Scouting Wisconsin - A couple of scary stats

[orangenirvana]

Warning: For those posters who only like reading bubble gum and cotton candy posts--with never a hint of the remote possibility that Syracuse could lose a game--please stop reading and move on...

I stole the following from the Wiscy forum...

Transition Defense - Syracuse likes to run. They score 18.4% of their points on fast breaks. But Wisconsin doesn't allow that to happen. Only a stingy 9.3% of their opponents' points can from the fast break variety. Mighty North Carolina mustered an impressive 3.3% in their dogfight with the Badgers. In Syracuse's losses, their percentage of points from fast break was a lowly 1.5%.

I noticed in the Vanderbilt game that they simply do not allow transition points. And those stats above are quite impressive. Very disciplined team. The bright side to that is, they sacrifice offensive rebounding in order to stop transition.

Which means if Syracuse wants to score in transition, they'll have to turn the Badgers over. Except...

Protecting the Ball - Syracuse's offense is mostly transition-based and feeds off of forcing a great amount of turnovers, scoring 27.3% of their points off of turnovers. Wisconsin is the second least likely team in the country to cough up the rock and only allow 15.6% of their opponents' points to be scored off turnovers.

Ugh.

So scoring will likely be an issue unless SU is able to be productive in the halfcourt. That means SU will have to limit turnovers and hit the very few open shot opportunities they'll have. This will also be a great time to have Fair get out of his slump, as we need that extra penetrator and scorer. I think Fair is one of the better matchups SU will have when they have the ball. The Badgers' power forward (Bruesewicz) is only 6-6 and not overly athletic. If Fair can hit the mid-range jumper, that should allow him the ability to beat him off the dribble, which should in turn free up some guys.

Wisconsin's man D is suffocating. I'm not sure how well Scoop matches up with Taylor's strength and athleticism. Gasser will likely frustrate Triche and Waiters. I think the key to scoring will be how Joseph does against Evans, and how well Fair / Dirty do against Bruesewicz.

I don't know how well Wisconsin does against the full-court press. Might be a good idea to find out. They aren't an extremely deep team, maybe we can wear them down.

It's going to be a low-scoring game, no question about it. The good news is - we seem to thrive on that and have grinded out wins all season. But have we played a team this season as good as Wisconsin?

 

[cspades99]

This is one game where I think rebounding will be more telling than turnovers. SU guards leak out to create transition, but Wisconsin's guards leak back to stop it. Hold Wisconsin to one-and-done, and crash the offensive glass, and they might be able to get easy buckets to replace the transition scoring.

Both teams struggle in the half court, but I still expect SU to have the bulk of the one-on-one mismatches. Hopefully this leads to a lot of foul shots.

This is the last game they'll be able to play less than great and win. But if they can put together two runs during this game, it should prove to be too much for them to overcome.

 

[jncuse]

My biggest concern is that when they play us tough on D that we start to settle for threes.

This team has no problems playing against tough D's as noted how we are able to make the plays at end of game. But we seem to only have the focus when we really need it -- it would be nice to have that for the majority of a game.

 

[suloyalfan]

I don't know if we've played a team as highly rated/ranked as Wisconsin, but since we've already played 5 of the teams still remaining in the Sweet 16 field and gone 6-1 in those games, I'd say we've been tested.

Also, those are interesting statistics. I doubt that we will press them. I think that we are better against man-to-man defense than we are against zone, and Wisconsin doesn't play zone. Regardless of how well they play man-to-man defense, I think that helps us. For example, we just dropped 50 points in the 2nd half of the last game against the agressive (#20 Kenpom Defense) man-to-man defense of Kansas State.

 

[joct]

Good analysis. In the thought that stats can be interpreted many ways, here goes a couple of things (this is just some food for thought analysis, not simply to counter any anti-SU argument)

-- On them not giving up many transition points: Does anyone in the Big 10 have any type of transition game? (I don't know...maybe Ohio State?) If so, are they in the ball park of SU's?
-- On them not turning it over: Have they played against a zone this year? That could bump WU's turnover potential a little higher. Since they are low scoring, even if they don't turn it over, if their possesions end in long jumpers, with long rebounds, that SU is great at getting run-outs on.

