B1G Game 8: Gophers Host Purdue (1-24-19)

[CutDownTheNet]

... the Gophers are so limited offensively, cant win many games shooting 30% and they got good looks most of the game.

... Bell and Pitts alone are not enough to carry this team. I really hope they can string a few W's in the upcoming weeks.

My problem is they shoot too much even when they’re bricking shots. Need more of post game.

Bello & Lamke combine for 6-14
Bell & Pitts combine for 14-38

6-14 = .429 two-point shooting for Bello & Lamke.
7-24 = .292 two-point shooting for Bell & Pitts.
7-14 = .500 three-point shooting for Bell & Pitts.
14-38 = .368 overall shooting for Bell & Pitts.

Although the overall shooting of Bell & Pitts (in the Purdue game) was only .061 lower than that of Bello & Lamke, the really aweful factoid is that their two-point shooting was .137 lower - .292 versus .429. That translates to an average of .584 points per shot for Bell & Pitts versus .858 points per shot for Bello & Lamke. We're only getting a lousy .584 points for every two-point attempt by Bell & Pitts in this game! The difference is .274. That amounts to throwing away, on average, more than a quarter of a point for every time that Bell & Pitts take a two-point play, because they could have had a quarter-point more if they had created a play for Bello & Lamke instead.

Now the three-point shots are a different story in this particular game. In this game, Bell was good from three and Pitts came roaring back out of her three-point shooting slump, so that they shot .500 from deep between them. Times three equals an average of 1.5 points per trey attempt.

So what are we supposed to conclude from this? Are we to say that the guards should (almost) completely stop shooting twos themselves, and adjust their playing style so that they mostly shoot threes or else create two-point plays for the post players? Well, that's what the numbers say, at least for this particular game.

But our three-point shooting has been historically sketchy this year (except for a couple games in which Pitts went crazy and shot .710 on threes), so we're perhaps not quite ready to become a mostly three-point shooting team. But it's clearly as obvious as can be that we create way too few plays for our post players, Bello & Lamke, who are shooting .533 and .549, respectively, on the season through the Purdue game.

In particular, why are we not making plays for T. Bello, who has a good shot out to 15 feet or so. In the Purdue game, pretty much, Bello only touched the ball when she got one of her 18 rebounds, or when she came up top to high-three-point position to give the guards an outlet pass, from which she passed it right back. We don't seem to ever pass it to her in a play-forming capacity, where either she or Lamke are the ultimate targets for taking a shot. We do setup Lamke for a low-post play occasionally, but again, probably not frequently enough.

I gotta tell ya, if you're going to take a two-point shot at all, you're really going to want your .533 and .549 shooters taking the shot, so that you can average over a point for such a play. That's preferrable to .476 (Pitts) or .416 (Bell) or .389 (Brunson) or .375 (Staples) taking the two-point shot! Sure, you need to mix up the shooters, and for sure we're always going to need those create-your-own-shot points that Bell is so good at getting, and Pitts shoots almost 50% from two, so that's pretty much always a good shot too. But why the heck is it, that we hardly ever run plays for our post players?

My problem is they shoot too much even when they’re bricking shots. Need more of post game.

In the Purdue game, that's 24 two-point shot attempts for Bell & Pitts, 20 two-point shot attempts by the rest of the team combined, 14 well-spent three-point shot attempts by Bell & Pitts, and 6 completely unfruitful three-point shot attempts by the rest of the team.

As hinted by the quote, this is completely backwards. The posts should get more two-point shot attempts just because they shoot better. Furthermore, they are more likely to follow up their misses with an offensive rebound and a putback (especially Bello). So we need more plays where the posts get a touch! Look at all the touches Purdue's Harris got - many of which were clutch scores that helped them win. It's not a coincidence that the 7-point delta between Harris' 13 points and Bello's 6 points more or less equals the difference in total score, minus the few points we gave them on intentional fouls in the end-game. Let Bello shoot, for crying out loud!

Only four players made FG’s only five players scored with the fifth player making two FT’s. Not sure anything is going to change.

In the Purdue game, Kaposi got two three throws, and as noted, only four of our players scored all the field-goal points plus remaining free throws - namely, Pitts 19, Bell 17, Lamke 9, Bello 6). A total of 51 points in 40 minutes of play.

On the other hand, for Purdue let's tally the points by their four main scorers - namely McLaughlin 17, Oden 14, Harris 13, Hardin 10. A total of 54 points (more than our whole team) in 40 minutes of play. Oh, by the way, the rest of their team including bench players scored 10 more points.

A final note on the Purdue game. It was billed as a rebounding battle, and it was. In fact, it was a tie - 39 rebounds per team. However, T. Bello out-rebounded Harris 18 to 9. But that was made up by other Purdue players, including Diagne off the bench for 7 rebounds (so that Diagne plus Harris together almost neutralized Bello's rebounding). Off the bench, the Gophers got 4 rebounds from Kaposi, which was a pretty good effort. But in the end, (a) we didn't have our normal rebounding-differential advantage in this game, plus (b) we didn't let the posts shoot enough, and (c) our shooting in general (except for the improvement in three-point shooting among Bell & Pitts alone) was a lot worse than Purdue's shooting, and (d) we didn't make a good enough effort to come out and defend their three-point shots. A recipe for a lost game. As noted in another post, we can hopefully learn the most from lost games.