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Coaching Question


cohete15

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I love Archie. He will, without a doubt, put us back where we all want to be. I do have a question tho...

Before I ask it, please read my first sentence again. And I do not blame our failure at the FT on him, but...

I believe it's been posted that Archie's teams at Dayton were below average at the FT line. He still won consistently there. Was/Is there not enough emphasis placed there? Was his coaching that much superior in the conference that his teams could fail at the FT line (relatively speaking), but still win? Is Archie seeing that at this higher level of competition, you can't beat good teams without being good at the FT line? Having better players will certainly help, but you have to think he's sitting in his office right now staring at all the points we didn't get at the FT line, and how much better our record would be if we could a higher percent. Maybe the effort is there, but it's become too much of a mental thing for these players. While I am highly, highly encouraged by what I saw this year, it makes games like last night hurt even worse to see us lose games at the FT line than to lose by 12 points because we just aren't very good.

Please read my first sentence again before responding LOL. 

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I think that there are three factors that have played a role in the disappointing free throw shooting:

1) playing harder on defense means we are sometimes less composed when shooting on offense

2) Miller took the approach this year of taking players out after each mistake for the first third to half of the year. The team was used to a very different response to mistakes from Crean and so the confidence bottomed out

3) the players shooting them were not used to being so essential to team success or playing so many minutes and they struggled to adjust...Davis and then Morgan really lost confidence, basically everyone else shot about how you would expect them to shoot...

Question will be if Archie makes adjustments to how he practices and game coaches in year two in order to have a more confidently shooting team for more of the year...

 

 

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13 minutes ago, mchenry34 said:

I think that there are three factors that have played a role in the disappointing free throw shooting:

1) playing harder on defense means we are sometimes less composed when shooting on offense

2) Miller took the approach this year of taking players out after each mistake for the first third to half of the year. The team was used to a very different response to mistakes from Crean and so the confidence bottomed out

3) the players shooting them were not used to being so essential to team success or playing so many minutes and they struggled to adjust...Davis and then Morgan really lost confidence, basically everyone else shot about how you would expect them to shoot...

Question will be if Archie makes adjustments to how he practices and game coaches in year two in order to have a more confidently shooting team for more of the year...

 

 

I would add one more thing. We don’t have any really good free throw shooters. It’s not like we have a bunch of guys that have typically shot 80% and are now shooting 60%. Our two guys that get fouled the most, Morgan and RoJo (didn’t look that up, just assuming) have always been shaky, streaky free throw shooters. Davis did decline this year before getting hurt, so there’s is that one. 

But my general point is that this was never a team with really good, or even above average, free throw shooters. 

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In my opinion FT have little to do with coaching.  Other than the obvious form issues, a coach can't do much.  FT are mental, or you just suck at them.  How many players have you seen that look like all Stars in scrimmage, but can't do jack when it's an actual game....  And if I'm 19+ yrs old and missing ft on the regular, I am shooting a million in my own time

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I'll go one step further and include 3 point shooting as well.  I made a spreadsheet comparing last year's numbers to this year's for each returning player.  Hopefully next year we see an increase in returning numbers instead of a decrease with most.  There are some numbers that don't play out well (McRoberts 2 for 2 on FT last year, so percentage will obviously decrease), but overall there is a fairly substantial overall decrease in both areas.  If our returning players would have shot the same percentage on FT and 3s this year as they did last year, we would average just over 3 more points a game.  We've lost 3 conference games by 3 or less points.  Now, obviously it is impossible to say we could just add 3 points to each game and we would have won it, but I think shooting is an area that needs to improve to get some more wins next year.

I also don't buy the bad FT shooters idea.  Newkirk is our only returner who shoots a higher percentage this year than last year.  Out of a group of 7, no reason 6 of them should decline from one year to the next.

image.thumb.png.09ced66e66ca3020d20ecbe160d1e381.png

 

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I guess I look at it like this..I'm not saying one shouldn't practice all phases of the game but if you can't shoot free throws by the time your at this level chances are your just not a good free throw shooter...who knows they make them all the time in practice but when the lights are on maybe they just tense up to the point they don't feel comfortable.

