This made me think of the way Pope designed the BYU offense around Aly Khalifaâs skillset last season and the way it was so successful. I wonder if Buchanan might have similar skills. Also, Khalifa played for Ronchez at Charlotte, so I wonder how he was used there and if Ron watched any BYU games from last season to see what all the talk about Khalifa was about and picked up some ideas.
4 Likes
He was using Khalifa as an offensive hub, maybe tilted a little more towards scoring than passing compared how BYU used Khalifa, but he gave him plenty of opportunities to show off his passing touch.
5 Likes
Hereâs the portal tapes from this past year. Tbh, my main takeaway is that portal tapes doesnât really do that good of a jobâŚ
3 Likes
Torvik update:
With preseason weighting:
Offense: 125
Defense: 32
Without preseason weighting (just based on 4 games played):
Offense: 223
Defense: 29
4 Likes
Weâre terrible, and that was clear to me after CTB retired and after each of the first three games (Nova shooting mirage notwithstanding), but the way weâre terrible has surprised me.
Itâs our shot volume.
Our TOs are way too high (21.6%, 319th nationally) and our ORs are non-existent (20.9%, 344th nationally). That means other teams get a lot more FG attempts than we do (66-49 last night).
Our shooting is only OK (great at 3s, terrible at 2s, blends to 51.2% EFG, which is 121st nationally) and cannot overcome our lack of attempts.
8 Likes
I donât think weâre terrible. Weâre pretty mediocre. Will look really good against certain teams when our shots are falling but are going to really struggle against teams that have length and pressure our guards.
5 Likes
Way too early to deliver a final verdict. There were silver linings last night. Not many, but a couple. And our rotation skews young. Three true sophomores, two true freshmen.
At some point, I was like - hey we are battling! And then a few minutes later, we werenât.
But I used to have a pet theory that scoring margins can be misleading. The point is to win, not to beat the spread, or even keep it to the spread.** So when we were down by 8 or so, we needed to try to win. But basically that led to us playing a bit ragged. Which played right into Tennesseeâs hand unfortunately.
To be fair, this is an underbaked theory.
** folks who disagree should remember how we made the tourney last year â bad predicitves, good success based numbers
2 Likes
And not a single 4th or 5th year.
Meanwhile, Tennesseeâs Top 7:
Zeigler: 4th year, all with UT
Mashack: 4th year, all with UT
Lanier: 5th year transfer
Milicic: 4th year transfer
Okpara: 3rd year transfer
Gainey: 4th year returnee
Dubar: 5th year transfer
Their least experienced rotation player has as many years as our most experienced.
4 Likes
Random question but have they announced what early-season tourney weâre playing in next year?
1 Like
For me, it was just an absolutely putrid time for a HOF coach to decide heâs gonna peace out a few weeks before the season.
He kind of Fâd Ron. He Fâd the season. He Fâd the idea of a â2 year planâ.
TLDR- Tony is gone. The 2 year plan, if it ever existed, is in the shred bin.
We are more or less where weâve been since Ron got interim Markeled. He needs to exceed the likely outcome of his HOF prior boss to keep the gig.
9 Likes
One more negative Nelly comment and then Iâll leave you all alone for a few minutes.
We are running a brand new offense with brand new schemes that is more or less exactly the same as our old offense, even though itâs totally different.
Iâve made the comment that ânew offenseâ should mean more than sets and where you set ball screens and who sets up where.
If anything, Ron is even more of a stick in the mud than Tony. He doesnât even believe in easy buckets. He doesnât believe in ORs. He doesnât believe in leveraging situations to attack an unset defense.
So if we can create good jump shots in the flow of our offense and knock down those jump shots at a high enough rate, then our offense will look pretty good! (Villanova!). And if we canât, then we have no other way of making our offense look decent (VCU, Georgetown, Campbell, Coppin, Tennessee).
(And yes, a lot of this is a personnel issue⌠unlike last years team, thereâs not really an obvious âeasy bucketâ solution âŚ)
4 Likes
Only you could have a TL:DR section longer than the paragraph it summarized 
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Haneyâs post prompts a question for me: does CTB retire if Elijah doesnât shred his knee on the scooter? It feels like a healthy Elijah with practice under his belt makes this team a lot better (not FF good but tournament probably) and puts us in great shape to make a real run next year. Like that injury I think really altered the trajectory of the next couple of years. Obviously unknowable though
I think the things that made Tony leave were:
Traudt, funny story, Kon
The Traudt thing hurt even worse because Tony even said it that we had other guys we would have gotten⌠and then Igor also left because of Traudt coming in along with not playing over Statts.
Kon was the back breaker though.
P.s. Ament didnât help either.
7 Likes
Iâd throw in Perry too given the unusual conditions there. We were recruiting against no one and still lost him.
Traudt to funny story to kon to Perry. Just a horrible streak - each impacted by the new environment.
6 Likes
Tonyâs downfall began with Guy and Jerome leaving early and missing out on Juzang and then Morsell Jabri and Carson not panning out all at the same time.
Followed by the revolving door of undersized or slow 4 man
No complete guards = no offense.
No versatile athletic 4 man = no packline d
16 Likes
Ideally if he wanted to position Ron for the best chance of success he would have done it next fall to align with the 2 year plan. Thatâs assuming we had minimal roster turnover after this season if he were still coaching. This was always going to be a transitional season with so many new pieces.
2 Likes
This is just part of the story. Covid played a significant role, too. Coach Bennett couldnât evaluate prospects in the summer of 2020. The results were that both high school signees in the 2021 class were from overseas. In the normal scheme of things, the 2020 class would have followed in the pattern of 2012 & 2016. Filling in with transfers seriously compromised the continuity which Bennett had been developing.
3 Likes
Iâm not saying Gertrude wouldnât have been good this season, but I feel like we keep assuming that guys who have done nothing for us were going to single-handedly save this season. Bliss and Gertrude primarily. Have we ever had guys make that sort of jump in year 2 after not playing in year 1? I know Bliss redshirted but same concept applies to him.
2 Likes