I bet Cal beats Colorado. There were so many negative people on here. The ball movement is crisp. One even questioned me that Connor Vanover was garbage. Look at us now.

This could be a real clean thread.

GoldenBear151 said:

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I bet Cal beats Colorado. There were so many negative people on here. The ball movement is crisp. One even questioned me that Connor Vanover was garbage. Look at us now.

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Wow you wrote this before the half was over.

It was like 8 minutes into the game lol

56-51 even though Colorado played pathetic and turned the ball over a record 20 times.

They turned it over because we played defense you negative buffoon.

calfanz said:

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They turned it over because we played defense you negative buffoon.

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I thought Cal played one of their better defensive games this season and it did lead to some steals, but most of Colorado's turnovers seemed to be of their own doing (sort of like Cal earlier this season). Biggest problem, IMHO, was the 5+ minute stretch in the second half without a basket. Lads lost their composure and put up some poor shots outside of the flow of the offense. Seems like they were individually looking to make a big shot to change the momentum. I've seen it many times - never works, just digs a deeper hole.

GoldenBear151 said:

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I bet Cal beats Colorado. There were so many negative people on here. The ball movement is crisp. One even questioned me that Connor Vanover was garbage. Look at us now.

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In the words of Eminem, "Snap back to reality, oh there goes gravity". Loved the "win streak", especially against stanfurd, Sadly, it was against a faltering UW, a terrible stanfurd and a terrible WSU without several players. We still finished the same as last year - 8 wins and last place. We did improve on our margin of defeat - last year we lost by 9.5 points on average and this year it was 8.6 points. Flip side is the Pac-12's RPI is even worse this year compared to last and our RPI went from 223 to 254. Progress? Based on meaningful statistics like wins and RPI, not really.

BeachedBear said:

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calfanz said:

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They turned it over because we played defense you negative buffoon.

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I thought Cal played one of their better defensive games this season and it did lead to some steals, but most of Colorado's turnovers seemed to be of their own doing (sort of like Cal earlier this season). Biggest problem, IMHO, was the 5+ minute stretch in the second half without a basket. Lads lost their composure and put up some poor shots outside of the flow of the offense. Seems like they were individually looking to make a big shot to change the momentum. I've seen it many times - never works, just digs a deeper hole.

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Agree that Colorado had several unforced turnovers, but our defense had a lot to do with it. I used to argue that martin's defense was too conservative. He would argue that he got the results, and it would be a very good point.

But coaches don't all share Martin's defensive approach and can get results in other ways

Our current approach, good or bad, is to have a more aggressive defense.

When I say that, a lot of people think I'm referring to a full court press, which is a part of it. However at this level i'd only advocate it as a situational defense. We are not and should not try 40 minutes of hell.

What I advocate is a pressure defense. I hate defenses who sit back and let the offense dictate the action and be comfortable in their offense.

An aggressive defense's main goal is NOT to get steals. It's to make the opponent uncomfortable inside their offense. That means not allowing them to get to their spot, disrupting what they like to do, making them take bad shots.

When this happens it gets in their head and they make mistakes. They get tentative. They lose confidence.

Steals are a bonus

Those uncharacteristic unforced turnovers were caused by our defense. Not just physically what we were doing, but mentally

HoopDreams said:

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BeachedBear said:

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calfanz said:

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They turned it over because we played defense you negative buffoon.

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I thought Cal played one of their better defensive games this season and it did lead to some steals, but most of Colorado's turnovers seemed to be of their own doing (sort of like Cal earlier this season). Biggest problem, IMHO, was the 5+ minute stretch in the second half without a basket. Lads lost their composure and put up some poor shots outside of the flow of the offense. Seems like they were individually looking to make a big shot to change the momentum. I've seen it many times - never works, just digs a deeper hole.

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Agree that Colorado had several unforced turnovers, but our defense had a lot to do with it. I used to argue that martin's defense was too conservative. He would argue that he got the results, and it would be a very good point.

But coaches don't all share Martin's defensive approach and can get results in other ways

Our current approach, good or bad, is to have a more aggressive defense.

