What do you do if you're Rick Barnes?

D

DJDJAJGJ

250+ Posts
He's in a bad situation. He's a defensive minded, half-court, slow it down style of coach, but this team isn't suitable for that. He knows it too because we're way too bad defensively to be playing a half-court style.

We need to run like the Suns or Warriors. We did do that at the beginning of the year. It's not like Barnes doesn't want to run... he knows it's the best fit for the team.

But since we are so damned feeble from the bench, our starters have to play 35+ minutes. If you try to play Suns ball with college players and with a ridiculously small rotation, the team is going to get severely exhausted. Running all the time was detrimental, so it had to stop. You can see it's already affecting our play with the tiredness. But playing slow is also detrimental to the team because of our bad defense.

So what do you do if you're Barnes?

To avoid fatigue, I think we have to stay with the half-court offense, but we just need to improve the plays we're running. More passing and less stagnation would help. And please make your free throws and open threes. Wow...

Everyone's upset at the loss to the Aggies, but the emergence of Dexter Pittman was a HUGE positive towards the development of a half-court offense. A&M plays a slow style so Pittman won't have to worry about being run out of the gym. Big 12 for the most part is also slow enough for Dexy to play.

I don't even know what to think of Gary Johnson. Will he contribute to this team at all this year? He's totally lost on defense. I'm hoping that he and Dexy will get more involved in our offense.
 
We need some quicker starts and better depth. With a point guard like DJ, I find it odd that we play slow early. We should be pushing the tempo to set up some timing issues for later.
 
I was wondering why we don't have a two personnel offense scheme? Go small and run with DJ, Abrams, Mason, Wangmene/Johnson, and James - fast and athletic. Then slow the tempo with DJ, Atchley, Abrams, James, and Dex/Chapman - big and strong.

Scheme #1 has 3 guards and 2 forwards scheme #2 has 2 guards, 1 forward, and 2 centers. Let DJ work the inside lanes with James and Wangmene cleaning up the glass/ playing the easy dish and dunk. Then go big and play inside out hitting the big men inside or kicking out for the two deadeyes to pop the treys.

But that is just my opinion
 
I'll take the simple approach: Work on the ft's. When you're shooting around 50% you're going to definitely cost yourself some games that you wouldn't ordinarily lose.

Hook'em!!!
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The horns are weak defensively against a big team because they are just so small. Augustin and Abrams play almost the whole game so they not only have to deal with problem of being very small on D but are also exhausted from playing so many minutes. In addition Mason is having to play a very undersized small forward. Atchley is not a physical center. James is small at power forward.

If the horns had a more conventional lineup, they would do much better on D. To achieve this, they could play Mason more minutes at guard, James at small forward and Johnson or one of the big subs at power forward. that team can rebound and play D but requires a more sophisticated offense than the horns currently run.

If Augustin and Abrams got some rest, the horns could play a more pressing style of D and run more on O.

The bench is not totally weak. If you start Augustin, Abrams, James, Johnson, and Atchley then you have Mason to spell Augustin and Abrams at guard and Wangmene and Pittman to spell the front line guys (and Mason can spell James against some teams).

On O, the horns need to pick and roll much more to create mismatches for their athletic big men James and Johnson (and to a lesser extent, Dexter and Wangmene and Mason). If Augustin is truly one of the best point guards in the country, he should be able to execute the pick and roll pass very well. Right now it is a rare sight in the horns offense to see Augustin passing the ball to the big man rolling to the bucket after screening for Augustin.

The horns should run an offense early in the shot clock instead of Augustin immediately trying to get his shot. Once the shot clock runs down, Augustin can then go for his one on one type offense.

It has been apparent that Dexter's conditioning has been improving for a while. He grabs a bunch of rebounds per minute normally (he just does not get many minutes).
 
ONE
reak down film and look where you've played good. Practice and do that.
Look where you've played bad. Don't do that.

TWO
Figure the other team is going to come out determined like hell to win.
Plan to do the same.

THREE
Play every minute like it's the last and you're 3 pts down.

FOUR
During warm-ups stop running around and stop and stare down the house.
Say over and over: "I own this place. This is my house."

FIVE:
Start playin' and keep on runnin'.