Just some food for thought...

 

[lvilleorange]

We have two very physical guards in Waiters and Triche. Both will be needed to break their man down and get into the lane. I think that is where we can do the most damage. Wisconsin will slide help and that should give a nice lane for a pass to Kris, James or CJ for an open midrange shot or drive to the hoop.

 

[SmilinBob]

They like to take charges and the refs are going to have a lot of input on how this game is going to be played. They call it tight, don't allow blocking at the top, no clutch and grabs and again how they call charges it will determine how SU plays in this game. If they call a tight game and foul trouble happens for both teams, we have the edge here because of our depth. Got to hit our open opportunities along with a good percentage of free throws. SU is going to have to earn this one because I doubt it's going to be given to us.

That said, I'm not sure how they are going to handle our zone. Stats are nice but you also have to look at the variables that are involved as well. If the badgers struggle with the zone and become frustrated and fall behind, how we they react? Will they take quicker shots that might lead to more fast brake chances if we rebound the ball or get turnovers? If all things logically remain constant than it will be two interesting forces going against each other full strength ut the unknown variables that happen such as how a ref calls a game, injury, foul trouble, getting into a rhythm, TV timeouts, bounces of the ball and who the heck wants the lose balls and gets them.

Wisconsin lost games this year and to teams that are quick and can run like Michigan St, NC, Marquette, Michigan and can shoot/get hot. If we can penetrate and make things happen, not get called for charges and hit our open jumpers our offense should be fine. If they play off Christmas he HAS to make them pay for that. As I said, they like their charges and if Scoop, Triche and Waiters can drive and dish or score without charging we can play to our potential. If you see our kids looking at refs and complaining a lot, I think we are going to have problems like the ND game.

Ryan has a good game plan going into this game and we have to force them to adjust from it. If SU can take away something they do well we'll see how they adjust to that and as I wrote earlier, if we can frustrate them which will be hard to do, this game will turn out pretty well for us. Have to limit the stupid turnovers but play relaxed enough to make plays.

 

[moqui]

Syracuse's gaudy transistion offense numbers were built up against a bunch of teams that were loose with the ball. 31 of our 35 opponents rank 70th or lower in offensive turnover percentage. The ones who valued the ball were Florida, ranked 16th in TO%, who played us within 4 point on our home floor; 11th ranked Cincy who played us twice and beat us once; and #9 Notre Dame. SU's only two losses came vs. teams highly ranked at valuing the ball.

Wisconsin is ranked #2.

 

[jncuse]

It would be interesting to see how Wisconsin reacts to the press. Will they take the "easier" score after they beat the press or set back up and control tempo?

 

[Cuseman78]

Syracuse's gaudy transistion offense numbers were built up against a bunch of teams that were loose with the ball. 31 of our 34 opponents rank 70th or lower in offensive turnover percentage. The ones who valued the ball were Florida, ranked 16th in TO%, who played us within 4 point on our home floor; 11th ranked Cincy who played us twice and beat us once; and #9 Notre Dame. SU's only two losses came vs. teams highly ranked at valuing the ball.

Wisconsin is ranked #2.

Ruh roh. The more I think about this game, the more it concerns me. I hope this isn't Butler v.2.0

 

[CorduroyG]

Syracuse's gaudy transistion offense numbers were built up against a bunch of teams that were loose with the ball. 31 of our 34 opponents rank 70th or lower in offensive turnover percentage. The ones who valued the ball were Florida, ranked 16th in TO%, who played us within 4 point on our home floor; 11th ranked Cincy who played us twice and beat us once; and #9 Notre Dame. SU's only two losses came vs. teams highly ranked at valuing the ball.

Wisconsin is ranked #2.

oh well, it was a fun run while it lasted, on to next year!

