Abysmal A-10 offensive showing (the numbers)

[Natty]

Two things are really killing us right now in Atlantic 10 play: turnovers and interior scoring.

23% offensive turnover rate ranks last in the A-10 outside of SLU, who is 14th momentarily because they haven't played a game. That's a brutal stat. Basically we give our opponent the ball (or they take it...some combination of that), one of essentially every four trips down the court.

46.9% two-point percentage currently ranks 12th in the Atlantic 10 and again, because SLU has yet to play a game in the A-10.

The long and short of that combination is we don't make it easy on ourselves. No easy buckets in A-10 play and we ramp up our degree of difficulty with the turnovers.

Combine those key negatives and you get our offense that is scoring 0.952 points per possession in the league play. That ranks only ahead of winless Saint Joseph's, Duquesne and Fordham. The team with 0.952 points per possession offensive efficiencies on the season, Florida Gulf Coast, ranks 306th nationally in that stat. So our offense in league play is playing to the caliber of the 306th worst offense in the country, relatively speaking.

I don't quite understand how the wheels have fallen off so badly there, how we've been so much worse against these teams than we were against top-100 squads to start the season.

 

[theyaintwantit]

Two things are really killing us right now in Atlantic 10 play: turnovers and interior scoring.

23% offensive turnover rate ranks last in the A-10 outside of SLU, who is 14th momentarily because they haven't played a game. That's a brutal stat. Basically we give our opponent the ball (or they take it...some combination of that), one of essentially every four trips down the court.

46.9% two-point percentage currently ranks 12th in the Atlantic 10 and again, because SLU has yet to play a game in the A-10.

The long and short of that combination is we don't make it easy on ourselves. No easy buckets in A-10 play and we ramp up our degree of difficulty with the turnovers.

Combine those key negatives and you get our offense that is scoring 0.952 points per possession in the league play. That ranks only ahead of winless Saint Joseph's, Duquesne and Fordham. The team with 0.952 points per possession offensive efficiencies on the season, Florida Gulf Coast, ranks 306th nationally in that stat. So our offense in league play is playing to the caliber of the 306th worst offense in the country, relatively speaking.

I don't quite understand how the wheels have fallen off so badly there, how we've been so much worse against these teams than we were against top-100 squads to start the season.

Natty - thanks for this bit of information. A 5 game sample is a decent enough sample to draw judgements from.
Maybe ---- Ace as the point guard is making some mistakes and some other teams have more tape on him now that he's played in 14 career college games?

We don't need to be top 4 or 5 in these categories to be good. But...... bottom 4 will call for a lot of losses.

 

[HBK]

Two things are really killing us right now in Atlantic 10 play: turnovers and interior scoring.

23% offensive turnover rate ranks last in the A-10 outside of SLU, who is 14th momentarily because they haven't played a game. That's a brutal stat. Basically we give our opponent the ball (or they take it...some combination of that), one of essentially every four trips down the court.

46.9% two-point percentage currently ranks 12th in the Atlantic 10 and again, because SLU has yet to play a game in the A-10.

The long and short of that combination is we don't make it easy on ourselves. No easy buckets in A-10 play and we ramp up our degree of difficulty with the turnovers.

Combine those key negatives and you get our offense that is scoring 0.952 points per possession in the league play. That ranks only ahead of winless Saint Joseph's, Duquesne and Fordham. The team with 0.952 points per possession offensive efficiencies on the season, Florida Gulf Coast, ranks 306th nationally in that stat. So our offense in league play is playing to the caliber of the 306th worst offense in the country, relatively speaking.

I don't quite understand how the wheels have fallen off so badly there, how we've been so much worse against these teams than we were against top-100 squads to start the season.

