Team Trends Heading into Last Weeks of Season

[cbertus6]

I've recently been diving back into some of the data at cbbanalytics.com to see how the team has performed so far, and how that's changed over time. One thing that stood out to me was some of the trends over the last 5 games. During that time, our 3-point attempt rate (number of 3s/number of total attempts) was just under 45% and good for the 93rd percentile in the country meaning we are launching a crazy high number of 3PAs. On the flip side, we are taking just under 29 2-point attempts per game which would put us in the 2nd (!!) percentile. This really stood out to me after watching the OSU game where it felt like all our points (game winner aside) came at or around the rim. Jalon Moore, Oweh, and even Uzan were all monsters around the rim and the offense looked so much better. Seems to indicate to me that we need to be more aggressive slashing to the basket moving forward. I'm sure this is in part because teams are giving us some open looks due to bad shooters on the floor, but it is something we should be looking at ourselves via self scouting.

On another note, our defense has a steal % over the last 5 games of just 5.3% which is good for 0th percentile (you read that right). YIKES!! That is a problem. Even though we've cleaned up the turnovers over the last 5 games ourselves (14.3% - good for 66th percentile), we are still losing the turnover battle because we cannot force any. We have the wings and guards to put more pressure on the ball, but it doesn't seem to be translating to production right now. Need to figure that out.

Bottom line is we need to be more aggressive getting to the rim on offense, and we need to be more aggressive pressuring the ball on defense. Those are the two glaring weaknesses right now for the team and, honestly, they feel like reasonable fixes this late in the season. Will be interesting to see how this year plays out. Would love to hear anyone else's thoughts or statistical observations they've noticed over the season.

 

[WichitaSooner]

Good post. I don’t hold out much hope on the defensive turnover issue. It’s not something Moser believes in. Look how rarely we attempt to pressure the ball. I’d love to see us do it. We have the athletes with Moore, Soares, Oweh, even Los, to be a good run-and-jump, trapping defense. But it’s just not a part of our game and I can’t imagine him making a huge change this late in the season.

Maybe the offensive approach can be tweaked, and probably should be since we are a very bad shooting team. But Los and Oweh had been so bad finishing at the rim before Saturday, and I think that game may be a one-off since OSU isn’t exactly a big team. I hope that game at least gives them confidence.

I worry that this week will see two games where, due to a combo of turnovers and offensive rebounds, our opponent end up with about 10 more shot attempts. That’s one way Houston makes its living and why their offense rates so highly despite them not being a good shooting team.

 

[stormspencer]

It's pretty ironic this team has a very good FG% defense, yet they don't force TOs....you would think those stats would go hand-in-hand. Like Wichita said, I wouldn't mind seeing a little more trapping on occasion....just for a change of pace or different look. I think we have a lineup or two that could potentially be effective with this.

 

[MJSooner]

It's pretty ironic this team has a very good FG% defense, yet they don't force TOs....you would think those stats would go hand-in-hand. Like Wichita said, I wouldn't mind seeing a little more trapping on occasion....just for a change of pace or different look. I think we have a lineup or two that could potentially be effective with this.

Agreed.

To me, it's not a coincidence that Otega struggled more, the offense and shooting have struggled more, TO margin, and shooting have all been more of an issue of late. If you look back to the beginning of the season, we were full-court press and trapping much more. As a result, had many more buckets in transition, and "DCO" as PM likes to label it. May not have been a full-court trap like the Billy days, but we were definitely forcing tempo much more than as of late. We were playing to take advantage of some of the athletes on the floor, like Jalon, Tega, and seems even Godwin and Darthard were playing better with more tempo.

I know better teams and athletes for the opponent plays into that, but we do need to get back to forcing tempo more on both ends of the floor.

 

[TINY]

It's pretty ironic this team has a very good FG% defense, yet they don't force TOs....you would think those stats would go hand-in-hand. Like Wichita said, I wouldn't mind seeing a little more trapping on occasion....just for a change of pace or different look. I think we have a lineup or two that could potentially be effective with this.

We tried to trap a lot more early in the season with Godwin and it resulted in a lot of easy buckets for our opposition. Seems like we went away from that for a reason.

 

[WichitaSooner]

Good post. I don’t hold out much hope on the defensive turnover issue. It’s not something Moser believes in. Look how rarely we attempt to pressure the ball. I’d love to see us do it. We have the athletes with Moore, Soares, Oweh, even Los, to be a good run-and-jump, trapping defense. But it’s just not a part of our game and I can’t imagine him making a huge change this late in the season.

Maybe the offensive approach can be tweaked, and probably should be since we are a very bad shooting team. But Los and Oweh had been so bad finishing at the rim before Saturday, and I think that game may be a one-off since OSU isn’t exactly a big team. I hope that game at least gives them confidence.

I worry that this week will see two games where, due to a combo of turnovers and offensive rebounds, our opponent end up with about 10 more shot attempts. That’s one way Houston makes its living and why their offense rates so highly despite them not being a good shooting team.

Quoting myself here because due to TOs and offensive rebounds, we have taken 16 fewer shots with still over 11 minutes to play.