 

[LennX6]

Warning: For those posters who only like reading bubble gum and cotton candy posts--with never a hint of the remote possibility that Syracuse could lose a game--please stop reading and move on...

I stole the following from the Wiscy forum...



I noticed in the Vanderbilt game that they simply do not allow transition points. And those stats above are quite impressive. Very disciplined team. The bright side to that is, they sacrifice offensive rebounding in order to stop transition.

Which means if Syracuse wants to score in transition, they'll have to turn the Badgers over. Except...



Ugh.

So scoring will likely be an issue unless SU is able to be productive in the halfcourt. That means SU will have to limit turnovers and hit the very few open shot opportunities they'll have. This will also be a great time to have Fair get out of his slump, as we need that extra penetrator and scorer. I think Fair is one of the better matchups SU will have when they have the ball. The Badgers' power forward (Bruesewicz) is only 6-6 and not overly athletic. If Fair can hit the mid-range jumper, that should allow him the ability to beat him off the dribble, which should in turn free up some guys.

Wisconsin's man D is suffocating. I'm not sure how well Scoop matches up with Taylor's strength and athleticism. Gasser will likely frustrate Triche and Waiters. I think the key to scoring will be how Joseph does against Evans, and how well Fair / Dirty do against Bruesewicz.

I don't know how well Wisconsin does against the full-court press. Might be a good idea to find out. They aren't an extremely deep team, maybe we can wear them down.

It's going to be a low-scoring game, no question about it. The good news is - we seem to thrive on that and have grinded out wins all season. But have we played a team this season as good as Wisconsin?

When our strengths go directly against an opponents strengths why is the assumption that their strength trumps ours. It could go the other way. How does one discern the difference?
The cliche is "by playing the game".
Personally I would favor Wisconsin for less statistic-based reasons .

 

[cspades99]

Ruh roh. The more I think about this game, the more it concerns me. I hope this isn't Butler v.2.0

I hope it is, because there is no way we lose that game twice. I also imagine they'll be calling moving screen fouls a lot more this year with how tight most of the officiating has been.

 

[jdubs30]

We absolutely have to taken press Wisconsin. The goal wouldn't be to turn them over, but rather speed them up. They'll be very systematic in their halfcourt and if we can take off 5 seconds or so of that while pressing them it's worth it.

If you think about it, trading rebounding for transition points might not be awful for us. Wiscy getting 20 ORebs could lead to 20 extra shots for them, hardly doubt we'd get anywhere close to 20 shots in transition all year in a single game. If them going one and done most possessions equals us not running all game, might not be a terrible trade.

 

[Marsh01]

Wisconsin needs to make 3 point shots for them to win plain and simple. If they dont shoot it well they will get beat. Here are their 3 point stats in all of their losses this season:

UNC 8-28 (28%)
Marquette 5-19 (26%)
Iowa 3-28 (11%)
Sparty 5-22 (22%)
Michigan 7-20 (35%)
Ohio St 5-27 (18%)
Sparty II 5-24 (20%)
Iowa II 6-16 (37%)
Sparty III 7-20 (35%)

8 losses. 51-204 from 3 point range which equals 25%. On the season they average 36% from three point range.

Its not rocket science people. Live by the 3 and die by the 3.

You can throw in turnover stats all you want. They have to put the ball in the basket to win this game. If they shoot it well from behind the arc then their chances to win this game based on all of the stuff people mentioned dramatically increase. If not then bring on the Buckeyes.

Vanderbilt had so many open looks against this team and they just didnt knock shots down. Go back and watch the game. Time after time guys were missing wide open perimeter shots yet perception is it was great defense because of "Bo's system".

Here are quotes from Vandy's players after the game:

In the post-game writeup, both Jenkins and Taylor said it was just a bad shooting day for them and not really Wiscy’s D that did them in. “I think it was more a matter of the ball not going in,” Taylor said. “All of my shots pretty much felt good. They just were a little bit short or a little bit too long. Things like that happen in basketball.”

