Basketball minds - can any explain Ray's offense?

I've had our games on while doing other stuff in the past, but yesterday watched while on the treadmill so it was the first time to take a long, focused look at what we are trying to do on offense.

My conclusion was that I have no freakin clue other than assigning people the 1-5 positions and telling the 4 and 5 to stay in the post area.

The goal of any offense should be to get certain players certain shots in certain areas that play to their strenghts. But I see none of that, I see a church league offense that basically ran like this: Pass, dribble two times, pass around the permiter, dribble once - pass around the perimiter - drive carelessly into a double team and hope for the best.

It's looks like just absolutely terrible coaching. Scoring 70 last night was a stroke of luck b/c we never hit 10 3's in a game. We are also terrible fundamentally with passing skills.

Our offensive arsenal is very limited, basically consisting of the following:

* Thomas is a decent 3 point shooter and has improved his mid-range game slightly
* Ware has developed a decent 15 footer and can stills score 1-1 in the post
* Roquez is a decent slasher/finisher and good and offensive rebounds and garbage buckets
* Chicken still has our best first step and his jump shoot looks better than before.
* Daniels has a decent jump shot
* Ready is an ok shooter and shows occasional flasher of playmaking ability

That's not much and frankly we are terrible at everything else. So the question is how to play to those strenghts.

Against a man defense I don't see why we don't run either a single or double pick and roll with Ware and either Chicken or Ready. Ware is big enough to set nice picks and he's a good target on a roll or can pop and hit a 15 foot jumper. You could also run it with Daniels playing a 4.

It's our best chance to either create an open lane, a layup opportunity for the guard are/Roq or a open jumpshot for Ware or pullup for the guard or an open 3 for Daniels/Thomas.

Against a zone we are more helpless b/c our lack of shooting, but we have to pass the ball much quicker around the zone and get more high/low movement in the post to try and catch the defense in a rotation.

I think you could have just stopped at terrible coaching and that would have summed it up.

"Church league" is the best way to describe it in my opinion. We just move and throw the ball around in a very deliberate manner that seems very easy to defend. We do nothing to play to what strengths we have and get those players open at the spots they want to be. Just throw the ball around and jack up a shot when the clock runs down. The only difference from the Stansbury offense we complained about so much is that we move around a little more, but that's meaningless because there's no purpose to the motion. We also go about it way too slow and timidly, giving the defense plenty of time to catch up and negate any kind of opening or mismatch we may or may not be trying to create. It's pitiful.

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Originally Posted by thf24

"Church league" is the best way to describe it in my opinion. We just move and throw the ball around in a very deliberate manner that seems very easy to defend. We do nothing to play to what strengths we have and get those players open at the spots they want to be. Just throw the ball around and jack up a shot when the clock runs down. The only difference from the Stansbury offense we complained about so much is that we move around a little more, but that's meaningless because there's no purpose to the motion. We also go about it way too slow and timidly, giving the defense plenty of time to catch up and negate any kind of opening or mismatch we may or may not be trying to create. It's pitiful.

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Exactly, we never set good hard screens on or off the ball or run curls or anything. It looks like we spend absolutely no time on the offensive side of the ball. And it's not like our defense is stellar but I'd call it NCAA average.

Very simple answer and it is a problem all across college basketball. There's too much "coaching" going on at the college level. You still have so many coaches that believe in "we need to pass the ball 'X' # of times while working within our set. We need to run our motion offense, etc." Consequently you get players who are stuck thinking about running an offense or timid to shoot out of fear of being pulled out of the game, which leads to guys playing tight.

And if you combine that with the lack of proper teaching at the youth level (thanks AAU), then you get guys in college who have no idea how to move without the ball.

I think AAU and college coaches are at fault to a degree. Bruce Pearl is one of the few who works well with what the system gives him. His players play loose and confident because they know they have some freedom within his system and it's very aggressive, like today's players want to be.

I hear all these coaches, Ray included, about spending all this time practicing defense, defense, defense. Playing defense is some technique and a lot of heart and hustle. Playing offense is an art and skill. That's where you need to devote your practice time.

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Originally Posted by Irondawg

And it's not like our defense is stellar but I'd call it NCAA average.

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Absolutely. We have more than enough defense to win a lot more games than we have thus far if we just had anything going on offense.

One thing that can really help an offense is getting buckets in transition. And we may be the worst transition team in the country. That part is very confusing to me b/c we have some good athletes and good finishers, but Cornell is better in transition than us.

Everyone here so far has nailed it. I(clearly wrongly) attributed it to youth and lack of depth in the first 2 years. But there's no clear goal to our offense. When things go like they were last night, we need to be setting screens like crazy for Daniels to get him looks. But do we? Once they went help on him, he barely shot late in the game. If you are going to play the style we're playing, you've got to have a very good creator at point, and let them "make" the offense for you. We don't even remotely have that right now.

We struggle with the ball screen on both sides of the floor. It's perplexing. That was one thing that, for the most part, Stansbury did really well...

The truth is that while this is not a "good" team, it's also not nearly as bad a team in term of talent that we've seen on a lot of nights. Which means it's the coaching unless there is some serious locker room or injury issues that are unknown.

So when we talk about Newman and see comments that there is nobody there to help him, etc. it's not really all that true. I think with better coaching we are still the NIT bid type team we all thought we'd be entering the season.

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Originally Posted by HoopsDawg

One thing that can really help an offense is getting buckets in transition. And we may be the worst transition team in the country. That part is very confusing to me b/c we have some good athletes and good finishers, but Cornell is better in transition than us.

