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Post by 00hmh on Apr 4, 2020 16:57:56 GMT -6
Big variable where his head is.
Good athlete. Always potential there if you can harness it.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 4, 2020 18:36:16 GMT -6
It’s gonna be a long lockdown seeing as we got 9 pages so far out of Kroft.
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Post by 00hmh on Apr 4, 2020 18:41:36 GMT -6
It's a sort of Bizarro World Bane thread.
Kroft and Bane. Two kids from Richmond with dreams of big things. You can hardly tell them apart.
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Post by cardfan on Apr 4, 2020 18:51:21 GMT -6
We got nuthin’ else right now. 🤷♂️
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Post by rmcalhoun on Apr 4, 2020 19:31:57 GMT -6
I cant even find a mention of anything Ball State to discuss today.. So instead I stole a stream of wrestlemania god this is horrible
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Post by cbcjanney on Apr 4, 2020 21:27:41 GMT -6
I see lots of words from today and I do not think I want to read them all so if this has been said Im sorry.. Bottom line Whit missed on Kroft he might be a role player on a mac team but I feel like the MAC is to much for him. Id bet he ends up at a lower level. This makes me ponder another question.. We have a had a slew of whits favorite Indiana all stars and no matter how many we have our results are the same. So are the voters voting the wrong kids in for Indiana All Stars or is the level of play in Indiana trending down IMO the Indiana All Stars are not the best players anymore. The reality is (as much as I don't like it) that we've hit a cycle where probably 15 of the best 20 teams in the state are from Indianapolis/surrounding suburbs, and correspondingly 15 of the best 20 players are from those same mega-school areas. Currently, they have the largest enrollments, the highest-paid and largest coaching staffs, the best weight rooms, feeder programs, the highest % of kids who play basketball year-round, and....now that these top teams are centralized in the same geographic area they play the best competition night-in night-out. In eras past, certainly the North Central Conference, the Region, and other parts of Indiana at various times would've laid claim to playing equal to better basketball then Indy, but it's nowhere close now/probably the last 5-10 years. However, the rest of the state has begrudgingly not yet come to terms with that fact. There is anti-Indpls bias and many of the state's sportswriters and fans still expect to see the all-state teams, Mr.Basketball, and All-Star teams scattered around all corners of the state (and spread around non-4A classifications as well). As someone else mentioned there is often a big dropoff between All-Stars #1-8 and All-Stars #9-13 -- we're often getting the ones 9-13 and those are the ones who are sometimes voted on to placate the geographical balance demands, or the ones who might have a large contingent of fans buying tickets to the actual All-Star games (e.g. from New Castle, Greensburg, Plymouth, Columbia City).
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Post by lmills72 on Apr 4, 2020 22:57:36 GMT -6
I don't see that there has been much untapped talent sitting on BSU's bench recently. I don't believe that Whitford could have won significantly more games, and certainly not a championship, by being less rigid or utilizing one or more players in a different way. Maybe he could have done marginally better, and maybe there is some issue with rigidity, but this is a side issue. Whitford's biggest shortcoming....by far....is recruiting. Kroft is one example of this. His problem was not that he was a good mid-range scorer wasted by the inflexible Whitford. His problem is that he's not that good. I think this will eventually be proven by his lack of future impact at the D1 level. I won't disagree regarding Whitford's biggest shortcoming. I would quibble on what might be significant in the win column. We easily could have been 22-9, 23-8 this past season instead of 18-13, not necessarily by using untapped bench talent, but by utilizing the talent we had potentially more efficiently. Let's look at 7 of our losses last year: N. Kentucky, 2-point loss, missed 14 3s, 22% from distance W. Ill., 7-point loss, missed 23 3s, 28% UTEP, 1-point loss, missed 19 3s, 24% CMU, 5-point loss, missed 14 3s, 26% BG, 6-point loss, missed 22 3s, 18% BG, 6-point loss, missed 21 3s, 27% UT, 6-point loss, missed 24 3s, 20% We easily could have won 4-5 of those games if Whitford had in his coaching toolkit the ability to say "Boys, the 3s aren't falling for us tonight. Let's try something else." But he doesn't have that so we just continue to fling threes like that's the only possible answer. What would 4-5 more wins have gotten us? Probably wouldn't have made much difference in conference seedings, but we could have conceivably tied Akron for the top seed in the tournament (at least record-wise, although we probably would have been the second seed on the tiebreaker). We might have pushed our way into the top 100 in the rankings where, if we had a good tournament run, we might have garnered an invite to a decent postseason tournament. And overall just having the ability to play more than one way makes a team so much harder to defend. Opposing coaches know there's only one way we're going to beat them, as does every person on this board because they post it before every game: "Well, if we shoot well we can win." Damn, that's some shocking insight. Finally, there might be untapped talent on that bench, but we're never going to see what Huggins and Hendriks can do, because I suspect Whitford really doesn't know what to do with them.
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Post by williamtsherman on Apr 5, 2020 8:09:05 GMT -6
I would disagree with the idea that a team should stop shooting threes in a particular game because they are shooting a low percentage early. Three point shooting is inherently variable. Randomness will dictate that there will be periods where the percentage is low. That does not mean the next period will also tend to be low percentage.
Three point shooting is such a big part of the game these day and you would obviously find that any team tended to shoot worse in their losses. To bolster your case, you would want to show something like shooting a low % (relative to your team's normal %) in the first half is positively correlated with shooting a low % in the second half. I think that's probably not the case. This "hot hand/cold hand" concept at the team level is a very easy thing to statistically study, and I think if it was supported by the data, it would be widely known.
Whether or not Whitford's teams shoot too many threes in general is a different argument.
