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Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 228002, member: 289"] (I started putting this together before Fab Melo’s re-suspension but I still think it’s relevant) Like a lot of SU fans, my perception of this seasons is that, while we kept winning, the quality of our play declined late in the year and that we’d better return to the way we were playing if we are to have a significant NCAA run. There are three stats I think are especially significant: Points Outside the Paint, (or as Brent Axe dubbed it, ‘POP’). Basically these are jump shot: plays where we don’t have to force our way through the defense to score. The game can get really hard if you have to get to the basket for all your points. You compute POP by taking the total points scored and subtracting points in the paint and free throws made. Manufactured Possessions, (MP). We heard all year about how we weren’t a great rebounding team but we could make up for it with the steals and blocks we’d get out of our aggressive zone. The problems with blocks is that often don’t produce a change of possession. I like to just add one team’s rebounds to the other team’s turnovers. Those are possessions they “manufactured”, which can give them a chance to not only score but to beat the defense down court to do it. Fast Break Points, (FBP). And we love to beat the defense down court to score. That’s what we recruit all these athletic types to do. When we get bogged down in the half-court game, we aren’t the same team. Here is a listing of our POP, MP and FBP of every game we have played this season, with the exception of the Colgate game, for which the SU athletic website produced only a one-page box score without the breakdown of fast break points. They also didn’t have points in the paint but I used the ESPN play-by-play to compute the points scored on “jumpers”. Fordham 27POP +15MP 15FBP Manhattan 29POP +19MP 42FBP Albany 26POP +22MP 24FBP Colgate 44POP +21MP unavailable Virginia Tech 27POP +12MP 14FBP Stanford 27POP +1MP 10FBP E. Michigan 47POP +18MP 17FBP Florida 23POP +13MP 16FBP Marshall 11POP -6MP 18FBP G Washington 16POP +6MP 26FBP NC State 45POP +9MP 9FBP Bucknell 32POP +7MP 9FBP Tulane 38POP +3MP 7FBP Seton Hall 18POP +10MP 18FBP DePaul 13POP +5MP 16FBP Providence 33POP +1MP 6FBP Marquette 28POP +8MP 24FBP Villanova 23POP +5MP 15FBP Providence 33POP +1MP 6FBP Pittsburgh 23POP -8MP 13FBP Notre Dame 27POP -5MP 0FBP Cincinnati 19POP +3MP 10FBP West Virginia 18POP -10MP 10FBP St. John’s 33POP +10MP 10FBP Georgetown 28POP -11MP 6FBP Connecticut 46POP +7MP 13FBP Louisville 5POP +5MP 6FBP Rutgers 17POP -3MP 13FBP S. Florida 13POP -1MP 8FBP Connecticut 29POP +4MP 10FBP Louisville 28POP -9MP 17FBP Connecticut 19POP -6MP 8FBP Cincinnati 41POP -1MP 2FBP We’ve averaged 27POP +5MP and 13FBP per game this year. I would be satisfied with those averages if we maintain them. But it’s the departures from them that are the problem. We’ve been under 20 POP ten times this year and 6 of those have been in the last 12 games. We’ve lost the MP battle 10 times this year and 9 of those have come in the last 14 games. We’ve had 10 or fewer fast break points 10 times in the last 13 games. We don’t want to just jack up jumpers as an alternative to doing anything else on offense but they need to be part of our offense. What makes it tough is the lack of inside scoring, which tends to set up open jump shots and allows the assist to come from inside out, which means the shooter is already squared to the basket when he receives the ball. Instead our shooters have to create their own shots inside the arc and play ring-around-the-rosie outside of it. In wish the team would discover the pull-up jumper. It would make not only their jump shots more effective, but their drives as well. We’ve got to get more aggressive on defense. We aren’t going man to man. I wish we would go back to using the press proactively. It was effective for us earlier in the season. But even in the zone, where are the traps, the tipped passes, the busy hands and feet in front of the zone and the playing of the passing lanes. We’ve grown more conservative as the season progressed, just chasing the shooters around. I’m afraid that without Fab, we’ll get even more conservative and JB will want his guards to prevent any penetration into the paint where the other team could not only score but get our young centers in foul trouble. We rarely run off of a defensive rebound so that conservative defense will tend to limit our fast break points. I think we’ll just have to continue trying to grind out the wins as we have been doing down the stretch of the season. [/QUOTE]

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