For many of us, Cal offense left a lot to be desired the last two seasons. The offense just did not look as good as we expected. The players all had their good moments, but the team did not work well together on offense to make baskets. Evaluating team play on offense is more a subjective matter, but the statistical side can indicate some trends, especially assists. Assists per game, and the ratio of assists to made field goals tell us how often a team's baskets are the result of a pass. This is not the total picture, because there are no stats for how often a shooter was helped by a screen from a teammate, for example.

Cal's 2016 team had 12.6 assists per game, and their Assist to Field Goals Made Ratio was 48%. Cal's 2015 team was nearly the same, averaging 12.5 assists per game and their A/FGM Ratio was 50%.

Assists have been recorded at Cal beginning in 1969. There are only 3 teams in the last 48 years which made fewer assists per game or had a lower Assist to Field Goal Ratio than the Cuonzo Martin teams of 2015 and 2016:

1976: Assists to Field Goals Made = 40% This was a Dick Edwards team, with Gene Ransom and Ricky Hawthorne responsible for nearly all the assists (11.8 per game)

1984: 11.3 Assists per game, ranked #266 out of 275 teams, and the lowest Cal total in the last 48 years. This was a Dick Kuchen team with Butch Hays, Kevin Johnson, and Chris Washington

1998: A/FGM Ratio = 46% This was a Ben Braun team, with Geno Carlisle and Thomas Kilgore getting a total of only 5 assists between them, and 2nd stringer Circus King leading the team with 3 assists per game. Team total was 11.9 assists per game.

Even Lou Campanelli (who most fans, including me, believed was not a good offensive coach) had better offensive teams. Lou's worst offensive team based on assists per game was 1988, at 14.7 assists per game, and that was also Gary Colson's first year with the Bears. Lou's best offensive year was Colson's second year, when the Bears averaged 18.5 assists per game, the highest in 48 years, and an A/FGM Ratio of 69%, also the highest at Cal in 48 years. Campanelli's teams had an A/FGM Ratio of 60% or better in all of his years at Cal, except 1992, where the Ratio was 57.

Last season's NCAA Championship game pitted Villanova (15.9 Assists per game, A/FGM Ratio = 59%) against North Carolina (17.8 Assists per game, A/FGM Ratio = 57%). If Cal wants to eventually reach this elite status, one way to do this would be to try and look like the teams that share the ball more. This way of playing gives teams who do not have a roster loaded with 5-star players a way to compete with the teams who do have lots of 5 star players.

All the top teams of last season that I looked at share the ball more than Cal does. So if Cal does not begin to play this way, then we need to have a steady stream of 5-star recruits every season to replace the ones who leave the program early for the draft or to transfer. Cuonzo Martin can coach defense. Cuonzo Martin can recruit at a high level. So far we have seen little or no evidence that he can coach players to share the ball in an offense. Pete Newell once said the two-man play is the essence of basketball. We see very little of this from Martin's teams. What we have seen looks to me like the one-man play is the essence of our basketball now. Our half-court game is "Take it the rim. Make a play." Our fast break or transition game is essentially one player dribbling coast to coast with the ball and taking a shot. The only way this kind of offense is successful is to always have four or five great one-on-one players on the floor at all times. But many coaches, beginning with Pete Newell, proved one-on-one offenses can be stopped. John Wooden proved that four or five outstanding players sharing the ball cannot be stopped. That is the ideal offense, and the one that most coaches aspire to have, but it also can sometimes require a great coach to get great individual players to work together.

This season should tell us more about Martin as a coach: whether he can up his game to include more sharing the ball or not. He does not have as many great individual players this season, as far as we know, so it is an ideal time to start emphasizing sharing the ball over "take it to the rim". If he can't do this, perhaps bringing in an assistant to coach the players on offense would be the answer to getting Cal to the next level. Gary Colson. Bobby Knight, and Brad Duggan are perhaps too old for the job, but there are probably plenty of offensive minds out there waiting for just such an opportunity.

I agree that this year should tell us a lot. It should be obvious that this team should try to get the ball to Ivan and then play off him, because there's clear evidence that Ivan can hit the open man out of a double-team.

I think any judgment of Martin, his offense and utilization of assists is going to take a lot more time than most people are willing to give. The reason is that you really need to see how his offense flows with different point guards and how those point guards develop during his tenure. So far, CM has basically used T Wallace as a point guard - and I'll just leave it at that.

I'd like to see a point guard grow and develop over a few seasons. I'd also like to see 4 or 5 different point guards go through the program before making a judgment on a coach wrt assists. That could take 10 years!

Looking beyond the assist aspect of the offense and based on what we've seen from CM so far at Cal, I would not expect to see a fluid or complicated offense that we may have seen under Monty. But I would expect some improvement in the flow and consistency of the offense compared to the last two seasons. In particular, we might have a nice inside outside game with Ivan and our wings this year.

My strong sense under CM, is that we will see a tough, defensive minded team with lots of heart. This will keep us in most games and win a few. When our offense is above average, we will have a lot of success. When our offense is below average, we will be a bubble team.

While I refuse to go tripping down the 1960 stat lane I am also very interested to see how the team works in its half court set.

Precdiction - we will look WORSE in running fast break basketball (a place that Brown and Wallace Excelled at)
We will look BETTER in the half court set - since the ball will not "stick" as it did last year when it got into Ty and Brown's hands.

Another prediction I will make - SFCB will continue to wax about Pete Newell and it will continue to drive me BATTY given the vast and wide differences between the game as it was played then and the way it is played now. The fact I am driven batty and express this will also make SFCB batty. Shocky will get us out of our funk by posting pictures of Curvy Brunette Yoga practioners that will both offend and titalate - often the same poster. And I will post many times during the game thread and Shocky will remind me I should be flying up to Haas to create memories with SCT Junior.

(Hey, SCT Junior Female variety is staring girls touch rugby Monday so who knows.....;-)

Interesting thread, SFCity. I agree with BeachedBear that it is too early to judge Cuonzo's offensive philosophy. This is the first year with true point guards and a big man (Rabb) ready to have the offense run through him. I do agree that so far, the offense has left much to be desired, though.

