2019 Off-Season IU Roster News and Moves

[Walking Boot of Doom 18,170]

26 minutes ago, MikeRoberts said:

Some like to use this as a reason to justify our struggles and why they aren’t Archie’s fault, be we have shooters that aren’t improving and others that look worse over time.

 

So, while we may not naturally have a great team of shooters, it is alarming the lack of progression/improvement and even in some cases regression. Our free throw shooting and 3 point shooting is horrendous and I cannot help but think that has to be tied to the way we practice and weight train. If it was one guy that would be different but it’s not.

 

 

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Who got worse? 

[Free Jurkin! 1,496]

It doesn't matter how many players combine to shoot 35% from 3. Teams are only going to pay attention to the 1 guy who actually shoots 35%+ on his own, and right now we know we have one such guy. Yes it will help our efficiency to not have high volume, bad shooters. But the remaining guys still aren't good, except for Green.

Green was shooting 7-10 3s a game at the end of the year, and I think that's pretty close to what he should shoot consistently next year if he's getting 30+ minutes. But Phin and Durham need to be shooting 4-5 each, and making above 35%. They also need to be able to get shots off on the move and off screens. And we need to get more comfortable taking quick open 3s and 3s on delayed breaks. People get upset when Green took quick 3s, but those were often good shots. A shooter catching in rhythm is a good shot at any time in the shot clock.

Teams that have advanced in the tournament feast on that shot. Even Virginia, who runs a very methodical offense, has multiple guys who are ready to pull at any time. We need multiple guys that can do that. The good news is that Al and Phin are hard workers, and I expect them to improve. But it would feel better if we already had some known commodities.


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[Brass Cannon 24,068]

2 minutes ago, Free Jurkin! said:

It doesn't matter how many players combine to shoot 35% from 3. Teams are only going to pay attention to the 1 guy who actually shoots 35%+ on his own, and right now we know we have one such guy. Yes it will help our efficiency to not have high volume, bad shooters. But the remaining guys still aren't good, except for Green.

Green was shooting 7-10 3s a game at the end of the year, and I think that's pretty close to what he should shoot consistently next year if he's getting 30+ minutes. But Phin and Durham need to be shooting 4-5 each, and making above 35%. They also need to be able to get shots off on the move and off screens. And we need to get more comfortable taking quick open 3s and 3s on delayed breaks. People get upset when Green took quick 3s, but those were often good shots. A shooter catching in rhythm is a good shot at any time in the shot clock.

Teams that have advanced in the tournament feast on that shot. Even Virginia, who runs a very methodical offense, has multiple guys who are ready to pull at any time. We need multiple guys that can do that. The good news is that Al and Phin are hard workers, and I expect them to improve. But it would feel better if we already had some known commodities.


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There's a scene in moneyball where Hill and Pitt have to explain production thru the aggregate that people really should watch. 

Virginia has 3 guys shooting volume who are at or around 40 percent. I think we might have that next year. 

[Walking Boot of Doom 18,170]

Agreed with @Free Jurkin!

During the 1-12 injury riddled streak, Al seemed to become less confident in his shot as well, and began to pass up good looks. Don't get me started on how many wide open shots McRoberts passed up... This is all observational, but it seemed consistent. Correct me if no one else noticed this.

79% of our threes were taken by five players (in order of volume): Romeo (18% of shots on 27% shooting), Green (17% of shots on 41% shooting), Durham (17% of shots on 35% shooting), Juwan (13% of shots on 30% shooting), and Rob (13% of shots on 31% shooting). Something as simple as Romeo cutting his 3PA from 125 to something closer to 75 (Juwan and Rob had 88 and 87) may have made the difference in a couple games, especially if those attempts went to Green or Durham, or Romeo took it to the hoop instead.

 

[Free Jurkin! 1,496]

There's a scene in moneyball where Hill and Pitt have to explain production thru the aggregate that people really should watch. 

Virginia has 3 guys shooting volume who are at or around 40 percent. I think we might have that next year. 