When I say that, a lot of people think I'm referring to a full court press, which is a part of it. However at this level i'd only advocate it as a situational defense. We are not and should not try 40 minutes of hell.

What I advocate is a pressure defense. I hate defenses who sit back and let the offense dictate the action and be comfortable in their offense.

An aggressive defense's main goal is NOT to get steals. It's to make the opponent uncomfortable inside their offense. That means not allowing them to get to their spot, disrupting what they like to do, making them take bad shots.

When this happens it gets in their head and they make mistakes. They get tentative. They lose confidence.

Steals are a bonus

Those uncharacteristic unforced turnovers were caused by our defense. Not just physically what we were doing, but mentally

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By definition, unforced errors are not influenced by the defense.

IMO, by your definition of an aggressive defense, Jones' zone is way more passive than Martin's force the ball to the help-side of the court man defense. However, I do agree that Martin did not like to gamble and overhelp on D like Jones apparently prefers.

HoopDreams said:

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BeachedBear said:

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calfanz said:

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They turned it over because we played defense you negative buffoon.

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I thought Cal played one of their better defensive games this season and it did lead to some steals, but most of Colorado's turnovers seemed to be of their own doing (sort of like Cal earlier this season). Biggest problem, IMHO, was the 5+ minute stretch in the second half without a basket. Lads lost their composure and put up some poor shots outside of the flow of the offense. Seems like they were individually looking to make a big shot to change the momentum. I've seen it many times - never works, just digs a deeper hole.

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Agree that Colorado had several unforced turnovers, but our defense had a lot to do with it. I used to argue that martin's defense was too conservative. He would argue that he got the results, and it would be a very good point.

But coaches don't all share Martin's defensive approach and can get results in other ways

Our current approach, good or bad, is to have a more aggressive defense.

When I say that, a lot of people think I'm referring to a full court press, which is a part of it. However at this level i'd only advocate it as a situational defense. We are not and should not try 40 minutes of hell.

What I advocate is a pressure defense. I hate defenses who sit back and let the offense dictate the action and be comfortable in their offense.

An aggressive defense's main goal is NOT to get steals. It's to make the opponent uncomfortable inside their offense. That means not allowing them to get to their spot, disrupting what they like to do, making them take bad shots.

When this happens it gets in their head and they make mistakes. They get tentative. They lose confidence.

Steals are a bonus

Those uncharacteristic unforced turnovers were caused by our defense. Not just physically what we were doing, but mentally

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I get what you're saying and agree about an aggressive defense, but even some of CUs unforced turnovers were pretty bad. (I like your mental aspect, but don't think that accounts for 100% of unforced turnovers). Overall, our defense isn't THAT good. Look at some of UConn's, UNLV and Arkansas' aggressive D's - even Louisville. We're not clicking anywhere near that level and don't have the horses.

My point is some of the Colorado turnovers that people point to as 'unforced' are caused by something the defense is doing.

Making a bad pass is sometimes because you were playing tentative, so you hesitated a second, giving the defender a split second to recover or jump the pass

A very high pass may look completely because the guy threw a wild pass, but more likely (at this level) he was over compensating for his previous turnover

I've even dribbled the ball off my foot because a defender picked my pocket the last time down the court

That's why trash talking works sometimes (by Jalen Rose for example who talked about its impact in the espn fab 5 documentary).

So much of sports is mental

And yes, there are truly some unforced errors

Civil Bear said:

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HoopDreams said:

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An aggressive defense's main goal is NOT to get steals. It's to make the opponent uncomfortable inside their offense. That means not allowing them to get to their spot, disrupting what they like to do, making them take bad shots.

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By definition, unforced errors are not influenced by the defense.

IMO, by your definition of an aggressive defense, Jones' zone is way more passive than Martin's force the ball to the help-side of the court man defense. However, I do agree that Martin did not like to gamble and overhelp on D like Jones apparently prefers.

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Many people think that a zone defense is a passive defense. Zone defenses can be just as aggressive as a man defense. All defenses are designed to force the ball to the sideline and all zone defenses have help regardless of location.