One minor point: assists/fg is a better stat than assists/game, since the latter can be influenced by style of play--i.e., slow it down v. shoot quickly.

BeachedBear;842752576 said:

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I think any judgment of Martin, his offense and utilization of assists is going to take a lot more time than most people are willing to give.

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I think we've already seen plenty of Martin's offense. Like any other team sport, the results will get better as the talent gets better, but there is never going to be a lot "there" there as far as offensive structure goes.

I expect that the offense will change from last year to take advantage of this years talent .....more of an emphasis on movement and passing to get open looks , and less isolations .

While I agree that this year will tell us a lot, and while I like offenses that move the ball, I don't see much point in valuing ball movement as the measure of an offense and I don't agree that measuring a team's offensive output by assists is as useful as you believe. Mike Montgomery's best Cal team averaged 14.3 apg, roughly what you say Campanelli's worst team averaged. Yet Montgomery's 2009-10 team was 24-11 and averaged 77.2 points per game while Campanelli's team averaged 66 ppg and was 9-20. My point would be, you design your offense to fit your personnel unless you are a complete system coach, in which case you'd better recruit only players that fit that system well. Montgomery did that, Campanelli did not, and we don't know about Martin yet but last year didn't tell me much about that question. I didn't like the lack of ball movement the last couple of years, and last year in particular. However, you blame the coach without even looking at the personnel or whether the players were executing what the coach wanted them to do. Or if they were trying to execute, whether they were doing it well. IMO, it was less the offensive structure than the execution. We had some players who were not good (i.e. they were bad) at moving the ball quickly who were high usage players. If you don't move the ball quickly in a motion offense it stalls. You can blame that on coaching,somewhat legitimately, although with Brown in particular the staff had very little time to correct long-held bad habits. The year before we had almost no offensive talent for long stretches and I wouldn't even put that year into the mix. No one could have done much with that crew.

This year the offense should focus more on Rabb, who is an instinctive passer and who does know how to facilitate. The primary ballhandlers should be much less sticky than Wallace and Brown. We may indeed see better ball movement, and I sure hope we do, but it also may well come in the context of the same system and be more the result of different personnel, not better or different coaching. We'll see.

^+1 every word^

As much as the stats from the OP do a great job of pointing out our issues, some of those problems originated from the fact that our two best players were selfish scorers, and one of them played a position that demanded selflessness. But I judge Martin based on his words almost as much as the team's performance. His answer to last year's offensive problems every single game that we did not have good offense was that we just needed to be more aggressive and score the ball, which is the last thing our team needed to do. This year, his comments have been that the team has to get the ball to Ivan, and that Ivan needs to be more more aggressive. In other words, he does not seem to believe in offensive flow and favors 1-on-1 basketball.

I feel like we've been down this road before, and that eventually he's going to have to bring in an assistant coach that knows something about offense. Having better players is great, but if they are handicapped by a crappy offensive system, then we will be easy to frustrate. That said, I agree with others that our half-court offense should improve with a true point guard in the game more often. It seems our fast break offense has to get worse, but it felt like last year we blew so many breaks, so maybe there will be less of that.

While I agree that last year's offense left much to be desired, I think you are misinterpreting Cuonzo's comments about Ivan. When you have a dominant player, no matter how much you run motion or pass the ball, it makes sense to run the offense through him. Last year, Ivan was not nearly aggressive enough in terms of getting position, demanding the ball, and looking to score (by his own admission). Of course, he was hampered by having Wallace playing essentially out of position, and Brown not having the court sense as a passer (I don't think it is necessary to call them "selfish" when acknowledging their shortcomings). We now have two true point guards; how good they'll be remains to be seen. It is also true that Rabb is an excellent passer for a big man, so running through him as the first scoring option and a passing option when double-teamed or without a clear shot makes sense. I read Cuonzo's comments very differently than you.

BeachedBear;842752576 said:

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I think any judgment of Martin, his offense and utilization of assists is going to take a lot more time than most people are willing to give. The reason is that you really need to see how his offense flows with different point guards and how those point guards develop during his tenure. So far, CM has basically used T Wallace as a point guard - and I'll just leave it at that.

I'd like to see a point guard grow and develop over a few seasons. I'd also like to see 4 or 5 different point guards go through the program before making a judgment on a coach wrt assists. That could take 10 years!

Looking beyond the assist aspect of the offense and based on what we've seen from CM so far at Cal, I would not expect to see a fluid or complicated offense that we may have seen under Monty. But I would expect some improvement in the flow and consistency of the offense compared to the last two seasons. In particular, we might have a nice inside outside game with Ivan and our wings this year.

My strong sense under CM, is that we will see a tough, defensive minded team with lots of heart. This will keep us in most games and win a few. When our offense is above average, we will have a lot of success. When our offense is below average, we will be a bubble team.

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+1. All good points. I'm afraid I'm less patient. I've seen the Bears win an NCAA title, and I want to see another one ASAP. I want everyone to see what I did. There is no thrill like it in basketball.

I hope we don't have to wait 10 years to evaluate an offense, or even how it flows. Montgomery won a PAC12 title in his second season, and he did it without having an actual point guard. Randle was more of a scorer, while sometimes feeding others who could create their own shots. Cobbs was a combo guard. So was Franklin. Seely was a scorer. Gutierrez was a prototypical point guard on defense, but on offense was not highly skilled in either distributing or scoring. The only actual point guard he had was Brandon Smith, who alas, was probably not PAC12 caliber. And yet even with no skilled point guard, Montgomery's teams all had movement. The players moved, and the ball moved. Not as much as I would have liked, but that was due to not having a real point guard. To your point, give Montgomery at Cal a Chris Hernandez, and I think Montgomery takes a Cal team deeper into the NCAA tournament. Give him a Brevin Knight, and Monty could take a Cal team to the Final Four and maybe farther. Montgomery also had Sam Singer as a freshman, who was not really ready for prime time, but he did evidence the vision and intuition of a point guard. I suspect he was also a combo guard out of high school, based on his scoring stats.

