When I was coaching High School Basketball I instilled in my teams/players
that basketball is a game of mistakes. The team that made the fewest mistakes
usually won the game. You had to value the ball and not turn it over.
The goal was to get a good shot off on each and every possession. There is no such thing as a perfect game and there never will be.

My first team made it to the Virginia High School League Final Four. We lost by two points with 3 seconds to go in the game when the ref called an off the ball holding call against us, putting the opponents best player on the free throw line in a tied game. We finished the game with only 5 turnovers.

Watching the women's final yesterday was excruciating for me. I'm still trying
to figure out how we were even in the game with over 30 turnovers. Obviously, Marshall's atrocious shooting percentage kept us in it.

Coach O's offense against the press needs some serious help. It was the difference
in the game. But, most importantly, the ladies need to value the ball much better.

They played valiantly and the comeback was great.

Conversely, the men blew the game open by destroying ASU's full court press. Text book press offense attack. Hopefully, the two coaches can get together and share some X's and O's on how to attack different presses. Start with a 1-4 alignment for the in-bounds pass.

Great post...

Sadly, this is Coach O's THIRD failure against the press - Marshall, MD, Ohio State

Not a personal attack on him - but something is wrong in the system/ thinking when you get burned 3 times by the same thing...we actually looked worse against this press than OSU

I'm assuming Marshall is just way quicker and more athletic overall than we are. They could trap us in the full court, then retreat to play man D if we broke it. All we could do on the defensive end was sit in a loose zone and hope they missed shots. I'll admit only got to see the 4th quarter and OT, but that was a pretty frustrating defensive strategy to watch, too.

(03-12-2024 11:41 AM)PolishFalconDuke Wrote:  I'm assuming Marshall is just way quicker and more athletic overall than we are. They could trap us in the full court, then retreat to play man D if we broke it. All we could do on the defensive end was sit in a loose zone and hope they missed shots. I'll admit only got to see the 4th quarter and OT, but that was a pretty frustrating defensive strategy to watch, too.

I don’t go away with the impression that Marshall was more athletic, but that they simply played a style of aggressive, trapping press the team just wasn’t prepared to break. JMU was a bigger team (taller), but when your guards looked completely baffled as to how to break the press (deer in the headlights kinda thing), and the Refs let the D slap and punch at the ball and body the ball handlers, well, it gets ugly. Like 39 turnovers ugly.

Hopefully Coach O and staff learns from all this and fixes whatever was causing the issues.

For the most part, his system works. He knows what his team does well.
My big issue is he doesn't seem to adjust or have a plan when a team tries to take our team out of what they do.
30+ turnovers in one game.
Poor handling of the press. I mentioned it during the game, but I don't understand why the players didn't adjust (or told to adjust) to help give the handlers an option downcourt. It was like they were left out to dry and could only pass it to one another or heave it down the court.
Disclaimer: I am not saying Coach O needs to be fired. But there seem to be too many times when we play good teams and we are not the better team. We have the talent to be the better team. Despite all the turnovers, we were still in that game yesterday. That is incredible. But imagine if we eliminated a third (or even a quarter) of those turnovers. That game could resulted in a win.

Sean's teams tend to lose more and more composure as the game goes on.

I'll never forget the UMD 4th qtr disaster

Toledo blew 20 pt HT lead this year.

There's been so many times we lost composure at end of games.

At least yesterday we fought back after losing the lead.

Gotta bit of Lefty in his teams.....

The way Marshall’s press was structured did not allow an easy pass to the middle near half court and therefor what JMU was trying to do did not work. Was at the game and what we needed to do was get the ball in and immediately reverse the ball and just go making the defender at second level make a decision whether to come up and stop that dribbler leaving middle open or allow w the ball to be advanced over half court. At that point ball needed to go back to middle to avoid the trap. We kept passing it in and taking a few dribbles allowing the soft trap such that even if we reversed the ball they had time to recover.

All that said Marshall is good at what they do and their coaches teams have lead the nation in turnovers forced and points. We had way too many completely unforced turnovers after beating press and that is what cost us the game.

Didn't we play them twice earlier in the year..and learn nothing?

(03-12-2024 03:09 PM)bcp_jmu Wrote:  Didn't we play them twice earlier in the year..and learn nothing?

Forget about previous games just watch second half of semifinal against ODU.

(03-12-2024 03:09 PM)bcp_jmu Wrote:  Didn't we play them twice earlier in the year..and learn nothing?

Actually, that second game at Marshall, we really did have it figured out. We beat it so often that they finally relaxed it.

The number one thing that cost us the game were missing all those baskets down low in the paint. It was not typical of us. I also believe we need to learn to pass the ball off a bounce, they are way harder to defend. When we do pass, we need to fire it and have our girls prepared to receive a much stronger thrown ball.

(03-12-2024 08:39 PM)BleedingPurple Wrote:  

(03-12-2024 03:09 PM)bcp_jmu Wrote:  Didn't we play them twice earlier in the year..and learn nothing?

Actually, that second game at Marshall, we really did have it figured out. We beat it so often that they finally relaxed it.

The number one thing that cost us the game were missing all those baskets down low in the paint. It was not typical of us. I also believe we need to learn to pass the ball off a bounce, they are way harder to defend. When we do pass, we need to fire it and have our girls prepared to receive a much stronger thrown ball.

I wantcher the whole game yesterday...so now, based on this info, it's even more of a headscratcher - we beat their press once before, yet could not this time...granted we had butterfingers too, still they forced an unholy number of TOs - that coach has some strategy balls