I'm working on something special to show how Davidson gets so many 3s against us but who knows if I ever finish it, mostly because I think they just hit another one.
In the meantime I think we are focused on the wrong side of the court. McKillop has figured out Schmidt's offense. In the last 4 meetings Bonas averages 61.5 points per game. It is almost impossible to hold Davidson below 60, Loyola-Chi, Temple, and Rhode Island are the only teams to limit Davidson to under 60 this season. They are all top 60 defenses per Kenpom. So we need to figure out something different to score more and give our defense a sliver of a chance. In the past as I pointed out it has been one of our dudes putting on the superhero cape to produce offense. I don't think we have anyone ready to do that yet.
There has been some discussion about playing zone against Davidson, I can tell you that we tried that Friday for at least a couple of possessions in the first half but due where on the floor the Davidson offense lines up it was hard to see we were in our normal zone. I think you have to play a more traditional 1-3-1 if you are going to zone Davidson. If it were me I'd put OO in the middle of that zone and Welch on the bottom of it. All I know is a couple possessions playing that way can't be much worse than what we tried.
Lofton picking up a foul 2 minutes into the game moved him on to Carter Collins for a while rather than on JAG or Grady to keep him out of foul trouble or he just kept getting switched away from those guys. Either way having him away from the ball hurts our defense. He is the best on ball defender we have, and I don't think its that close.
Nelson Boachie-Yiadom hasn't gotten much run for Davidson all year but had a great game vs us. If they are going to make a run he has to get more minutes. He is their best athlete and did all the little things well. Maybe he just had a good game because our 4 situation is not great but he passed the eye test and gave Davidson an edge they have been missing this year.
I was really hard on Bobby on twitter Friday night. I hate being that guy, who trashes players. But I'm not backing down from what I said. He had a -26.3 BPM according to T-Rank and has had a negative BPM in 8 of the last 9 games. BPM is a
per-100-possession stat, the same scale as Adjusted Plus/Minus: 0.0 is league average, +5 means the player is 5 points better than an average player over 100 possessions, -2 is replacement level, and -5 is really bad (per basketball reference). I also want to add that he looked completely defeated when he picked up his last foul. He saw Schmidt call Winston to come in and just grabbed Grady or JAG to get it over with. If Schmidt gets Bobby back on track I'll admit he is a wizard.
Speaking of Winston. He has come a long way and has a ways to go. I think he has fallen in love with the reverse layup even when he could go up strong on the front side and get fouled. The other mistakes that he makes are all things you expect from a young guy. He tries to do too much at times on offense but when he plays within his role the team's ceiling rises. To be honest I didn't notice him much on defense this game which normally would be a good thing but I think it was just because after 10 minutes I only half watched the defense and mostly watched Davidson's offense because they were getting whatever they wanted.