Pete Newell reached the Elite 8 in his 3rd season, and had captured the NCAA title in his 5th season. In his first two seasons he had more stars but no real point guard to run offense or distribute. When point guards Al Buch and Bob Wendell arrived, he had his best teams. But even in his first two seasons, players moved, and the ball moved. You could see it, and once he got his own point guards, it was off to the races.

Cuonzo had Sam Singer for two seasons. Sam had morphed into a true point guard on his roster. He has improved his point guard skills, while his shooting leaves a lot to be desired. I'm not sure he would have been a good enough starter at point. Cuonzo chose not to give him the point guard spot. He always chose Wallace, and he had to live with the results of that decision, which was good scoring and less flow or sharing of the ball.

Reaching the Elite 8 in his third season entailed getting a bid to the tournament and winning 1 (one) game.....23 total teams in the '57 tourney with Cal being seeded into the semifinal of the West Region....not really a fair comparison but still it was an accomplishment in those days...

SFCityBear;842754450 said:

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....I hope we don’t have to wait 10 years to evaluate an offense, or even how it flows. .....

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To clarify my point, I don't think it takes 10 years to evaluate the offense (as MZillion pointed out). My ten years was in regards to point guard development and particularly some of the stats you referenced. Last two seasons weren't a good barometer for PG development for a number of reasons that I probably don't need to rehash. I give CM eight more years because, not only would I like to see a PG develop over a few seasons, but I'd like to see it more than once.

Having said all that, my strong hunch is that we will NOT see CM or the staff 'develop' a PG. More likely, they will recruit a strong PG and use an offense that doesn't rely much on one.

:gobears:

bluesaxe;842752779 said:

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While I agree that this year will tell us a lot, and while I like offenses that move the ball, I don't see much point in valuing ball movement as the measure of an offense and I don't agree that measuring a team's offensive output by assists is as useful as you believe. Mike Montgomery's best Cal team averaged 14.3 apg, roughly what you say Campanelli's worst team averaged. Yet Montgomery's 2009-10 team was 24-11 and averaged 77.2 points per game while Campanelli's team averaged 66 ppg and was 9-20. My point would be, you design your offense to fit your personnel unless you are a complete system coach, in which case you'd better recruit only players that fit that system well. Montgomery did that, Campanelli did not, and we don't know about Martin yet but last year didn't tell me much about that question. I didn't like the lack of ball movement the last couple of years, and last year in particular. However, you blame the coach without even looking at the personnel or whether the players were executing what the coach wanted them to do. Or if they were trying to execute, whether they were doing it well. IMO, it was less the offensive structure than the execution. We had some players who were not good (i.e. they were bad) at moving the ball quickly who were high usage players. If you don't move the ball quickly in a motion offense it stalls. You can blame that on coaching,somewhat legitimately, although with Brown in particular the staff had very little time to correct long-held bad habits. The year before we had almost no offensive talent for long stretches and I wouldn't even put that year into the mix. No one could have done much with that crew.

This year the offense should focus more on Rabb, who is an instinctive passer and who does know how to facilitate. The primary ballhandlers should be much less sticky than Wallace and Brown. We may indeed see better ball movement, and I sure hope we do, but it also may well come in the context of the same system and be more the result of different personnel, not better or different coaching. We'll see.

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I wrote that “Evaluating team play on offense is more of a subjective matter…” I never wrote the word “movement” anywhere in that post. I never wrote that I believe “measuring a team's offensive output by assists is … useful.” What I wrote was that, “Assists per game, and the ratio of assists to made field goals tell us how often a team’s baskets are the result of a pass.” That is not a belief or an opinion. It is a statistical fact. If your team makes 20 baskets, and 12 of them came as the result of an assist, then they are assisting the shooter with a dish 60% of the time. The rest of the baskets came by way of individual effort by the shooters.

I never mentioned offensive output in my post, and to bring it up is not quite fair. Campanelli’s 1988 team was actually a little worse offensively than you wrote, if sports-reference.com is correct, scoring only 64 points per game, which was well below the 1988 NCAA average of 74 points per game. I am helping to make your point here, but there were a number of reasons for the low output. The first was they were a poor shooting team, shooting 42% vs. the 1988 NCAA average of 47%. The second reason is that their best player, Leonard Taylor, who was a dominant player at both ends, missed the entire season with injury. Without Taylor, Cal had no post game, and no post defense. They were a poor defensive team, giving up 70 points per game at 47% shooting. The result was that Cal committed nearly 100 more personal fouls and gave up over 200 more free throw attempts than they received, and their opponents scored 145 more free throws. So Cal lost at least 6 points due to FG% difference, and another 6 points at the free throw line, a 12 point deficit, not to mention Taylor’s loss. So they played decently, and overcame half of the 12 point deficit to only lose to opponents by an average of 6 points.

The comparison with Montgomery’s 2010 team is not meaningful. Monty had good post offense from Boykin and MSF, outstanding perimeter shooting, and several players who could create their own shot. In fact, I thought they went one-on-one too often. They were a much better shooting team than 1988, shooting 48%. They were much better defensively than in 1988, giving up 68 points and holding opponents to 43% shooting. They had 6 steals per game, while the 1988 team had less than ONE steal per game.

I don’t feel I am blaming Cuonzo Martin for anything. The 2016 team did better than I thought they would. I did not write about the personnel, because earlier I had written ad infinitum about the one-on-one play of certain players. I have no knowledge of whether Cuonzo Martin has a system, and the players are not good enough to execute it, or are reluctant to execute it. I can’t get inside his head, or get inside the heads of the players. I have respect for Hoop Dreams and Beached Bear who know more about this game than I do, and they are optimistic that Martin does have a system and it will be better in years to come. I don’t see any evidence of a system yet. But maybe I don’t know how to recognize it. You say we didn’t have players who pass quickly. How about that coast to coast fast break that we nearly always use? In that fast break, there is no passing at all. How about the two man play? Do you need quick passing for that? We hardly ever run one.

