Season Post-Mortem, Part I: How Do You Score? A Brain Dump

There's no doubt the Hoyas' offense was extremely disappointing this year. Thanks to a late season offensive swoon (following a mid-season defensive swoon), this was the worst offensive efficiency in JTIII's tenure:

Year      Adj. Off. Eff.     Rank
2005           113            34
2006           117             9
2007           125             2
2008           117            18
2009           110            57

That's right. Let that sink in. A team with an assumed immense amount of offensive talent simply could not score at the level of even a passable tournament team.


So how does a team score?

There's only so many ways to generate a shot:

• Low post offense


• Dribble penetration


• Outside or mid-range shooting


• Motion/passing penetration (the backdoor cuts, UCLA cuts, pick and roll, high post, etc.)


• Offensive rebounding


• Transition offense

More importantly, it's my opinion that the more diverse an offense is the harder it is to stop. That's really easy to see with, say, offensive rebounding or transition offense, two things that generate shots and points without necessarily impeding a half-court offense. They are additive, occurring after and before the half-court offense.

But within the half-court offense, the other four factors open things up for each other. Low post players or dribble penetrators that require help defense create open outside or mid-range shooting. Quality outside shooting requires extended defenses that allow for better penetration, motion offense and slower (or no) doubles down low. Effective cuts and passes open up shooters outside or discourage too much help defense.

A defense that doesn't need to worry about outside shooting can simply sag on a team, making cuts and dribble penetration less effective. A team that doesn't need to worry about effective cuts or dribble penetration can extend the defense and give up less open looks. And a team that doesn't have to double a low post threat can do all of the above.


So what does Georgetown have? What did the Hoyas used to have?


Let's knock off what the Hoyas haven't done during Thompson's tenure: transition offense. They've never run much, and when they have, they've been awful at converting.

There's a certainly a strong argument for running more. Chris Wright is better in the open floor than Jon Wallace, and when you are struggling for offense, running can create some easy shots. Unfortunately, there's not a lot of other strong handlers on the team, and the team struggles to make the right decisions and finish on the break. I don't have the numbers, and nothing to compare it to, but I don't think anyone will disagree that the team has an incredibly low conversion rate on the break.


Before we get to the other elements, let's take a look at some of the offensive statistics over the years for Georgetown:

Offensive Stat   2005 (Rank)  2006 (Rank)  2007 (Rank)  2008 (Rank)  2009 (Rank)

Adj. Eff.         113  (34)    117   (9)    125   (2)    117  (18)    110  (57)
Opp. Def. Eff.     96  (24)     96  (22)     96   (8)     97  (31)     96   (3)

eFG%             53.1  (35)   53.4  (28)   57.0   (4)   56.8   (4)   52.5  (56)
2Pt%             51.8  (41)   53.5  (15)   57.8   (2)   56.3   (2)   54.2  (12)
3Pt%             36.5  (75)   35.5 (129)   37.0  (73)   38.4  (38)   33.0 (221)
3PA/FGA            43  (13)     37  (71)     35 (151)     40  (48)     36  (89)

FTA/FGA            30 (302)     32 (277)     37 (164)     34 (237)     43  (35)
FT%              70.4 (114)   70.6 (127)   71.0 (115)   65.2 (286)   71.2  (94)

OR%              35.6  (90)   36.3  (77)   40.2   (8)   33.8 (132)   33.4 (152)
TO%              21.9 (203)   18.8  (35)   22.0 (213)   21.2 (192)   21.6 (246)

A/FGM              63  (32)     66   (9)     49  (75)     62  (44)     57  (92)

Some initial thoughts to look into:

• This by far is the worst three-point shooting team Thompson has had. Why? Personnel, or lack of open shots?
  


• This year marks the largest divide between 2PT % and eFG%, meaning the mix between two point FGs and three point FGs was well off. And this was the first time (not counting fouls) that the Hoyas had definitely taken too many threes for our ability.
  


• We're probably going to need to look at 2009 split out. The team collapsed; the numbers of the early conference game are likely inflating the yearly totals, but that wasn't the issue.


• Two point shooting took a hit post-Hibbert, but less than you'd think, especially when you incorporate in lost offensive rebounds.
  


• Relative to the rest of college basketball, this year was the worst year for the Hoyas in terms of generating shots: the worst ranking the Hoyas have had in TO% and OR%.
  


• Georgetown hasn't always been awful at offensive rebounding (see before Jeff Green left), but there's only been one year where the turnovers have been passable.
  


• In the Final Four year, the team assisted on a lower percentage of its shots than any other year. However, the team also generated many offensive rebounds (which lead to put-backs), upped its FG% and its foul rate from the previous year and still managed to score. This year, the % of assisted baskets dropped, but rebounding did as well (and so did FG%). I'm not sure what this means.

The two things that jump at me more than any other are the poor outside shooting and the inability to generate shot opportunities due to turnovers and poor offensive rebounding.


In future posts, I hope to take a look at what is each of those points. Those two points would explain a lot in context of the six ways to score:

• Outside/midrange shooting: Assumed Poor

• Transition offense: Poor

• Offensive rebounding: Poor

With few shots, and no ability to make outside shots defenses can (and did) sag on the interior to harm those aspects of the offense.

• Low post offense: Mediocre to begin win, made worse by lack of shooting

• Penetration: Wright is better, but lots of turnovers from others, lots of help D

• Motion offense: Decidedly worse -- but defense could, again, sag