Over helping is not what zone defenses are trying to do, although some zone traps can effectively result in the same thing which is bad,

I agree that the last two years defense has a lot of over helping. I've been pointing that out for two years, and have been very critical of it and our defense in general (although it's improved recently. The main reason for this improvement is directly related to vanover)

Looking at the box score, there appear to have been some issues other than defense. I think we should be pleased with the defense over the last few games, and holding a team to 56 points should be enough for an average offensive team to win. We are not that team yet. Still when you record 12 steals and 6 blocks, and your opponent makes 21 (or 23?) turnovers, you should be able to take advantage of that, much more than we did apparently, and put up many more shot attempts than your opponent. We put up only one more shot attempt than Colorado. Colorado has a good defense, which likely accounted for much of our offensive play.

Our offense must have really struggled in this one. Nearly 60% of our buckets did not come by way of an assist. That starts with Austin. If your point guard plays 35 minutes and gets only one assist, what is he doing out there to earn that scholarship? Cal shoots 34% from the floor. You MUST shoot over 40% in these games to have a better chance to win. All I saw of the game was the highlight clips, and all they showed was players on both teams making spectacular drives or threes while closely guarded. It was all one-on-one. Hopefully that wasn't the case, but the box score seldom lies, and we had only 7 assists. That is pathetic.

Finally, rebounding. Cal got only 17 rebounds. That is awful. Colorado got more than twice that many, I think. Our leading rebounder for the game was one of our shortest players, a guard, Matt Bradley, with only 5 rebounds.

Going forward, a lot of things need to be fixed. We need better rebounding from our bigs, and we need more bigs. We need a lot better offense, and we need a point guard who can set people up, not just shoot by himself. I hope the defensive improvement will be real, not a fluke, and can give us a good starting point for next year.

SFCityBear said:

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Looking at the box score, there appear to have been some issues other than defense. I think we should be pleased with the defense over the last few games, and holding a team to 56 points should be enough for an average offensive team to win. We are not that team yet. Still when you record 12 steals and 6 blocks, and your opponent makes 21 (or 23?) turnovers, you should be able to take advantage of that, much more than we did apparently, and put up many more shot attempts than your opponent. We put up only one more shot attempt than Colorado. Colorado has a good defense, which likely accounted for much of our offensive play.

Our offense must have really struggled in this one. Nearly 60% of our buckets did not come by way of an assist. That starts with Austin. If your point guard plays 35 minutes and gets only one assist, what is he doing out there to earn that scholarship? Cal shoots 34% from the floor. You MUST shoot over 40% in these games to have a better chance to win. All I saw of the game was the highlight clips, and all they showed was players on both teams making spectacular drives or threes while closely guarded. It was all one-on-one. Hopefully that wasn't the case, but the box score seldom lies, and we had only 7 assists. That is pathetic.

Finally, rebounding. Cal got only 17 rebounds. That is awful. Colorado got more than twice that many, I think. Our leading rebounder for the game was one of our shortest players, a guard, Matt Bradley, with only 5 rebounds.

Going forward, a lot of things need to be fixed. We need better rebounding from our bigs, and we need more bigs. We need a lot better offense, and we need a point guard who can set people up, not just shoot by himself. I hope the defensive improvement will be real, not a fluke, and can give us a good starting point for next year.

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I thought it was Austin's worst game in months. He alternated between being tentative and making ill-advised drives without looking to pass. My view of him (expressed elsewhere) is that he decides whether to pass or shoot before beginning his move rather than reacting to what the defense does. If I can see that, pretty sure the defenders can as well.

As for rebounding, pulling Vanover out to the perimeter is effective in opening the middle (which we didn't exploit at all), but means our biggest big is not a factor in rebounding. I thought that Sueing, who is normally one of our better rebounders had an off game as well.

Finally, McNeill was inexplicable. 7 of our first 9 points, and then zero for the remaining 35+ minutes of the game.

HoopDreams said:

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Many people think that a zone defense is a passive defense. Zone defenses can be just as aggressive as a man defense. All defenses are designed to force the ball to the sideline and all zone defenses have help regardless of location.

