Am i the only one who roots for former targets a lot? Certain guys I don’t if it was one that truly burned but I find myself often rooting for them. LIke I really like this Marquette team and I think they actually have a lot of potential. They look pretty damn good right now. They played a pretty tough schedule for this short little non conference run.
Beat Wisconsin, lost To UCLA (who imo is a good team) and lost to OK st which was a little more surprising. Elliot looks great out there. His career has mostly been hindered by injury , no? I really like him in high school coming out.
Cain
Carton
John
Dawn Garcia
Mcewen
Torrence (another kid I was real fond of in high school but not a target if i recall)
Elliot
I think they could make a nice run if Carton finds his swag. Reminds me of Michigan’s roster a bit in you got 5-7 guys who could all go for 8-10 at any time or more. Solid offensive balance.
And as soon as I say that they blow a twelve point lead.
I actually really like this roster a lot. Garcia is a beast downlow. Kid has a lot of potential. Between John and him they have a nice 1,2 downlow and Cain is a nice sf as a senior rounding out a nice front court.
If Carton can become who we all though he was out of high school consistenly then him and Mcewen are a real solid back court. If Elliot and Torrence can provide nice bench minutes with Lewis than its a nice roster.
Probably in an effort to get games in. Several conferences are doing that now, though I think they are having teams play in the same location two days in a row.
This was the part I was interested in hearing about:
“What is the difference in these games? Well, one possibility is officiating. In the evenly matched games, home free throw rate is just a 1.18% advantage for the home team (versus an average advantage of 3.4% in the previous years. Meanwhile, in mismatches the home team is mostly retaining its usual advantage in getting to the line: 3.2% versus 4.3% in those kinds of games in previous years.”
Christopher has an elite ability to get into the lane and create for himself, but he isn’t creating for anybody else right now. He has 7 total assists in 6 games and is also only shooting 6/22 behind the arc. Not sure how well he would have fit into an offense that requires lots of unselfishness to keep the ball from sticking. Then again some of that is probably coaching as Hurley basically lets his guards do whatever they want on offense.
Christopher is great at creating for himself though which is what Michigan lacks. They’ve been creating quite a few assists as a team they just need a guy who can break down tough defenses individually.
Hurley hasn’t had a team finish higher than 192nd nationally in assist rate in 5 years at ASU. Christopher demonstrated he is a quality passer in AAU. If he was operating in an actual offense he’d be a solid creator for both himself and others imo.
It’s not all that bad if you are drawing defenders and have elite rebounders. I don’t think we do, though. Next year, with both Diabate and (presumably) Hunter out there, there’s a chance that might work.
Verge and Martin have assist rates 2.5x what Christopher is doing so far so they aren’t having nearly as much trouble creating for others in the same lineup.
Does this line of thought generally fall into the ‘refs are intimidated or influenced into calling more fouls on the visiting team with fans breathing down their necks’ line of reasoning? That always felt like one of the more obvious lines of inquiry, whether accurate or not. . .
Refs are human…most of them are going to get caught up in the moment of a loud home crowd. Likewise, if an opponent is being affected by the pressure of playing in front of a home crowd they may make a couple more dumb fouls per game than they would in an empty gym.
It’s interesting there is any difference in FT disparity now - I think the argument for why it existed in the first play is that it’s easy for refs to get swept up in how a crowd reacts to a play sometimes. Obviously, that’s not occurring. I’d be tempted to say that any gap right is just a result that we’ve had predominantly buy games with massive talent disparities, and better teams generally draw more fouls?
Have not watched more than a few minutes of any ASU games, how much are they each operating out of ball screens? We know Christopher was a capable and willing passer in high school and AAU. He’s not gonna be a Simpson, but if he was the primary ball handler in our offense he’d absolutely have a much higher assist rate than he currently does.