Anyone else a little nervous about our assist statistics?

[big red22]

6 assists for a team is pretty bad… but it seems to be working.  I'm hoping once Rey and Biggs gets back it should go up.  If it doesn't we could be in trouble down the road

[Nighthawk]

This early in the season I'm not nervous about much with the team. I'll see how they are after the first road trip before I start getting nervous.

[TheKamdyMan]

6 assists for a team is pretty bad… but it seems to be working. I'm hoping once Rey and Biggs gets back it should go up. If it doesn't we could be in trouble down the road

Definitely will with Gallegos coming back. I don't expect him to create much on his own now with guys that can drive and dish out to open him up on the perimeter. That alone should be good for at least 4 more assists a game.

[FredsSlacks]

hopefully biggs can create shots for others.

[49r]

I mean, at least against FGCU, nobody was stopping Tai (or anyone else, really) on the drive and so there wasn't really any reason for them to dish.  Is that a sign of selfish play?  Or just taking what the defense gives them?

 

I personally think it's too early to be concerned about anything.  This team is young, we're going to have plenty of things to learn how to do.

[hhcmatt]

Assists numbers do not dictate success...they dictate style.

Our turnover percentage should be a much higher concern or just overall number of turnovers...right now we're doing well about protecting the ball.  You can score without help from a teammate....you can't score if the other team has taken the ball from you.

[49r]

So I guess that would be Nighthawk, me, and dimes firmly in the "No" camp then.

[hhcmatt]

So I guess that would be Nighthawk, me, and dimes firmly in the "No" camp then.

 

 

[Huskerpapa]

Not worried...yet.  We are making good passes. 

[lanigan123]

See thread about a good big. Driving lane and fishing for layups is different than fishing for jumpers

[Stuk N Boulder]

Dimes,   I went to school with a guy that looked EXACTLY like Alfred E Neuman. I actually thought that he was the guy they  modeled the magazine character after......scary stuff.

[Nighthawk]

Assists numbers do not dictate success...they dictate style.

Our turnover percentage should be a much higher concern or just overall number of turnovers...right now we're doing well about protecting the ball.  You can score without help from a teammate....you can't score if the other team has taken the ball from you.

Actually...maybe you can??? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQK06eoW1ko

[AuroranHusker]

Assists numbers do not dictate success...they dictate style.

Our turnover percentage should be a much higher concern or just overall number of turnovers...right now we're doing well about protecting the ball. You can score without help from a teammate....you can't score if the other team has taken the ball from you.

Actually...maybe you can??? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQK06eoW1ko

Great shot, wrong basket.

As for OP, it will be interesting to see how Ray & Deverell fit into the rotation from here on out. I have a feeling that assists will go up but TO's may be higher as well w/ more pressure D we could face in the near future (i.e. Charleston Classic)...

[Norm Peterson]

Y'know, I like seeing us getting points off assists.  Not all freelance points are bad points.  Sometimes points without an assist are set up by someone setting a good solid screen.  That doesn't show up in the box score as an assist but when Tai has a huge lane to the basket because someone set a good screen, there's nothing wrong with that.  And I saw a lot of that kind of thing in the first game.  And in the first half of the second game.

 

What I saw in the 2nd half of the 2nd game concerned me a bit, though.  Whereas Shavon Shields typically lets the game come to him and doesn't try to force shots or deliberately look for his shots to the exclusion of better options, 2nd half the other night, that's what I was afraid I was seeing from Tai and Terran.  Guys who were more interested in finding their shots than in playing a team game on the offensive end.

[tcp]

Our offense right now isn't predicated on passing for the sake of it. It's getting the best shot--least resistance, highest odds of going in. So the answer to this question lies in evaluating the shooting percentage of the team. It's above .50. So that makes the answer to the OP, "no".

[Huskerbb73]

One thing this does show is that we now have players that can create on their own instead of someone else doing it for them. 

[hhcmatt]

Bill Carmody's Princeton offense generates assists all day.

As you can see, with the teams slow tempo and assists per game, they've been crushing it on Assist % (Assist/FGM) for the last decade.  As you can also see, his record has been all over the place.

 

[royalfan]

 

6 assists for a team is pretty bad… but it seems to be working. I'm hoping once Rey and Biggs gets back it should go up. If it doesn't we could be in trouble down the road

Definitely will with Gallegos coming back. I don't expect him to create much on his own now with guys that can drive and dish out to open him up on the perimeter. That alone should be good for at least 4 more assists a game.

 

This.  I am hopeful Rey gets a lot more clean looks this year with more guys that can get in to the paint to draw defense in. 