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1 hour ago, Leathernecks said:

I'll go one step further and include 3 point shooting as well.  I made a spreadsheet comparing last year's numbers to this year's for each returning player.  Hopefully next year we see an increase in returning numbers instead of a decrease with most.  There are some numbers that don't play out well (McRoberts 2 for 2 on FT last year, so percentage will obviously decrease), but overall there is a fairly substantial overall decrease in both areas.  If our returning players would have shot the same percentage on FT and 3s this year as they did last year, we would average just over 3 more points a game.  We've lost 3 conference games by 3 or less points.  Now, obviously it is impossible to say we could just add 3 points to each game and we would have won it, but I think shooting is an area that needs to improve to get some more wins next year.

I also don't buy the bad FT shooters idea.  Newkirk is our only returner who shoots a higher percentage this year than last year.  Out of a group of 7, no reason 6 of them should decline from one year to the next.

image.png

Fantastic graph!

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39 minutes ago, mchenry34 said:

I think it’s too obvious a weakness for that to be true...there isn’t a coach or n America bad enough to make the mistake of not practicing them much when it is s this bad...

I'm going to respectfully disagree with this caveat: I don't see Archie spending much time during practice because practice time is precious especially when you are tapering down at the end of the season, but I'm confident he's asked the players to get in plenty of reps on their own time in Cook Hall. I just don't see the players doing that as much as they should.  Otherwise, their percentages would not be dropping.  With practice comes muscle memory and confidence.  There will always be a mental aspect, but I think you can help confidence with lots of reps.

I just have a hard time believing that much emphasis/effort is being put into this area when the team has mostly gone backward.

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5 hours ago, Leathernecks said:

I'll go one step further and include 3 point shooting as well.  I made a spreadsheet comparing last year's numbers to this year's for each returning player.  Hopefully next year we see an increase in returning numbers instead of a decrease with most.  There are some numbers that don't play out well (McRoberts 2 for 2 on FT last year, so percentage will obviously decrease), but overall there is a fairly substantial overall decrease in both areas.  If our returning players would have shot the same percentage on FT and 3s this year as they did last year, we would average just over 3 more points a game.  We've lost 3 conference games by 3 or less points.  Now, obviously it is impossible to say we could just add 3 points to each game and we would have won it, but I think shooting is an area that needs to improve to get some more wins next year.

I also don't buy the bad FT shooters idea.  Newkirk is our only returner who shoots a higher percentage this year than last year.  Out of a group of 7, no reason 6 of them should decline from one year to the next.

image.png

I love the graph. I wish Josh McRoberts was on this team though... xD :cheers:

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11 hours ago, cohete15 said:

I love Archie. He will, without a doubt, put us back where we all want to be. I do have a question tho...

Before I ask it, please read my first sentence again. And I do not blame our failure at the FT on him, but...

I believe it's been posted that Archie's teams at Dayton were below average at the FT line. He still won consistently there. Was/Is there not enough emphasis placed there? Was his coaching that much superior in the conference that his teams could fail at the FT line (relatively speaking), but still win? Is Archie seeing that at this higher level of competition, you can't beat good teams without being good at the FT line? Having better players will certainly help, but you have to think he's sitting in his office right now staring at all the points we didn't get at the FT line, and how much better our record would be if we could a higher percent. Maybe the effort is there, but it's become too much of a mental thing for these players. While I am highly, highly encouraged by what I saw this year, it makes games like last night hurt even worse to see us lose games at the FT line than to lose by 12 points because we just aren't very good.

Please read my first sentence again before responding LOL. 

These kids have 24 hour Cook Hall to get better at free throws. Archie's focus was teaching Defense which wasn't taught here for 10 years.

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15 hours ago, mchenry34 said:

 

Question will be if Archie makes adjustments to how he practices and game coaches in year two in order to have a more confidently shooting team for more of the year...

 

 

This is what I am looking for. I think there was likely a whole host of issues at play this year. I think its too early to say we will perenially be a below average FT shooting team..  Next year will give us a better idea and be something to watch fir early in the season.

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14 hours ago, FKIM01 said:

The way they are shooting, I doubt if they are practicing much.

I've wondered the same.  I can see how FT shooting would be de-emphasized during team practice due to the need to build a defense and offense basically from the ground up.  That said, there's no excuse for being this bad from the line - the players should work on it on their own as there's no need for coaches and other players to be involved.  They all have keys to Cook, and should know if they need to work on it.  I can't even buy the idea that they need coaching for form and technique - I watched several of the IHSAA girls championship games yesterday and you see girls with all sorts of weird shots, but they're still accurate.

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