I took a week off from writing “My Scout Report,” so I have two weeks of observations to catch up with.
Good Offense- As coaches, we are always looking at what is good and bad about our offense. We apt to break things down, looking at shot selection, quality of screens, turnovers, and more. We often don’t think about it but one of the best predictors of whether our offense is good or not in a game, is whether our defense is good.
Most often when the offense looks stale and struggles, it is because the offense is ALWAYS having to go against a set half-court defense. The other team is scoring and you are not getting transition. Improve the defense, improve the offense!!
Turnovers Mean Bad Defense- When we break down how many points per possession our defense is giving up, a huge factor is how many live ball turnovers we are giving up. The Spurs have been able to beat the Thunder in three straight games. The biggest factor in the Spurs success is that they have not given the Thunder run outs with live ball turnovers.
My Fault- I know when I talk about a “good attitude play,” most of you are not likely to think of Draymond Green. I was watching a Warriors game. Green had the ball out top, and Steph Curry was on the baseline. Curry started to cut backdoor, Green anticipated and threw the ball. Curry stopped in the middle of his backcut, the ball went out of bounds. Unless Golden State has a unique rule, the general basketball rule is that if you start going backdoor, you MUST keep going backdoor. It was clearly Curry’s fault for the turnover. Immediately Curry tapped his chest and acknowledged that it was his error. At the same time Green did the same- it was not Green’s error but that is being a good teammate.
Fastbreak Points Don’t Always Show Up- I was watching the Bulls play. The Bulls play at one of the faster tempos in the NBA. On this night, they were not getting many fastbreak points, in a large part because they were not getting stops and rebounds.
The announcer made an interesting point. He said, “At the end of the night, the Bulls fastbreak points total will be unimpressive, but they have created so many problems for the defense by just pushing the ball up the floor on every possession.
He then showed 4-5 clips of the Bulls after makes or after rebounds, pushing the ball and running the lanes. He showed how they did not get a shot that would be labeled as a fast break basket, but over and over the way they pushed the ball, the defense had to scramble and had mismatches to guard the offense coming up the floor.
MaxPreps Going to Become NET Rating- In college, they used to use RPI then they went to NET rating to help determine if teams make the NCAA tourney or not. The IHSA has been using MaxPreps just as a way of listing all the team’s scores for coaches, when the coaches seed the Regional/Sectional complexes.
The additional feature of MaxPreps is that it attaches a value to “strength of schedule,” and then ranks teams- nationally, state wide, and each class in the State.
In Illinois boys, the strongest rated schedules for teams to this date are- Bolingbrook 15.8, Manual 15.8, Chicago Curie 15.7, Whitney Young 14.6, St.Ignatius 14.2, Peoria 14.2.
In WB6 boys, the strongest rated schedules to this date are- Geneseo 11.8, Moline 8.8, UTHS 7.1, Quincy 6.0, Rock Island 5.0, Sterling 4.9, Galesburg 3.0, Alleman 2.9.
In Illinois girls, the strongest rated schedules to this date are- Example Academy 18.4, Prospect 17.5, Benet 17.0, St.Charles E 15.7, Fremd 14.9, Breese Central 14.8, Loyola 14.8, Naperville C 14.6, St.Ignatius 14.0
In Central Illinois- Quincy 13.4, Washington 13.3, Morton 12,9, Metamora 12.6, Geneseo 11.8, Peoria ND 11.7, Alleman 11.6, Dixon 11.4, Sterling 11.3, Galesburg 11.0, UTHS 8.9, Rock Island 8.3, Dunlap 7.5, Moline 6.6.
MaxPreps then takes the “strength of schedule,” quality of wins, and quality of losses- to then rank teams.
The question everyone is asking- Will the IHSA next year or at some point start using MaxPreps for seeding, instead of the coaches vote? An obvious reason to do this would be to eliminate coaches ability to try to manipulate seeding by drastically under-seeding certain teams.
After colleges had used RPI for sometime, the mid-majors figured out the formula and then adjusted their schedules to improve their RPI. The Power conference were not happy with that, and today they have gone to NET. The NET formula is kept a secret so the mid-majors can’t try to adjust their schedules. Obviously they have a general idea but not specifics.
If the IHSA does eventually go to using MaxPreps, it will be interesting to see if…
*** To they share with coaches the formula for strength of schedule so they can adjust their schedules?
*** Will a committee of coaches have the ability to make recommendations for adjustments to the basic formula?
*** How will this impact who teams are willing to play and not willing to play?
Hats Off- There are so many great things that athletes and coaches in all sports are doing. Sadly, many of these achievements go unrecognized because of schools, AD’s, and coaches not using social media. I want to recognize those who have been VERY impressive over the last two weeks:
** Athletic Director from Sterling- Their athletic twitter account is outstanding in letting you know the contests coming up for all sports. And the results of each sport- EVEN if they lose. And recognition for Coach Jackson for posting her own things but ALWAYS retweeting the Athletic Dept tweets.
** Athletic Director from Washington- The Athletic Dept twitter account has everything but the school menu on the account. Individuals and teams receive great recognition. Outstanding!!
** Union HS, Oklahoma- My favorite Tulsa team and the AD make a person feel like they are there.
** Galesburg HS wrestling Facebook gets credit for the best individual post where they recognized Anthony Makwala for his 100th win. Great job!!! (And now add a Twitter acc’t.)
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