Half Court Offense on the road/netural courts

[jwhite17]

Is anyone else concerned about our half court offense away from home?

We definitely are built to run with our athletes and length, but it seems teams can really hurt our offense when we play a half court game (see Wyoming and UCSB games). This has been a problem since Boyle has taken over. Our assists/game is much better compared to last year, and I'm happy for that.

I beleve we were bottom 10 in the country last year. This year, we are at least mediocre in that department.

At home, we get to the line so much that it really covers up our deficiencies of a true PG. I'm not sure if our offense needs a true PG though. Dinwiddie is more of a combo guard to me that can pass and shoot. I'm not saying we need a true pass first PG. I just think something is wrong with an offense that relies on getting to the free throw line to generate points.

On the road/neutral, we won't go to the line as much, and then we have guys forcing up bad shots thereby losing to bad teams.

I know winning on the road is much harder in college bball than any other sport, but I'm afraid we will have trouble on the road again this year if we don't fix our half court issues. In both neutral court games, we shot terrible. Will it be the same or worse in a hostile environment?

I hope we can go 5-4 on the road and win all of our home games. That would be perfect from my perspective with our young team.

Thoughts?

 

[PuebloBuff]

Will probably still be a struggle but I think Scott can really help us there, assuming we can get him the ball.

 

[GoBuffs!!]

I have never been to a practice, but my guess is that Tad doesnt spend too much time on the half court offense from what I can tell. Not that its a bad thing, but figure that you have limited practice time, and I am sure he feels that practicing other parts of the game (Defense) is much more important.

We have a young team, but they are all Tads guys now. I think in the next few years some of the other parts of the game that he stresses will be handed down from the upper classmen to the freshman, so he can spend less time working on them at the full team practices. Which will allow them to all work on other aspects (half court offense).

Overall, something to keep an eye on, but I am not that conserned at this point.

 

[jgisland]

The assists/FGM ratio is up early but that has a lot to do with the competition - we did have a 4 assist game against Wyoming this year, I'd be surprised if the assist numbers didn't go down as the year progresses. A lot of the problem with the half-court offesne is that Spencer tries to be too much of a traditional PG, that isn't what he is and that isn't what CU needs from him. He's the most dynamic offensive player on the team, CU can't have him standing around the three point line facilitating the offense.

Tad does spend a good amount of time on the half-court offense in practice, he's not oblivious to the half-court struggles. CU's going to struggle in the half-court because the scouting report is out on CU - you keep them out of transition and pack it in on a zone on defense and make CU shoot outside shots. With Dinwiddie and Scott on this team I'm not worried about CU getting to the line, CU's a top 10% team at getting to the line, they're going to get there no matter where they play.

The bright side IMO on all of this - CU's got some players that can attack the zone and are "getting it". Hopkins and Fletcher have had the game slow way down for them and both have the athleticism to penetrate zone. Dustin Thomas has struggled of late, but nobody has shown the ability to flash to the high post and create spacing like him. When he flashes to the high post he has the ability to knock down the elbow jumper and which will make teams need to be aware of him, that opens up room for Scott down low. And to Scott, he's not getting the ball enough, he's 5th in % of shots per minute on the team. We've heard about playing "inside out", it's time to start seeing it.