You don’t think assists per game or per field goal mean anything? How did you like Cal’s last basketball game vs Hawaii in the NCAA tourney? There are many who make the excuse that two of Cal’s best players, Tyrone Wallace and Jabari Bird were hurt and missed the game. That hurt Cal’s chances to go far in the NCAA, but losing to Hawaii? That was one of the most embarrassing losses in Cal history. There are many Insiders who place unwavering faith in recruit rankings. Cal entered that game with a top 5 (Brown)ranked recruit and a top 10 (Rabb) ranked recruit, and two 4-star players, (Matthews and Domingo), three 3-star players (Rooks, Singer, and RMB). Hawaii countered with two 3-star players (Thomas and Jankovic) and two 2-star players (Jovanovic and Valdes). The rest of the Hawaii roster was all unranked. Even with no Wallace or Bird, Cal was loaded with talent, compared to Hawaii, and Hawaii handed Cal their fannies on a platter.

In that game, Cal made a whopping 6 assists as a team. The Cal point guard, Sam Singer, had ZERO assists. I can’t remember a Cal game where the point guard had ZERO assists. If Cal had made their usual 12 assists, Cal would have theoretically had at least 12 more points, and would have won that game. I know there were other reasons. Jaylen Brown should have stayed in bed. He made 7 turnovers and fouled out with 4 points. Domingo played 14 minutes without a point, Rooks and KO got a whopping five rebounds between them. RMB played 26 minutes with 3 points. Only Mathews and Rabb played up to capabilities.

I am not asking for much. I’d like to have seen that Cal team get 16-17 assists per game. It was doable. Last season, 70 NCAA teams had 15 or more assists. Michigan State averaged over 20 assists per game. Of course, they had a true point guard and we did not. I hope we find one this year.

You're quibbling with your own language instead of addressing the point. Are you saying passing doesn't mean ball movement? You were talking about passing but not about ball movement? Because that would be strange. And "[COLOR=#000066]If Cal wants to eventually reach this elite status, one way to do this would be to try and look like the teams that share the ball more" doesn't mean ball movement. OK, what does it mean then? And while the word "movement" may not have appeared in your post (I didn't bother verifying that since I never said it did) maybe it should have. Ball movement means more than assist totals if you're trying to assess the passing capabilities of an offense.

And you weren't measuring offense by assist numbers when you said: "[/COLOR][COLOR=#000066]Even Lou Campanelli (who most fans, including me, believed was not a good offensive coach) had better offensive teams. Lou's worst offensive team based on assists per game was 1988, at 14.7 assists per game, and that was also Gary Colson's first year with the Bears. Lou's best offensive year was Colson's second year, when the Bears averaged 18.5 assists per game, the highest in 48 years, and an A/FGM Ratio of 69%, also the highest at Cal in 48 years. Campanelli's teams had an A/FGM Ratio of 60% or better in all of his years at Cal, except 1992, where the Ratio was 57." So therefore my point that Montgomery's team had similar assist numbers but a much better offense is what, irrelevant? Unfair?

[/COLOR][COLOR=#000066]Assists do not measure when passing leads to a basket. This is the NBA definition but I believe the NCAA one is pretty much the same: "[/COLOR]An assist is a pass that directly leads to a basket. This can be a pass to the low post that leads to a direct score, a long pass for a layup, a fast break pass to a teammate for a layup, and/or a pass that results in an open perimeter shot for a teammate. In basketball, an assist is awarded only if, in the judgement of the statistician, the last player's pass contributed directly to a made basket. An assist can be awarded for a basket scored after the ball has been dribbled if the player's pass led to the field goal being made."

[COLOR=#000066]Assists are subject to scorer judgment calls and are affected by where the game is played.. It's a somewhat flawed stat even when you use it to try and measure whether a team is sharing the ball because it does not show anything but the one pass, which could be a routine pass initiating the offense to a guy who shoots an open jumper just as easily as a pass that actually creates an opportunity for a teammate. And, guys can be passing the ball really well but not hitting open shots and again the assist stat won't measure the effectiveness of the passing. For that reason assists as a stat is not by itself a real measure of the effectiveness of an offense. That's what I said. I did not say they were irrelevant. But there are a host of other stats, including offensive efficiency, effective field goal percentage, and points per possession that I find much more telling.

Your post was entitled "Cal Offense." Personally, I'm fine with a team that has few assists but a good offensive efficiency, a high effective field goal percentage and a lot of points per possession if that's the team's best bet for scoring efficiently given your personnel. Cal did not score efficiently last year, but in my view it was more because of the players than because of the system. We had guys who handled the ball a lot who had no feel for passing and did not have good judgment when they drove the ball. Those guys would have filed in a system based on ball movement as well.

As an aside, your hangup on point guards is just weird to me. Assists don't only come from point guards. Draymond Green averages more assists than Steph Curry. Is that a flaw or something? The idea of one guy running the show and being the only distributor is fading away, as are a lot of the older concepts regarding positions in basketball.

Why you brought up the Hawaii game is baffling to me. There were a lot of other reasons why Cal lost that game, including the fact that we shot 3-19 from deep and gave up 77 points. Cal had 6 assists in that game, yes. Cal also had 6 assists as a team when they beat Washington and scored 78 points. That's what I mean by assists not being a good measure of offense.





[/COLOR]

SFCityBear;842754908 said:

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I wrote that "Evaluating team play on offense is more of a subjective matter" I never wrote the word "movement" anywhere in that post. I never wrote that I believe "measuring a team's offensive output by assists is useful." What I wrote was that, "Assists per game, and the ratio of assists to made field goals tell us how often a team's baskets are the result of a pass." That is not a belief or an opinion. It is a statistical fact. If your team makes 20 baskets, and 12 of them came as the result of an assist, then they are assisting the shooter with a dish 60% of the time. The rest of the baskets came by way of individual effort by the shooters.