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That's why I specifically mentioned Jones' zone defense, which I consider to be gambling more than agressive. Jim Boeheim's or John Chaney's match up zones would be examples of agressive zones. Some agressive zones are particularly vulnerable from the side (i.e 1-3-1). Of course all zones employ help. The issue with Cal (as you said) is they over help.

UrsaMajor said:

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I thought it was Austin's worst game in months. He alternated between being tentative and making ill-advised drives without looking to pass. My view of him (expressed elsewhere) is that he decides whether to pass or shoot before beginning his move rather than reacting to what the defense does. If I can see that, pretty sure the defenders can as well.

As for rebounding, pulling Vanover out to the perimeter is effective in opening the middle (which we didn't exploit at all), but means our biggest big is not a factor in rebounding. I thought that Sueing, who is normally one of our better rebounders had an off game as well.

Finally, McNeill was inexplicable. 7 of our first 9 points, and then zero for the remaining 35+ minutes of the game.

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Good post. Agree

UrsaMajor said:

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SFCityBear said:

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Looking at the box score, there appear to have been some issues other than defense. I think we should be pleased with the defense over the last few games, and holding a team to 56 points should be enough for an average offensive team to win. We are not that team yet. Still when you record 12 steals and 6 blocks, and your opponent makes 21 (or 23?) turnovers, you should be able to take advantage of that, much more than we did apparently, and put up many more shot attempts than your opponent. We put up only one more shot attempt than Colorado. Colorado has a good defense, which likely accounted for much of our offensive play.

Our offense must have really struggled in this one. Nearly 60% of our buckets did not come by way of an assist. That starts with Austin. If your point guard plays 35 minutes and gets only one assist, what is he doing out there to earn that scholarship? Cal shoots 34% from the floor. You MUST shoot over 40% in these games to have a better chance to win. All I saw of the game was the highlight clips, and all they showed was players on both teams making spectacular drives or threes while closely guarded. It was all one-on-one. Hopefully that wasn't the case, but the box score seldom lies, and we had only 7 assists. That is pathetic.

Finally, rebounding. Cal got only 17 rebounds. That is awful. Colorado got more than twice that many, I think. Our leading rebounder for the game was one of our shortest players, a guard, Matt Bradley, with only 5 rebounds.

Going forward, a lot of things need to be fixed. We need better rebounding from our bigs, and we need more bigs. We need a lot better offense, and we need a point guard who can set people up, not just shoot by himself. I hope the defensive improvement will be real, not a fluke, and can give us a good starting point for next year.

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I thought it was Austin's worst game in months. He alternated between being tentative and making ill-advised drives without looking to pass. My view of him (expressed elsewhere) is that he decides whether to pass or shoot before beginning his move rather than reacting to what the defense does. If I can see that, pretty sure the defenders can as well.

As for rebounding, pulling Vanover out to the perimeter is effective in opening the middle (which we didn't exploit at all), but means our biggest big is not a factor in rebounding. I thought that Sueing, who is normally one of our better rebounders had an off game as well.

Finally, McNeill was inexplicable. 7 of our first 9 points, and then zero for the remaining 35+ minutes of the game.

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Can you remember back in the day, when all guards were combo guards? Both guards capable of driving, shooting, and setting up teammates? Maybe one was a little more suitable to running the offense, but both could do it. Over time, basketball moved to defined positions with defined responsibilities. A point guard and shooting guard. The PG did most of the driving, dishing, and starting the offense, while the SG did mostly catch and shoot. After a while, we began to admire PG's who could shoot, and shooting guards who could drive, and we arrive at where we are now, where most all guards are combo guards, both guards with multiple responsibilities. Have we come full circle, 60 years later?

I say this because McNeill olayed PG in his 1st season, and showed a good outside shot, and less in the way of point guard skills, while this season, he tried to play SG, but he is not a catch and shoot player. He needs the ball in his hands, needs to bounce it, before he can do anything with it, pass or shoot, much of the time.He really struggled this season, and his play was very streaky, during games, and from, game to game. Not consistent. He often disappeared in games.