There's your 5-pt plan.
 
maybe he should quit - because all the horn fans and aggies know more about baksetball than him - my goodness, how much college basketball do some of you watch around the country - playing at home is huge and i am one who is not surprised at all - we haven't been shooting the ball real well since conf. started, so why would we all the sudden go on the road, where we are their biggest game and expect anything else - until we can shoot the ball better consisitently and have some of the other players step up like they did earlier in the year, it will be difficult - just have to play through it - it was just one game and the way a&m shot tonight, we probably would have had to shoot over 50% to have any kind of chance even if we would have played well - our home games haven't been that great lately on the offensive end
 
The first part of this game we looked like a bunch of white guys at the YMCA trying to play basketball.
Airballs, bricked shots that barely grazed the rim, dribbling the ball off of our feet out of bounds and sometimes just dribbling the ball right into 2 or 3 defenders and giving it to them. Not to mention being 7 for 15 from the line at one point.

You are not going to win on the road starting a game off like that...ever.

What I could not understand is why we did not pressure them more. When we started trapping them and pressing them in the backcourt they started turning it over and we made a run. Then all of a sudden we would just drop back and play half court defense. Of course they would go to the low post and our guys would just let them back all of the way into the paint and make a 2 footer.

I know we are not that deep and it takes a lot out of you to keep the pressure on but we had several chances to get back into that game and closed to within 10 several times by doing so but we never stayed with it long enough.

That really bugged me.
 
Work hard and try to improve, not many other options. I feel at number 10 this team is ranked way too high. They are a top 25 team but should not be near the top 10.
 
correct; I'd say we're top 20, just for DJ alone. Without DJ, we're an NIT team which scares the **** out of me b/c of our lack of depth.
 
10-6 may be extremely optimistic at this point. Texas has just started its 9 game stretch in which it plays Baylor, OU, A&M all twice, and has games against KU and KSU, with an away game at ISU to round it out (a game that should not be taken lightly--Texas barely beat them in Austin last year, and they are playing better and Texas is playing worse this year--oh, and their top 3 point shooters are 6'7", 6'10", 6'1", and 6'6"). Obviously, Jan. 30-Feb. 25 (and maybe even the Feb. 28 game in Lubbock) was going to be the most importart part of the season. Up to now, the bench has gotten so little time on the court that their ability to contribute late in the season is highly questionable.

So, what have we seen so far in conference? Missouri lighting the Horns up from 3 land in Columbia. Squeakers against two teams that are looking like conference doormats. The annual accolade and head handing to Bob Knight in Austin. A brutal pounding in College Station. Not good, especially when one considers the opponents are a combined 6-18 in their other conference games. At this point, I think the dependence on 5 small guys is risking disaster, and while Pittman showed last night some of what he can bring, the rest of the bench contributed squat outside of a few Wangmene rebounds and two ejections (if you count Chapman fouling out).

.411 shooting pct in 5 conference games (opponents--.464).
.327 shooting pct for 3 pointers (opponents-- .382).
.614 ft pct ! (Insert Bill Walton's favorite word here.)

I think, harkening back to Barnes' comment that he would be disappointed if this wasn't his strongest defensive team, that it is safe to say Barnes must be disappointed. Hearing those words, I had envisioned the team playing ten deep and rotating several big guys ala Thomas, Buckman, Klotz to make life difficult for opponents inside, but that simply never materialized this year.

Meanwhile, Abrams is shooting .356, while averaging 15 shots a game. Abrams and Augustin are taking 1/2 of the team's fg tries. That might not be a problem if they were getting good looks, but most of the time they aren't, particularly Abrams, who seems to be just jacking stuff up as fast as he can or shooting in traffic on the move. During the while, he has shot all of 7, yep 7, free throws. 14.6 fg attempts and 1.4 ft attempts per game. I said this last spring, this summer, and in the fall--Abrams has to learn how to get to the basket and draw contact to get to the free throw line. He isn't big enough to just shoot from outside, and once teams pay attention to him on the perimeter, he is neutralized as an offensive threat. Well, he has one more year to figure that out.

It's a shame that Johnson wasn't getting time on the court in the non-conference games; maybe if he had we would see him staying his his defensive assignments and giving some production. It's also a shame Texas doesn't have Balbay to give Augustin some more rest, but the team will have to play with what it has.

What I don't understand, I guess, is why there isn't more of an effort to get the bench into play, regardless of their individual limitations. I have always thought Barnes's teams are at their best when they play 9-10 guys full throttle on defense. Yeah, I know nearly everyone on the bench has looked lost on defense at times, but what the hell. I didn't see the value in removing Pittman, Wangmene, and Chapman for entire games when they blew a defensive assignment or did the wrong thing on offense. The regular starting 5 aren't going to win anything by themselves; they aren't big enough to survive half court matchups unless they can speed up the game with pressure on the ball. If Texas is playing Augustin, Abrams, and Mason over 30 minutes a game, it can't really press on defense very much.

