Beekman vs. Burton, Groves shooting the lights out (good positioning), Harris with Reece vs. without, and some other quick-hitters.
Just watched 25 or so minutes of the game for the first time and read a bunch of your review. Thoughts:
- I was yelling “shoot it” on the Rohde possession louder than I did on the Joey Hauser - K St possession. Twice! (We don’t exactly inspire confidence in our guys who are struggling, do we?)
- can’t convince me Eli would be doing worse in Dante’s minutes, so don’t try. Dante is not guarding and he’s not scoring. Eli might have a TO or 2 (or 3 or 4, who knows), but he’d get rim pressure and he’d defend, and (most importantly) he’d get better. Eli needs to play and it’s a minor tragedy Tony isn’t letting him do that. Two friggin years in a row he hasn’t played. One was bad luck. This year is just stupid.
- saw Reece with a bunch of “duh” moments. Being sick makes sense.
- Of all my critiques of Tony’s personnel choices and the broken offense he’s decided not to fix, I’m basically fine with the pack line. But the way ND attacks it by hitting the man in the corner as soon as we start to rotate is the kind of thing that might radicalize me in a year or two… stay tuned for that!
- Groves was great! Even played well defensively.
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Which is a non negotiable for a Bennett guard. A bad night is one thing, but to be turnover prone routinely will keep a guy perma-benched here.
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It’s true… but should it be? Beekman had 5 on Wednesday and also had some defensive lapses… but he was also dominant.
What if a player like Eli (and I don’t actually think this will be true, but as a hypothetical) never gets the turnovers under control but would still able to impact the game all throughout the box score?
Are we accurately weighing the cost of a turnover against the opportunity cost of keeping players like that off of the floor? Not accounting for points the other way, aren’t most turnovers the equivalent of a missed shot?
Not necessarily directing the questions at you as I know you’re just making a statement about CTB’s tendencies, but I’m inclined to think we’re a little too conservative on these things, especially in the Eli case.
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No, because a missed shot had a chance to be a made shot.
Edit: and missed shots have a chance to be ORebs.
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Sure, prior to it being taken.
But as an end result if your offense is missing more shots because you’re creating worse opportunities because less talented but less turnover prone players are playing, there’s a point where that becomes a greater net negative than a few possessions where you don’t get the shot up.
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Could be wrong but feels like turnovers morelikely to be scored on ten a regular missed shot.
Theres also turnovers from trying to make something happen, and then turnovers from poor ball handling. Gertrude is the latter.
Gertrude will be someone where it all suddenly clicks.
I understand the point you are trying to make and I’m not even necessarily disagreeing with the idea that we could be less conservative, but it’s just wrong to equate a turnover to a missed shot in an effort to justify your desire to see Eli play.
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My point just being, if you were looking at it as an equation, it would be a balance of turnovers as wasted possessions/opportunities the other way vs. output on those other possessions - how much the player forces the defense to play around him, what they create for themselves and others both directly and by being on the floor, what they limit and how they enable the defense to play on the other end, etc.
Where we mostly seem to play it as minimizing turnovers is the barrier to entry first and foremost.
Regardless of Eli, he’s just very relevent in the moment.
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I feel like this would be a different conversation if our offense were good. Like “say what you will about the methods, he’s getting it done.”
But our offense is garbage! So maybe the philosophy (minimize TOs above all else) is kinda helping create the garbage? Or at the very least failing to properly dispose of it?
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So the solution is to play the guy with the lowest ORtg on the team? Also the second lowest eFG%, the highest TO%, and 8% 3P%?
I’m on record saying I want to see the kid get some run but you’re on crack if you think he’s going to solve any problems for us.
Oh, and we have been winning games. We need to keep doing that.
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Speaking of turnovers…. Rohde had 4 against Louisville and they keep trotting him out there.
Not sure what he did during the summer that was so impressive but you can’t convince me right now he’s capable to play at this level.
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Maybe? I guess the solution is unlikely to be found in “keep doing what we’ve been doing.”
The winning part has been good. Feel like the offense has to get better to creat more sustained success this season. But maybe not!