I never mentioned offensive output in my post, and to bring it up is not quite fair. Campanelli's 1988 team was actually a little worse offensively than you wrote, if sports-reference.com is correct, scoring only 64 points per game, which was well below the 1988 NCAA average of 74 points per game. I am helping to make your point here, but there were a number of reasons for the low output. The first was they were a poor shooting team, shooting 42% vs. the 1988 NCAA average of 47%. The second reason is that their best player, Leonard Taylor, who was a dominant player at both ends, missed the entire season with injury. Without Taylor, Cal had no post game, and no post defense. They were a poor defensive team, giving up 70 points per game at 47% shooting. The result was that Cal committed nearly 100 more personal fouls and gave up over 200 more free throw attempts than they received, and their opponents scored 145 more free throws. So Cal lost at least 6 points due to FG% difference, and another 6 points at the free throw line, a 12 point deficit, not to mention Taylor's loss. So they played decently, and overcame half of the 12 point deficit to only lose to opponents by an average of 6 points.

The comparison with Montgomery's 2010 team is not meaningful. Monty had good post offense from Boykin and MSF, outstanding perimeter shooting, and several players who could create their own shot. In fact, I thought they went one-on-one too often. They were a much better shooting team than 1988, shooting 48%. They were much better defensively than in 1988, giving up 68 points and holding opponents to 43% shooting. They had 6 steals per game, while the 1988 team had less than ONE steal per game.

I don't feel I am blaming Cuonzo Martin for anything. The 2016 team did better than I thought they would. I did not write about the personnel, because earlier I had written ad infinitum about the one-on-one play of certain players. I have no knowledge of whether Cuonzo Martin has a system, and the players are not good enough to execute it, or are reluctant to execute it. I can't get inside his head, or get inside the heads of the players. I have respect for Hoop Dreams and Beached Bear who know more about this game than I do, and they are optimistic that Martin does have a system and it will be better in years to come. I don't see any evidence of a system yet. But maybe I don't know how to recognize it. You say we didn't have players who pass quickly. How about that coast to coast fast break that we nearly always use? In that fast break, there is no passing at all. How about the two man play? Do you need quick passing for that? We hardly ever run one.

You don't think assists per game or per field goal mean anything? How did you like Cal's last basketball game vs Hawaii in the NCAA tourney? There are many who make the excuse that two of Cal's best players, Tyrone Wallace and Jabari Bird were hurt and missed the game. That hurt Cal's chances to go far in the NCAA, but losing to Hawaii? That was one of the most embarrassing losses in Cal history. There are many Insiders who place unwavering faith in recruit rankings. Cal entered that game with a top 5 (Brown)ranked recruit and a top 10 (Rabb) ranked recruit, and two 4-star players, (Matthews and Domingo), three 3-star players (Rooks, Singer, and RMB). Hawaii countered with two 3-star players (Thomas and Jankovic) and two 2-star players (Jovanovic and Valdes). The rest of the Hawaii roster was all unranked. Even with no Wallace or Bird, Cal was loaded with talent, compared to Hawaii, and Hawaii handed Cal their fannies on a platter.

In that game, Cal made a whopping 6 assists as a team. The Cal point guard, Sam Singer, had ZERO assists. I can't remember a Cal game where the point guard had ZERO assists. If Cal had made their usual 12 assists, Cal would have theoretically had at least 12 more points, and would have won that game. I know there were other reasons. Jaylen Brown should have stayed in bed. He made 7 turnovers and fouled out with 4 points. Domingo played 14 minutes without a point, Rooks and KO got a whopping five rebounds between them. RMB played 26 minutes with 3 points. Only Mathews and Rabb played up to capabilities.

I am not asking for much. I'd like to have seen that Cal team get 16-17 assists per game. It was doable. Last season, 70 NCAA teams had 15 or more assists. Michigan State averaged over 20 assists per game. Of course, they had a true point guard and we did not. I hope we find one this year.

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It's a shame you had to spell that out. Unfortunately it'll probably fall on blind eyes.

bluesaxe;842757735 said:

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You're quibbling with your own language instead of addressing the point. Are you saying passing doesn't mean ball movement? You were talking about passing but not about ball movement? Because that would be strange. And "[COLOR=#000066]If Cal wants to eventually reach this elite status, one way to do this would be to try and look like the teams that share the ball more" doesn't mean ball movement. OK, what does it mean then? And while the word "movement" may not have appeared in your post (I didn't bother verifying that since I never said it did) maybe it should have. Ball movement means more than assist totals if you're trying to assess the passing capabilities of an offense.

And you weren't measuring offense by assist numbers when you said: "[/COLOR][COLOR=#000066]Even Lou Campanelli (who most fans, including me, believed was not a good offensive coach) had better offensive teams. Lou's worst offensive team based on assists per game was 1988, at 14.7 assists per game, and that was also Gary Colson's first year with the Bears. Lou's best offensive year was Colson's second year, when the Bears averaged 18.5 assists per game, the highest in 48 years, and an A/FGM Ratio of 69%, also the highest at Cal in 48 years. Campanelli's teams had an A/FGM Ratio of 60% or better in all of his years at Cal, except 1992, where the Ratio was 57." So therefore my point that Montgomery's team had similar assist numbers but a much better offense is what, irrelevant? Unfair?

[/COLOR][COLOR=#000066]Assists do not measure when passing leads to a basket. This is the NBA definition but I believe the NCAA one is pretty much the same: "[/COLOR]An assist is a pass that directly leads to a basket. This can be a pass to the low post that leads to a direct score, a long pass for a layup, a fast break pass to a teammate for a layup, and/or a pass that results in an open perimeter shot for a teammate. In basketball, an assist is awarded only if, in the judgement of the statistician, the last player's pass contributed directly to a made basket. An assist can be awarded for a basket scored after the ball has been dribbled if the player's pass led to the field goal being made."

[COLOR=#000066]Assists are subject to scorer judgment calls and are affected by where the game is played.. It's a somewhat flawed stat even when you use it to try and measure whether a team is sharing the ball because it does not show anything but the one pass, which could be a routine pass initiating the offense to a guy who shoots an open jumper just as easily as a pass that actually creates an opportunity for a teammate. And, guys can be passing the ball really well but not hitting open shots and again the assist stat won't measure the effectiveness of the passing. For that reason assists as a stat is not by itself a real measure of the effectiveness of an offense. That's what I said. I did not say they were irrelevant. But there are a host of other stats, including offensive efficiency, effective field goal percentage, and points per possession that I find much more telling.

