The scouting at the BIG level is too good. Most of our half court offensive sets start with a dribble hand off to the wing. I would be interested in knowing what % of the time we do this. I estimate that when we are facing a man to man defense, the dribble hand off is tried in 7 out of 10 of our offensive sets. During the last several games, culminating in the Indiana game, we have had the ball stolen during the hand-off at least 8 times (perhaps even more). Most of these steals resulted in points for the opponent and sometimes in deflating dunks.
The predictability of our offensive, as weak as it is, was exploited in a most glaring way by Indiana. Check out this blog article. It uses photo captures from the telecast to make the point (there are several pages of the article that are worth perusing) http://www.insidethehall.com/2017/01/17/film-session-rutgers-4/
Our response to the frequent steals -- when the defender jumps the Rutgers’ wing handoffs with strength to steal the ball -- was for the recipient of the handoff to go backdoor. This did not work because Indiana was waiting for the move and stole the ball when we tried that maneuver.
So what will the coaches draw up in response to our futility? The opposition has figured us out, but we keep on running the same sets. Isn't this why they get paid the big bucks -- to devise adjustments to what the other team is doing to disrupt the game plan? I haven't seen too many adjustments. Although I am impressed with the overall job Pikiell is doing, I would like to see some variation. If the dribble hand-off is too predictable, try something else. We can't keeping banging our heads against the wall. We have scouts too!!
The predictability of our offensive, as weak as it is, was exploited in a most glaring way by Indiana. Check out this blog article. It uses photo captures from the telecast to make the point (there are several pages of the article that are worth perusing) http://www.insidethehall.com/2017/01/17/film-session-rutgers-4/
Our response to the frequent steals -- when the defender jumps the Rutgers’ wing handoffs with strength to steal the ball -- was for the recipient of the handoff to go backdoor. This did not work because Indiana was waiting for the move and stole the ball when we tried that maneuver.
So what will the coaches draw up in response to our futility? The opposition has figured us out, but we keep on running the same sets. Isn't this why they get paid the big bucks -- to devise adjustments to what the other team is doing to disrupt the game plan? I haven't seen too many adjustments. Although I am impressed with the overall job Pikiell is doing, I would like to see some variation. If the dribble hand-off is too predictable, try something else. We can't keeping banging our heads against the wall. We have scouts too!!