I understand aggregate production, but baseball and basketball are significantly different. Baseball is a much more individual sport than basketball. If a player's 3 point efficiency is lower than a team's 2 point efficiency, teams will not respect them. IU shot 54% on 2s as a team, and Green was the only player with an eFG above 54% on 3 pointers. That means pretty much every 3 taken by anyone except Green was a poor shot. I agree that we have a chance to have multiple guys who can do that next year, which is why I am more optimistic than most here, but we don't have any guarantees.

 

Good 3 point shooting has such a massive impact on the rest of the offense too. Just look at last night's game. Edwards was incredible obviously, but part of the reason Virginia didn't double him is that they still had to respect Purdue's other shooters.

 

 

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[Brass Cannon 24,068]

1 minute ago, Free Jurkin! said:

I understand aggregate production, but baseball and basketball are significantly different. Baseball is a much more individual sport than basketball. If a player's 3 point efficiency is lower than a team's 2 point efficiency, teams will not respect them. IU shot 54% on 2s as a team, and Green was the only player with an eFG above 54% on 3 pointers. I agree that we have a chance to have multiple guys who can do that next year, which is why I am more optimistic than most here, but we don't have any guarantees.

Good 3 point shooting has such a massive impact on the rest of the offense too. Just look at last night's game. Edwards was incredible obviously, but part of the reason Virginia didn't double him is that they still had to respect Purdue's other shooters.


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35% from 3 as a team is equivalent to 52.5% from 2 as a team. Pretty close to our two point production. It would force teams to be honest.  

And Virginia won because as we learned so often under Crean defense is more important.  It forced one person to try and beat them and more often than not that fails  

I am all for adding shooters but not at the expense of the defense.  One of the reasons I imagine we took Franklin or Newman was defense. 

35% gets us to where our shooting isn't a terrible weakness. And frankly with natural progression I would bet ours would hit 38% or so next year with our primary guard rotation  which should be taking at least 70 percent of our 3 point shots

The reasons teams didn't respect us this year was mostly because they knew that a bad shooter was likely going to take the shot. We need to change that aspect of the game.  Our 2 best shooters need to have the most attempts by far. Like the 2016 team. 

[Hoosierfan2017 19,912]

2 hours ago, Brass Cannon said:

It’s not misleading it’s a statement of the combined percentage of the people returning. 

Nowhere did I say we kept teams honest I said this is a good enough percent to keep them honest. 

Your inability to correctly read does not make my statement misleading. 

 

It's incredibly misleading. Al shot 34.8%, Rob shot 31% and Smith shot 21.9%. 

[Brass Cannon 24,068]

1 minute ago, Hoosierfan2017 said:

It's incredibly misleading. Al shot 34.8%, Rob shot 31% and Smith shot 21.9%. 

The 35% as a group stat has been discussed on this board for quite some time. And was clearly the intent of the post. Could I have been clearer sure my bad but it was hardly misleading because anybody had with a lick of sense should have been able to figure it out. 

[Free Jurkin! 1,496]

35% from 3 as a team is equivalent to 52.5% from 2 as a team. Pretty close to our two point production. It would force teams to be honest.  
And Virginia won because as we learned so often under Crean defense is more important.  It forced one person to try and beat them and more often than not that fails  
I am all for adding shooters but not at the expense of the defense.  One of the reasons I imagine we took Franklin or Newman was defense. 
35% gets us to where our shooting isn't a terrible weakness. And frankly with natural progression I would bet ours would hit 38% or so next year with our primary guard rotation  which should be taking at least 70 percent of our 3 point shots
The reasons teams didn't respect us this year was mostly because they knew that a bad shooter was likely going to take the shot. We need to change that aspect of the game.  Our 2 best shooters need to have the most attempts by far. Like the 2016 team. 

It doesn't matter what the team 3 point% is if only one guy can shoot. Teams will respect that player, but no others. I agree that our highest volume should come from our best shooters, but based on results during the big 19, Green is the only player who should have shot 3s.

We need multiple guys that opponents have to be up on to create driving lanes for others. Smith was not good this year, but his athleticism would get him more points if he wasn't constantly driving into packed lanes.

