Flow is basically just the ball screen offense everyone runs - we just are often much more static off ball when we’re running it, which really isn’t as effective. That would be something we could easily invest a little tlc into and improve.
But we need a Sides alternative, IMO.
In my mind, I see two separate graphs of an exponential curve. One graph is titled Defensive Execution and one is Offensive Execution. X axis is % of Practice time. At 80% allocation toward defense, we are at the far right side of the defensive curve where it is basically flat. In other words, if we allocated another 10% of time we would get very little improvement in Defensive execution. On the offensive curve, we are at 20% allocation of the X-axis (80% is defense) where the curve is very steep. Another 10% of time allocated to offense from defense would produce significant gains while harming us very little defensively. Can anyone swing by Tony’s office and have the convo? Thanks. Appreciate you.
Perhaps I’m saying this because these kinds of offenses knocked us out of the tournament 2 years in a row, but my preference would be a Princeton-based system with 5-out looks like what Colorado St or Furman run. Has lots of off-ball screening and movement, lots of read-and-react, but better maintains spacing when run well (and with some shooting threats).
Finally read the full article. Really well done, thanks for that.
I agree that we need to change the scheme – not just for recruiting better talent but because Sides is fundamentally flawed. YES we can (and have) won with it. But we can do better, to you point, in creating offense that attacks the rim and generates 3 point shots, that is less predictable, and allows us to take advantage of mismatches more frequently. But I think it has and will cripple recruiting going forward. For that reason alone, it needs to be scrapped.
The only major thing I disagree with in your article is the your arguments around Pace. Yes, it is simply math. And at the college level, I don’t believe pace of play introduces material variance – at least to the degree you suggest. The UCONN team you cited repeatedly in the article plays VERY slow at 315th in the country. Yes, that’s still 5 possessions more than we play at, but if you assume 1.2 PPP offensively and 0.8 PPP defensively, that’s still only 2 points (JUST 2 POINTS!) in expanded predicted margin. And that’s before you assume any inverse relationship between efficiency and pace. I do think pace matters more in the NBA with more possessions in a game, but at the college level it isn’t some variance enabler.
Agree with what cuts said above. To me it’s a few things that are less about schemes and sets and more about style, some softer coaching tendencies, and recruiting strategy. All of these things needs to be solved for whether we double down on B/M or change things more wholesale:
Like Duke
This year playing 4 combo guards 1 undersized PF and 2 centers
+1 to @zvillehoo on this one. Efficiency stats are tempo-free for a reason. This year, many of the best offensive teams are in the bottom 50% of teams when it comes to pace of play. I take your point (about being more flexible around tempo), and I agree with it but would probably frame it as “controlling the tempo of a game does not mean that you have to play every possession at a snail’s pace. You can score quickly or even in transition (gasp) and still be in control of the tempo as long as you’re determining when the games speeds up.”
In the NBA the fastest paced team, Washington, gets basically 106 possessions per game and the slowest, New York gets basically 99. That’s 7 possessions per game spread out over a much bigger sample size.
In college, the fastest team gets 15 more possessions than us a game - which is 25% of our total possessions in a game! Even 6 more possessions per game is 10% of our total possessions. Each possession is more valuable in the college game so PACE becomes a huge weapon if you benefit from fewer possessions - which sometimes benefits us and sometimes really hurts us.
My point isn’t that offenses can’t be efficient with a slower PACE - offensive efficiency isn’t relevant to pace (other than potentially the mental aspect).
I’m saying that you increase game variance when you play at a slower pace because each possession matters more so random bounces/shooting anomalies, etc are more impactful. Good for when we’re trying to upset a team, bad for when we’re trying to avoid being upset.
Prima facie true, of course.
However, the number of possessions per game is a by-product of the length not only of offensive possessions, but also defensive possessions. And there is likely to be a correlation between defensive efficiency and defensive possession length – our opponents likely score fewer points per possession as the length of the possessions increase (culminating in shot clock violations, of course, but also desperation shots as the shot clock winds down).
Put simply, we would suffer even more upsets if we let opponents have more relatively easier early-in-the-shot-clock opportunities. Yes, that’s a deliberate oversimplification to encourage reflection on the metrics.
We also likely score fewer points as the length of our possessions increases as things stand now (I’d be willing to wager that was the case this year as we regularly passed up good and great never came).
If one believes that our pace of play positively impacts the points per possession that we allow, I’d wager the inverse is true of how we score; especially factoring in the mental element of big games. Either way, I don’t think either necessarily have to be true, and I’m trying to advocate for a system in which we run more effective offense such that there isn’t so much pressure on the defense, even if defense is still our core identity.
On a macro level, if we make adjustments to the program and we’re a team that’s going to be a high seed in the tournament year-over-year, it makes sense (at least to me) to get away from HAVING to play in a style that inserts more variance into a game.
That’s not what variance is, but again, I take your point. Variance typically increases with sample size. And yes, decreasing possessions does increase the weight of each possession.