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Agree - it's horrific how we run a break. I didn't know it was possible for good athletes to be so bad at it.

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Originally Posted by Irondawg

Agree - it's horrific how we run a break. I didn't know it was possible for good athletes to be so bad at it.

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Yep. That was supposed to be our strength this year. 40 minutes of hell and transition. You do those 2 well and you can make up for a sub-par offense...

I believe if and that is a big IF, you were to fire Ray and bring in Richard Williams all of a sudden our players would improve drastically. Ray despite what several on the board were preaching, is not a great X and O man. In fact He is terrible. The player don't know what to do.They don't know their roles. The shooters don't shoot. They are not put into the right position to shoot.

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Originally Posted by Irondawg

The truth is that while this is not a "good" team, it's also not nearly as bad a team in term of talent that we've seen on a lot of nights. Which means it's the coaching unless there is some serious locker room or injury issues that are unknown.

So when we talk about Newman and see comments that there is nobody there to help him, etc. it's not really all that true. I think with better coaching we are still the NIT bid type team we all thought we'd be entering the season.

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For this team the whole is definitely LESS than the sum of the parts.

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Originally Posted by tcdog70

I believe if and that is a big IF, you were to fire Ray and bring in Richard Williams all of a sudden our players would improve drastically. Ray despite what several on the board were preaching, is not a great X and O man. In fact He is terrible. The player don't know what to do.They don't know their roles. The shooters don't shoot. They are not put into the right position to shoot.

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I think you are correct. Even when we give effort we are often out of position on defense or just plain lost on offense. Ray comes across as an intelligent guy with good basketball knowledge but some guys can translate that to their players and other can't.

The players look lost out there on offense. Believe or not on the most part they are good athletes. Good coaching over last 3 years would have brought at least 10 more wins. Ray is in over his head . Simple to correct though

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Originally Posted by tcdog70

I believe if and that is a big IF, you were to fire Ray and bring in Richard Williams all of a sudden our players would improve drastically. Ray despite what several on the board were preaching, is not a great X and O man. In fact He is terrible. The player don't know what to do.They don't know their roles. The shooters don't shoot. They are not put into the right position to shoot.

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Gotta agree with you at this point. Hell, I think just bringing someone in who could inspire some confidence in players who need it to perform consistently, like Fred and Travis, would go a long way.

I wonder if Sallystansbury saw last night's game. I'd be interested in his take on this question. I actually thought we did a lot of things well on offense last night, especially avoiding the low percentage shot. I'd like to see us get the ball to Ware a lot more down low, but other than that, it was a matter of shots falling or not.

He took the Woody McCorvey offense and adapted it to basketball.

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Originally Posted by engie

Yep. That was supposed to be our strength this year. 40 minutes of hell and transition. You do those 2 well and you can make up for a sub-par offense...

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I think Ray has moved away from "how do win win" to "how do i shorten the game and not get blown out every night"

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Originally Posted by codeDawg

I think Ray has moved away from "how do win win" to "how do i shorten the game and not get blown out every night"

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This!!! He has officially throw in the towel. His goal is to draw fouls. That's it. This is Croom football. Trying to just keep the score tight.

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Originally Posted by codeDawg

I think Ray has moved away from "how do win win" to "how do i shorten the game and not get blown out every night"

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That's right. We really worked the shot clock last night. We passed on some open shots and ended up taking worse shots because I think he wants to see more ball movement. That's the kind of offense recruits love to play in. **

The fact that Ray is still tinkering with his starting lineup when he has a lot of guys on the roster who have been with the program 2 and 3 years tells me everything I need to know about his coaching . He has watched these guys play basketball day in a day out yet still can't figure out the lineup he needs to succeed . He should know each players strengths and weaknesses and how best to play to their strengths . He should also know by now who needs to start and who needs to come off the bench . These players do not understand their role nor have they ever been told what their role should be. That's coaching

It is like watching 4 year olds play soccer.

The biggest problem is we lack what every high school in America has, and that is a decent continuity motion. It isn't a play, where players are designated one move after another, it's just your basic four out one in screen away or cut off the ball based on the defense. Instead we either stand in place and swing it around the perimeter or we just sit there. Our players also lack common knowledge. I saw many times last night in semi-transition o where we would cut on top of each other, effectively making 1 be able to cover 2 guys. Multiple times we didn't understand that if they have one in the lane and we have two cutters off the ball, one needs to flare out and one needs to slash. Instead, both would run to the hoop, costing us a chance at an easy basket. Then we would get in the set (saw it at least 15 times last night) where the wings cross, one of them gets a pass and the ball side post cross screens the other post. That is the most elementary play on earth, and unless we are playing a special needs school, we will continue not to get a damn thing from it.

True but we don't set good screens either and almost never down pick or back pick to surprise a defender and open somebody up. The guards are also very lazy with the cuts and are basically just using it to move from one side to the other without trying to shake their guy off of it. It's just bad, plain and simple.

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Originally Posted by Irondawg

True but we don't set good screens either and almost never down pick or back pick to surprise a defender and open somebody up. The guards are also very lazy with the cuts and are basically just using it to move from one side to the other without trying to shake their guy off of it. It's just bad, plain and simple.

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Exactly. When we DO go set a screen or run a set, the screener just stands there hoping the defender runs into him and the screenee just runs up. They don't understand how to run their man into a screen, and don't understand how to get open off the ball.

And that's coaching pure and simple. Ray blew the golden ticket.

He had a two year free pass and could spend basically all his time working on the fundamentals of these guys. Instead as juniors our core guys have no idea what they are doing on the floor.