 

[jdubs30]

re: Butler. That year we only had 3 players who could create off the dribble; Triche, Scoop and Kris. Wes/AR were more spot up shooters and Rick was the low post threat.

This year Triche, Scoop, Kris, Fair, Waiters can all make plays off the bounce. That's important vs. a tight man to man type defense, it could get the defense to collapse and open up the shooters.

2010 wasn't tested in those types of games like this year's team is.

USF plays like Wisconsin.

 

[moqui]

If you think about it, trading rebounding for transition points might not be awful for us. Wiscy getting 20 ORebs could lead to 20 extra shots for them, hardly doubt we'd get anywhere close to 20 shots in transition all year in a single game. If them going one and done most possessions equals us not running all game, might not be a terrible trade.

that is definitely true. Even in a slow tempo game, you can build a run painstakingly over many minutes if you keep limiting your opponent to one-and-dones, even if you sprinkle in plenty of your own. I can definitely envision a case where an 8-0 run built over 6 or 7 minutes of game time is the decisive factor.

 

[CorduroyG]

Wisconsin needs to make 3 point shots for them to win plain and simple. If they dont shoot it well they will get beat. Here are their 3 point stats in all of their losses this season:

UNC 8-28 (28%)
Marquette 5-19 (26%)
Iowa 3-28 (11%)
Sparty 5-22 (22%)
Michigan 7-20 (35%)
Ohio St 5-27 (18%)
Sparty II 5-24 (20%)
Iowa II 6-16 (37%)
Sparty III 7-20 (35%)

8 losses. 51-204 from 3 point range which equals 25%. On the season they average 36% from three point range.

Its not rocket science people. Live by the 3 and die by the 3.

You can throw in turnover stats all you want. They have to put the ball in the basket to win this game. If they shoot it well from behind the arc then their chances to win thie game based on all of the stuff people mentioned dramatically increase. If not then bring on the Buckeyes.

bingo. we defend the 3 we win. all these "efficiency" #s give me a headache. cincinnati and notre dame didnt beat us because they have good "offensive turnover percentage" or whatever, its cause they got crazy hot from 3 in the 1st half and we fell way behind and played catch up the rest of the game. notre dame had 17 tos in that game.

 

[moqui]

bingo. we defend the 3 we win. all these "efficiency" #s give me a headache. cincinnati and notre dame didnt beat us because they have good "offensive turnover percentage" or whatever, its cause they got crazy hot from 3 in the 1st half and we fell way behind and played catch up the rest of the game.

and why couldn't we catch up with one of our patented 21-2 runs? because they didn't turn the ball over, denying transition points, and SU couldn't run quality half court sets

you were half way there in your analysis

 

[ROCorange]

Good analysis. In the thought that stats can be interpreted many ways, here goes a couple of things (this is just some food for thought analysis, not simply to counter any anti-SU argument)

-- On them not giving up many transition points: Does anyone in the Big 10 have any type of transition game? (I don't know...maybe Ohio State?) If so, are they in the ball park of SU's?

I like where your heads at

 

[SmilinBob]

We absolutely have to taken press Wisconsin. The goal wouldn't be to turn them over, but rather speed them up. They'll be very systematic in their halfcourt and if we can take off 5 seconds or so of that while pressing them it's worth it.

If you think about it, trading rebounding for transition points might not be awful for us. Wiscy getting 20 ORebs could lead to 20 extra shots for them, hardly doubt we'd get anywhere close to 20 shots in transition all year in a single game. If them going one and done most possessions equals us not running all game, might not be a terrible trade.

A press could be SU's friend depending on the context and flow of the game. I was peeved when Boeheim pressed KState because when he did KState was already struggling against our zone and it opened it up for them. Wisc has a very good pg and bigs that can catch the ball, Ryan gets them into the right spots because a lot of teams would like to press them to speed the game up. If our zone is struggling to stop them then by all means SU has to change the flow of success vs the zone and a press may be the way to do it. We could also jump press once they cross the mid court line as well, use our depth and try to tire them out but again that means that we can't give up easy points or foul out our 2 centers.