Your post was entitled "Cal Offense." Personally, I'm fine with a team that has few assists but a good offensive efficiency, a high effective field goal percentage and a lot of points per possession if that's the team's best bet for scoring efficiently given your personnel. Cal did not score efficiently last year, but in my view it was more because of the players than because of the system. We had guys who handled the ball a lot who had no feel for passing and did not have good judgment when they drove the ball. Those guys would have filed in a system based on ball movement as well.

As an aside, your hangup on point guards is just weird to me. Assists don't only come from point guards. Draymond Green averages more assists than Steph Curry. Is that a flaw or something? The idea of one guy running the show and being the only distributor is fading away, as are a lot of the older concepts regarding positions in basketball.

Why you brought up the Hawaii game is baffling to me. There were a lot of other reasons why Cal lost that game, including the fact that we shot 3-19 from deep and gave up 77 points. Cal had 6 assists in that game, yes. Cal also had 6 assists as a team when they beat Washington and scored 78 points. That's what I mean by assists not being a good measure of offense.





[/COLOR]

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Yeah, well, it's always an interesting exercise to dig into some of these stats and I read some interesting articles about the limitations of the assist stat. And it kept me away from election reading for a while. A major plus.

Civil Bear;842757852 said:

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It's a shame you had to spell that out. Unfortunately it'll probably fall on blind eyes.

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Bluesaxe makes excellent points:

We were 66th in effective FG% and 52nd in offensive efficiency both out of 350 teams. Very good though not elite #'s

We will IMO be better this year on offense than we were last year.

Those numbers were frustrating, however, considering the team had a couple of lottery picks and some other talented players on it. But last year's team had talent but not the right mix of skills. I agree we ought to be better offensively this year, especially in terms of ball movement and flow.

CalHoopFan;842758550 said:

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Bluesaxe makes excellent points:

We were 66th in effective FG% and 52nd in offensive efficiency both out of 350 teams. Very good though not elite #'s

We will IMO be better this year on offense than we were last year.

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bluesaxe;842758859 said:

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Those numbers were frustrating, however, considering the team had a couple of lottery picks and some other talented players on it. But last year's team had talent but not the right mix of skills. I agree we ought to be better offensively this year, especially in terms of ball movement and flow.

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Exactly my view. Wallace was simply not a good orchestrator of the offense. The ball stopped with he and Brown. The challenge we'll have this year is shooting. Brown and Wallace were good finishers inside and Mathews was deadly from deep.

CalHoopFan;842758910 said:

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Exactly my view. Wallace was simply not a good orchestrator of the offense. The ball stopped with he and Brown. The challenge we'll have this year is shooting. Brown and Wallace were good finishers inside and Mathews was deadly from deep.

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Yup.yup.yup. Based on my view of the Exhibition, I was really hoping that Jabari and Sam would take the opportunity to show what they could do, stepping our of the shadow of the three you mention. As I said elsewhere, they really disappointed me in this facet and we need them to step up. Although a lot of it is on them (intent more than skills), I'm also looking to see if this coaching staff can help these two in particular make the adjustment.

If so, a lot of good things will happen with this team. If not, it will be a long season or we will be overly reliant on Ivan as a one-dimensional team.

I really think Jabari may be the key. Even if SS doesn't step up his game significantly, there's still hope with Moore at pg, but someone needs to be a scorer from the perimeter (I assume Mullins can shoot, but he's not going to get the looks without someone else).

Blueseax, (love the handle, by the way. Are you a musician?)

I completely agree with your points about not using assists to measure output or effectiveness, or using all the modern stats like eFG%, points per possession, efficiency, etc. to measure offensive effectiveness. The point I tried get across was I am not using the assist stats to MEASURE anything. I wrote about how the Cal offense LOOKS, not about their output or efficiency or effectiveness. I wrote about apples, and you wrote about oranges and bananas as well. I wrote that evaluating TEAMWORK on offense is a SUBJECTIVE matter, by which I implied that TEAMWORK could not be measured by numerical statistics. My point was that most good teams today play a certain way, and LOOK a certain way. The title of this thread is "Cal Offense", which encompasses a lot of things. I should have titled it, "Assists and Teamwork" or Cal Teamwork on Offense", and I apologize to you if I misled you with my title.

There have been many past comments made on the Bear Insider about how assists are not a good measurement of offense. I agree. But the fact remains that Cal's assist statistics are just average, compared to the rest of the teams in the nation, and they are much lower than the assist statistics of good teams. Assist statistics may be numerical, but they are a subjective assessment of how often a team plays together. They tell you how often a basket is a result of a pass. All or nearly all good teams had more assists than Cal, and nearly all good teams had pretty good teamwork. Cal did not have a GOOD-LOOKING team last season, not nearly as good-looking as all the early predictions voiced on this board. And IMO, Cal did not often have good teamwork last season.

The reason a lot of assists is a good thing is because it usually means the related baskets were the result of a player taking a high percentage wide open shot. Many of the unassisted shots taken were low percentage tightly defended shots. High percentage shooting looks good, and often means team success.

I also agree with you that assists are subjective judgments by statisticians. Over the course of the season the good and bad judgment calls by statisticians probably average out for most teams. Thanks for that definition of an assist which you quoted. I've been looking for that for a long time. Could you send me the source? I'd especially like to know when those definitions were enacted. Over the last 50 years, the definition has been so watered-down and liberalized that it is impossible to accurately compare assists from today with earlier eras. An assist was never awarded for a pass resulting in a perimeter basket until after the three point rule came into effect. Because the three is such a low percentage shot compared to a layup, I think only half an assist should be awarded for the pass resulting in a three-point basket. In the pass for a layup, the skill of the passer is more important. In the pass for a three pointer, the skill of the shooter is more important.

Awarding an assist for a pass to a player who takes some dribbles and scores is ludicrous. How many dribbles is the shooter allowed? One? Two? Ten? On a play where one player inbounds the ball at one end, and the receiver dribbles the length of the floor to make a shot, does the passer who inbounded the ball get an assist? Oscar Robertson said that when he played, if a player took just a single step after receiving a pass before he shot, then the passer was not awarded with an assist. And when Oscar played, he never got an assist for a pass to a teammate who made a perimeter shot. If today's Cal team were to be awarded assists based on the definition of an assist used 50 years ago, they would likely get only 8 or 9 assists per game. So I'd rather we don't go down this road of what is an assist, because it makes modern teams look inferior in terms of teamwork, IMO, because they don't make many assists based on the original definition of an assist.

