Forum › Forum › Lehigh Sports › Lehigh Men’s Basketball › Bucknell › Reply To: Bucknell
Great stuff all over this thread. And with power restored, I can jump back in – yeah! Couldn’t agree more on finding the open man when TK gets doubled; I think it’s absolutely critical. Almost like we need a secondary “play” once the ball goes into the post – some extra motion, something. Since watching the Spurs run in the NBA playoffs last year, I’ve obsessed a bit about big-to-big passing. The Spurs do that REALLY well.
Pace of play is mysterious, to me. It is definitely clear that we get better results when the pace is faster – measured in possessions per game. But I really struggle to figure out how to influence that. I’d never want to see us intentionally shoot earlier in the shot clock. We’ve seen clearly better results when we get more ball movement – making the extra pass. I think this is supported by the observations here on the board about our results when our assists/FG number is higher. Feels like two conflicting measures!
Without shooting early on purpose, the other clear way to speed up the game is to shorten opponents possessions. But how? The opponent largely controls that. The only thing that occurs to me is forcing turnovers. I might try to look back to see how our forced TOs align with pace numbers. In addition to speeding things up on D, TOs also lead to transition opportunities – easy buckets and short offensive possessions. The highlight vs. Bucky is a perfect example. Do you possibly choose to gamble a bit more on D, to create TOs? I suppose really clamping down on opponent ORs would also help – which we actually do pretty well, most of the time.
