Shades of Egwu but frankly he was great otherwise.
Illinois 116, Ottawa 65 (Exhibition) Postgame
- Status
In the games so far it looks like DGL's natural position is Point Getter, not Point Guard. Hopefully he will realize that he can maximize his playing time this season by getting the ball to scorers in a position to score, but he has a ways to go on that.
Yes he needs to learn to use his abilities to get other players good looks and find them as well.
Ummmm….. NAIA. Let’s wait till next
Sunday.
Sunday.
1m4tr
Cliffmas
But let’s not overreact if we lose by 12 to them either.
Not just you. I was kind of disappointed in Dain's performance as well. And I've been on record as a big Dain fan. He was kind of a non- factor offensively but the worst part was he wasn't coming close to matching the energy / effort of his teammates. And only four rebounds?? Against Ottawa?? C'mon man. Guarantee BU let him know about that.
He's talented enough to flirt with a double double average. Just has to want it a little bit more.
End overreaction.
But Grandpa, let's do a little math on that. I'm afraid last season (ever since Kofi left really), we've been in big trouble on this issue. This Ottawa exhibition game just shows nothing has changed this season (at least, not yet):
Points per shot on 2s: (31/36)*2=1.722 pts
Points per shot on 3s: (14/42)*3=1.000 pts
So, based on these averages, we gave up 0.722 pts each time we chose to shoot a 3, when we could have shot a 2. That's pretty dumb basketball! (Yes, I'm assuming we don't turn it over by working for a 2 and so on, but that stuff is small potatoes compared to the main numbers shown above, and it's also compensated by increased rebounding chances on 2s.)
What is worse is that we made that same mistake in about 80% of our games last season. Yes, I ran all of them in a spreadsheet this afternoon. And the worst part is that Underwood knows it, and he acknowledged it in the postgame interview (at least on this Ottawa game), and he has acknowledged it more generally in the past, so he knows the big picture on this issue too.
The crazy part is that we don't have to do that. Dain's FG percentage led the team last season. We're also pretty good at driving (TSJ, CH, TR, SH). Rogers and Dain do a great job avoiding 3s. (Yeah, we know why for them.) But for the other guys, they have to sense it more. Goode sensed it in the first half. He was ON, and kept shooting, which made sense. But after that first made 3 in the second half, Goode went cold. He should have limited himself after a couple misses. I was surprised and disappointed there, since I figured Goode would limit himself to great looks when he went a little cold, but he didn't. And as a team we also took too many 3s overall, especially in a game where it was obvious that we were killing it on 2s (partly because of a big height and size advantage and partly because we were beating them off the dribble and by interior passing). Yeah, that was mostly Underwood's fault, since coaches know that stuff way early and should have everybody ready for what their team's big advantages are each game. Underwood didn't.
Yeah, I know. We killed them anyway. But I want to beat KU and Marquette and a bunch of awesome teams. We can't overshoot 3s this season, like we did in about 80% of our games last season. That means it is high time to think about this stuff and limit ourselves to great looks from 3 for our best shooters and even they need to sense it when they are going cold and, when this happens, go to the hole or our big men or cutters instead. Goode and some others didn't, and they better figure this out soon.
I agree. I was trying to not overreact (yet).
Good analysis and it would be more efficient for us and possibly win more games if we shot more 2s. Yet, as you know, the greater majority of NBA shots are 3s, thus college players tend to try their best to become proficient in that area to impress the NBA scouts.
The problem wasn’t that the players wanted to shoot 3s because they wanted to impress NBA scouts. The main issue last year was lack of any cohesive offensive play. We didn’t get paint penetration. We didn’t run much in the way of motion or sets to free guys up. We settled for far too many contested 3s. Another issue last year especially (if we are being honest) was that even when we took “good looks” from outside the arc, we didn’t hit the (sometimes wide open) shot. But….what was the alternative last year? We weren’t getting many easy looks near the basket. We weren’t generating much in the way of offensive flow. The ball was often sticking around the perimeter. So the options were to take a late clock 3 or not take a shot. I agree that we should actually run some offense and generate more transition points and more “high percentage” shots from within 5 feet of the rim, but we should also be open to taking good looks that occur within the offense.