You write that I blame Cuonzo Martin, which I didn't think I did, but then you turn around and blame the players for not sharing the ball. Cuonzo has not talked much in public about sharing the ball, but he has talked about his players needing to create shots for themselves, and get tougher to make those shots. But neither you or I know for sure whether he is coaching them to pass and set up teammates or not. Neither you or I know if the players are not listening or not able to execute what he wants. We can only guess. I hear what you are saying about the players, but I am hesitant to blame them, because they are kids, kids who may not know better, and it is up to their coach to coach them in the aspects of team play. Ultimately, both players and coach are responsible for how the team looks and plays. I hope you are right about this season's group maybe being more adaptable to team play.

The Washington game was a stinker, except that we won. Both teams played poorly on offense. Cal shot 39% and UW shot even worse at 33%. If that was a good offensive game for you, well, OK.

What is my HANGUP about point guards, according to you? Draymond Green, a forward, leading the Dubs in assists is unusual, and anecdotal. Rick Barry, a forward, led the '75 Dubs. Wilt Chamberlain, a center, led the whole NBA in assists one season. So what? It happens sometimes. True point guards are fewer today, and most point guards are combo guards now. But I'd guess that on 90% of the teams in basketball today, the point guard still leads his team in assists. It is more important that the point guard be a leader on the floor. Nearly every good team has a leader, and that leader is usually a point guard. You saw what happened to Cal last season without a leader on the floor. Someone who runs the offense, sets up his teammates, runs plays. A good point guard, like Curry, by setting up his teammates for easy buckets, sets up a rhythm where others look to make assists as well. Rick Barry did it in '75. Magic Johnson did it every year. I will tell you one thing: if you need a player who can make lots of assists for you, as both Martin and Montgomery have needed, you will likely have more success looking among the recruits who are guards than the ones who are forwards or centers.

If you thought last years offense was bad, this one is going to look far, far worse at times. With Jaylen and Ty, at least you could go 1 on 1 and get a reasonable look at the basket if your set play doesn't produce.

There will be patches where our offense looks good, but you're also going to see a bunch of this: Rabb gets position, we throw the ball in, he gets immediately doubled and passes out, the defense will over rotate and we'll either throw up a contested brick 3, or someone will drive past his initial defender and take a wild layup because nobody on this team (besides maybe Bird) has demonstrated the ability to finish over post players.

Maybe we should just cancel the season now.

UrsaMajor;842759161 said:

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Maybe we should just cancel the season now.

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At least until we pull our next 5 star recruit.

concernedparent;842759302 said:

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At least until we pull our next 5 star recruit.

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Eh, but we add one, but lose one....Go figure.

I think we've mostly beaten this one to death. And yet: :hammer:, just one more. I did hear Martin talking about needing better ball movement last year, both in press conferences and during games. I'm not actually "blaming" anyone for anything here, just pointing out that in a motion offense that gives the players a lot of responsibility for deciding whether to drive or pass, guys who aren't natural passers are going to stop the ball. We had two of those and Wallace in particular came into the season knowing he had to show better at that and didn't. My hope is that they do better this year because Rabb in particular will get a lot more touches. While I might agree with the generality that you are probably going to find better passers at guard/wing positions that in bigs, I think the best and most intuitive passer on this year's team is Rabb.

As for point guards, I just see the trend away from depending on one guy to distribute and to me that's a good thing. If you have a great PG, awesome. But if your best passer is a PF, get him the ball and have the other players cutting or moving off the ball to give him opportunities to show it. Green is an extreme example of a Swiss Army knife player, but Steph Curry is a great passer and yet Green gets more assists. To me that shows that assists depend on other players finishing, and great shooting will up anyone's assist totals. We did not have that. Second, you can get good passing from places other than your point guard, but if you don't have good passers you're not likely to see much of it. And really, if you have a guy who never had to pass much and isn't a natural at it, coaching isn't going to change that a whole lot in one year. It takes more experience and more playing in a system where that's what you're expected to do.

As for the Washington game, I'll take 78 points most nights. Points win games. But if the team had shot 50% instead of 39% I'm sure the assist totals would have been higher. So which is it, chicken or egg?

And yeah, I used to be a blues guitar player. Not so much any more.

SFCityBear;842759093 said:

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Blueseax, (love the handle, by the way. Are you a musician?)

I completely agree with your points about not using assists to measure output or effectiveness, or using all the modern stats like eFG%, points per possession, efficiency, etc. to measure offensive effectiveness. The point I tried get across was I am not using the assist stats to MEASURE anything. I wrote about how the Cal offense LOOKS, not about their output or efficiency or effectiveness. I wrote about apples, and you wrote about oranges and bananas as well. I wrote that evaluating TEAMWORK on offense is a SUBJECTIVE matter, by which I implied that TEAMWORK could not be measured by numerical statistics. My point was that most good teams today play a certain way, and LOOK a certain way. The title of this thread is "Cal Offense", which encompasses a lot of things. I should have titled it, "Assists and Teamwork" or Cal Teamwork on Offense", and I apologize to you if I misled you with my title.

There have been many past comments made on the Bear Insider about how assists are not a good measurement of offense. I agree. But the fact remains that Cal's assist statistics are just average, compared to the rest of the teams in the nation, and they are much lower than the assist statistics of good teams. Assist statistics may be numerical, but they are a subjective assessment of how often a team plays together. They tell you how often a basket is a result of a pass. All or nearly all good teams had more assists than Cal, and nearly all good teams had pretty good teamwork. Cal did not have a GOOD-LOOKING team last season, not nearly as good-looking as all the early predictions voiced on this board. And IMO, Cal did not often have good teamwork last season.