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Post by 00hmh on Apr 5, 2020 8:33:53 GMT -6
I would disagree with the idea that a team should stop shooting threes in a particular game because they are shooting a low percentage early. Three point shooting is inherently variable. Randomness will dictate that there will be periods where the percentage is low. That does not mean the next period will also tend to be low percentage. Three point shooting is such a big part of the game these day and you would obviously find that any team tended to shoot worse in their losses. To bolster your case, you would want to show something like shooting a low % (relative to your team's normal %) in the first half is positively correlated with shooting a low % in the second half. I think that's probably not the case. This "hot hand/cold hand" concept at the team level is a very easy thing to statistically study, and I think if it was supported by the data, it would be widely known. Whether or not Whitford's teams shoot too many threes in general is a different argument. This is amazing. I was about to post the same thing.
Could not agree more. Hot hand and cold hand are statistical illusions. Unless, say, your best shooter had a broken finger.
The other issue is that if somehow the cold hand theory worked, it is not terribly likely you can suddenly get so much better with your second best option on offense that you could overcome a deficit.
Mills may have claimed as much above when he highlighted some losses he said would be easily turned around by not shooting 3's.
The one thing we can agree in is that in hindsight it might seem so. But continuing to shoot and miss was after all not the plan. Or the statistical expectation when adopting it.
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Post by cardfan on Apr 5, 2020 8:55:32 GMT -6
I don’t know, I’m with Mills. How bout getting the ball to Teague around the paint and tell him to go get buckets or rack up FT’s instead of just bombing away. Change it up a little. But that’s just me. But since we evidently do not believe in midrange jumpshots or guys who can hit those type of shots (I’m not talking about Kroft, I don’t think he was all that useful) I guess we’ll just continue to live and die (die pretty often) chucking 3’s. Why feature a all Mac first teamer on a regular basis, especially when we can’t buy a 3? We have no post up game. 3’s or drive, 3’s or drive. In a lot of those losses I’m not sure we drove much. At least not with any purpose.
No kidding that shooting and missing a bunch was not the Plan. But what was the plan for when we were shooting and missing all those shots?
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Post by 00hmh on Apr 5, 2020 9:15:16 GMT -6
I don't see that there has been much untapped talent sitting on BSU's bench recently. I don't believe that Whitford could have won significantly more games, and certainly not a championship, by being less rigid or utilizing one or more players in a different way. Maybe he could have done marginally better, and maybe there is some issue with rigidity, but this is a side issue. Let's look at 7 of our losses last year:................................................... That is mostly just the "cold hand fallacy." See Sherman's post above.
In a couple of those games I would heartily agree we took some bad 3 point shots. So if you are arguing for better shot selection taking 3's I would agree.
Also, contrary to your assumption our players are often supposed to take 2 point shots, and I would agree there were possessions where a 2 point basket was a good shot and we missed an opportunity.
In both cases that was imperfect offense. But it was not systematic error. And of course every team makes those kinds of error in most games.
In both cases that is a different gripe than saying we should have systematically stopped shooting 3's.
If they are giving you the 3 as they did in several games you cite above, the idea that taking 2 point shots against the packed in defense doesn't seem likely to me to produce a high percentage. Finally, there might be untapped talent on that bench, but we're never going to see what Huggins and Hendriks can do, because I suspect Whitford really doesn't know what to do with them. Why do you believe that? The two players are entirely different players, and neither was really ready to contribute a lot this year. I am inclined to say from what I have seen that Huggins did not fit our offense this year, but Hendricks probably did, a totally different player.
If those guys were not ready for a lot of minutes this year and unable to play as we had designed the team to play we wouldn't see much one way or the other that would indicate what Whitford knew or did not know.
The idea in a close game of going to the bench and trying a player you don't think is quite ready, and maybe changing the way we play to do it just doesn't seem a good plan.
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Post by williamtsherman on Apr 5, 2020 9:30:52 GMT -6
Wait...hold on a second. There is now some indication that my previous post was completely wrong. Let me go back and check that.
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Post by comet on Apr 5, 2020 10:06:35 GMT -6
I don’t know, I’m with Mills. How bout getting the ball to Teague around the paint and tell him to go get buckets or rack up FT’s instead of just bombing away. Change it up a little. But that’s just me. But since we evidently do not believe in midrange jumpshots or guys who can hit those type of shots (I’m not talking about Kroft, I don’t think he was all that useful) I guess we’ll just continue to live and die (die pretty often) chucking 3’s. Why feature a all Mac first teamer on a regular basis, especially when we can’t buy a 3? We have no post up game. 3’s or drive, 3’s or drive. In a lot of those losses I’m not sure we drove much. At least not with any purpose. No kidding that shooting and missing a bunch was not the Plan. But what was the plan for when we were shooting and missing all those shots? I always felt that Teague was pretty bad about catching the ball in the post, putting it on the floor and going to the basket. He always seemed to struggle with dribbling in that area and maintaining possession. Maybe not physically strong enough to do ? I don't know, just my opinion.
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Post by lmills72 on Apr 5, 2020 10:07:01 GMT -6
In both cases that was imperfect offense. But it was not systematic error. And of course every team makes those kinds of error in most games. Yes, it is systematic error. When your system does not control who shoots 3-pointers, it is flawed. There is no indication that our system puts any limits on who who takes 3s.
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Post by lmills72 on Apr 5, 2020 10:13:01 GMT -6
Finally, there might be untapped talent on that bench, but we're never going to see what Huggins and Hendriks can do, because I suspect Whitford really doesn't know what to do with them. Why do you believe that? I think a better question is why would you believe otherwise. There seem to be a few years of history to support my comment.
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