College Basketball - Don’t be a dinosaur

[ShockTalk]

There are hundreds of guys in gyms every night shooting 500 or 1,000 3 balls. That's led to hundreds of guys who can scorch a D from deep. So, put 4 guys on the perimeter and give the ball to your guy who can drive to the hoop. The Shox reaction to that is to sag into the paint to prevent Morris from fouling out in 12 minutes. That leaves shooters open on the perimeter, and they can hit from there when they're not guarded.

Interesting stats:

Morris hasn't had 4 fouls on him since 1/28, 13 games ago. Before that, mid December.

Over the last 9 games, Morris averaged 2 fouls per game. In 6 of those games, he averaged 32.5 minutes, 17.7 points, and 1.7 fouls with the Shocks winning 5.
In the other 3 games, 22.3 minutes, 15 points, and 2.67 fouls with the Shocks going 1-2. Yes, he had more fouls, but it would also appear we left some fouls on the table.

Maybe playing Shaq more aggressively (or with more confidence) and having the guards not sag off would have paid off with more points for us, fewer for them.

[FadedCrown]

AM better be a good interior defender next year, our guards need to stop collapsing so quickly.

[Topshock]

If he plays, what will we do when their 5, ball screens for a perimeter player? Seems all we could do is not switch on the screen which frequently leaves the shooter open or play zone because I see no way he can guard a perimeter player.

[jdshock]

Interesting stats:

Morris hasn't had 4 fouls on him since 1/28, 13 games ago. Before that, mid December.

Over the last 9 games, Morris averaged 2 fouls per game. In 6 of those games, he averaged 32.5 minutes, 17.7 points, and 1.7 fouls with the Shocks winning 5.
In the other 3 games, 22.3 minutes, 15 points, and 2.67 fouls with the Shocks going 1-2. Yes, he had more fouls, but it would also appear we left some fouls on the table.

Maybe playing Shaq more aggressively (or with more confidence) and having the guards not sag off would have paid off with more points for us, fewer for them.

I can't count the number of times I felt like LS, CF, or AR collapsed, swiped at the driving player and fouled him when Shaq seemingly had good defensive position. I think collapsing on drives this year resulted in 1. open shooters, 2. additional fouls on the collapsing guards, and 3. no better defense against the actual driver.

[wusphlash]

I can't count the number of times I felt like LS, CF, or AR collapsed, swiped at the driving player and fouled him when Shaq seemingly had good defensive position. I think collapsing on drives this year resulted in 1. open shooters, 2. additional fouls on the collapsing guards, and 3. no better defense against the actual driver.

Agree, there were many times I thought Shaq was in position only to have a foul called on someone else. TC, RB and FVV were strong enough to go in an dig the ball out of the drivers. LS, CF and AR are not that strong.

[RoyalShock]

A point made in the tweet in the original post that I think could apply to WSU is the whole idea of drive and kick. I felt like that element was completely missing from our offense. Every time one of our guards got into the lane I expected either a shot (and to be fair, Connor was very good at hitting those shots), turnover or offensive foul. Shaq and Willis really struggled to recognize and deal with double-teams. They forced up shots or turned the ball over instead of kicking it out to open shooters. We had good assist numbers, which I think were largely due to having good ball movement and off-ball movement within the offense.

Could that be part of the reason we didn't defend the drive-and-kick very well? I'm sure they practiced defending it, but I can't help but wonder if it was being practiced at least as much from an offensive standpoint if the defense would have been better. That's obviously pure speculation on my part, of course.

[Shocker_Power]

Interesting stats:

Morris hasn't had 4 fouls on him since 1/28, 13 games ago. Before that, mid December.

Over the last 9 games, Morris averaged 2 fouls per game. In 6 of those games, he averaged 32.5 minutes, 17.7 points, and 1.7 fouls with the Shocks winning 5.
In the other 3 games, 22.3 minutes, 15 points, and 2.67 fouls with the Shocks going 1-2. Yes, he had more fouls, but it would also appear we left some fouls on the table.

Maybe playing Shaq more aggressively (or with more confidence) and having the guards not sag off would have paid off with more points for us, fewer for them.

It seemed to me (possibly wrongly), that NCAA basketball as a whole was less closely called on fouls this season. I thought the officials really let them play this season, particularly in the paint. If that is true, it could account for Shaq being less foul prone. I also think, with our depth, it didn't favor our team if true.

[Topshock]

Here is something interesting, last season we played 12 games against the kenpom top 100 and gave up 99.26 pointer per 100 possessions. This year in 16 games vs the top 100 we gave up 108.97. Now here is where it gets interesting. In our 12 games against the top 100 last year Mcduffie and Zach Brown started together 7 of them and we gave up 94.24 points per 100 possessions. In the 5 games the did not start together we gave up 106.3 points per 100 possessions.
This is a prime example of how playing small helped our defence last season. Time and time again we played two five men together and it rarely worked. Very rarely did Mcduffie and brown ever play together this year let alone start together. I know Mcduffie was hurt some of the year but you would have thought we would have explored this lineup at some point see as how we had so much success the previous year with it.

These are remarkable stats.

[WSUwatcher]

Indeed they are remarkable, 12 and Top -- but considering the way Kelly played this year, I can understand why he wouldn't have been the guy to not start. Maybe the answer would have been Brown and Kelly until McDuffie recovered, then McDuffie and Kelly; but isn't that kind of what they did?

The other question that comes to mind is, what was the metric when the various combinations were in the game together (regardless of who started). I don't subscribe to KenPom and wouldn't know how to find that info (assuming it can be compiled) even if I did, but one of our hoop geek SNers may be able to do that bit of analysis.

[ShockTalk]

It seemed to me (possibly wrongly), that NCAA basketball as a whole was less closely called on fouls this season. I thought the officials really let them play this season, particularly in the paint. If that is true, it could account for Shaq being less foul prone. I also think, with our depth, it didn't favor our team if true.

Not sure is that's it or not. Below is Shaq's numbers.

12 Non-con games: 21.6 minutes per game / 3.1 fouls per game

1st 11 conference games: 22.0 mpg / 2.2 fpg

Last 10 games : 28.2 mpg / 1.9 fpg

A little hard to imagine in his 4th season, but he seemed to steadily increase minutes while reducing fouls. One could also say that those last 10 games included most of our toughest games and highest pressure games.

[Cdizzle]

I would contend that a lot of this was reputation-based.

[ShockerEngr]

coach mentioned on his radio show that Shaq did much better this year about avoiding silly hacking fouls when he'd get tired

[WuShock Reaper]

It seemed to me (possibly wrongly), that NCAA basketball as a whole was less closely called on fouls this season. I thought the officials really let them play this season, particularly in the paint. If that is true, it could account for Shaq being less foul prone. I also think, with our depth, it didn't favor our team if true.

This has been a three-year trend:

All Teams	Games	Fouls	Per Game	% Chg
2018	11,473	207,498	18.1	-3.8%
2017	11,509	216,402	18.8	-2.5%
2016	11,466	221,026	19.3
Wichita State	Games	Fouls	Per Game	% Chg
2018	33	581	17.6	-6.2%
2017	36	676	18.8	-7.0%
2016	35	707	20.2