The reason a lot of assists is a good thing is because it usually means the related baskets were the result of a player taking a high percentage wide open shot. Many of the unassisted shots taken were low percentage tightly defended shots. High percentage shooting looks good, and often means team success.

I also agree with you that assists are subjective judgments by statisticians. Over the course of the season the good and bad judgment calls by statisticians probably average out for most teams. Thanks for that definition of an assist which you quoted. I've been looking for that for a long time. Could you send me the source? I'd especially like to know when those definitions were enacted. Over the last 50 years, the definition has been so watered-down and liberalized that it is impossible to accurately compare assists from today with earlier eras. An assist was never awarded for a pass resulting in a perimeter basket until after the three point rule came into effect. Because the three is such a low percentage shot compared to a layup, I think only half an assist should be awarded for the pass resulting in a three-point basket. In the pass for a layup, the skill of the passer is more important. In the pass for a three pointer, the skill of the shooter is more important.

Awarding an assist for a pass to a player who takes some dribbles and scores is ludicrous. How many dribbles is the shooter allowed? One? Two? Ten? On a play where one player inbounds the ball at one end, and the receiver dribbles the length of the floor to make a shot, does the passer who inbounded the ball get an assist? Oscar Robertson said that when he played, if a player took just a single step after receiving a pass before he shot, then the passer was not awarded with an assist. And when Oscar played, he never got an assist for a pass to a teammate who made a perimeter shot. If today's Cal team were to be awarded assists based on the definition of an assist used 50 years ago, they would likely get only 8 or 9 assists per game. So I'd rather we don't go down this road of what is an assist, because it makes modern teams look inferior in terms of teamwork, IMO, because they don't make many assists based on the original definition of an assist.

You write that I blame Cuonzo Martin, which I didn't think I did, but then you turn around and blame the players for not sharing the ball. Cuonzo has not talked much in public about sharing the ball, but he has talked about his players needing to create shots for themselves, and get tougher to make those shots. But neither you or I know for sure whether he is coaching them to pass and set up teammates or not. Neither you or I know if the players are not listening or not able to execute what he wants. We can only guess. I hear what you are saying about the players, but I am hesitant to blame them, because they are kids, kids who may not know better, and it is up to their coach to coach them in the aspects of team play. Ultimately, both players and coach are responsible for how the team looks and plays. I hope you are right about this season's group maybe being more adaptable to team play.

The Washington game was a stinker, except that we won. Both teams played poorly on offense. Cal shot 39% and UW shot even worse at 33%. If that was a good offensive game for you, well, OK.

What is my HANGUP about point guards, according to you? Draymond Green, a forward, leading the Dubs in assists is unusual, and anecdotal. Rick Barry, a forward, led the '75 Dubs. Wilt Chamberlain, a center, led the whole NBA in assists one season. So what? It happens sometimes. True point guards are fewer today, and most point guards are combo guards now. But I'd guess that on 90% of the teams in basketball today, the point guard still leads his team in assists. It is more important that the point guard be a leader on the floor. Nearly every good team has a leader, and that leader is usually a point guard. You saw what happened to Cal last season without a leader on the floor. Someone who runs the offense, sets up his teammates, runs plays. A good point guard, like Curry, by setting up his teammates for easy buckets, sets up a rhythm where others look to make assists as well. Rick Barry did it in '75. Magic Johnson did it every year. I will tell you one thing: if you need a player who can make lots of assists for you, as both Martin and Montgomery have needed, you will likely have more success looking among the recruits who are guards than the ones who are forwards or centers.

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UrsaMajor;842759017 said:

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I really think Jabari may be the key. Even if SS doesn't step up his game significantly, there's still hope with Moore at pg, but someone needs to be a scorer from the perimeter (I assume Mullins can shoot, but he's not going to get the looks without someone else).

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Agree and after first game against SDS I see the same issues. Don't see Bird or Singer changing their game enough to generate enough offense. Mullins looks a little like Sam as a pass first, but with a better shot. They should play him as a two and screen so he can get open shots. Does not look like he can create. Bird still looks like a nice third option, and will have some good moments, but disappear. The Moore kid looks like it will take a year or so to be a real threat. Sort of surprised he did not have enough quickness to get around defenders. Domingo looked much better, and he may be the missing link. Overall I think the pros have them in the middle of the PAC 12 which seems about right. If so we sort of wasted two National top recruits. It shows that you must have a deep bench to win consistently.

Bisonbob;842760559 said:

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..... Overall I think the pros have (Cal) in the middle of the PAC 12 which seems about right. If so we sort of wasted two National top recruits. It shows that you must have a deep bench to win consistently.

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Pac12 media poll picked Cal 4th in the conference (after Oregon, Zona, and UCLA).

http://pac-12.com/article/2016/10/21/defending-champion-oregon-named-pac-12-mens-basketball-favorite-first-time

Cal tied for 3rd place last season. Not quite sure that's "wasting" the talent on hand.

Not really buying this post. First of all, not sure I understand how you can evaluate the team after ONE game in which Rabb DIDN'T PLAY. You should really quit your day job and run an NBA franchise if you can evaluate a freshman after his first ever game. You say they should play Mullins at the 2. Just what position did you think he was playing Friday night???????? SDSU was supposed to be a solid team coming off a tournament appearance, yet we won by 29 without Rabb. How is that a waste.......

UrsaMajor;842761076 said:

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Not really buying this post. First of all, not sure I understand how you can evaluate the team after ONE game in which Rabb DIDN'T PLAY. You should really quit your day job and run an NBA franchise if you can evaluate a freshman after his first ever game. You say they should play Mullins at the 2. Just what position did you think he was playing Friday night???????? SDSU was supposed to be a solid team coming off a tournament appearance, yet we won by 29 without Rabb. How is that a waste.......

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+1

No worries, Ursa and Southie.
BGGB2 only has a mere 2000+ posts.
:p

concordtom;842761118 said:

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No worries, Ursa and Southie.
BGGB2 only has a mere 2000+ posts.
:p

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Geez Tom....they aren't talking about BGGB2....they are talking about BisonBob and they are correct...apparently BisonBob wasn't watching when Moore almost broke the SDSU guy's ankles as he blew by him....