I wouldn't say the sky is falling, but yes we lost by four and shot ourselves in the foot numerous times because we missed at least four free throws. The math is pretty straightforward here.
Pregame: Illinois vs Long Island, Saturday, November 22nd, 1:00pm CT, B1G+
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Plus it allows Kylan to play off ball more
So you agree that the free throws were the issue? Your original post made it seem like we have a long list of problems.
If the "problem" of free throws isn't solved by making more free throws, then how else would you solve it?
Perspective after that loss. We reintegrated two guys, one of which is brand new, back into the rotation. Tomi clearly not his old self. Petrovic will get there. Both will be top 7 minute guys on this team.
Need to get some more consistency and PT out of lineups. Getting and staying healthy over the next week+ is massive.
Need to get some more consistency and PT out of lineups. Getting and staying healthy over the next week+ is massive.
Consistency. Sustaining a good free throw rate over consecutive games, I'll keep the bar low and ask for two games in a row with at least 70%, which we've yet to do.
We've got other problems, but my original post was just about free throw shooting.
Their season average is 75%. This is silly.
As we get healthy, IMO this needs to be down to an eight man rotation:
Guards/Wings: Boz, Wagler, Petro, Stoj.
Frontcourt: Mirk, Ben, Z, Tomi.
Team too talented for Jake to get regular minutes. He played 2 minutes, and had arguably the worst play of the game. Also shooting 5-17 from deep on the season.
Guards/Wings: Boz, Wagler, Petro, Stoj.
Frontcourt: Mirk, Ben, Z, Tomi.
Team too talented for Jake to get regular minutes. He played 2 minutes, and had arguably the worst play of the game. Also shooting 5-17 from deep on the season.
And against real opponents specifically they're averaging 65%. If you average 65% against your real competition and 80-something% against your cupcakes, yeah your season average looks good, but when the postseason comes and you're out of cupcakes, what do you think will happen?
FT% will normalize. I'm just now realizing you're in a tizzy about this because they shot 69.6% against Texas Tech, which to you means that this definitive 5 game sample shows they can't make FTs against good teams.
Is this in regards to Petro?
The guy I look at is actually mirk. The nights he doesn’t have it, I think Andrej sliding to the 4 with a Boswell and Petro backcourt and Keaton at 3 is where I’d expect more minutes for him.
That said, I still need to see a lot more from him before I’d advocate 20+ Petro minutes right now - just spitballing where I’d see some time open up.
I would think as Petro becomes a major minutes guy...Wagler might see minutes at PG and the 3 spot. likely Davis gets much less. Plenty of minutes to distribute. Lee should be in the mix some as well.
OrangeBlue98
Iowa is not in a great spot right now (LvilleILL1)
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To be fair, one of those games was a 20-21 night, which is not sustainable.
In three of the five games, free thrown shooting has been mediocre at best.
I’ll stand by what I said in a different post. Make free throws consistently and get healthy, and this team’s ceiling is legitimately national championship caliber. But the free throw shooting has to be a lot more consistent.
I'm not saying they can't, I'm saying I haven't seen it yet and it's something I'd like them to fix (and I do think they can fix).
It's literally the headline here- Free throws doom Illinois in United Center loss to Alabama | The Champaign Room https://share.google/FjGxtdIVGYfJXj0BW
95% obviously isn’t sustainable, true
Is 59% “sustainable”?
You’re trying to include one outlier and exclude another. That doesn’t really give an accurate picture
I think the answer lies somewhere in between
Shooting (including free throws) is volatile, some nights it’ll look good and others it wont
76% overall is pretty good, and I think it will go back up to where it was before we just shot a season low %
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Yeah, the doom posting falls into the same patterns of discounting every good trend to "prove" the bad trends are the norm.
That's the thing about basketball, some nights you're on, some you aren't. Larger the sample size, the more you can read from it.
One game of 13-22 shooting is just as predictive as one game of 20-21 shooting.
The missed FT's were definitely a problem...but am I the only one that saw a lack of rebounding (especially in the 2nd half) on the defensive end as a problem as well??? I remember in the 2nd half Bama I think got 4 shots on one possession ( I think 3 of the 4 shots were from 3)...another possession Bama got 3 attempts before a put back....these seemed to come at a crucial point just as we were gaining momentum and stemmed any chance of us regaining the lead....I know on paper the rebounding was pretty even...but to me some of Bama's offensive rebounds were back breakers....whoops...posted in the wrong thread...but my thoughts still stand
Do you think cupcakes have bad FT defense of which we can take advantage, but we are incapable of doing so against "real competition?" The season is just 4 games old for crying out loud. Yeah, I would expect over the course of a season that our FT% would be a little lower against high level competition because the players are going to be exerting themselves at a higher rate and be more tired/winded when they are taking the shot. But it isn't going to be pushing a 20% difference. Way too early to be worrying about FT shooting.
My hoped-for explanation is our gameplan uses Ivisic (both of them) to help make rebounds possible even if it's not one of them coming away with the ball, but both were playing hobbled.
My explanation that I hope isn't true is when Andrej takes over a game the rest of the team play like outfielders when a pitcher keeps throwing strikeouts, they're not engaged on one end and that carries over to the other end. I don't think this impacted Kylan or Ben as much but Keaton was somewhat impacted and Mirk was just gone.
Of course not FT defense, but there's a reason people talk about how does a team react when the lights get bright, and for this team so far the lights get bright they start missing free throws. I don't think it's ever too early to consider room for improvement, especially from these high-competition games.
Noticed that too. I thought he popped hard on offense and conversely looked baaaad defensively but not to the tune of -16. +\- is fun but can be misleading I don’t think that’s all on him.
But I think his defense is as advertised. Which is to say it really is lacking. That’ll limit his minutes.
That being said, I’m withholding full judgement until he’s had more than 3 practices and a single game under his belt.
As a counterpoint - 59% is more sustainable than 95%. Doesn’t mean you should exclude either... but 59% will likely be closer to our season average than 95%. But most importantly, the 59% was in a true game setting. In the two game sample of non-cupcake competition - which is the only sample that should matter as we get into UConn/Tennessee/B10 play - we have not shot it well.
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