Watching the game last night, it appears we have decent athletes we have good quickness. Also it appears Andre Kelly can be a solid player with size, smoothness and very good hands.

What sticks out is how pathetic our half court offense is. There is no cohesiveness. Its basically a weave where at some point a player decides when to drive to the hoop. I honestly believe that Sueing, McNeil, and Bradley could all be decent 3 point shooters if they are in position to take a 3 within the flow of the offense. But last night any 3 they attempted was a result of their own playmaking and in most occasions they were off balance to make a high percentage attempt.

If WJ and the staff can't fix the half court offense then he might as well go back to his original plan to press and play a helter skelter game. otherwise this will be a low scoring team all season.

RedlessWardrobe said:

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Watching the game last night, it appears we have decent athletes we have good quickness. Also it appears Andre Kelly can be a solid player with size, smoothness and very good hands.

What sticks out is how pathetic our half court offense is. There is no cohesiveness. Its basically a weave where at some point a player decides when to drive to the hoop. I honestly believe that Sueing, McNeil, and Bradley could all be decent 3 point shooters if they are in position to take a 3 within the flow of the offense. But last night any 3 they attempted was a result of their own playmaking and in most occasions they were off balance to make a high percentage attempt.

If WJ and the staff can't fix the half court offense then he might as well go back to his original plan to press and play a helter skelter game. otherwise this will be a low scoring team all season.

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Yes that's the sad part. We don't get any open shots for McNeil or Sueing within the flow of an offense, because we don't have a team offense. It's like we have an RPO (I guess SPO for basketball) for everyone except there is no plan for anyone without the ball. That's why Don Coleman had to resort to hero ball last year. These kids deserve better.

come on bears shoot some 3's. they count 50% more then 2's.

When Farnham wasn't busy doing his bill Walton impersonation, he said multiple times people are just standing around watching the guy with the ball.

I don't understand how a D1 team can have zero off-ball movement. It's worse than an AAU game.

It's not fair that Austin gets a bad rap for seemingly just driving into the lane with nowhere to go, cause if people would at least move to get open while he's driving, his penetration would actually be effective. But he drives and people are just standing around. Not his fault.

This is 100% coaching. Season is effectively over.

If our former HC was clueless about offense, get to the part where we were supposed to expect more from his assistant.

...because Sueing and McNeill don't pass the ball enough and play way too much "me" ball. The mindset needs to change. That was last year, when we had no facilitator. If they circulate the ball and be ready to shoot when you catch it in an open position, shots will go down more often. Passing on wide open 3's either because they weren't ready or prefer to shoot off the dribble, is just not productive. I had fewer issues with Bradley. Needs to pass more when the defense collapses on his drives. But his 3 came within the flow, as did Sueing's. Other players like Gordon and Vanover missed 3's that should have been taken, and will go down at a higher rate than many of McNeill's efforts.

Not sure if we were going to win either way, but if we play to our potential, that should have been much closer.

Defense is obviously an issue and always was going to be one. But Kelly and Bradley were OK. I need more Vanover and Gordon. It may not always look pretty, but Vanover immediately improves interior D, changes shots and gets rebounds. Throw him an entry pass and let him find the open guy when teams collapse down on him.

bearister said:

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If our former HC was clueless about offense, get to the part where we were supposed to expect more from his assistant.

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You hit a nail on the head there, Bearister.

I loved that I received pushback on this board when I called for his head after the exhibition. I took that stance because it was immediately evident during that game that this is the same confused squad as last year. Jones isn't capable of preparing a team of athletes to intelligently compete. It's not the youth. It's not the conditioning or strength. It's looking totally clueless and unprepared for something that you are supposedly putting a ton of time and effort into. I view Jones as a conman and mid level heist man. But it's so awesome that he looks constipated and has a deep voice. Kinda like his former boss.

What is shocking is that the players don't just take over the offense and do it themselves. That has happened in other sports to great success.

calgo430 said:

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come on bears shoot some 3's. they count 50% more then 2's.

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In a perfect world, this is correct. However, in the real world, you need to factor in how well a team shoots these shots. Yesterday against Yale,

Cal shot 2's at 39%, so 0.39 x 2 = 0.78 points for each two point attempt.

Cal shot 3's at 20%, so 0.20 x 3 = 0.60 points for each three point attempt.

For Cal, in this game, to shoot more 3's than 2's would only have made things worse, and Cal would have lost by a bigger margin. Don't read too much into this. It was just for this arena, these rims, and this opponent. Cal shot both 2's and 3's terribly. It is likely that both these percentages will get better over time, or at least I sure hope they do, or we will win less games this season than last. If Cal could shoot 3's at 33% (not unreachable, and 2's at 45% (also reachable), then your strategy would be much more attractive.

0.45 x 2 = 0.9 points per two point attempt

0.33 x 3 = 1.0 points per three point attempt.

SFCity:

I'd be interested in your perspective. To my eyes, it seemed there was little purpose to what we were doing on offense. My sense is that the low shooting percentages were less a comment on our shooting than on the offense which was rarely yielding decent looks. Also, if you look at the stats, most of the misses were either Sueing (3-14) or McNeill (0-8). Vanover, Anticevich, an Kelly were all 2-3, and Austen an Bradley had decent percentages, although Austen's lack of assists sort of negated any advantage from his shooting. At one point in the 2nd half, I counted 5 consecutive possessions without a single screen being set.

Your thoughts?

Jones thinks he is at Louville.

UrsaMajor said:

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SFCity:

I'd be interested in your perspective. To my eyes, it seemed there was little purpose to what we were doing on offense. My sense is that the low shooting percentages were less a comment on our shooting than on the offense which was rarely yielding decent looks. Also, if you look at the stats, most of the misses were either Sueing (3-14) or McNeill (0-8). Vanover, Anticevich, an Kelly were all 2-3, and Austen an Bradley had decent percentages, although Austen's lack of assists sort of negated any advantage from his shooting. At one point in the 2nd half, I counted 5 consecutive possessions without a single screen being set.

Your thoughts?

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UrsaMajor,

Before I saw this post, I had posted a thread on Austin, which might answer some of your question. I agree with all you say. Shooting percentages will usually be their best with open looks, not when heavily guarded.

Cal had only 18 buckets on only 6 assists. Both numbers say that Cal was not moving, getting open, and getting good looks. Thus the low shooting percentages. Yale had 25 field goals on 14 assists, which is how the game should be played. Cal looks almost exactly like last season: When Cal shoots, it looks like 80% or more of the shots are tightly contested, sometimes with double teams, and when an opponent shoots, 80% of their shots look like wide open shots with no defender. When a Cal player gets the ball, his first move is to dribble it. When a Yale player got the ball, his first move was usually to pass it. They ran cuts, screens, back cuts. Cal did very little screening, few cuts, and no back cuts I remember. This is a Cal problem going back to Martin's first game, except that Martin had way better personnel than Jones has, most of whom are very young.

bearchamp said:

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What is shocking is that the players don't just take over the offense and do it themselves. That has happened in other sports to great success.

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Don Coleman tried.

I guess Theo saw more than he could stand of this train wreck in Maui last year.

I get your numbers. But the issue isn't the quantity of 3 pt shots, its the quality of them.

RedlessWardrobe said:

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I get your numbers. But the issue isn't the quantity of 3 pt shots, its the quality of them.

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I think you are absolutely right. Open shots are higher percentage shots than ones that are not open. I was responding to a poster who wrote that we should shoot more threes. Our coaches need to devise ways to get our players more open shots, and we need our players to pass up shots which will be tightly guarded by defenders. Not to mention we need to reduce the number of open shot attempts we give to the opponents.