Agreed on not sacrificing defense, which is why we saw so little of Damezi. I think people need to be patient with him though. I don't know that he will ever be great for us, but I wouldn't worry too much about his freshman year. Virginia has a guy named Jay Huff. Redshirt sophomore. He's 7'1", athletic, can shoot the 3, and move pretty well. He was a top 60 recruit. He barely plays for them though because he's still a work in progress defending the pick and roll. The pack line is not easy to learn, especially for post players. Even Hunter redshirted for them. Guys will learn at a different place depending on prior coaching, so hopefully Damezi gets it this year. He could add a shooting dimension.


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[Hoosierfan2017 19,912]

8 minutes ago, Brass Cannon said:

The 35% as a group stat has been discussed on this board for quite some time. And was clearly the intent of the post. Could I have been clearer sure my bad but it was hardly misleading because anybody had with a lick of sense should have been able to figure it out. 

Sure, they shot 35% as a group, but three of the four members of the group shot under 35%. 

[Brass Cannon 24,068]

2 minutes ago, Hoosierfan2017 said:

Sure, they shot 35% as a group, but three of the four members of the group shot under 35%. 

So?  The point is they will likely be the guys taking our 3s next year. Or at least the ones we have stats on. Hunter being a ?

[Free Jurkin! 1,496]

So?  The point is they will likely be the guys taking our 3s next year. Or at least the ones we have stats on. Hunter being a ?

Your logic doesn't make sense. If one guy shoots 35-80 and another shoots 0-20, they may have combined to shoot 35%, but we only want one guy taking 3s. We had 1 good 3 point shooters and 3 bad ones who combined to shoot 35% (which still isn't high enough). That doesn't mean we have 4 shooters. That means we have 1 and 3 other guys who defenses want to shoot 3s because their shots have lower expected value than the other shots we could get.

 

Look at the way teams are defending Duke. It doesn't matter that teams guard Barrett and Reddish at the 3 point line. They're sagging so far off Jones and Goldwire that it's clogging the lane and creating problems. Jones made them pay last game. Our bad shooters need to be able to make teams pay next year

 

 

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[Brass Cannon 24,068]

11 minutes ago, Free Jurkin! said:

It doesn't matter what the team 3 point% is if only one guy can shoot. Teams will respect that player, but no others. I agree that our highest volume should come from our best shooters, but based on results during the big 19, Green is the only player who should have shot 3s.


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Virginia has only 2 guys over 40%. Yet they are in the final four. 

Teams strategize based on team performance. They won’t be able to only sag back and crowd the paint when Green doesn’t have the ball. Because all we have to do is pass it to Green then. 

35% as a group will force them to be honest.  They backed off this year because there was about a 40% chance that a below 30% shooter would shoot the ball  if everybody on the perimeter can hit at least 32-34 they won’t be able to do that  its just basic percentages.  You can not just chose to let the other team have 1.05 points a shot. .93 is a lot different to give up. And besides it’s very unlikely that group only shooting 35% next year  statistically Rob will improve  and Al will likely improve  

 

[Brass Cannon 24,068]

2 minutes ago, Free Jurkin! said:

Your logic doesn't make sense. If one guy shoots 35-80 and another shoots 0-20, they may have combined to shoot 35%, but we only want one guy taking 3s. We had 1 good 3 point shooters and 3 bad ones who combined to shoot 35% (which still isn't high enough). That doesn't mean we have 4 shooters. That means we have 1 and 3 other guys who defenses want to shoot 3s because their shots have lower expected value than the other shots we could get.

 

Look at the way teams are defending Duke. It doesn't matter that teams guard Barrett and Reddish at the 3 point line. They're sagging so far off Jones and Goldwire that it's clogging the lane and creating problems. Jones made them pay last game. Our bad shooters need to be able to make teams pay next year

 

 

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Reductio ad absurdum much?

If your bad shooters are hitting 1 out of 3 that’s a significant improvement over this year. 

[MikeRoberts 6,837]

Who got worse? 

