His sophomore jump will be something special. Watching him get better throughout his freshmen year was something I haven't seen in awhile. Night and day player from the start of the season to the end. I am excited for him to start dunking on players and finishing strong at the rim.
Agree that his jump this year could be pretty big. He isn't likely going to all of a sudden start dunking on people though...I wouldn't think. What he needs to do, more than anything else, to most help this team win more games, is get A LOT better defensively and on the boards.
i have never claimed to be an X & O guru. But the statement that we run the same sets as everyone??
We did run a lot of varied zoom type action off high ball screens. Think about the Kansas game, some of the games later in the season where Trey was effective coming off ball screens.
Did IU have UConn type guards? You picked one team to make your point. Pick Purdue. Pick Michigan state. We ran zoom, isolations, horns..etc. just about everyone runs those sets. You can run options out of those sets. So if option one doesn’t work then it can revert to second and third options. IU had 1 option a lot of times which makes it look simplistic. So it’s insane to me that anyone says Woodsons system etc… if we had those guards you would see a similar offense as everyone else. What you are trying to do is get a mismatch and or the defense trailing. We had no one but our posts that was option 1. Next year we will have 3-4 options on the floor and if I hear one more person say we didn’t play 4 out I give up. We most certainly had many 4 out sets.
We also spent extended minutes, in every single game, with X/Gabe/Trey...standing on a wing pump faking with the ball while Malik or Kelel fought for position and posted up. With no other movement. There were a lot of reasons our offense was ranked 100th...but the eye test showed that when we ran more high pick and roll stuff, more regularly, we had a lot more success. There's probably analytics that either prove or disprove this...but I'd bet that when we did run the zoom type stuff, our offense was top 50. We were over 100 because our post centric, double post stuff, was probably 150.
It’s the bench that killed us the most. If you look at the starters they were pretty efficient. If you go back and watch. If the first set didn’t work or the mismatch happened early then we went post iso. Well 9 times out of ten our two post guys were the mismatch in that scenario. It’s so obvious too. We will have way better and more options out of any set or iso. Will have legit 5 options now.
"That will shut everyone up." Actually, many of us have waited a very long time for the opportunity to shut up...but haven't had a reason to. Can this group be successfully coached on the run? Remains to be seen. Woodson will get his chance. Sink or swim.
I had a long winded post... but it all boils down to... I have watched and rewatched a lot of games and moments... it wasn't just end of shot clock situations. Post ISO is central to Woody's basketball philosophies. He even commented on it multiple times. How he has done it at IU, doesn't work. He's had historically good bigs, and our offenses have been mediocre when working through them. Even with the "weaker" back courts, his offense has been more effective when we've pulled bigs away from the basket, or ran more "modern" stuff.
Late shot clock is ideal if you want a UConn type result. They worked teams to death on offense. As I said before if the mismatch was already in the post it went straight in. The problem we had also was he had one option to throw it out to. I’m going to say “hopefully” it’s a much better split.
The problem I have with that is.. even though we haven't had full stables of excellent perimeter players, and our best players have been bigs... we've still been quite a lot better offensively when we've pulled bigs away from the basket and paint area. Either by running high ball screen action, zoom/horn action...OR even by just posting TJD/Kelel further away from the basket. When TJD started catching the ball more on the wing his senior year, and then turning and making passes from that position, or making moves to the basket from that position, rather than the normal lower block post positions...we were A LOT more effective.
He's 66 years old...and his fingerprints are all over the offense. I don't think change is likely in the schematics. And, I don't think he's being micromanaged in order to pressure him to change. I think he goes with his own best judgement, period.. Add to that, I doubt he thinks his way is not working and will not work. He's been running the same schemes for decades....and getting the same results. This is why I put less emphasis on changing players....As long as the schemes are the same...the results are too. This is a pivotal year....we will see if he knows how to pivot.
I'm thinking along these lines, somewhat. And its why my expectations for them honestly won't initially be as high as some people's probably will be.
You nailed it with the point that options are available off of many of these sets and high rolls but we have not had to personnel or mindset to execute anything but the basic core set.
Yes. Defense became “tolerable” but offensively you could see it coming where he can be a force. Excited to see what he can do next year not only individually, but for the team.
