Wichita State vs Lipscomb (NIT Semifinal)

[ShockCrazy]

Because our offense for some reason was centered around two 35% FG shooters that take lots and lots of bad shots.

I don’t think I’ve seen so many air balls ever between two players before, which are unrecorded turnovers.

And yet, final offensive rating for Markis was second to only Midtgaard, who is a low usage player who doesn't create his own shots. And o-rating encapsulates all those turnovers and terrible shots you like to tout so much. And Samajae was only behind Dex for perimeter players being ahead of ES, JB, and RT.

[Topshock]

And now that you've had plenty of time to benefit from hindsight, at exactly which point would you have called for a stoppage of play that didn't already take place because of a TV break, o great guru of the sacred timeout? Whine, whine, whine.

I do think there may be something to the comment by one other poster that 3G was letting his seniors decide the outcome. He gave them their chance to step up as they have a number of times, especially recently, and tonight they didn't (although they were certainly not alone). But would you have had them sitting instead? Somehow I doubt it. Even Fred and Ron had moments their final year when they tried to do too much.

You are right, allowing Seniors free rein, letting them not play with the team, has been a recurring coaching problem under GM. Doesn't mean I think he should be fired or isn't an overall good coach but he needs to improve in the off season as well as the players.

[Dan]

I was fine with taking the open 3s toward the end. The alternatives were not better. We weren't able to drive in a get decent looks and JE was getting triple teamed when he received the ball and was unable to recognize that there should be 2 open teammates (for an open 3). Bottom line is that Lipscomb decided at the end that we were going to have to beat them with 3s and it paid off for them. They were hitting 3s and we weren't. Can you imagine if Samaje would've taken a Steph Curry 3 late in the game like that kid did from Lipscomb? It went in and he looks like a hero, but it was a terrible shot choice.

[ShockerFever]

And yet, final offensive rating for Markis was second to only Midtgaard, who is a low usage player who doesn't create his own shots. And o-rating encapsulates all those turnovers and terrible shots you like to tout so much. And Samajae was only behind Dex for perimeter players being ahead of ES, JB, and RT.

Considering our overall offense is poor at best, you’re setting the bar pretty low.

Other players had potential for better scoring opportunities but were never given the opportunity. And a lot of the non-senior’s shots were forced because they were handed the ball often at the wrong times and at the end of long dribbling episodes.

Your cherry picking is quite impressive.

[ShockCrazy]

Considering our overall offense is poor at best, you’re setting the bar pretty low.

Other players had potential for better scoring opportunities but were never given the opportunity. And a lot of the non-senior’s shots were forced because they were handed the ball often at the wrong times and at the end of long dribbling episodes.

Your cherry picking is quite impressive.

Cherry picking? Those are the full season stats, that's the opposite of cherry picking. You realize that lower opportunity count generally correlates to higher success rate right? Higher usage players SHOULD have the lower ratings. Yet they don't, it's because the young players struggled to adapt as most young players do.

[AndShock]

Why exactly should a lower opportunity count result in a higher success rate? Everyone should eventually reach their “true” offensive rating after a certain number of possessions but there’s just as much of a chance of a lower possession count resulting in an abnormally low offensive rating as a high offensive rating.

As for Markis, his metrics are impacted by his ability to get to the line, which I think everyone would agree he is very good at. The question is if he only got to the line because he takes terrible shots or if he would have been able to play smart and still get to the line. I’m curious what his O-rating is when you only consider FGM.

[ShockCrazy]

Lower opportunity means higher success rate because mostly it means selectivity. It means getting higher quality shots. By necessity your highest usage players get lower quality shots. They are the ones the defense focuses on and they are the ones who shoulder the burden during low clock situations. Bigs should always have a higher rating than guards because most shots are at the rim thus higher percentage.

Well if you want to talk about his shots, then his EFG which doesn't account for FTs is only behind the 3 bigs, as expected and Dex. But his turnover rate is the lowest on the team. There is a huge gap form the bigs and Dex/Markis who are very close to the rest who are over 6% or worse compared to the top group.

[Shockm]

Too much is made about bad shots. The only thing wrong with SHJ’s 3 shot was it was early in the clock. The good thing was he was open.

If if anyone else was making shots I’d agree. However, no one was shooting well. Therefore we are splitting hairs. If SHJ makes it no one cares.

[ShockerFever]

Too much is made about bad shots.

Are you suggesting taking bad shots in a basketball game is overstated and not that big of deal?

[proshox]

They were good looks that didn’t go in. Everyone had a chance to step up in the last ten minutes. Nobody was successful.

[Horn28Clem30]

As soon as those 2 open 3s were missed that would have essentially been daggers, i looked at my girlfriend and said "I don't like this one bit right now, momentum has just changed majorly" It's tough to say they were bad shots since they were both open, but at that point you could have gotten the same look running 20-25 seconds off the clock trying to find a better one.