[Norm Peterson]

Our offense right now isn't predicated on passing for the sake of it. It's getting the best shot--least resistance, highest odds of going in. So the answer to this question lies in evaluating the shooting percentage of the team. It's above .50. So that makes the answer to the OP, "no".

I'd always understood that Miles was strictly motion and no set plays.  In his post-game the other night, he was talking about how he maybe should have let our guys run more motion but he had them running sets instead.  Obviously, the two types of offenses are different. 

 

But motion isn't just freelance, random movement.  There's a structure to it and rules or principles that govern spacing, ball movement, player movement without the ball and shot selection.  It's still a system.  And what worried me the other night, in the 2nd half particularly, was that it seemed like there was a lot of out-of-system guys trying to do stuff on their own.

 

My perception was that, while Shavon on the one hand lets the game come to him (very mature player) a couple of other guys, namely Terran and Tai, wanted their share of shots.  Terran first tried taking things 1 on 5 with limited success.  And then Tai, I'm guessing because he figured that if he passed the ball off and it got to Terran, he'd never see it again, started trying to do his own thing.

 

Twice in transition in the second half, Shavon was wide open on the right side between the wing and the corner and Tai saw him and, instead of passing to Shavon, kept it on the dribble until the defense got down and got set.  Two other times, we had fast-break opportunities with a player filling an outside lane and the ballhandler chose to try taking it all the way to the basket by himself.

 

What I think we saw from Terran, certainly, and a little bit from Tai in the 2nd half the other night was not a case of finding shot opportunities within the structure of whatever offense we were running, but out-of-system trying to force things.  And that typically doesn't work.  So, my answer to the OP would be, yeah, a little bit maybe.  But let's give it another game or two and see what happens.

[tcp]

@Norm: I get the point you make, but it depends on your read of their motivation. I only saw the last 9 minutes, and I saw a flat team (acknowledged in the post game presser, and that includes Shavon when he was on the court) and sometimes you'll see a player try to push things by trying to up the energy level by themselves when everyone else is flat footed. That's how I interpreted Terran's play--about half his shots came during that stretch, I think, including an outstanding 3 point play off an offensive board.

 

Chauncey Billups probably informed my view of assists during his first stint with the Pistons: to paraphrase, "if the first shot is good, and the ball goes in, you don't need many assists."

 

Now, if you start seeing Iverson-esque statistics, then I'd be totally on board the concern train. And indeed, you may still wind up being right, but I get the feeling that Miles would have a leash on pretty fast if he thought a player was turning into a destructive ball hog.

 

I really trust this staff about these things more than I have in many years. It makes being a fan much more relaxing.

[ajb5856]

"I'd always understood that Miles was strictly motion and no set plays. In his post-game the other night, he was talking about how he maybe should have let our guys run more motion but he had them running sets instead. Obviously, the two types of offenses are different."

My understanding was that Miles loves the motion offense but has certain "sets" or "pieces" that he can call out of the motion offense. IIRC, last year, it was explained that the team was so limited that they could not do everything Miles wanted them to do within his motion offense so they just practiced go-to fragmented sets or plays out of it. I'm having trouble remembering the term Miles used to describe the portions of his offense that they would run but I know they weren't able to run his full blown offense last year. I'm assuming that to start this season we are in a somewhat similar situation with all the new players even though they are athletically capable of running everything Miles wants. He is probably taking it slow and still calling some of the fragments or sets. I think that might be what he was getting at in his post game comments after Western Illinois.

[Norm Peterson]

I'm with you, tcp.  As I said above, it's maybe a little concern.  For now.  But it's only been two real games and there's a lot of distance yet to travel.  Not sure I agree about trying to energize the team.  Might have been a little bit that way for Petteway although I can remember cringing a bit when he tried to go it alone even though he hit that fadeaway J in the lane.

 

Jekyll and Hyde from the FGCU game as far as energy level, but that's probably to be expected.  What will worry me is if we're still having energy issues the end of November.  With a young team you expect a little bit of ups ad downs but you don't want them to come out totally flat, especially against a team whose "A" game can beat you.  I think that happened with Kent last year.

 

But, as with you, I trust this staff.  Not gonna worry about it until we get quite a bit further down the road.

[HuskerFever]

6 assists for a team is pretty bad… but it seems to be working.  I'm hoping once Rey and Biggs gets back it should go up.  If it doesn't we could be in trouble down the road

I'm more nervous about injuries than I am about assists...

[Huskerpapa]

Sounds as if Coach Miles worries more about getting to the line than to hand out an assist.  As long as we are scoring, I am fine as well.