This is going to be an interesting game of chess and adjustments. Coaching and execution are going to win this...not that it most of the time doesn't but sometimes you just have much more talent and gets you through. I believe that the Butler game and ND game will help us a lot here.

 

[armory]

All this paralysis by analysis still gets trumped by one thing: Wisconsin doesn't play zone.

Far and away SU's worst performances all year came against zones. Our team is far too talented to be contained M2M.

 

[mark79]

We absolutely have to taken press Wisconsin. The goal wouldn't be to turn them over, but rather speed them up. They'll be very systematic in their halfcourt and if we can take off 5 seconds or so of that while pressing them it's worth it.

If you think about it, trading rebounding for transition points might not be awful for us. Wiscy getting 20 ORebs could lead to 20 extra shots for them, hardly doubt we'd get anywhere close to 20 shots in transition all year in a single game. If them going one and done most possessions equals us not running all game, might not be a terrible trade.

I gotta agree with Jdubs here for several reasons. First off, we are extremely deep at point guard and have the luxury of pressing full game
and not wearing out of we choose to.

Second, is the point about speeding them up and getting them out of rhythm. A patient team hates that. But not only that, it kinda lights a fire under your own team as well and we know this team likes to run.

Thirdly, even if we don't get turnovers we will have frazzled their guards for maybe 5-10 seconds each offensive trip giving them less time to set up something decent in a half court set. It is also mentally wearing to have to handle a press and we have the horses to do it.

Finally, a press means our own defense will have to spend less time chasing around their three point shooters in the half court set. We all know how impatient we can get with teams that just throw it around for 30 seconds. If we press them for 10 then we only need to chase them for 20. Let's get in their grills.

I say press or at least semi-press the entire game to dictate tempo and get our athletes jump-started.

 

[JeremyCuse]

Wisconsin needs to make 3 point shots for them to win plain and simple. If they dont shoot it well they will get beat. Here are their 3 point stats in all of their losses this season:

UNC 8-28 (28%)
Marquette 5-19 (26%)
Iowa 3-28 (11%)
Sparty 5-22 (22%)
Michigan 7-20 (35%)
Ohio St 5-27 (18%)
Sparty II 5-24 (20%)
Iowa II 6-16 (37%)
Sparty III 7-20 (35%)

8 losses. 51-204 from 3 point range which equals 25%. On the season they average 36% from three point range.

Its not rocket science people. Live by the 3 and die by the 3.

You can throw in turnover stats all you want. They have to put the ball in the basket to win this game. If they shoot it well from behind the arc then their chances to win this game based on all of the stuff people mentioned dramatically increase. If not then bring on the Buckeyes.

Vanderbilt had so many open looks against this team and they just didnt knock shots down. Go back and watch the game. Time after time guys were missing wide open perimeter shots yet perception is it was great defense because of "Bo's system".

Here are quotes from Vandy's players after the game:

In the post-game writeup, both Jenkins and Taylor said it was just a bad shooting day for them and not really Wiscy’s D that did them in. “I think it was more a matter of the ball not going in,” Taylor said. “All of my shots pretty much felt good. They just were a little bit short or a little bit too long. Things like that happen in basketball.”

Good write up Marsh, I was thinking the sameway, if there hot from deep were in a dogfight/trouble if there not on from outside we should win barring a horrendous offensive night.
I think the key is going to be recognizing early if they are hitting deep shots and extending the zone out as much as necessary to force them to either go inside or shoot from NBA range and beyond.

 

[CorduroyG]

All this paralysis by analysis still gets trumped by one thing: Wisconsin doesn't play zone.

Far and away SU's worst performances all year came against zones. Our team is far too talented to be contained M2M.

as scoop said in the kstate postgame presser, we've been seeing alot of zones lately and our eyes lit up when we saw man to man today. of course it took them a half to actually take advantage of it.