KU Coaching Staff to Pose Nude...NOT
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NOT!
But now that I have your undivided attentions, Self has to decide if he wants to play a low possession game of the kind GU likes, i.e., play it anyway they want, or does he want to hurry it up.
Who we are is a weak inside rebounding, half court team that likes low possessions, because we don’t want to give an opposing strong rebounding team a lot of chances at stick backs on the offensive glass, which a high possession game enables.
On the other hand, KU is a much better shooting team than GU, so more trips equal more opps for that superior shooting percentage to tip scoring in our favor.
What to do, if you are Bill Self?
It will be interesting if Self decides to keep it slow and pack it inside to shut off their inside game and see if they can make any treys. If neither team is hitting from the outside, we could conceivably see a bang-ball game, where both teams end in the high 40s to low 50s.
But I think Self will tell his players at least to hurry it up the floor with long sideline passes to make GU hurry up the floor right along with KU, and then run the stuff and make them guard awhile. This will do more to get Smith into foul trouble than anything. KU has not done this yet this season and this is a good game to break this old tactic of Self’s out of the incase of emergency break glass case.
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I’m assuming we are better-conditioned than them, if anything because of a) Hudy and b) better athletes. Under normal circumstances, I’d say run 'em out of the gym. But under normal circumstances, we’d be playing at AFH. Since we’re not, I’d say a balanced attack is best. We gotta play some half court, if anything, just to minimize crowd impact, particularly in our first true road game.
Screens and swings and a little weaving in the half-court game, and aggressive-yet-opportunistic fast breaks would be my formula. (But thank God I’m not coach!)
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“Since we’re not, I’d say a balanced attack is best.”
We need to learn to focus on tempo. And offense and defense need to play at their own unique (best) tempos. We can use one to adjust the other. For example… if we pick it up on defense, speed up our end (and hopefully our opponent’s offense) that should give us more energy in our offense. Doesn’t mean we need to speed up our offense… just have more energy.
If we come out slow and fall behind, we need to adjust the tempo. If we come out with a sped up offense because the other team is pressing… we need to call a timeout and talk about it. Get the ball past half court and run more determined offense.
This is an area that will make or break us this year.
Control our own tempo, control our own destiny.
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I think you are onto something, as usual.
But this tempo thing has always been really tough for me to unsnag, because there can be a lot of circularity in logic triggered by the feeding loop back and forth between offensive and defensive tempo assumptions and assumptions about their cascading effects.
So, as important as I think what you are getting at is, I cannot yet articulate a sound set of rules about how to set and vary tempo. But I will work on it.
Where I always get tripped up in thinking about this issue may seem kind of arcane, but it is at the foundation of all choices one makes about tempo.
The issue may be layed out this way.
If you are poor shooting team, do you want a low, or high possession game?
And if you are a good shooting team, do you want a low, or high possession game?
Let us assume for the sake of analysis that both teams are equally good defensive teams.
The underlying crux is this: as number of possessions decline, the percentage contribution of each score to total score increases.
As the number of possessions increases, the percentage contribution of each score on each possession decreases relative to total score.
If you shoot a low percentage and your opponent shoots a high percentage, then the more trips there are the more opportunities for the superior shooting team to score more points than the inferior shooting team.
On the other hand, as you lower possessions, each possession is in a sense more valuable and so a superior shooting team ought to see its advantage magnified in a low possession game, also.
The conventional wisdom is that better shooting teams ought to speed it up into higher possession games, while poorer shooting teams ought to slow games down into lower possession, grind it out games.
But the simplified logic I have just outlined contradicts that conventional wisdom.
The logic I have articulated suggests that long, or short possession games will not decisively help or hurt either team.
Other things equal, the better shooting team will hold distinct advantage in low AND high possession games.
Therefore, coaches should not be altering tempo, at least to achieve high, or low, possession games, according to good, or bad shooting nights.
One should be altering tempo based on the comparative athleticism skills of the two teams.
If one team is long and massive and relatively slow, then it needs to keep the game a low possession game so as not to be undermined by its own limitations. It ought to want to battle for spots and avoid playing for control of lines.
If one team is lithe, long and athletic, or short and quick, or some combination of both, it ought to be wanting to play that way as much of the time as possible to avoid its own limitations in a slow down and battle for spots game. It ought to want to turn the game into a game of lines both in half court and in transition.
Or so it seems.
As I said, I am not at all resolved on this yet.
What I will say now is this.
You want to play as few possessions as possible against their high percentage offense; i.e., when they have both Smith-Rivera and Smith in together,energized and unfouled up. So early in the game you want a long possession game both directions. But you want to hurry Smith up the floor every time before you run a long possession aimed at getting him fouled up; that means driving into him. Once he is out, you still want short possessions on both ends. Why? KU appears the better shooting team from outside, and about equal inside, so the more possessions KU gets against a poor shooting team the greater our scoring advantage will grow.
It is the reverse for GU. Since they are best when shooting inside, they want as many possessions as possible early when the combination of Smith Rivera and Smith are most potent; i.e., at the beginning of each half. Then without them, they want the fewest possessions possible to minimize the scoring efficiency advantage of our overall better shooting will yield.
Both these strategies, of course, will unfold and be altered in efficacy of effect by which team is having an off night, or an on night shooting the ball.
When neither team is shooting the ball well, a question arises: do we slow it down as much as possible and muddy it up, or do we try to get out and go to try to get some easy transition baskets we can make even on a bad shooting night.
The answers will likely differ for each team. depending on how they are shooting early in each half.
If GU can’t buy a basket early even with Smith-Rivera and Smith in, then they may with their likely rebounding advantage decide to squirt out for some transition baskets, while leaving Smith behind as a safety. If GU stays cold after sitting Smith, then they may decide to muddy it up on both ends, run their stuff, and keep KU from getting out on the break.
If KU can’t buy a basket early, it should not only hurry it up, but actually try to squirt out in transition since its trying to wind Smith anyway. But if KU were hot from trey early, then it wants keep hurrying and get more possessions by shooting more quickly.
Frankly, I think the reason Self is such an aficionado of pressure defense is that most of the time pressure defense is an equally effective cnwhen you are trying to muddy it up, and when you are trying to get out and go, and any where in between.
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So if the coaching staff is going to pose nude, does that mean Bill is going to pose sans toupee?
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It would depend, would it not?.