A-10 teams know our style, but they also now have sufficient video to study of our guys. They’ve learned the strengths, weaknesses and tendencies of our players. That video wasn’t really available in South Dakota, and once we left State College, the teams we played in non-conference were inferior from both a talent and athleticism perspective, so we could overwhelm them. Now, it is up to the staff and players to vary some things and make some tweaks. The more experienced teams we play in conference will be most likely to follow a game plan to beat us. Who has beaten us? Experienced teams at Bonaventure and Rhody. Who have we beaten? Inexperienced teams at St. Joes, Mason and GW. Dayton will be interesting. They have some great experience in places (Crutcher and Watson, who are their best players), but they have a lot of inexperience, too. It is interesting that our best players may be some of our more inexperienced players. Usually, your best players are your most experienced (see Dayton, Rhody, Bonaventure, Richmond, SLU, Davidson).

 

[Ramdog]

Natty - thanks for this bit of information. A 5 game sample is a decent enough sample to draw judgements from.
Maybe ---- Ace as the point guard is making some mistakes and some other teams have more tape on him now that he's played in 14 career college games?

We don't need to be top 4 or 5 in these categories to be good. But...... bottom 4 will call for a lot of losses.

those stats clearly suggest that we ain’t very good

 

[Ramdog]

Two things are really killing us right now in Atlantic 10 play: turnovers and interior scoring.

23% offensive turnover rate ranks last in the A-10 outside of SLU, who is 14th momentarily because they haven't played a game. That's a brutal stat. Basically we give our opponent the ball (or they take it...some combination of that), one of essentially every four trips down the court.

46.9% two-point percentage currently ranks 12th in the Atlantic 10 and again, because SLU has yet to play a game in the A-10.

The long and short of that combination is we don't make it easy on ourselves. No easy buckets in A-10 play and we ramp up our degree of difficulty with the turnovers.

Combine those key negatives and you get our offense that is scoring 0.952 points per possession in the league play. That ranks only ahead of winless Saint Joseph's, Duquesne and Fordham. The team with 0.952 points per possession offensive efficiencies on the season, Florida Gulf Coast, ranks 306th nationally in that stat. So our offense in league play is playing to the caliber of the 306th worst offense in the country, relatively speaking.

I don't quite understand how the wheels have fallen off so badly there, how we've been so much worse against these teams than we were against top-100 squads to start the season.

ouch

 

[northernvatiger]

Two things are really killing us right now in Atlantic 10 play: turnovers and interior scoring.

23% offensive turnover rate ranks last in the A-10 outside of SLU, who is 14th momentarily because they haven't played a game. That's a brutal stat. Basically we give our opponent the ball (or they take it...some combination of that), one of essentially every four trips down the court.

46.9% two-point percentage currently ranks 12th in the Atlantic 10 and again, because SLU has yet to play a game in the A-10.

The long and short of that combination is we don't make it easy on ourselves. No easy buckets in A-10 play and we ramp up our degree of difficulty with the turnovers.

Combine those key negatives and you get our offense that is scoring 0.952 points per possession in the league play. That ranks only ahead of winless Saint Joseph's, Duquesne and Fordham. The team with 0.952 points per possession offensive efficiencies on the season, Florida Gulf Coast, ranks 306th nationally in that stat. So our offense in league play is playing to the caliber of the 306th worst offense in the country, relatively speaking.

I don't quite understand how the wheels have fallen off so badly there, how we've been so much worse against these teams than we were against top-100 squads to start the season.

Yikes.

This VCU team needs to get its act together, or things are really going to get ugly. Please, no repeat of last season!

 

[share the ball]

Two things are really killing us right now in Atlantic 10 play: turnovers and interior scoring.

23% offensive turnover rate ranks last in the A-10 outside of SLU, who is 14th momentarily because they haven't played a game. That's a brutal stat. Basically we give our opponent the ball (or they take it...some combination of that), one of essentially every four trips down the court.

46.9% two-point percentage currently ranks 12th in the Atlantic 10 and again, because SLU has yet to play a game in the A-10.

The long and short of that combination is we don't make it easy on ourselves. No easy buckets in A-10 play and we ramp up our degree of difficulty with the turnovers.

