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Message: [QUOTE="shandeezy7, post: 1008763, member: 720"] I can't figure out how people watched this team the entire year and took away from it that our defense was the problem. Could we have shaken things up and gotten a little more aggressive on D and forced the action a little bit? Sure, but who's to say that wasn't going to result in quick and easy buckets for the other team? This team COULD NOT PUT THE BALL IN THE BASKET. Everything from threes to mid-range shots to fast break opportunities to bunnies at the rim. They struggled for basically the entire second half of the season (or more) to score from anywhere on the court. We basically had one outside threat (Cooney) who was wildly inconsistent and shadowed by a defender all game long (which imo is what caused his decline in performance - he was either throwing up contested, off-balance shots, or when he actually did get open, he was rushing shots); CJ Fair who is an excellent off-ball offensive weapon but who does not excel at creating offense for himself or others; Jerami Grant, who has a very limited game outside 10 feet and the majority of his offense is reliant on offensive put-backs; Rakeem Christmas, who had trouble staying on the court at times and who we basically did not feed the ball to in the low post nearly enough; and Tyler Ennis, who was the engine for our offense, but teams realized this and began to key on him, not allowing him to penetrate into the lane and forcing the ball out of his hands. This team ranked 225th in the country in assists per game at 11.8, 180th in shooting % at 43.7% and 223rd in 3 point shooting % at 33.1%. If we were even average in these offensive categories, I think our season would have had a much different ending. Our offensive ineptitude finally caught up with us toward the end of the year, and despite our defense's best efforts, we couldn't overcome it. [/QUOTE]

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