[jazztrane]

Yep told my wife a similar thing at that time - we're letting them hang around and the longer you do that the more dangerous it is. And those were just wide ass open 3's like shooting in warm ups we missed. :(

[WstateU]

I'm in the same camp and told the Mrs. the same thing. The clock was our friend and we were jacking up shots early in the possession with an 11 point lead... you could see the train wreck coming. I'm sure Lipsomb fans were starting to question some of Garrison Mathews'
shots also; he was jacking up closely guarded shots and missing badly helping us to the 11 point lead... Burton and Dennis were all over him. The difference is/was he hits a high percentage of threes and their team is built around him. The 'bomb' he hit over Dennis proved it.

[ShockBand]

You are right, allowing Seniors free rein, letting them not play with the team, has been a recurring coaching problem under GM. Doesn't mean I think he should be fired or isn't an overall good coach but he needs to improve in the off season as well as the players.

Do you really think he is going to change his MO on this? Or on his norms for not calling timeouts? Yes, I understand this is a message board where you expect posters to ***** and moan, but doing so about how HCGM handles his seniors and how he handles timeouts is kind of beating a dead horse at this point. HCGM is who he is, and that is unlikely to change at this point in his career.

While last night's game certainly had its frustrations, all in all, we got bonus time in spades at the end of the year. Everything after beating ECU in Memphis was "house money" hoops.

[molly jabali]

Yep!

[jazztrane]

I love our seniors and appreciate all they've done but I think you'd have to admit they had a bad night, and I'm sure no one feels worse about it than they do, which really hurts. Any question I had about how much SHJ cared was answered when he drew the single handed 10 second call. They put it all out there and unfortunately a lot of open shots did not fall.

[ShockCrazy]

Completely agree. They struggled and the shots weren't falling, but they were good looks. Far too often people want to make missed shots into the narrative playing selfish basketball.

[Stickboy46]

i agree with this. That SHJ 10 second call was beautiful. I asked myself where that was the rest of the game though.

[Stickboy46]

That's god awful logic. You really think if we run our offense for another 15 seconds we get a better look? I sure as hell don't I've watched this offense sputter and stall all year numerous times. Time on the clock should NEVER be a consideration for a shot if time left is more than a couple minutes and you are literally in range of running out the clock. There is too much game time left to begin thinking you should stall it out. So wait... we aren't in position to rebound, meaning further from the basket, but they were able to get the boards and beat us down the floor and get easy baskets. Please explain that logic for me?

If i have to explain it, you don't understand basketball as well as you think you do. They weren't bad shots, they weren't good shots considering how cold the shooters had been and the score and time of the game.

And yes we could have gotten a better shot.

[ShockCrazy]

If we could have gotten better shots, how come we had multiple possessions get down to no time on the clock after this and never got a good look? How many good looks did we get after those shots since we made 0 FG? Cold shooting? You are aware that those two were 2 for 7 from 3 going into that point? Not hot but not cold either, quite literally one more make and we'd call it good shooting.

[Stickboy46]

So people shooting 28% from 3 should be taking 3s really early in the clock when we have a lead, or should we have used more clock and tried to get a high quality 2. Sorry, they just weren't good shots to take at that time.

[ShockCrazy]

High quality 2s? Have you watched our offense this year? When do we consistently ever get high quality 2s? A wide open Markis 3 point shot is better than any other shot that isn't an open dunk or layup. That's not an exaggeration. He's easily over 40% of those(I wish I had a synergy account), which equates to a 60% 2 point shot, how many of those do we get out of our sets this year? I guarantee coach liked those shots, and would take them every time.

[Rocky Mountain Shock]

Am I suffering from selective memory or does it seem like we have had a string of guys struggle in front of the home town crowd? MM in NY (and @UConn considering the Hurley connection), ZB at Houston last year, Dexter at Tulane this year (though, hitting the game winner may totally disqualify him from this list). As bad as we want them to succeed in front of their friends and family, it's obvious they want it more.

Also, we got the ball to ES for a three pointer twice in the last 30 seconds. Admittedly, one was a really bad pass from Dexter, but it definitely reminded me of Stutz taking the three pointer against VCU in the NCAA tournament. ES and Stutz were both fine shooters, but we have a couple guys who have hit those shots this year.

Oh well. Everything in the NIT was gravy, and it's always fun to still have a rooting interest in April. The future is bright.

This x 1000. I have learned to dread "homecoming" games because it seems whomever is going home craps their pants in front of their friends and family. I remember the Seton Hall game where McDuffie went home--and was absolutely awful. If we never have any more "homecoming" games it won't be soon enough.

[Shox The Revenant]

The Shox play better against P5/P7 teams than they do against top tier mid major teams over the years. Just a perception, whether wrong or right. That's why we lost :)

[Dan]

Are you saying we're becoming KU? Damn mid majors!

[WSUwatcher]

Don't know if that's exactly why they lost, Smiley Rev, but I'll certainly agree that the Shocks performed better against (just as an example) Clemson and Indiana than they did against Furman and the Flaming Lips. That's also not unusual -- it could probably said about more of WSU's fellow high major programs than not.

[WstateU]

Sorry, it's P7 basketball and P6 football.. get it straight young whippersnapper. :)

[choida]

NC State we would have beat...sad reality

[WSUwatcher]

Probably true, unfortunately. But that's the way it is: the Flaming Lips won at TCU (although they got whipped at Clemson), Furman won at Villanova, and who knows how many more examples could be cited if I wanted to take the time to find them.