I also say it, because Austin played point guard this season, and he is the same type of player, in the sense that he plays like a combo guard, where his best offensive skill is driving and scoring, with passing secondary, and outside shooting less skilled. Austin the PG also disappears in games, especially his passing, setting up teammates. Sometimes he disappears for whole games. When that happens, Wyking has few options, McNeill or Bradley, neither one a point guard. A good defender, a bigger or quicker one, could probably shut Austin down. It is difficult for a guard like Austin with no consistent outside shot, to drive against a zone.

The combo guards of the '50s played a game in which it seemed to be easier to play the position. The best ones all looked to set up their teammates. Teams used pattern plays, which they drilled and drilled to master. So starting a play was to see a play and run it. Plays were more complicated then, but because they had drilled so much, there were few individual decisions for a player to make. Often times the guard who started a pattern play would end up being the one who took the shot, because the play was being run for him to take the shot. The main decisions were made when the defense had stopped the play, and the team then went into a 2nd or 3rd option. Today, motion offense provides for more decision making by the players on the floor. The guards of today seem to look for the shot first, and feeding a teammate second. It is a little different mindset.

SFCityBear said:

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The combo guards of the '50s played a game in which it seemed to be easier to play the position. The best ones all looked to set up their teammates. Teams used pattern plays, which they drilled and drilled to master. So starting a play was to see a play and run it. Plays were more complicated then, but because they had drilled so much, there were few individual decisions for a player to make. Often times the guard who started a pattern play would end up being the one who took the shot, because the play was being run for him to take the shot. The main decisions were made when the defense had stopped the play, and the team then went into a 2nd or 3rd option. Today, motion offense provides for more decision making by the players on the floor. The guards of today seem to look for the shot first, and feeding a teammate second. It is a little different mindset.

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I agree with most of this post, SFCity. I do think, however, that there have been some good pass-first guards recently. Lonzo Ball (who still has a horrible shot) was one. McKinley Wright of Colorado is another (although he looked for his shot more in the Cal game). I think Frank Ferrari of USF is also.

SFCityBear said:

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Can you remember back in the day, when all guards were combo guards? Both guards capable of driving, shooting, and setting up teammates? Maybe one was a little more suitable to running the offense, but both could do it. Over time, basketball moved to defined positions with defined responsibilities. A point guard and shooting guard. The PG did most of the driving, dishing, and starting the offense, while the SG did mostly catch and shoot. After a while, we began to admire PG's who could shoot, and shooting guards who could drive, and we arrive at where we are now, where most all guards are combo guards, both guards with multiple responsibilities. Have we come full circle, 60 years later?

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good post SF.

One of the struggles this year has been the PG role, and you summarize some of the issues well. However, the way I looked at going into the season was we would have improved passing this year. Better passing from the PG, but also because we would have 3 PGs on the floor a lot this season. McNeil, who was our starting PG last year, and Bradley who played PG in HS.

But that hasn't happened. Everyone agrees on Paris's passing. I think he is capable as I've seen flashes of vision and great passes, but it just isn't his DNA. He wants to score first. However, there are more to playing the 1 than passing and scoring. He is strong and reliable with the ball and can break traps easily. Maybe we just take this last factor for granted.

But back to the 3 guards on the court ... McNeil doesn't show a lot of PG level passing when he's at the 2. I expected more. Bradley has shown flashes of good/great passing off the ball (I actually think he has potential at PG, a true combo guard)

SFCityBear said:

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I also say it, because Austin played point guard this season, and he is the same type of player, in the sense that he plays like a combo guard, where his best offensive skill is driving and scoring, with passing secondary, and outside shooting less skilled.

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I know you're discussing offense, but IMHO Austin's greatest weakness is defense. Don't know why, he's plenty quick, but time and again I saw his man just blow by him.

stu said:

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SFCityBear said:

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I also say it, because Austin played point guard this season, and he is the same type of player, in the sense that he plays like a combo guard, where his best offensive skill is driving and scoring, with passing secondary, and outside shooting less skilled.

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I know you're discussing offense, but IMHO Austin's greatest weakness is defense. Don't know why, he's plenty quick, but time and again I saw his man just blow by him.

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Not so much in the last few games, I noticed, which is why I believe the team turnaround had as much to do with pride as anything else. It's not fun when the media starts noting you are the worst defense in Div1.