So, I don't know exactly what to do, but I would probably try to get more players involved in the game by using the bench more (it's not like the starters have been dominating anything). I'd want to use Smith at least a few minutes every game so the three guard lineup can play faster to try to force steals and a race up and down game. To prevent the guards getting too tired, I'd want to see the team alternate the tempo by slowing things down, bring in Pittman to try to pound the ball inside.

I've always thought this team needed one of the big guys to step up to give a combination of defense, rebounding, a decent ft %, and a reasonable inside offensive threat, but looking at the last thing as being the least important. Right now there doesn't seem to be anyone who can do that very effectively in a fast full court game. Atchley's best offensive weapon is long range shooting and he still isn't strong enough to maintain position inside, Pittman can't go up and down the court for long, Wangmene is no offensive threat and his exuberance exceeds his savvy, and Chapman isn't strong or quick enough to handle the demands yet.

I admit that I am disappointed so far, having expected the team to play as well as or even better than last year's team. I would say that I was primarily looking to the results in March, not the early season, so the final judgment isn't in, of course.

It doesn't take a genius to see the problems. We can all see the problems and lots of us have commented on them since November--depth, interior size, perimeter size. It might take a basketball genius to find a solution. It will definitely take someone a lot smarter than me to find that solution without letting players 6-10 see the floor more.

While I'm disappointed in the results so far, I'm not going to knock Barnes. He still is playing a young team. Only 5 guys had significant playing time coming into the year, and they mostly spent last year playing roles next to the 6'9" long armed could shoot from anywhere all the time freak. Only Gary Johnson was considered to be a top recruit, and he wound up missing the first two months. So, we're probably all guilty to some degree in becoming a little too exuberant following early wins against Tennessee and UCLA.

I'm not writing off the season. This team could still get hot and finish in the top three in the conference, or it could play as it has and finish in the middle. I am looking for some kind of greater effort to get everyone involved. I don't see the team making any kind of tournament run unless the guys on the bench are able to help a lot more than they have to date.
 
I'm not going to offer up a bunch of 'scholarly basketball' insight and knowledge here because I don't have it. One thing as a fan I can see is that this team lacks any chemistry whatsover. We have no depth and some players show up and others dont. Rarely do more than a couple of guys show up on any given night. DJ is our PG. he should be averaging 20 pts. again, but there are no "role players" stepping up like Dex "Big Baby" Pittman did last night. Gone are the days of Naismith award winning underclassmen. Our freshman are going to need 2+ seasons to be good. Texas (players and Barnes) need to step up and play/coach like they know how, like the blue collar team they are. Go back to whats working. Oh yeah, and make your ******* freethrows. thats a start.
 
Minute Bull brings up a good point. We need a big man version of Justin Mason. I thought Johnson was going to be that guy at the least. Mooney actually fits that role the best as far as big men. Should he be getting more playing time? Ugh... I'm not going to go that far...
 
Pick and roll - and actually get the ball to the guy who is rolling to the bucket. Simple - but DJ nor anyone else can or will do it.
 
Sometimes I wonder if the chemistry of other teams was affected the same way ours has been by the change in the NBA draft rule that landed us KD, and saw the departure of PJ Tucker and probably Gibson (assuming LaMarcus was gone anyways). Not that I'm going to put too fine a point on how that would have necessarily affected this years team.
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I just pray its going to be more fun to watch this team in March (completely possible)
 
1) how did we not get to the final four with gibson, lamarcus, and PJ on the same team? Sorry to change the topic but an earlier post made me think of that team.

2) what really sucks is aggy owns us in football AND basketball these last few years. that's really the biggest kick in the nuts for me.

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This team is not playing nearly as well as the team that beat UCLA and Tenn. Back then Atchley was playing great offensively, not so much now. His perimeter play drew the big guys out of the paint, which opened up so much more for the team.

There are many things causing this slump, but that's one of the biggest. What I don't understand is why we don't run more plays off of Atchley. He's got a sky hook that rarely misses. I'd be curious to know what the % is for that shot. If I were to guess, I'd say he's 8 of 12. He needs to shoot that shot more often.
 
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