Yes I 100% agree that you should look at it in a risk/reward context. If a guy’s positives greatly outweigh the negatives, then you live with the negatives.
That still doesn’t make a TO = a missed shot.
As for the specific case of Eli, I’m not convinced his current positives outweigh his current negatives. Apparently Tony agrees. Everybody is entitled to assume he’d be some kind of dominant game changer if he just got the chance, if that’s what you want to do. But he’s not playing for a reason. This isn’t a “don’t criticize Tony” post, but it is a “Tony is due the respect of at least considering that he might be right even if don’t believe that he is” post.
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Of course you’re right that a turnover isn’t exactly the same as a missed shot. The actual difference is the difference between an opponents expected points on the following possession after a turnover vs a rebound and then you have to back out offensive rebounding %
But I am talking about outcomes meaning, in hindsight, shots missed - not a turnover vs. a shot taken with no known outcome.
My point being solely just to say that the difference isnt that great and turnovers shouldn’t be disproportionately weighted vs everything else that goes into team performance when a player is on the floor.
To your conclusion re: Eli - I’m not making the case that he’s some savior who will change everything or even dramatically raise our ceiling. I don’t actually think that’s true.
But I do think he should see some playing time for a variety of near term and long term reasons, especially when we’re struggling to find great solutions at the three. And I do think he can help in the ways we’ve seen him contribute already and the turnover concerns are overblown.
Maybe he’s just worse than all of the options we’ve been playing - absolutely possible, but it’s not been so good that it’s not worth trying and if you don’t try there’s a real opportunity cost around the potential for him to get more comfortable in live game situations.
At the end of the day, the arguments that never playing him are correct feel very risk-averse, to me, which goes back to my general thought around turnovers being a complete deal breaker.
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Harris (RS 3rd year) is putting up worse shooting numbers than first year Casey Morsell. Without the defense.
Feel like that context is needed.
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Believe me, I understand your point. I also agree with basically everything you just said, with the exception being the relative value of a turnover. I’m not making an argument that Eli shouldn’t play. I want him to play. I’ve said it many times. But if you actually do a risk/reward analysis of the player, it basically makes the case for why he’s not playing. He turns it over at a high rate and there isn’t much production on the positive side to argue why he should be playing. Except potential. I recognize the potential and that’s why I want him to play too.
I don’t think Tony can do no wrong, but maybe I just give him more credit than some other posters. I think if Tony was seeing a lot of potential in practice for our Eli to positively impact games in the near term, we’d be seeing him play.
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Eli has a better effective FG % and True Shooting % than both Rohde and Harris.
He’s also 4th on the team in FT % and waaay better than Rohde and Harris.
He also has a good FT rate - .244 - better than Bond, Groves, McKneely and Rohde.
His turnover rate is 16.4%.
Reece is at 14.5% and
Rohde and Harris are both at 15.5%.
Gertrude’s Rebound rate is higher than Taine, Reece, Isaac, and Rohde.
His win shares per 40 is better than Harris and Rohde.
Eli has the 2nd best Defensive Rating on the team just behind Dunn.
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I hear you and think what you’re saying is fair.
The argument for him playing is almost entirely potential, also agreed.
I do think we’ve seen some things that point to an ability to contribute, though, defensively, on the glass, in transition, attacking the rim, where the narrative that he’s a walking turnover stems mostly from the Memphis game where everyone was and some games where he’s been the PG with the backups. Agree that his handle is loose and decision making is raw at times.
The argument for not playing him at all, to me, should rely on the idea that you just can’t risk putting him out there or he’ll cost you games - which I doubt as even if he makes a mistake or two you could pull him (other players do too). It happened to Leon a few games ago.
The benefit being that you’re taking a chance on the potential, developing a guy with immense talent, and will get the occasional contribution (and if all goes well maybe more than occasional) that the alternatives can’t give you.
Understood we’re ostensibly at the same place re: wanting him to play a little and not having overly lofty expectations for when he does, it sounds like the only difference is how much we disagree with the logic around the alternative.
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Leon not a good example as leon is not entrusted with bringing the ball up the court.
Fans think about the ceiling. Coaches focus on establishing the floor. Which we havent established yet in acc play
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