Of the few players we had that played meaningful minutes that weren’t freshmen, all regressed sans Durham and Green.

Below shows who regressed of people that actually do these things, like McRoberts really didn’t ever get to the line so he isn’t included there and Davis doesn’t really take threes so he isn’t included there.

Of the people that shoot in these categories we had 2 people improve and everyone else regressed. That’s not good

Regressing 3 point percentage
McRoberts
Smith
Morgan

Regressing Free Throw Percentage
Morgan
Davis
Smith


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[Walking Boot of Doom 18,170]

21 minutes ago, MikeRoberts said:

 

Of the few players we had that played meaningful minutes that weren’t freshmen, all regressed sans Durham and Green.

Below shows who regressed of people that actually do these things, like McRoberts really didn’t ever get to the line so he isn’t included there and Davis doesn’t really take threes so he isn’t included there.

Of the people that shoot in these categories we had 2 people improve and everyone else regressed. That’s not good

Regressing 3 point percentage
McRoberts
Smith
Morgan

Regressing Free Throw Percentage
Morgan
Davis
Smith


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Free throws were certainly concerning, and I have no idea what happened there. Everyone did improve from Archie's first year, but are still below FT% from Crean.

Regarding three point shooting, I disagree that there were significant regressions.

Morgan - 2018: 53 3PA with 30.2% 2019: 88 3PA with 29.5% (I call that even, especially considering the increase in attempts)

Smith - 2018: 10 3PA with 30% 2019: 32 3PA with 21.9% (He made 3 of 10 threes last year - way too small of a sample to establish a baseline and call it a regression)

McRoberts is the anomaly for sure. He only attempted 19 this year versus 33 last year. Watching him, the kid had zero confidence.

 

[Free Jurkin! 1,496]

Reductio ad absurdum much?
If your bad shooters are hitting 1 out of 3 that’s a significant improvement over this year. 

Our second best shooter hits 1 out of 3, and he got worse throughout the season. I think guys can get better, but you're acting like the problem is solved by just removing high volume low efficiency scorers. Yes that helps, but that doesn't make us more dangerous from 3, just slightly more efficient.


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[Brass Cannon 24,068]

15 minutes ago, Free Jurkin! said:

Our second best shooter hits 1 out of 3, and he got worse throughout the season. I think guys can get better, but you're acting like the problem is solved by just removing high volume low efficiency scorers. Yes that helps, but that doesn't make us more dangerous from 3, just slightly more efficient.


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Being more efficient and being more dangerous are pretty much the same here. They both result in more points. 

31 to 35 is a net .12 increase in points per attempt. Assume 24 3s a game and that’s 2.88 points a game. That is incredibly significant.  

I still think people aren’t going to be happy till we are shooting the 3 the way we were with Crean and that’s never gonna happen.  

Virginia has their best 3 point shooters taking 71 percent of our 3s  Thats what we need to do  If Rob and Al can get to the 38% area which statistically is very likely we will be fine  if we do what Virginia did  

 

[Demo 17,489]

1 hour ago, Free Jurkin! said:

Look at the way teams are defending Duke. It doesn't matter that teams guard Barrett and Reddish at the 3 point line. They're sagging so far off Jones and Goldwire that it's clogging the lane and creating problems. Jones made them pay last game. Our bad shooters need to be able to make teams pay next year

 

 

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Good comparison. Almost without exception(Illinois)  the defensive gameplans in the halfcourt against this team were essentially the same. The only players on the perimeter that teams didn’t consistently shade the lane or double off of were Langford and Green. That’s it. Langford was obviously a different animal, but the only guy that other teams weren’t fine with giving open looks to was Green. So, if anything, I think this was a worse shooting team than the stats suggest. They weren’t missing tough contested looks, they were missing open look after open look. Really inhibited Langford’s game. A kid like Cline might have shot  north of 50% getting the kinds of looks that Rob or Durham or Smith were getting. 

[GloryDays 5,892]

7 hours ago, Napleshoosier said:

Was talking more 1971 ! Lol


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What a great team.Super Hicks.