Combine those key negatives and you get our offense that is scoring 0.952 points per possession in the league play. That ranks only ahead of winless Saint Joseph's, Duquesne and Fordham. The team with 0.952 points per possession offensive efficiencies on the season, Florida Gulf Coast, ranks 306th nationally in that stat. So our offense in league play is playing to the caliber of the 306th worst offense in the country, relatively speaking.

I don't quite understand how the wheels have fallen off so badly there, how we've been so much worse against these teams than we were against top-100 squads to start the season.

love your look at these stats to better understand where VCU is an outlier
I would love a deeper dive on the turnover stat (probably only comes from video review) but the nature of the turnover is important

I am more likely to accept a turnover that is an aggressive offensive turnover - for example Bones driving to the rim and commits an offensive foul or Ace making an entry pass to the block to a big that the big is unable to catch because the hands weren't ready (those types of turnovers I don't mind)

on the other hand the kind of turnovers that I hate are the walking calls 30 feet from the rim , or a moving/illegal pick 35 feet from the rim, or a pass from a big 25 feet away from the basket to a closely guarded wing player that is stolen or goes out of bounds

 

[Celticguy]

Is this really so unexpected ?
Young guards and a freshman PG are going to have trouble.
And we seldom try to involve our bigs in the offense.
This really should be expected.

 

[mrgeode]

We dropped from 44 on Torvik to 45. Some of y'all need to take Ed Nixon's advice and get some sleep.

 

[LQuarles]

Is this really so unexpected ?
Young guards and a freshman PG are going to have trouble.
And we seldom try to involve our bigs in the offense.
This really should be expected.

Yeah, let's just ignore the 21 combined FG attempts by Levi, Corey, Hason and MBJ yesterday.

 

[SpiderRAM]

It is unfortunate that these abysmal numbers come at a time when fans are getting used to not sitting in their seats. This could lead to real problems for the athletic department with regards to donations and season ticket sales for next year.

 

[share the ball]

Yeah, let's just ignore the 21 combined FG attempts by Levi, Corey, Hason and MBJ yesterday.

rare I would defend Celticguy but my review of the play by play shows that at least 10 of the field goal attempts for those 4 bigs came after they got an offensive rebound - we need balance in our O and the more touches we see inside have a tendency to open court for others too
go rams

 

[Valley drop step]

There are 6 teams in the A10 with an offensive efficiency above 1.0 (points per possession). They are SLU, Dayton, Richmond, SBU, UMASS, Davidson - in no particular order. Those are the top teams in the standings and the only ranked team (SLU). If you are not a good offensive team, you can mitigate that with rebounding and turnover margins to create more scoring opportunities for yourself.

If you sum the sum the offensive rebound and turnover margins last night. It was a wash - 0.0. No real advantage gained. In VCUs other loses this season, the Rams were in the negative when those to margins were totaled.

I don’t know if this is a measure coaches would value, but it makes some sense to me as an indicator of at least some interest. Havoc worked reasonably well because Shaka’s teams didn’t turn the ball over - though that may sound surprising. Although the better teams with good guards seemed to get a lot of easy baskets and not a lot of turnovers. The turnovers and rebounding are a (the?) problem.

 

[LQuarles]

rare I would defend Celticguy but my review of the play by play shows that at least 10 of the field goal attempts for those 4 bigs came after they got an offensive rebound - we need balance in our O and the more touches we see inside have a tendency to open court for others too
go rams

All the bigs got plenty of touches besides rebounds. On some plays they looked for their shot, and due to good defense by the other team, passed back out instead of forcing them. Some of the best decision making yesterday came from our bigs, they just didn't rack up the points to show for it. MBJ was getting to the rim, but finished badly. IMO getting touches for our bigs has been some of the least of our problems.

 

[Wolfpack Ram]

All the bigs got plenty of touches besides rebounds. On some plays they looked for their shot, and due to good defense by the other team, passed back out instead of forcing them. Some of the best decision making yesterday came from our bigs, they just didn't rack up the points to show for it. MBJ was getting to the rim, but finished badly. IMO getting touches for our bigs has been some of the least of our problems.

Bad decision making in general is this team's problem.