Back to Basketball - offensive efficiency

I finally got around to watching the Dayton game and decided to track our offense in some very broad terms

• 60% off our offensive possessions graded as good
• 55% of our 3pt shots graded as good

Like anything the grading scale is subjective, but I judge good by meaning we either got a good shot or were attempting to make a good pass. So you could have a good shot not fall or a turnover where a guy fumbles it out of bounds and it still be a good possession. Likewise Peters can hit a fadeaway 3 from NBA range with 20 seconds which means it was a productive possession, but it's not really a good possession.

70% of good should really be the minimum goal. College kids are always going to take bad shots some of the time or have bad possessions with a terrible pass. It happens. But the more good possessions you have the more points you'll score on most nights.

As many other have noted while watching our team, we are just inefficient on offense. We don't value possessions and take a number of poor shots throughout a game. Compared to some of the other top 25 teams I've watched we're at least 10% more inefficient than others in most games. I still don't know what Howland's half-court philosophy is. We do a ton of standing around and the on-ball guys often don't appear to be trying to get to any specific spot. So I blame a lot of the problems on the system itself but the players don't make it any better most of the time.

I will say it's getting a touch better. I thought Dayton was an improvement over recent games and the good news is that we're simply more talented than most teams we'll play so we can overcome some of it. I also think our weaknesses here are a trend in the SEC so it will tend to even out in conference play.

However if we could just see minor improvement here it could be the difference in 2-3 wins and would be vital in NCAA games if we do well enough to get into that tournament.

I agree with your breakdown of the team. I can live with a missed shot if it's a good one, but we seem to waste too many possessions with bad shots. I would like to see us play our tails off on defense every possession and then be as efficient as possible on offense. As you mentioned, I don't really know what our half court philosophy is, but I feel we are at our best when Lamar creates for other people as he did the second half of last year and against Dayton. If he's not trying to create for others then I feel we are better with Nick playing the point. This Clemson and Cincinnati game will be huge for our team. I hope we continue to improve as we did last year, but I thought we would look better to start this year with all we had coming back.

Howland seems to favor pro-type iso and 2-man stuff in the half court, which is frustrating because a big reason for more structured college offenses is to avoid the bad shots that result out of that style of offense when run by relatively inexperienced college players lacking the necessary discretion. I think that's exactly our problem that's resulting in all these bad possessions.

Thanks for the breakdown. This is something I've vaguely had my eye on during Howland's tenure, though in a much simpler way via points per possession.

In Rick Ray's last year, we were 292nd -- yes 292nd -- nationally in points per possession. (Good God, y'all . . . .) Here's how Howland's first three years went: 121st, 190th, and 124th. Taking us from 292nd to 120th in a single season with the exact same players was actually damn impressive. And though the bump down in year 2 is a bummer, we basically had an entire new roster. I'm more disappointed in year 3, though. Same players plus Nick W. and we just improved from 190 to 124.

After 7 games this year, against a mixture of bad, ok, and potentially solid competition, we're sitting at 61st nationally. Not sure what I think of that. In the games that I've watched so far, I've been irked at the offense in many of the same ways that I was last year and, like you, have had trouble figuring out what our offensive style is supposed to be.

For what it's worth, the defensive numbers tell a brighter story. Ray's last year we were 112th nationally in defensive efficiency (opponents' points per possession). Howlands' first three years we were 150th, 102nd, and 42nd. Nice jumps in years 2 and 3. And though the small sample size is too small to tell, it's possible that we're on the right track again -- currently 23rd nationally in defensive efficiency.