Agree with too many threes but is there a stat that says our offense rebounding is better with twos than threes? Doesn’t seem that way to me but would be interesting stat. Need some threes to open up the driving lanes and the corner three seems to have a better stat (guess on my part). Also twos much higher % against smaller team. Don’t think we will come close against KU. Actually believe we will need more intermediate twos when playing against higher competition where they have shot blockers.
MDchicago
- Lake Norman NC
Watched a circa 2017 show on Big+ video archives last night called A Taste of Coaching, a dinner table discussion about coaching moderated by Steve Lavin and including Gene Keady, Bo Ryan, Mike Davis and Tim Miles.
One thing I found interesting was Bo Ryan mentioned that one of the things he did everyday in practice was to organize their scrimmage sessions into 10 possession increments and judged the offensive outcome solely on whether they achieved 1.0+ points per possession, with positive and negative consequences for winners and losers. Said by doing that everyday it incentivized the players to sort out among themselves who should be shooting 3s, taking the most shots, etc. and generally taught them to value each possession, avoid turnovers and play for offensive efficiency. Also said fouls were called and each free throw counted for 2 points, to incent the making of free throws on offense and playing cleanly on defense.
Assume all coaches are tracking and applying concepts in practices based on analytics these days, but regularly incorporating it into competitive game situations in practice, with real-time scoring and consequences, like that makes a lot of sense to me and is pretty impressive considering he retired in 2015.
Seems like your analysis needs to somehow account for when a 3 miss results in an offensive rebound and an easy put back 2, otherwise your data is skewed.
blackdog
- Champaign
These types of blowouts always result in the bug man getting forgotten about. Why pass to him when everybody is capable of beating their man and getting a shot?
Feeding the bug man is likely to create some buzz, too….
That seems like it would make sense. But I dont think there's much truth to it. In last year's 38 point win over Kansas City, Dain had 20 and 15.
Somehow Hansberry managed to get a double double and plenty of low post touches.
Dain would have been the biggest beneficiary of a traditional point guard from the portal. He has very, very good post moves but needs to get the ball in the right position. Besides his dunks in transition, I think he got one of those passes which converted.
Bigtex
- DFW
A lot of o reb and easy scores. Helped with his stats. Liked what I saw
Good rebounder. When the shot goes up he moves into position.
The data is pretty obvious for this game.
Illini in OC
In. The. Alley.
This.
There's good reason Amani was our unquestioned number one target for a long time. Chet always knew AH had the skills and the motor to be an early beast.
DGL's elevation has deservedly gotten a lot of attention while AH has found his place during preseason. I predict a strong freshman year and subsequent Kendall Gill-type rise as a soph.
Let's get him some real NIL $$ ASAP.
You have to remember it was an exhibition game while KC was a meaningful game. Thus, the coaching/playing time were different. And most importantly substitution patterns were completely different. In KC game 7 guys played 21 minutes or more. Against Ottawa only one player got even 20 minutes. BU was experimenting quite freely with different combinations. So not only did Dain play 65% more against KC — 23 minutes vs 14 — he was playing those minutes with likely much more “cohesive” units. Also, Dain was a bit of an unknown then, so I think they were looking more for him to get his career on track. Now it was likely much less a priority to see what he can do in a game you knew was going to be a blowout. Could be why he had 11 shots vs KC and only 4 against Ottawa. So while Dain might not have had a great game against Ottawa, I think the original poster’s premise has plenty of validity.
I don't know. Silly thing to quibble over. But the original point was big men always get forgotten in blowouts. Already showed that wasn't true. Now, you're saying big men always get forgotten in exhibitions. Well, just a look at Kofi's exhibition box scores shows that's not true. So now the "rule" might evolve to something like, "Big men don't perform well in exhibitions unless they're really good." To which I say, I think Dain is really good which is why it stood out to me that he didn't play well.
It was one exhibition game. Possibly and probably meaningless. But I'll stand by two things: There is no rule that big men don't have good games in exhibitions or blow outs. And Dain's energy left something to be desired on Friday.
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