2021-22 Expectations for Shocker Basketball – “Summertime Edition”

[Shockm]

Not to mention losing to a Drake team who you could tell was far inferior talent-wise.

One more thing to say Regarding the graph and playing in the American is that in 2019 we were Top 50 defensively, and 2020, we were Top 10, both in the American. We were not good in 2018 and last year.

[Stickboy46]

Not to mention losing to a Drake team who you could tell was far inferior talent-wise.

Not saying we were good at defense throughout the year .. but defense wasn't the reason we lost to Drake (or Cincy). Holding your opponents to 53 or 60 should net you a win the vast majority of the time.

[Shockm]

Not saying we were good at defense throughout the year .. but defense wasn't the reason we lost to Drake (or Cincy). Holding your opponents to 53 or 60 should net you a win the vast majority of the time.

We were 84 on defense, and 250 rebounding, and only 61 on offense last year. Not good at much but offense wasn’t our worse, and we didn’t win by much against teams much lower, and lost to a bad Cincy team in the AAC tournament. Drake wasn’t nearly as good as us either, and Joseph Yesefu scored 21 (averaged 12). That shouldn’t have happened but maybe you’re right and the statistics don’t represent our failures.

[Stickboy46]

We were 84 on defense, and 250 rebounding, and only 61 on offense last year. Not good at much but offense wasn’t our worse, and we didn’t win by much against teams much lower, and lost to a bad Cincy team in the AAC tournament. Drake wasn’t nearly as good as us either, and Joseph Yesefu scored 21 (averaged 12). That shouldn’t have happened but maybe you’re right and the statistics don’t represent our failures.

We held Drake to 53 points ? That's a stat too. My point is you should nearly always win when you hold your opponent to 53 points. So yes we werent great at defense all year but defense was NOT the reason we lost to drake. If you need your defense to hold a team to under 50 to win that means your offense is the problem.

[TheShocktocles]

We held Drake to 53 points ? That's a stat too. My point is you should nearly always win when you hold your opponent to 53 points. So yes we werent great at defense all year but defense was NOT the reason we lost to drake. If you need your defense to hold a team to under 50 to win that means your offense is the problem.

Totally agree. The Cincy lost in the AAC Tournament was similar. We lost those games not because of our defense. We lost because we shot like crap from the 3 point line and free throws. And many of those shots were wide open. Clanggggggggggggg!!!!

[pie n eye]

We held Drake to 53 points ? That's a stat too. My point is you should nearly always win when you hold your opponent to 53 points. So yes we werent great at defense all year but defense was NOT the reason we lost to drake. If you need your defense to hold a team to under 50 to win that means your offense is the problem.

Yes, holding a team to 53 points should result in a win more often than not but it’s no guarantee. Sometimes your best offensive player doesn’t make a shot from the field and scores one point and you get one point from your bench. The timing was unfortunate but **** happens. That’s the nature of a one and done format.

[Kel Varnsen]

Not saying we were good at defense throughout the year .. but defense wasn't the reason we lost to Drake (or Cincy). Holding your opponents to 53 or 60 should net you a win the vast majority of the time.

Not sure if that was what OP was referencing, but my response was more about the totality of execution, not necessarily on defense.

[pogo]

How do you suppose that last years analytics were low, while having a decent record, including an AAC Championship? Getting completely blown out by Memphis was an obvious symptom of the illness. Not so obvious, were very close games to teams like Temple, and Tulane that we should have beaten by at least 12-15 points.

I try not to "suppose" because that leads to woulda coulda shoulda. So what exactly is the symptom that is obvious in the blow out loss to Memphis? Please type slowly so I can follow the premise of the obvious symptom. Thanks in advance. Go Shocks

[ShockingButTrue]

Not to mention losing to a Drake team who you could tell was far inferior talent-wise.

Not to be too knee-jerk, but, Drake was a hell of a lot better shooting team.

[SB Shock]

Graphs are nice visuals to show trends and tendencies but don't impart information as to why something is happening. In this case the first nine years or so we were in the mvc and the last five we were in the AAC so you can see we were a much better defensive team playing in the mvc but the better competition, covid, people leaving the program and a coaching change has affected our defensive numbers while in the AAC.

I agree with you that the mass player defections, coaching change, and maybe even covid (if you are arguing, lost practice time impacted the team) probably resulted in WSU struggling to be an excellent defensive team.

But I can't entirely agree with your argument that the move to the AAC was the root cause. Ken Pom numbers are formulated such they are supposed to account for the strength of competition in and out of conference. WSU Offensive numbers didn't suffer their first year in the AAC - they went from the 13th ranked offense in their last year in the MVC to the 4th ranked offense in their first year in the AAC.

I will argue WSU was just a much better program (with better talent) in the MVC than they have been in the AAC - reference their Final 4 (20th ranked Defense) and Sweet 16 (15th ranked D) performances while in the MVC and the AAC with non-elite D were upset in the first round.

[Shockm]

We held Drake to 53 points ? That's a stat too. My point is you should nearly always win when you hold your opponent to 53 points. So yes we werent great at defense all year but defense was NOT the reason we lost to drake. If you need your defense to hold a team to under 50 to win that means your offense is the problem.

Maybe so, but sometimes a great defense makes for easy baskets. Our defense sucked all year, and then our offense did. We weren't as good as our record is what all the experts are saying. Maybe they are right. I hope not.

I think our rim protecting defense wasn't good ever during last year.

[Shockm]

Not to be too knee-jerk, but, Drake was a hell of a lot better shooting team.

Drake on the left and WSU on the right. Were we a 16 percent shooting team last year? Drake also out rebounded us. We had a 7 point lead on them, but we couldn't do anything to build on that. I thought that there were at least 4 American teams (Houston, SMU, UCF, Memphis), and USF, and Tulsa were as good as Drake. But they beat us last year. Who can figure?

37.7	FIELD GOAL PCT	33.9
36.8	THREE POINT PCT	16.7
11	TURNOVERS	8
38	REBOUNDS	35