiency if we could only hit a few shots.
Our off-ball players were in motion across the court and through the lane and we even reversed the ball some. The ball spent more time in the high wing area which enabled better passing to players cutting down the lane and allowed us to enter the ball more effectively into the blocks for post ups
The far fewer ball screens we did run were mostly for Newell which is always appropriate given his NBA skill level. Or were late in shot clocks as reasonable attempts to engineer shot opportunities. The hero ball attitudes and isolation schemes exhibited in the USC game were not a significant part of our game plan yesterday. CMW deserves some credit for the continuing transition away from a much more limiting and inefficient high post ball screen scheme.
The shooting was inexorably, eye-jabbingly awful. But had we hit free throws and made any reasonable percentage of our shots, the improved actions we were running would have kept this game close.
Silas, Montgomery and Leffew still don't appear to have fully bought into the zoom actions and they sometimes elected to drive the crowded lane instead of patiently waiting for the wing screens to develop. The problem also lies with our lackadaisical screening techniques which reduce the effectiveness of the zoom actions. Positioning of screens is poor and the recipients of the screen fail to make sharp cuts close to the screeners to effectively brush off the defenders.
Why are our screening techniques atrocious? Have those skills atrophied from our failure to run the actions in practice and scrimmages? Will they improve quickly now that we are running them often? Or did the staff purposefully value signing players with different skill sets other than the ability to run effective screening.
It won't move the meter to improve efficiency no matter how often we run off-ball screen actions if we don't run them properly. CMW already succeeded in changing the team culture to value and prioritize D. CMW also recruited in a way to improve our attitude towards rebounding too. Those skills involve hustle, desire and mindset.
Now we have to do the same to change team culture on setting screens and getting players free for open shots. Setting effective screens ought to be recognized and applauded by coaches, bench and fans just like laying down a sacrifice bunt to advance runners is in baseball. We are a work in progress but we would be showing some much needed improvement in O efficiency if we could only hit a few shots.
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