I hate to be the facts only person on the message boards, instead of generic catch phrases, but sometimes until you see something on paper, it doesn't register.
First of all.....for fans.....you simply cannot put ANY guards or wings onto the floor against elite, SEC, B1G competition and make blind or dumb statements like "Pike has to bring in new assistant coaches to run an offense"....players recruited actually do matter.
Why does this matter in terms of guards?? Because guards who can play offense AND defense with an ability to make individual plays, allows you to win or compete in games. And I have to assume that every guard recruited in the B1G or SEC, can dribble, pass, shoot and score from 3 point range BUT not always.........what's most alarming is not the 3 point %, percentages ONLY matter if there are enough attempts AND can that player taking the attempts, play defense, rebound, playmake....
Here are the number of 3s made by B1G team guards....not every guard, but the primary 3 to 4 players on each B1G roster who play meaningful games or minutes.....
Here are the total 3 pointers made by the primary guards (3 to 4 guards of all 18 teams)
Maryland 162
Wisconsin 161
OSU 152
Illinois 136*
Purdue 132
Nebraska 122
Michigan 120
Washington 119
Oregon 109
USC 106
Indiana 104
Iowa 104
PSU 102
MSU 97
UCLA 95
NW 95
Minnesota 94
RU 92
These are 3 pointers made by our primary guards ( which excludes PJ Hayes 16-48, since 9 of his 3s were in the 1st 5 games and he has not played a lot of minutes in games).
Harper 34-104
Acuff 27-69
JMike 13-38
Derkack 10-40
JWill 8-34
If you consider playing most of 5 B1G games without Dylan Harper and some games where Acuff barely played at all, the 92 3s or a threat of a 3 is impossible with JWill, JMike (whos percentage is good, but not a ton of attempts), and Derkack.....
Same limitations 2 years ago, Spencer carried the workload and very little from Mag, Mulcahy or Caleb from 3....Hyatt shot and made some but hes technically a forward and Simpson were not good either but better than Caleb and Mag.......both low volume and low percentage shooters, but very good on defense.
The notion that you can "run an offense" with sub 25 to 30% 3 point shooters like Caleb, Mag, Simpson 2 years ago and now JWill, Derkack and JMike is literally impossible.
As a comparison, the 3 primary guards at Maryland....
Gillespie 59-145 (40.6%)
Miguel 52-120 (43.33%)
Rice 51-139 (36.7%)
I can coach Maryland, Wisconsin others from my recliner at home.....but if you think playing PJ Hayes and Acuff solves the problem, if they cannot playmake on offense OR play good 1 on 1 defense, the number of 3s allowed and the shooting percentages of our opponents, goes up.
To recap, if Harper missed 1/2 PSU, MSU, Indiana etc, what offense are you running and how can you play good defense, if the players don't do both offense and defense at a B1G level??
Comes down to guards and complete guard recruiting.....which usually means $$$, NIL etc.....and having Adidas as an anchor instead of Nike, 100% kills you in recruiting the better players.....
Nike is solved and why 2024 and 2025 recruiting is getting cleaned up, but for this season, 13, 10 and 8 made 3 pointers from 3 of your 5 primary guards with 80% of the season complete, is a LOT to coach around.