From a practical standpoint, if slowing down the game was the recipe to beating better teams, then I’d think that we’d see a lot more teams rolling that out as a strategy to pull off upsets. I’d argue that I’ve seen as many underdogs win by speeding up the game as the opposite. Maybe I’m remembering selectively though.
What you’re describing with a random ball bounces having a significant effect on the game’s outcome is true of any close game. I’ve never compared the number of close, slow vs. close, fast games but generally speaking I’ve seen examples of both.
Right, and my point is that whereas changing offensive philosophies will increase our pace, that’s only half of the input on possessions per game. Sacrificing defensive efficiency for the sake of increasing pace seems unwise, so there are constraints on how much the pace could be increased to capitalize on superior talents.
Let me take a step back here because I’m using “variance” in a game design way where the discussion is around the spread of outcomes due to randomness. It’s basically, how swingy is the outcome of the game?
A spread of game outcomes over a 60 possession game due to randomness (bad calls, fluke shots, statistically abnormal shooting, fouls being distributed to a single player in fluke ways, a surprise strategy working that can be adjusted to, etc.) is going to be more variable than in a 75 possession game because each of those events has a larger impact on the game. Basically, there’s less time for the better team to “settle” and exert their talent superiority.
That doesn’t mean that all good teams have to play fast nor that playing fast can’t be a strategy that underdogs employ (although I’d definitely bet it’s not as common or effective) - but if a team is just flatly better than their opponent on average and have a higher points per possession expected on average, it’s usually better for them the more possessions there are in a game.
I agree with the directionality of the pace/variance argument. If each team gets 1000 possessions, the better team will always win. If each team gets only 1 possession, the better team may win only a little over 50% of the time.
I’m just not convinced that 60 possessions vs. 66** is really big enough to matter enough to make this worth talking about. I’d be happy to be proven wrong, if someone wants to do the math. (I don’t lol.)
**I chose 66 rather than 75 because speeding up our offense without speeding up our defense (the latter probably being a bad thing) would likely only get us to average pace.
Having said all that, I’m still in favor of an offense that’s not being slow just for the sake of being slow, as it sometimes seems ours is.
There are some assumptions here that I don’t think have to be true.
Increasing our offensive efficiency doesn’t HAVE to increase our pace. It’s more related to the offense itself, how many good looks its generating, how good we are at executing it (and of course the talent of those executing it). But, it probably will because if we’re doing it well we should get some good looks before the end of the shot clock… and that’s a good thing!
Increasing pace doesn’t HAVE to decrease defensive efficiency. There are many variables that go into that. But more opportunities to score against us doesn’t necessarily equate to those opportunities being better and would be offset if the quality of our opportunities improved by more than the quality of our opponent’s, which I don’t think would be a big ask given the recent quality of our opportunities.
That should definitely be goal #1 - improve our offense by more than we hurt our defense.
Our average margin over our 34 games this year was +3.14 points per contest. 6 possession feels like a lot to me if they’re favorable ones.
To be clear, I’m not saying speed up pace out of context, but I am saying that it would be good if we didn’t HAVE to intentionally slow what our offense is trying to do down to be effective - and if we had the ability to increase the number of possessions in a game if that was to our advantage re: our positioning against our opponent. Currently this is a strategic option we lack.
All of those assumptions are predicated on an additional assumption that there should be a goal of increasing the number of possessions in our games, which I think is much less important than improving our offensive efficiency.
They get to that pace in a very polarized way, as they get into transition a fair amount (28.7% of initial shot attempts in transition, which is around #100), but then if transition isn’t there, are very slow in the half court. But they use the whole shot clock on actions that set up additional actions. I think they kinda get the same “wear you down” effect that B/M has gotten at times when run well, but the design of their sets does a better job in recent years of putting cumulative strain on a defense.
I definitely agree on the last point. #1 goal is improving our offensive efficiency and I wrote as much in the piece that the pace discussion was not as important as that. If we could somehow improve our offensive efficiency a great deal while playing even slower than we do now (and defend just as well or better) then you definitely do that… but that doesn’t seem likely given that we’re already playing at the slowest pace of anyone.
The pace discussion is tangential but independent of that.
I think of it this way: let’s assume we could magically replicate our exact same point per possession efficiency (allowed and given) at 66 possessions per game as we do currently at 60ppp. That’s strictly better against teams that would have a worse PPP differential matching up against us and strictly worse against teams that would have a better one.
So it would be good if we found a system (or adopted a playstyle) that allowed us to vary our pace depending on the situation rather than only being able to play one way to be effective.
And, just in terms of overall pace/efficacy as it relates to our team, I’m not even sure that has to be true for this team as it is now, tbh. No way to prove it, but I’d be willing to wager a lot having scoured these games that we’ve hurt ourselves more by passing up opportunities to run and take early open shots in a possession than we’ve helped our defense by making those same decisions.